***Written in 2010, but with a 2013 photo. With this year being my 5th Anniversary, I thought it a perfect time to re-post. :)*** This weekend I’ll be at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. 8 stages, over a hundred bands, but to me it is so much more. Last October, my best friend (and fellow widow) and I ventured out on the green grass,…
What If I Forget …. His smell. His funny lips and the way they turned up at the corner. His skin. His dry skin that always needed chapstick, and his back that always needed to be scratched. What If I forget … Those piercing blue eyes that became someone else’s eyes when he donated them to the eye bank. The way they looked at me. Through me.
“Don’t be too late tonight, I really want to spend some time with you.” “I won’t. It’ll be an early hunt. I’ll be back before the kids go to bed. I promise.” I promise. Right before we exchanged I love you’s, this was one of the last things I heard Jeremy say to me. I’ve played it out so many times in my head, it gets very muddled now,…
“The way of progress is neither swift nor easy.” -Marie Curie …… is not a word I would’ve used to describe any part of my “After” in the first few years. Hell, I was trying too hard to just keep breathing, to just stay alive when I’d really rather not. Progress? Who gave a damn about progress …… I was using most of my…
There’s someone I’ve been neglecting for the past 3.5 years. She is strong, but has infrequent, spectacular meltdowns due to the ….(there is no word to describe this but widows know the feeling) …. of it all. She loves hard, but falls hard. She picks herself back up again, dusts herself off and keeps going. She takes every sling and…
“Why don’t you reread your Widow’s Voice posts from the beginning and see what kind of progress you’ve made.” My smart smart dude’s advice the other day when I talked to him about the possibility of identifying so much with widowhood that it was keeping me stuck in some ways. So I tried it. I didn’t expect to discover what I did. The overall…
Today is my birthday. Sort of. This blog will post on Friday, and so by the time you read this, it will no longer be my birthday. But right now, this minute, Thursday, September 26th, at almost midnight, it is the end of my birthday. This year, I am 42. This is the 3rd birthday without my husband. My first birthday without him was so awful, I don’t…
I’ve been thinking about what to blog about for two days now. And I haven’t been able to come with anything. At least, not anything new. The ironic thing is, grief has been so heavy for me this week. Yesterday morning in the middle of a random conversation with my two year old about daddy, I burst into tears, which turned in to full-out sobbing by…
…… even if it’s a brand new home. And sometimes …… especially if it’s a brand new home. (Not new as in newly built, but new as in new to you.) As most of you know, I’ve been splitting my time between Houston and New York City. And I’ve loved being in NY. I’ve always loved being in NY, but now I love it for additional reasons. And the…
I recently read a book (and then watched the movie) called “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell. I count it as one of my top ten reads of all time. It’s not an easy read, either in content (lots of death and savagery), nor in lightness (its complex, you can’t afford not to be 100% focused on the story or you will miss something important).But this…
Every time I dissolve into tears and those tears, instead of cleansing, dissolve into more tears and a spiral down into depression and anxiety, I realize I’m worrying about the same things. I’m stuck. It’s the SSDD syndrome: Same Shit, Different Day. I KNOW worrying about the future is pointless. I KNOW accepting myself is crucial. I KNOW I’ll…
I am jealous of old people. Every single old person that I see walking down the street. I am jealous of them. The bitter ones. The wrinkled up, exhausted by life ones. The healthy ones. The sick ones. The ones who have made it into their late 80’s or even early 90’s, and who are still walking side by side with their partners. The husband…
