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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
This past week, I was up at our cottage in northern Michigan, and I joined the family at nearby Ocqueoc Falls. Rick used to make fun of the falls. When I first took him there, he kept laughing as he ...
As I was making a left turn behind an unusually slow moving car, I gripped my steering wheel agitatedly and blurted out, "Why are you driving so slow?! You're stopping the flow of traffic. UGH!" And then I saw it. ...
Yesterday, Rick and I would have celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. It was the third one since he’s been gone. I made it through the fog of the first one. By the second one, I had adapted to life alone, ...
“Hello darkness, my old friend…” are the haunting lyrics of the beginning of the Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Sounds of Silence,” that have ebbed and flowed their way through the American musical fabric over the years. I know I ...
“When you die and I move to Finland**” is often heard in the house where I live. Always from the friend I live with to her husband of 10 years. It is always said rather matter-of-fact and casual; “babe take ...