The thing most people don’t get about losing your partner is that you also lose a part of yourself when they die. You lose aspects of who you were with them. You lose a lot of your innocence, without having any choice in the matter. You grieve a loss of your own self. This sudden identity change was an equally painful part of losing my fiance six…
milestones
I Wanted to Call You
It has been now 6 years since my fiance died. Very seldom these days do I have those moments when all I want to do is pick up the phone to call him and tell him about something that happened. Part of that is due to time, and probably part due to being able to share many of our favorite things with my new partner Mike. Having lost my mom when I was…
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…
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…
The New Stove
Every now and then something seemingly ordinary happens in our widow lives that has so much more meaning. Something that other people would really not think anything of. I had one of these a few weeks ago, when the glass top on our stove cracked. This was a stove that my new person, Mike, and his late-wife, Megan, had in their house for a decade. A…
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…
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…
New Directions Fueled by the Past
Today an exciting milestone has happened for me. One that runs deep, and is stitched with so many remnants of a past life and of every day since that I’ve fought for. Today I was accepted to be a contributor for a major photography agency that works in the book publishing industry. They work with publishing houses all over the world to help them…
100% Chance of Rain
A few weeks ago, a milestone came that I have dreaded for a very long time. It’s odd to say that, considering it was my anniversary with someone I love very much. But it wasn’t just any anniversary. It was the third year since the day Mike and I met. The third anniversary was also the last I got to have with Drew… he died six days later,…
1097 and Counting
Three years is not an insignificant amount of time to be in a relationship with someone. Three years is how long Megan and I dated before we were married. Three years is how long Megan was “healthy” during our relationship. Three years is how old Shelby was when her mother was carted away in an ambulance, on her way to an unknown…
Finance Department
Through our twenties, Megan and I (well, mostly me) got into a mountain of debt. Cars, trips, entertainment, and just plain “things” were being spent upon all the time. There were quite a few medical costs sprinkled in there too. By the time we hit 30 years old, we were at our wit’s end with bills. Megan’s disability prevented her…
Loss of a Different Kind
In my 37 years, I’ve seen my share of loss. I’ve lost all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, fellow Marines, a brother-in-law, cats, dogs and other pets, co-workers, and obviously, my wife. There has been illness, accidents, age, war, heart-attacks, and a sprinkle of stupidity involved. It happens. Death happens. I…