My Aunt Kathy just celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary. This is a significant event for anyone, but particularly significant for my aunt and “bonus” uncle, Monty, because my aunt had some doubts about the marriage before it even started. You see, my aunt was a 30-something year old widow at the time, raising a small child.Continue reading “Grab Life”
Category Archives: Embracing the Changes
If Our Days Aren’t Merry & Bright, we can Change it
As we begin the last week of 2021, I’m reflecting, but also, as I typically do this time of year, looking toward the future. I wrote in my last post, how awful that first Christmas was without Dale. I thought I’d planned but underestimated the impact that first Christmas would have on my psyche. ThisContinue reading “If Our Days Aren’t Merry & Bright, we can Change it”
Going West to Find Joy
As she did each evening, Sue Moak sat on the front porch of her home in the rural Texas Hill Country. She and her husband, Rickie, had bought the land and built what they planned as their retirement home. But Rickie died suddenly at age 61, nearly two years before. “I looked down the longContinue reading “Going West to Find Joy”
Embracing our Inner Weirdo
I don’t dream of him often anymore, but I dreamt of him early this morning. We were doing what we loved together, fishing. For some reason, it wasn’t from a boat, but we were in some body of water where we had to swim around taking a special line and tackle and dangling it inContinue reading “Embracing our Inner Weirdo”
The Changes we Embrace and Those we Don’t
“The only constant in life is change”-Heraclitus. In widowhood, there is the change we didn’t choose, obviously. But there is also the changes we do choose to make and even embrace. Early in my widowhood, I either read or was advised in group to make some small changes in “our” home, the idea is to begin the processContinue reading “The Changes we Embrace and Those we Don’t”
Moving Forward is a Choice
Oh, how easy it would be to wallow in the past. Facebook Memories can be both a blessing and a curse. They allow me to remember things I have forgotten and also reminds me it’s the anniversary of good things that happened, like trips and sometimes the smaller moments in life that become the bigContinue reading “Moving Forward is a Choice”
A Stranger in a Strange Land
Shortly after finding myself a widow, I wrote that the feeling as though I was in the aftermath of an explosion: “Imagine sitting in a beautiful home and everything around you seems perfect. All of a sudden, a loud bomb explodes and completely destroys the home and life you’ve built. There are pieces of itContinue reading “A Stranger in a Strange Land”
Softening the Quiet
It’s the quiet that sometimes bothers me the most. When my mom became a widow, I noticed she had started keeping the television on all the time. Before my dad died, she was alone many hours a day while he worked two jobs, but she never had the television on during the day. I nowContinue reading “Softening the Quiet”
Living Large in Widowhood 