He strides through my mind on a daily basis. My heart yearns for the Love I felt so strongly with him. My soul remembers back to the years we shared. My body yearns for his hands upon it. It’s been 5 years and 3 months since he left my world. I’m in love with a dead man. I can almost hear the shrieks of dismay and shock and see people draw back…
Widowed
Mountain Salve
Today, Megan would have been 37 years old. This is the fourth birthday since her death, and I can confidently say that they have gotten a bit easier. I’m not a ball of snot and tears, or missing her any more than I already do. She’s s imply “in focus” today. There is no other way to describe it but “in focus”. On any given day,…
Pixel Memories
Something that Megan and I did every year or two was get family photos taken. While we had thousands of “candid” pictures, taken from our phones or old point-and-shoot devices, we were never posed, and neither of us were exactly professional photographers. We would make the appointment, pack up a few various pieces of clothing, and head to…
The Challenge of Living At All
Sometimes I wonder, is life harder because I have been widowed or would have been just as hard in different ways if I had never been widowed? It’s a question I think on when I have long talks with friends who aren’t widowed, who are going through their own complex lives… complete with blended, divorced families and step kids or uncertainty in…
Edited Memories
As Sarah, Shelby and I near the time to depart for our summer vacation, I am reminded of just how different things were, and I am finding some appreciation of the very fact that as a widower, those differences weren’t always convenient. We’re traveling to my favorite place on earth, the Great Smoky Mountains, at the end of July. Megan and I…
Let it Be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDYfEBY9NM4 It’s one of those “jumbled” days, where it feels like I have nothing worth sharing with the world. Alison shared the same sentiment in her writing this past Wednesday. I’m approaching four years of widowerhood, and I’ve been writing here for three and a half. What else am I to say? I…
Through an Unthinkable Fire
Last Thursday, all of my closest friends flew in from around the country for our annual trip to see each other. Since 2012, when Drew died, we have been making it a point to come from far and wide to spend a weekend together celebrating his life and our friendships. We call it Drewfest, and this year was our sixth year. It was the first year having…
The New Crew
Tomorrow, Wednesday, is officially the beginning of “Drewfest” 2018. It’s an annual summer get-together of Drew’s friends, usually taking place somewhere in Texas, with the specific goal of having a fun weekend together as if he was still around, yet remembering he’s not. It’s a great endeavor, and one that in and of itself should…
Waiting in the Wings
This past week was the 6th anniversary of his death. I wrote last week about this, and what would have been our 9th anniversary together the week before. I will always hate that these two dates are a week apart. It’ll always piss me off to have to have my anniversary of celebrating our love so closely linked to when he died. But it is what it is…
Navigating My New Normal
It’s been 7 shorts weeks since I lost my Partner of 4 yrs. – Clayton, or as my family calls him “Tin”. Right now I am sitting, ironically, at the Atlanta airport on a layover to go home to Boston for my cousin’s wedding. Tin and I met in Atlanta and left the city to move to the beach, get married and make a life. Everyone has been…
A Friend I Never Knew
As luck would have it, today is Tuesday, my day to post my rambling here on Soaring Spirits. It is also the 6th anniversary of Drew’s crash, and the 4th trip around the sun since I began getting to know him. Through stories told by Sarah, his parents, and his friends, I’ve made a friend…a sort of widow pen-pal, in a way. It’s odd,…
Quality Time
The way the math works is that Shelby was born eleven and a half years ago. Megan died when she was seven, and Sarah came into our lives when Shelby was eight. That means that Sarah has had approximately half the time, at this point, that Megan had with Shelby. A third of Shelby’s life has been with Sarah. Somehow, Sarah and I got into a…