A large part of the story of Don and Kelley is our kitties. He loved animals, and over our years together, we had our little family of kitty cats. Isabelle and Ginger are over the rainbow bridge now, but I still have Autumn and Sammy, who we adopted together from a rescue shelter in NJ. These 2 cats have stayed with me all throughout losing Don to…
widowed memories
It’s Just a Piece of Metal
One of my favourite Mike stories, dating from before I met him, was frequently regaled in family conversations. I am sure that over almost thirty years, the story popped up at least once a year. More often after the kids were born. It made it onto the “Stories of Mike” CD Mike and Trisha recorded in the last weeks of his life while at the…
Running on Purpose_v2
21st October 2019 – today would be 32 years since my first date with Mike. This is the second time I have written a blogpost with the exact same title. Hence the _v2. The first was on my work website and was written on 7th June 2014. I had just completed a 32 km mountain trail run in our local hills, a “warm-up” for a bigger event later…
Approaching a Year
These past few weeks have been incredibly hard for me. I’ve been reliving what happened last year. It’s not that I welcome these thoughts, it’s that my brain keeps bringing them up. I remember the last lunch that we had as a family, just the day before my husband’s accident. I remember my daughter and I went to go have lunch with at his…
Magical Music
I am a new guest writer here on Soaring Spirits. I do realise that it’s a site for Widowed people. I am widowed. My husband Mike died of pancreatic cancer on 8th April 2017. He was 53. It feels like a life time ago. It feels like yesterday. It feels unreal. In addition, I have lost an amazing and one and only best platonic male friend, Don (11…
The Miracle of a Well-Lived Life
Each April 26, I post a blog I wrote in the days after Chuck’s death. I called it “Happy Anniversary, Dear Man”. But it wasn’t about our wedding anniversary; it was about his sober anniversary. One year, when I posted it, I was criticized for posting about his sober anniversary, because it broke Chuck’s anonymity, which is a crucial…
The Song in Your Heart
Sometimes a song is a gentle reminder an sometimes a song is a stick of dynamite… I woke up feeling more relaxed than usual today. I went to the gym before work and felt centered and ready for the workday. I have a 5 minute drive to work which usually happens in a blink of an eye until Adele comes over the radio. Tin absolutely loved Adele. She…
The Spice of Life
It’s amazing how simple things can etch a memory deep into your heart. Music, sights, sounds and smells. Food and cooking has always brought back memories of family holidays and campfire stories. Tin loved food. That’s basically the understatement of the year. He would take anything we had in the kitchen and in an hour there would be a…
Opposing Teams
I became a NY Yankee fan in the 1990s, when I went to NYC for college. It was the Joe Torre era, and baseball in NY was exciting. Going to multiple games at Yankee Stadium with college friends, it was tough not to fall in love with it. When I started dating Don, my late husband, he wasn’t really into baseball. He said it was boring, and asked me…
Trip Down Memory Lane
This week my daughter and I caught the ferry over to The Sunshine Coast in southern BC and toured Gibsons and Sechelt. Gibsons was home to the filming of the television show “The Beachcombers” from 1972 to 1990. It was also the first hometown to Wendy and Ben from 1993 to 1997. It’s where we lived when we got married, it’s where we…
Things in Common
This might sound kind of silly or stupid or not at all important in the grand scheme of things related to losing one’s life partner to death – but just bear with me, if you don’t mind. It’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and I feel the need to get these thoughts out. There are a lot of things that my husband and I had in common. A lot of things.
Our Old Lives
“I want my old life back.” I’ve heard a lot of widowed people say that, as I have, and continue to, some days. I miss a lot of little things about being married to Mike. It was a comfortable, familiar life, after nearly 14 years of marriage. I can still hear him shuffling across the tile floors, whistling. The refrigerator door opening and…