Yesterday, we received a great big box in the mail. Shelby drug it in through the front door, and we slid it across the living room floor, near the Christmas tree, to open it up. I zipped a pocket knife through the tape and she pulled open the top of the box to reveal presents of all shapes and sizes. She squirmed with excitement, while Mike and I…
Widowed
Home Is Not a House
I’ve lived in lots of places in my life so far. I was born in Maryland and raised in Arlington, Virginia until I was 6, at which time we moved to nearby McLean. I attended Georgetown University in Washington, DC and lived on campus there, moving each year, in the dorms and residential housing. After college I moved back in with my parents, and then…
Hope and Reality
As I wrote last week, I had made plans to go to a place called the Dolly Sods wilderness for a weekend of backpacking. I’d been planning for months, to return to this place that I was so familiar and comfortable with. A place that felt like home to me. As fate would have it, a fire ban was instituted in the area, which quickly put this trip…
Outside the Walls of “Safety”
Mike left around 3am Saturday morning, headed out to West Virginia. It’s his first major solo backpacking trip since we’ve been together. Three nights out in the mountains alone, with no cell service. Our only form of contact has been a satellite device that lets him send me preset “all is well” messages with his location every few hours (this…
Precious Gifts
One of the most precious gifts from my marriage to Mike is that I have, for the rest of my life, two beautiful stepdaughters. They were grown when I married him, but still very young, 18 and 22. Now, one is mother to three beautiful children and the other just got married this past weekend here in Kona. Let me tell you – I am deeply grateful I was…
Take me Home, Country Roads
“I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me, the radio reminds me of my home far away.And driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday, yesterday.Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads.” – John Denver In the purest, most technical…
Holidays and How our Stories Unfold
There were two really meaningful things about Thanksgiving for me this year. Firstly, I was at my sister’s house in upstate New York. For the first time in our adult lives, we now live close enough to each other that we can do the holidays together. This is an enormous deal for me… one that makes me wish our mom was alive to be a part of it…
357 Days of a Widows Grief
As much as I try to escape it, that day has been on replay in my mind for the past few weeks. The lead up to the one year mark of the day life changed. Terrified at the thought of what emotions this day will bring me. Angry that this day has a place in my life at all. And an overshadowing sadness that engulfs and strangles me with the thought that…
I have to go home
Well, the deed is done. Dad is in a home. But it’s not his home. We are crippled with sadness. Coming back to the house afterwards reminded me so much how it felt at my house after Mike died. Like the energy was sucked up into a vortex and we were left with this black emptiness.We know in our hearts no one will be able to give him the kind of care…
Blunting the Knife
Saturday marked two years since Megan’s death. I could sit down to write about how it was a horrible weekend, curling into the fetal position and crying more often than not. I could note how the minute I woke up, a tightness seized in my chest and a chill shot through my body. I could give an anecdote about walking through our dining…
Life is for Living
In a few weeks, Mike will be going on his first major backpacking trip since I have moved here. This is a big deal for me. Drew died while he was away on a trip. Mike is going to be alone in the woods, in potentially dangerous cold temperatures, with zero cell service, for several days. One of the reasons that he hasn’t been on any solo…
Her Beautiful Smile
I learned this morning that a good friend of Johns passed away yesterday afternoon, in the same way that he passed. Her passing is all too familiar and stirs up so many emotions. Following the shock I was overwhelmed with sadness for her and her family, the future they no longer have and that she no longer has. Grief consumes and there are no words…