Mike and I have been going through a bit of a rough patch the last few weeks. Not really knowing what was going on, it’s slowly lead to us both having triggers and making incorrect assumptions about various situations. After a few weeks of unknowingly having some things build up, it finally came to a head over lunch this past week. We talked, and…
widowed
A sea of flowers
So last Friday was the annual Circle of Remembrance memorial held by the Kona Hospice. It takes place at Hulihe’e Palace, an absolutely beautiful spot in Kona town. The building itself has a lot of history for Hawaii, which I thought about a lot sitting there; the place has a lot of history for me personally too. Mike loved it so, so much…
Death blows
I’ve been thinking about death a lot this week…how could you not. Not only do we have our own personal losses always dangling in our hearts, but when well known cultural icons pass away the whole world mourns for them and then it’s everywhere. David Bowie played such a huge role in my youth. He broke down barriers, broke new ground…broke…
Myrtle
I sit on my porch a lot…in Hawaii we call it our lanai. The same table and chairs have been there for years and years since we bought the place in 2001…scratch that, one of our dogs broke our original glass table; the cheap, wooden one there now is one I got at Ikea when I lived in LA in the 90s….ok I’m going off on a tangent… Suffice…
Not Alone and Lonely
Even when I’m not alone at the end of the day, I’m still lonely for Mike. His space can just never be filled. I wrote that line weeks ago but couldn’t finish anything with it. I think because it seemed like a complete thought; that one sentence summed it up for me in so many ways. But since I’ve been back from my holiday travels and looking…
The Last Straggler
It was still dark when I stepped outside the Holiday Inn near the Los Angeles airport where the airline had been forced to put me up after a snarl of delays and cancellations across the country left me unable to make my connection back to Hawaii. It was the final leg in a long day and a half of travel and I felt bleary and grungy, having spent the…
Sadness and Sugarplums
Here’s the sucky thing about being widowed. Well, one of the many sucky things about it anyway. Holidays will always be hard. They will always be tarnished with lost love and that empty chair at the table. There is just no getting around it, and it doesn’t matter how long it’s been. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this year – my third since Mike…
Far From Ideal
“Far from ideal”…just one phrase uttered by my friend Margaret during a recent conversation about the state of our lives well into year three of losing our husbands. It caught my ear because indeed…so much of our world now is far from ideal. We realized too during that conversation that our lives with our husbands were probably not…
Mileage
My new car is awesome. I never drive it or think about it without a wistful wish that Mike were here sharing it with me, but it is still awesome. He would have loved it too. A brand spanking new car with bells and whistles like I’ve never had before. My Subaru was a 2003 and Mike’s truck is a 1996 so I feel like I’ve been dropped headfirst into a…
Missing Pieces
I will never get used to death. Even my faith does not really help in that regard. Sure I might believe in a hereafter which brings some measure of comfort that the person we love is ok somehow and somewhere, and even that we might be reunited one day, but what we go through in our here and now after loved ones die is just downright disturbing…
No Pie for Me, Thanks
Somehow, my computer erased the post I’d been working on this week. I am NOT grateful for that. Grrrrr. But what I’d planned to say will probably not come as a surprise. It’s Thanksgiving again and it’s just not an easy time for us widowed folk. No matter what else lovely we find in our lives in the strange after-world, it is painful to…
Birthday Wishes
I have been working on this post all week knowing it was coming, but I’ve also been busy with lots of other things, and for a couple of days this week I actually lost track of what day it was. But then this morning (Wednesday) I woke up and realized today was the day…I knew it suddenly, without thinking, that today was his day. I just knew it…