The past week has been a roller coaster. Charlie was laid to rest and it was one of the hardest moments of my life. It was also during that time that I was moved by my friends’ kindness. I was lucky and blessed to have some of my dearest and best friends there…friends that weren’t like the friends that were around when Michael died….these are…
military widowed
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, which was first recorded to have been observed by Freedmen (freed enslaved southern blacks) in Charleston, South Carolina in 1865, at the Washington Race Course, to remember the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War. The…
Last Walk
***This was written 2 days ago*** Charlie… Charlie is more than a dog. Though my family had him since he was a puppy, in 2004 he came to live with me full-time. He became king. Always having been an outside dog, he was thrown into a world where he didn’t have to fight to get to the dog bowl and got to sleep among pillows and soft comforters. An…
Parenthesis, year 4
***If you’re reading this, it is officially May 21st, 2011. The four year angel-versary of my love. I’m writing this a week in advance, and hopefully have succeeded in doing my fourth skydive jump on the 20th (If I don’t blog next week, I’ll tell all your loves “hello” ;D ). This has become an annual event for the military widows of our…
It Holds On
I’ve been getting everything ready for our upcoming AWP event these past two weeks. One of the neatest components to the time is the golf tournament. I know…golf….not synonymous with anything too exciting, but at each hole is a sign. A sign that bears words from a fallen hero’s wife. Words on his life, his character, his soul….even his…
Books Revisited
**I’ve been revisiting past blogs. It’s sort of a way to remind myself how far I’ve come and continue to go. Here’s one I wrote May 9, 2009, that I wanted to share. I think we all, in some way or at some point, turn to books, blogs (wink, wink), or other forms of writing for healing** I believe for me, that a huge part of figuring out one’s grief,…
Suffering
“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” -Franz Kafka I’m at one of our bi-monthly AWP events. Our first night is one of the most interesting. For many of the widows, it is there…
The Wall
“But mostly, I cried because my life had been going full speed for so long and now it had just stopped, like running right into a big brick wall, knocking the wind and the fight right out of me. And I didn’t know if I’d ever even wanted to get up and start breathing again.” – Sarah Dessen This quote embodies the day I was notified and the…
Remembering
I was looking for the perfect quotation or saying for a friend going through her hero’s angel-versary and came across this excerpt. May you remember your love in the best of times and worst…and may your lives be enhanced through that action…As the four year mark creeps up on me, remembrance has been one thing to get me through the present.This…
Me
I’m introspective. You can still find me wandering the “Self-Help” aisles at a bookstore to find things to challenge my being and better my soul. Like art, all I took and take from those paperbacks is interpreted differently to me than others…and hell, I’m as flawed as a clearance item at a “Ross” store, so in seeing that each life…or in Ross…
A Real Kiss
I remember the moment like the sound of his heart. We sat facing the glass window panes in between gate 15 and 17. The looming knowledge that in a few passing moments a stranger would come over the intercom to separate us once again led us to focus on anything, but the reality awaiting him and I. The distraction was SkyChef loading food onto a…
Wack
You know what…..The poster has it all right! Loves not wack, even life isn’t (though it has its glimpses). But death, death I’m pretty certain is wack.Death didn’t take Michael out of pain or take him to a better place…he had all of that here, and at 22 ,I’m pretty sure he wanted to live down here with me a tad longer. I don’t think I’ll ever…