This is going to be short and sweet this week, because our life lately consists of prepping for the latest round of snow, after just getting pelted with the LAST round of snow before that one. And so on and so on until the end of time. Or, hopefully, another 3 weeks or so, when […]
Sudden Loss
To My Beloved Husband
To my beloved husband, Chuck D, as we approach the 6th anniversary of your memorial service, which we held 6 months out from your death… I know I did everything as perfectly as I could in those few short weeks between finding the cancer, our hospice time, and your death. I know this more than I know anything else in my life. And yet… Doubt…
When You Least Expect It
So much of our lives are built upon expectations. We plan our higher education based on the expectation that we can have a career doing what we love. We raise children on the expectation that they will succeed even beyond what we ourselves as parents have achieved. We marry, with the expectation that our partner will be there by our side…
Love On
I had some bad news this past week that has really been on my mind and in my heart for days now. Something that brought back a lot of memories, and a lot of important lessons, for me. It may be an odd thing to say, but at times there are things that I actually miss about those first few years after Drew’s death. As painful and horrible as that…
Over It
After a long day at work yesterday, teaching Theatre and Comedy courses at the University I work at and have worked at for 15 years, I came home to find out about the awful, horrific shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua College. I had sat down and put my TV on in order to feel relaxed after a tiring day, and instead, I found myself feeling once again…
Around the Corner
On July 12th, 2011, during another ordinary day in my previous life, I could have never in a zillion years predicted or seen coming that only hours later, my husband would leave for work and never return again. I could NOT have foreseen that he would be sitting at the computer desk in our bedroom one minute, and the next morning,I would be jarred…
What About Don?
It is now 3 years and almost 11 months (next week)since my beautiful husband left for work and never came home. In that time, I have (and still do) been to grief counseling weekly, tried many different widowed support groups, become a member of several online and in-person groups for widowed people, found support through Soaring Spirits and have…
The Knowing
When you lose your beautiful husband to sudden and shocking death at age 39, just four years into your happy and flourishing marriage, one of the biggest things you are left with is something that I call “the knowing.” What is the knowing? It is having the knowledge about a whole host of things regarding life and death, that your previous self had…
Spoons
Why do I keep expecting to be someone who hasn’t been through what I have? Why do I have these ridiculous expectations? Why do I feel less than because I’m so changed? Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be disabled by this tragedy, but I am anyway. I try not to use it as an excuse for my failures, but sometimes I forget that I am not as I…
Clean or Dirty
Something I’ve begun to distinguish since Dave died is clean pain versus dirty pain. I can’t remember the original source of this idea, though I’ve read about the concept several different times. Clean pain is the pain we feel when we lose someone or something we love dearly. It’s the pain we naturally feel when we’re ripped from…
A Beginning in the End
A lot of us talk about various times during this horrible journey where a shift begins to happen. It’s nothing concrete or tangible, it may not even be something we can easily define… all we know is that something has changed in us and the way we view what has happened to us. That is the shift.Since the new year began, I’ve been feeling as…
To Be Changed
Last night just before going to bed, for some reason I felt called to go back through some really old journal entries from the years leading up to when I met Drew. I don’t always pay attention to those little cues, but last night for whatever reason I did. I smiled to read some of the entries about our first days together… about how safe and…