This past Tuesday was our 25th wedding anniversary and I celebrated alone, sitting under the windchimes in my gazebo. A small portion of Rick’s ashes are in the chimes, so I always feel like he’s with me when I sit ...
The impact of Rick’s death has lessened as the years go by. That’s only natural. I've always been a firm believer that time really does heal all wounds, although not as quickly as we would like (and I definitely formed ...
I was watching a Brene Brown video and she talked about how everyone wants to have extraordinary experiences, but how the little things in life really matter more. She said that after stunning life events, like near-death experiences, the death ...
I attended a writers’ conference two weeks ago. I’m still working (reworking) my plans for life without Rick after retirement. We had big plans for our golden years, well laid-out plans. We started our web design business in 2001 with ...
My husband has been gone four and a half years. At this stage, the pain is no longer raw. His absence from my life isn’t something that nags at me hourly or daily as it once did. I’m used to ...
One of my new favorite shows, 1883, has the characters saying some memorable lines. But a discussion about grief in the last episode left me sobbing in a way I haven’t in a while. It was that pleasure/pain kind of ...
Author Joan Didion died in December. I’ve always enjoyed her writing, but I owe her a special debt of gratitude for her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, she described the grief and pain following the death of ...
Grief knows no bounds. It can be triggered when you least expect it, although most triggers are obvious and predictable. After Rick's death, I knew going into a diner, Home Depot, or Costo would be painful. I knew vacationing without ...
The first year or two after losing Rick, every memory that popped into my mind was an emotional trigger that sometimes made me sob, and other times just brought on some quiet tears. The trick was learning to handle these ...
I went on a date last Saturday night...it was my first date with a new man I met in an online dating app. After two years of first dates, the only thing I know for sure is that you never ...