Yesterday, just over 10 months after having lost my wife of 50 years to cancer, I designed our granite companion grave marker.
Tomorrow will be my second Grief Share class to help me deal with the loss of my wife just 10 months ago. She was substance, not shininess.
Do you have a ‘it-wasn’t-supposed-to-end-like-this’ story? Sure you do. We all do.
“The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone.”
The joy I had of being married to my dearest treasure on all this earth who prepared me, because of who she was, for the joy yet to be had.
Where do you go when your heart is overwhelmed, when faced with decisions looming like an insurmountable mountain in front of you?
If you are quiet, treading softly – not blinded by tears, nor slashing angrily with your walking stick - what you may discover in the woods.
Does she remember what it was like to be in love? To be held, to laugh, to simply sit in wonder together as the snow softly falls?
On the reservation desk stood a bouquet of yellow roses and white baby’s breath, stunningly beautiful in a vase tied with yellow ribbon.
Has the Beetle really been around since the dinosaurs? As long as humans have walked this earth, trustworthiness has been questioned.
A parable regarding what, better yet who, we value, as in priceless.
As her days on earth grew short, there was nothing better he knew she loved than to read their favorite love story.
"Some days we travel this journey with our wounds showing."
Tens of thousands of people promised to flip a virtual coin and obey whatever the coin told them to do.
Are we doomed to live out our lives as if going in circles, no purpose, no passion, no love?
He was smiling now - a whimsical, playfully quaint, and fanciful smile – as he recalled their memories there on the old leather couch.
To the ocean we went, its vastness, its pounding surf, its formidable power very much needed to quiet our soul. She was dying from cancer.
Blinded by tears brought on by rejection, abandonment, and even death in the very real world in which we live, how to find our way home?
Fairy-tale-like, we began blissfully, but the ‘happily-ever-after’ part we no longer get to write together.
This will be the first Christmas, after 50 of them, without my wife.
It's tradition that if one blows a dandelion’s seeds with one breath, a wish will be granted. But it's Christmas and they are not in season.
This is a familiar path, an old path, one he has walked so many mornings before.
A life unlived is like a house unfurnished - without laughter, and love, and loss.
Grief has a way – as perhaps no other way - for uniting those who have lost the treasure of their lives. But there's more. So much more.
Rarely do Nativities place the infant in the mother's arms. But what a message to those who are heartbroken when they do.
Our lives were put on hold to hopefully give others something to hold on to.
I love to wander but I am not lost. I love to wonder but I already know the answer.
“She’ll never graduate from high school. Never get married. There will be no more birthdays or Christmases. She died.”
She was arrested for speeding in the fabric store. Ok, that's not true. But the rest of the story will always bring tears.
“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path.”
Decorating was always my wife’s thing. But now that she was gone, what was I to do?
Going down these stairs meant you were going on an adventure. If you were going up these stairs it was because you were going home.
“Everything can be rescued and mended, even broken hearts.”
And just like that the tears threatened again, in the toy aisle, taking to a stranger from Kansas.
Yesterday was a difficult day in the most difficult time of the year.
Happiness, joy, and wonder are everywhere. So why, pretending to look at the program, am I trying to hide my tears?
She was one in 34,000. Literally, one among thousands, tens of thousands. And I found that one.
Don’t ask me to pray today as the family gathers for our first Thanksgiving in 50 years without her.
It is an important life lesson, not to step on the crack in the sidewalk.
I am told that it is a beautiful place, and that there, the laughter of loved ones is contagious, compelling, drawing.