Dear Rick, I just remembered the giant TV. We bought it at Best Buy after my parents said we could borrow their empty Discover card. You were flabbergasted that they would come down and offer it to us. They lived in the apartment a few doors down and they came to visit just to offer…
Author: Katherine
Katherine Billings Palmer is a technical writer, poet, and essayist from Garden City, Michigan. She’s won several academic writing awards, including first place in the University of Michigan Dearborn Critical Essay Contest for her work about poet John Donne: “‘The Sun Rising’: A Lover’s Boast.”
In 2017, Katherine’s husband, Rick, died of complications from small cell lung cancer. She wrote a series of poems and essays about her struggles to cope with her grief. I Wanted to Grow Old With You is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.
Her latest book, A Widow’s Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry – The First Year was published in January 2019 and is also available on Amazon.com.
Katherine is a guest blogger for the Hope for Widows Foundation and writes about her grief journey at www.TheWritingWidow.com.
Frozen in time
Dear Rick, Since you died, I’ve been amassing photos, videos, and even one voice recording I found. I’ve found things you’ve written – in longhand – and in google docs or Word. I’ve gathered anything and everything that can keep your memory fresh. Right now, I’m doing an Amazon Prime photo backup and seeing pictures…
I just made eggs for breakfast
Dear Rick, I just made eggs for breakfast. You used to do this for me every day before I left for work. You’d ask, “Do you want breakfast?” and I’d say, “Yes, please.” And you’d make three scrambled eggs in a small pan while I showered, and dressed, and ran to catch up because, as…
To my FB Hope for Widows group
I hate Fridays! I can’t stop sobbing. I want to go out on the deck with my husband and celebrate the end of the work week. We should be enjoying wine and appetizers, then whatever he grilled for our dinner. I want to sit and talk about nothing and everything. Then I want to dance…
I’m not normal
I’ve never been less normal in my life. Nothing is appealing – no food, no entertainment, no joy, no hope, nothing. I died when he died. I try to comfort myself with little “nice” things. I like to sit in my recliner, under his big brown blanket (it’s really burgundy; he always called it brown)….
You’re not coming back, are you?
I think I keep waiting for your return. Maybe you’re at the store. Maybe you even left town for a couple of weeks, as strange as that would be. Maybe you’re off riding your bike…riding, riding…back streets, dirt roads, through the park, enjoying yourself on this beautiful 76° day. Maybe you’re at Costco roaming the…
Better off
Jo asked me if I was better off after losing you than I was before we met. We were talking finances, and the answer is yes. But how many other ways am I better off today? You told me so often how intelligent I was, how beautiful, how sexy, how talented. You disparaged others who…
20 Years
Two decades in the middle of my life. In time, is that what you’ll become? I man I loved for two decades of my life? Twenty years is so awfully awfully short. Why does it hurt so much to picture you this way? To think that some day you’ll be a man I once loved?…
Groundhog Day
My life has become a movie: Groundhog Day. Every morning I wake up and realize you’re gone all over again. I drive in my car on the way home from work, looking forward to seeing you when I get there – oh wait, Rick is dead. I knew, but I forgot. I walk into my…
Unsteady
Since May, Rick wasn’t himself. The radiation caused pneumonitis in the same lung as the tumors it had killed. We enjoyed our wonderful Florida vacation beginning the second week of April, but the final week, he began experiencing pain in his lung. It became more difficult for him to walk up the slight slope of…