“Happy Mother’s Day!” the waiter says to me, followed by saying that he isn’t sure who is or isn’t a mom so he just says it to all the women coming in to eat lunch at the restaurant today. I laugh at his over-kindness, and say thank you. But then, as he walks away… the feeling sinks in. Now, normally I’m very good at keeping the whole children…
Widowed Without Children
Spoons
Why do I keep expecting to be someone who hasn’t been through what I have? Why do I have these ridiculous expectations? Why do I feel less than because I’m so changed? Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be disabled by this tragedy, but I am anyway. I try not to use it as an excuse for my failures, but sometimes I forget that I am not as I…
The Dream & The Death
Today is a very big day. In just a few hours, I will be loading up nine of my large framed photos and delivering them safely to the local hospital for my first solo art exhibition. It is a lifelong dream come true. And mostly, it has been incredible. I told my counselor the other day that it feels like a dream… that it feels like I got dropped…
A Farewell Toast
It’s come. The time for me to step away as a writer for Widow’s Voice and let another share their life with all of you…to heal and learn in new ways and see things from another’s view. This moment was inevitable, as the only permanence in life is impermanence (as we all know too well…hence us being here), yet I want to share a bit of what it…
Secret Universe
The other day, I was watching the Yankee game, and the Yankees were playing at home, against the Seattle Mariners. Now, if you know anything at all about baseball or the Yankees, you might know that Robinson Cano left the Yankees at the end of last season, and signed on with the Mariners. It is complicated and has to do with contracts and…
Loss
I was stuck for ideas the other day in art class and the teacher was trying to help me brainstorm. Make it autobiographical, he said, in his cheery 20-something voice, about the movie poster I was assigned to create.Autobiographical? I thought. Huh. Yeah. I began to sort through my life events. Lost my mom (and my dad, too, if we’re talking…
Grieving for Two
After two and a half years of feeling this soul-changing, earth-shattering loss, I just realized something sort of huge. Well, I always knew it, but I just stopped and actually thought about it, and now I am able to put it into words. It is this: I grieve on behalf of my husband more than I grieve for my husband. I hope that makes sense. I…
Birthday
Friday was Dave’s birthday. He would’ve been 41. I met him nearly 20 years ago. These three facts feel impossible. The day I met him feels like yesterday. I will always think of him as the 23 year old I first met. And his birthday keeps showing up to remind me that I’ll soon be older than he ever got to be. He was a sweet, chubby baby. His aunt…
My Home
I live in a wonderful city now. I’ve become more and more comfortable here. I like the weirdness, the outdoorsy-ness, the coffee shops, the rampant recycling and composting and organic gardening. I like the dogs and the green of the woods and the mist hanging in the west hills. I like the bridges and the dragon boats on the river. I like the…
Terrible Relief
Kelley’s post got me thinking. My knee jerk reaction was: what’s wrong with me that I parted with my wedding ring months after Dave died? What’s wrong with me that I don’t long to wear it? How did I let go of that ring? I measured the devotion I had by the way I dealt with my grief. Never helpful. Everyone grieves differently. For a moment I…
Turning Pain into Love
In 2012, when his death was so fresh, I needed to talk. About the pain, the fear, the agony, the anger, the loss, the accident, the future we will not have, the children we won’t raise, the wedding we won’t share… all of it. I wanted to crawl out of my skin with all the pain. I talked and cried almost every single day to someone about my pain. I…
Hope
Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent. ~Mignon McLaughlin It’s a new year and, with that, I’d like to rewind to the beginning years of Michael’s death. I dreaded a new year. One in which he hadn’t lived. He hadn’t existed. A year in which I couldn’t even refer to the year before of him being…