Yesterday was memorial day in the United States. Every year, on the last Monday in May, we Americans fire up the grill, go to parades, ignite fireworks, buy red-white-and-blue everything, and celebrate the unofficial start of summer. We hang our flags, complain about the heat, and have a drink or four to commemorate the day off from work.
Widowed
1273
1,273 days. That’s how long I have been a widower, as of this very moment. It’s an arbitrary number…over 1,000, not quite 1500. Not an even number, nor a prime number. It doesn’t signify a specific milestone or even an approaching one. It’s just Tuesday, 1,273 days since Megan’s death. I’ve now been through 3 of her…
Losing a Friend
So the book I have been writing about my husband’s death, and life in the aftermath, is finished. It is now in editing, and should be ready for publication for July 13th. One of the sections in the book is called “Words About Don”, where I asked a handful of his close friends and family to write up a few words/couple of paragraphs or so, about a…
How-to: Mother’s Day
As Mother’s Day approaches, I always tend to think of Megan a bit more. Many everyday things become somehow intertwined with a memory or anecdote about her, simply because she was Shelby’s mother. Even mowing the lawn brings thoughts about the fact that she had to close all of the windows in the house due to the smell of fresh cut grass…
Ink to Remember, Part 2
I’m going to do the easy thing today, and feed off of Sarah’s sunday post. I was in the woods for the first time in a while this past weekend, while Sarah’s sister came into town for a few days. They got to have their weekend together, while I got 24 hours or so next to a campfire. Her sister got her first tattoo on Saturday. From her…
Second Time Around
Does our soul get more than one soulmate? Yes. And no. This is what I believe. …. Our soul is perhaps the biggest part of our makeup, as human beings. It is what carries all the important stuff. Emotion, heart, love. I think that with life experience, age, and time, our souls change and alter some. I think after the death of a partner or…
Make Your Past
What do I think about on these Tuesday mornings, 3 ½ years after Megan died? It’s a question that I generally ask myself on the way into work, in preparation for publishing some kind of anecdote, observation, or predicament here on Soaring Spirits, in the hopes that a person will read and experience a “me too” or “oh wow, I never thought…
The Last Dance
Shelby is nearing the end of her 5th grade year. In just a few more months, she will be off to middle school. All I have known of her for most of her life is that she is an elementary school student. Through the sickness, health, additional sickness, and death of her mother, she has never skipped a beat, still bringing home 3.0 or higher…
Happy Belated
Hey man, Sorry I didn’t write you sooner. As fate would have it, your birthday was last Wednesday, and this just happens to be the best forum for me to do this, albeit only on Tuesdays. Sue me. Anyway, this is the third year in a row that I’ve given you a birthday letter. Last year, it was about cake and bacon beer (of which I did NOT…
The Fact of the Matter
The fact of the matter is, I’m a 37 year old widower. By most standards, it’s quite unique. I wasn’t married to someone in a high-risk career. Megan wasn’t in her seventies, hell, she barely made it into her thirties. Statistically, I’m much more likely to be divorced than widowed at my age. The fact of the matter is,…
Half Life
Half a lifetime ago, it was esprit de corps. It was smoking breakfast, sleeping through lunch, and drinking dinner. It was hard working weekdays, and lazy weekends. It was little pay and long hours, and not caring about either. Half a lifetime ago, days went by as years. The soundtrack was Blink-182 and Korn. The beer was warm and cheap,…
A Mindful Conversation
It’s been far too long since I felt the sting of an icy wind hitting my face. Months have passed since I lazily stared into a campfire of my own creation, with nobody but my own self to discuss it with. I haven’t dunked into a mountain creek after a long march, and I haven’t been woken up by annoying crows, rather than an annoying alarm…