The Golden Years I never thought I’d be alone In the golden years... This stage of life we longed for Retired from the nine to five drudge Free to do anything we wanted. When we looked towards the future, we ...
“You look like shit.” That’s what my oldest brother said to me as I got in the car one morning. It was the summer of 1983, and I was a junior in high school. As part of our morning routine, ...
In just barely over three short months, I will have been widowed for five years. Some days it feels like it's been decades and that I really and truly know how to make it without a partner. Other days, I'm ...
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 ...
Remember the Loch Ness Monster? The mysterious creature with the long neck protruding up out of the water? No one ever actually saw the monster and it was discovered that the grainy, black and white photograph of it was a ...
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 ...
Easter is upon us, and as with all holidays, I am struggling a bit more than usual. It’s like the ache that is always there, just under the surface of everything, bubbles up to the top. The hurt becomes a ...
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 ...
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 ...