Yesterday, July 25, is the third anniversary of our wedding without him. That’s three more anniversaries than I celebrated with him. We didn’t get to celebrate a single one. I try to imagine what we might be doing on our third anniversary but it’s hard to both predict and recall something that never once happened. Would we be going out for…
widowed fear of forgetting
Room for What Comes
Last weekend, I climbed a mountain with my sangha friends to honour my husband and to raise money for a fund set up in his name. I came home from that mountain imbued with a new courage. My hike up that trail, under the most adverse conditions, has helped me to let go of the fears I have had around conquering other obstacles in my life. I have…
As Memories Fade
Today is the first day of June, and eight days from the first anniversary of my beloved husband’s sudden death. While last year, at this time, England was sweltering under a heat wave, the temperature has barely climbed above 55F (13C) this spring. I check the weather forecast obsessively, grasping for some sign of a sliver of warmth. I want to…
He knew. This too, shall pass.
When my husband and I were ‘new’, and so full of love for each other, he would caution me that this aspect of our relationship, the euphoria and the intensity, would change. “It won’t always feel like this,” he would say. Extremist that I am, my heart opened and softened by his attentiveness, I did not believe it for a moment. I had found,…
New Years Crash
Ever since that calendar started to read 2015 about 24 hours or so ago, I have been feeling a little bit down. I keep forgetting that New Years Eve and New Years Day make me incredibly sad. I don’t know why I keep forgetting this, but I do. Each year since my husband’s death, the sadness surrounding New Years always seems to come out of nowhere and…
My Mind’s Eye
Sometimes I’d swear Mike is here with me. I keep getting the sensation of his presence…or maybe, my mind and heart are just working overtime to remember. To remember how it felt when he was in the room with me. The sound of his breath, his footsteps…how he looked, the familiar freckles on his forearms, his latest mustache creation, his…
Nobody Remembers
If you are widowed, and you are reading this, then you know that missing your person and the life you had together is as constant as breathing – it is a new fact in your new life that you didn’t ask for, and it’s just there, always and forever. The missing of what was never goes away. But then, above and beyond that missing, is a whole other kind…
Dreams
I never dream of him. I can’t for the life of me figure out why or how the person I spent most moments of 15 years with, the person I was closest to in my entire life, doesn’t show up in my dreams now that he’s gone from this earth. Or if he is, why I don’t remember those dreams but I do remember the mundane, annoying, or ridiculous dreams instead.
I can’t remember if I remember
I wrote this post on my personal blog back in April of 2012, but it was ringing in my ears this week, as I was trying to remember details and was getting frustrated about the pieces I couldn’t recover. I had a horrifying experience this week: I couldn’t remember.It started with a drive to meet my sister-in-law in Canada. The drive was a…
What if I Forget?
What If I Forget …. His smell. His funny lips and the way they turned up at the corner. His skin. His dry skin that always needed chapstick, and his back that always needed to be scratched. What If I forget … Those piercing blue eyes that became someone else’s eyes when he donated them to the eye bank. The way they looked at me. Through me.