As the sixth anniversary of Rick's death approaches, I realize I’ve had many shifts in my attitude about how I view my life here alone. For about the first two years, my whole identity was that of a widow. I ...
Lucky Let’s just say it. You are the lucky one, Ed. Dying is the answer to all of it. Life is a constant drum occluding the lyrics. When you die, you have flexible hours. You ...
I came across videos of a trip Rick and I took 14 years ago this month. He knew going to Cornwall to explore the land of my ancestors had been a life-long dream and we spent five glorious days in ...
It isn’t black veils over gray hair. It isn’t wrinkly hands clasped in front of them standing at the cemetery. It isn’t (always) a 90 year old staring out the window at gloomy clouds day after day. There is no ...
“Year two is harder than the first.” In the early days after losing my husband, Joe, I’d read how the second year of widowhood and grief is often harder than the first. 'Uhh, yea right,' I’d say to myself, usually ...
Oh how those Facebook memories love to pop up when my life is moving along almost as if things are normal and nothing has changed. Haven’t I always lived alone here in my ranch home? Wasn’t my daily routine always ...
The fuchsia-pink pool noodle Rick bought me is starting to decompose around the edges. The memories of that last vacation we shared are starting to fade around the edges, too. How can a pool noodle come to mean so much ...
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 ...
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 ...
Do you ever wonder if…instead of him…it had been you? Instead…I was the one with the out-of-nowhere terminal diagnosis and the slow, painful progression toward my early death in my 40s with so much I wanted to do and see ...