AKA "The Writing Woman"
Dear Rick, I had my performance review today. I always called you immediately after talking to Sam and told you what she said. You always told me you were proud of me, and of course, excited when there was any possibility of me getting a raise in my future and our circumstances improving as they…
I don’t know where he is. All religions have their explicit, concise answers for where the spirit goes after leaving the body. Heaven, limbo, another realm. But no one really knows. Those who write those “life after death” stories, describe the light, walking down a path, a glorious, peaceful feeling. They see long-dead relatives, they…
Tomorrow is the five-month anniversary of your death. Five months. I couldn’t have imagined living five months without your touch, without seeing your smiling face, hearing your throaty laugh. Five months without your witty repartee – and lame jokes. Five months without your love. However, for some unfathomable reason, I feel good, like I may…
In memorium. I keep making decisions in memory of Rick. He would have liked this or that. He and I picked out this furniture so I will buy it in his memory. I just thought about the gazebo outside. There was freezing rain this morning and it’s snowing now. I’ll need to go out and…
The new year always signifies a fresh start. What wonderful things will I experience this year? What new things will I attempt? What new hopes and dreams can come to fruition? Will it be a good year? No, not this year. This year signifies a new start, but not the kind I ever dreamed of…
When we were dating, Rick and I went through our “poetry phase.” I was a recent UofM grad – and English major who surrounded myself with books of poetry throughout the house. Rick enjoyed most of the poems I recited to him – at least I thought he did. Rick lived in Minnesota and I…
At my grief counseling appointment last week, I expressed to my therapist, Vaiva, that — as I start to feel more “myself,” stop thinking about Rick continuously as I had for the first few months — I’m more afraid of the pain that I know will come when I do think of him again. She…
It’s going on five months now I thought the “what if‘s” were over I thought I had locked them away in a box after examining every single one carefully minutely looking them over and over and castigating myself for what I could have done. But apparently it’s not over Apparently someone unlocked the box Perhaps…
I wake up every morning with some depressing thought. Sometimes it’s picturing you the day you died. Sometimes it’s remembering how your mind was starting to go in those last months. Of course, I never know what it will be. I only know it will cause pain, and then I’ll put it away and go…
In 2012, after my father died, I submitted his story to the NYT’s The Lives They Loved section. For some reason, it made me feel better – my father was a simple man, no movie star or world leader, yet he was bigger than life in my world. Publishing his story in the Times seemed…