2019
2019 was announced with a bang last Monday night , my neighbors set off a volley of fireworks at the stroke of midnight to mark its arrival. Inside my house a Chesapeake Bay Retriever leapt onto the couch and hid his face in my armpit – he obviously feeling as confident about the upcoming year […]
Surviving Christmas
Christmas arrived right on schedule despite the fact I’d had my foot on the brakes for weeks. It slipped into the house like an obligation and has fled almost as quickly. We set it up, put it out, ate it up and then got the hell out of Dodge. It’s done and I’m glad. We […]
The face of devotion
I only need to look at my big brown dog and think ‘I love you’ and he wags his tail. If the notion of going for a walk crosses my mind he looses his. Chester and I have a connection that goes beyond words. I inherited this brown dog and although we have a strong […]
Going Through the Motions
I’m trying to pull the spirit of Christmas out of myself and out of the boxes scattered on the playroom floor – everything feels dusty and I am out of practice. I am resisting the season even as carols play and colorful lights dot the landscape. I admit the Christmas spirit within me started to […]
A Christmas Lightbulb Moment
I’ve been dragging my heels and hanging onto November with my fingernails – doing everything in my power not to face December, but here it is. November gave me the slip on Friday and on Saturday my family pushed me into the festive season like a kid tossed into the deep end of the pool […]
New to the hood
I have a new neighbor, someone I love dearly moved into the widowhood this week and I’m heartsick about it. Her journey to the hood was much like my own and she has arrived here in the same fashion I did eight months ago; overwhelmed, over tired and broken. It will take a while for her […]
Getting Real
I’m not treading water anymore, I’ve been swimming in my archives lately, paddling around and taking a closer look at memories that have been muddied by grief. I’ve been reliving the days leading up to the end; the end of life as I knew it. The strange thing is I’m not drowning in tears as […]
The Archives
There was a guy, once upon a time, who thought I was pretty – more than that, he made me believe that I was. He saw something in me that gave both of us confidence. I spent forty years with that guy. Forty years – the lifetime of our marriage. Over the years we did […]
The Best We Can Do
You would think that after months of dealing with grief I would know how to help someone else deal with theirs – I don’t. I’m the awkward person I’ve always been, maybe even more so. If I’ve learned anything about grieving by grieving it’s that I know nothing about how anyone else feels – grief […]
Where I’m At
I still have maudlin moments, moments when I let memory walk me back into that sterile hospital room where I indulge my grief and relive the hours just before he passed away. I place myself in the middle of the nightmare – the dark center where the air is thick with fear. Back to when […]