When my grief counselor suggested I start dating two years after Rick died, I was appalled by the idea. There was no point. There would never be another Rick. He was “my person.” There was no chance of me finding ...
Five years ago today, I held Rick’s hand in a death grip. A literal death grip, for hour upon hour. By noon of that day, I realized he was going to die, and he did, at 8pm that night. The ...
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 ...
In a previous season of This is Us, a powerful show about the long-term, winding, intertwined storylines of an American family, Rebecca Pearson, the perennial widowed matriarch is helping deliver her first grandchild on the floor of her son’s home. ...
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 ...