The Return of Some Things Lost
Before I knew they were called hidden losses, I made my own list. I had carried my late husband's office whiteboard upstairs, and wrote down some of the many things that vanished the day he died. I called it "things we did together." Pup walks on the beach Loving phone calls and text messages Taking care of the yard Making travel memories I would stare at the list – much, much longer than this…
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Isn’t Life Grand
It was probably in the second month when we were in my clunky, blue car. I can’t remember where we were headed, but I was driving. Dylan was in the passenger seat and Mom sat in the back, folding her hunched shoulders over her knees. Her black raincoat covered her shrinking body and each time she sighed, the Gore-Tex material would crinkle along with her. Waiting at the stop light at the…
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Choices and Cheeseburgers
I had to make a lot of choices during the first year following my husband John’s suicide. Choices I was ill-equipped to make considering the fact that in those early days, my shock-saturated brain kept making me leave the house with two completely different types of sandals on my feet. As the one year anniversary of John’s suicide approached, I faced yet another decision. How do I commemorate…
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She’s My Wife
On this day. Four years ago. We became man and wife. I’ve cried hard many a day. This. One of the most tearful of my life. You were so sick. The pain extreme. You couldn’t stop throwing up. A true nightmare. No fairytale. Or dream. You were in the same clothes. From three days before. The experience of our union should have been beautiful. Instead. More like a horror. The happy couples. Laughing.…
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Who is that women in the mirror
Who is that women in the mirror? I think I know her. Yes I do. It’s me. The women whose husband died. Yes, he died. He left me. Left me to pick up the pieces. One by one. Day by Day. Week by Week. Month by Month. Year by Year. I see the pain in her face. It’s in the lines around her eyes, it’s in the lines around her mouth. She is hollow. She doesn’t see. She only see emptiness.…
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Mourning Dew
Expanding essence, settling spirit, vibrating vitality –a trilogy of wellness. Even with these truths aboard, sadness sometimes seeps to the surface, quietly gathers for acknowledgment. For it is also true, real, and right. Like morning dew on leaves and grasses, stale sorrows bead and adhere until a being notices, allows them to vaporize or entwine with restoration and revival. Mourning dew,…
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The Power of Unspoken Messages
How many of us stop to consider what it means to listen? Yet, at some time in our lives each of us will have experienced that universal sense of knowing we have been heard and understood. I first experienced this knowing in childhood. My grandfather, fifty years my senior and survivor of WWII, was the person I trusted with my innermost thoughts, feelings, dreams and fears. Like most people I…
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My Evening With A Wolf Spider
You know when your life changes forever, at least for me, the only thing I could think about was, “what am I going to do without my husband?” I couldn’t think much further than that. I was in a type of shock that I had never experienced before. I felt like I was in an endless fog that would never lift. When it hit me how much there was to take care of, it was absolutely overwhelming. Of course I…
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Rooted and Gentle Sadness
Here I am, all these years since you died on that heart wrenching spring day, and I miss you. Though the ache is less potent, I have a rooted and gentle sadness. I’m so grateful that our lives came together by the shores of Saddleback Lake, that you had the patience to wait for me to understand how to accept your unconditional love. I wish you could be standing with me, hand in hand, to witness…
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Suck the Marrow
Which is worse, to lose someone you love to a long term illness or to lose someone you love unexpectedly? This morning I woke up to the news that a local five year old little girl, Avery, had passed away from a tumor in her brain on Mother's Day. I had been following this family on social media for the last several months. This morning the message read, “Avery went to be with Jesus at 5:15pm…
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