One of the things I’ve learned – one of the great many things I’ve learned since becoming a widow is that life is change. All things shift, turn on their heads, ebb and flow, and come to an end. We can’t stop it though we may try. I might have thought I understood that before Mike died, but now I really get it. Because something has happened…
stephanie vendrell
Dead and Gone
My fingers know the letters. I can type as fast as most people can talk. But what to say…what to tell, this day in the middle of all the holiday madness. I can’t write about this. I can’t write about that. Too personal. Ok. But my life is what it is.My husband is dead, and still there are hard things. Doesn’t seem fair. I take it all in good…
Stored Memories
When I was a kid, Christmases were pure joy and fun. It meant cousins, grandparents, decorations, special dinners, holiday treats, and sometimes, winter fun like snowmen and sledding. It meant no school, warm fires, music sing-a-longs and laughter. Pretty soon I grew up. Christmases were still, for a few years, about family and love and gift…
To Know Grief is to Know Love
I can’t tell you how I manage to pull off a post every week, or how I have done so for the past three and a half years here. I get asked that a lot. Some weeks I know exactly what I want to write. Other weeks I feel dry…uninspired, lackluster and done. Then suddenly something will move me. Feeling overcome with emotion in a moment, a vision of…
A New Lease
Another sleepless night. Eyes wide open, I finally get up. I pace through the house, small as it is, investigating this or that I think I will or will not take to the new place, for the millionth time. Thinking about all the things I have already taken to the new place, for the millionth time. Our new place, my boyfriend’s and mine. …
Inward and Outward
Mike is everywhere, and nowhere. I feel him in my bones, like a part of my own body. He haunts my every waking hour. I never forget. It never slips my mind that my husband is dead. I can’t stop the memories that flood in. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing. Shopping, celebrating a holiday, watching his birthday come and go,…
Itching and Aching
It’s official. We signed the lease this week, my boyfriend and I, for the house we will occupy for the next year. I’ve decided to only think that far ahead, and it’s made it a little easier. Because it’s a huge transition, moving from the house I shared with my late husband for so many years. It’s also not a huge transition. I’m only…
Going With It
The big news is, we found a place to rent here in Kona that has agreed to the dogs. It’s only up the block, so moving should be relatively easy. It’s expensive…but thankfully my boyfriend is with us for all the support both emotional and financial that it will entail. It has not come easy. It took weeks for the owner to come around to us…
The Late Shift
I can’t sleep. I worked the late shift again, my usual schedule these days at the restaurant, so I’m not too surprised. Trying to sleep before one in the morning these days is difficult, when I don’t get home til half past 10 at the earliest. One does need to downshift for a bit after work, regardless of the hours. But this time it’s like…
With a Smile
Like a freight train, time is bullying its way forward. Come February, which feels just around the corner, I will have been five years without Mike. I sit here in his chair on the lanai we shared in this house, looking down on the ocean view he loved so dearly, wondering how that is possible. Because in this moment, and so many others, it feels…
Decisions, Decisions
Sometimes, you don’t make decisions. Sometimes, decisions are just made for you. Like that time my husband died. I definitely didn’t decide that. And as a result, a cascade of other decisions I didn’t make happened. I just had no choice in the matter. All the things you do in life, day-to-day or long term, doing any of those things without…
Tiresome Grief
I’m just so tired. Sitting here with all this week’s feelings, thoughts and words ping-ponging around my brain, that one just keeps rising to the top. Grief is a heavy, heavy stone to drag around, and I’m tired. That sinister companion has changed so much, not just in my daily life but how I think about life altogether. I’m been…