The meet-up happened!

Of course, it went even better than I expected.  Intellectually, I knew it would.  Emotionally, I was shaking in my boots.  Jennifer’s sister has always been incredibly open, warm, encouraging, and welcoming.  There was no reason to expect any different.  However, I did start to experience Dallas’ devious (in a fun…

i do not blog mushh lk i did in 2012 bit but cov19 is devill of satonn 

u cud say pepepl not getin medcal tretment coz of it

i  no pepel its got big c wil not suvse coz temt bean took ways u cud sya

say

frindss it cud hva ops it did npt hav big c cud be savd but will not coz of cov19

i no k  cnt sea a dr coz of cov 19

frinds it neees…

when you have no words for how you feel ...

So fast forward to mid-2020.  Dreams with Jennifer still occur, at an approximate monthly rate.  The emotional impact is not as debilitating as in previous months.  There is still this nagging notion that there is a message that needs to be transferred.  Still don't know what the message is or if I am delivering or receiving the message, just that there is a message.  Then it happens that I have an excuse to go through Topeka, to possibly meet Jennifer’s sister.  In…

i love seeing him in my dreams

My mom and Dad both died this past Dec. There deaths were easy to accept as my Mom had Alzheimer's to the point where she no longer spoke not knew anyone.  Visiting her was like going to get funeral each visit.  My Dad was 86 and had a great life and died of natural causes. But my brother John was a shock we never saw coming.  He was a healthy man that fell down to the…

My mother died in April after a years-long battle with vascular dementia. I buried her last Friday.

It hurts worse now than then.

I knew my mother was going to die. When she was first diagnosed two years and change ago, I looked up the medical literature. It said that life expectancy was six to nine years post-diagnosis.…

My birthday is tomorrow. 3 weeks after my mom passed away. I have been fearful about it. I am staying at my childhood home right now, taking care of my dad. It has been nice to be with family and where all of my favorite memories with my mom happened. I decided to take my daughter to our favorite café here. Bake a cake and a few of our relatives are coming. Everyone else lives far away. I felt good about it. Then my sister said that she was coming. She has had her own personal struggle…

i miss my dad

pstd actin up coz of stuff goin on yes had muhso mush loss in 8 yrs 

losn  nbor ovr yr go new her sinse i wz 8 

a

frind 2 mnth monfth a go

cov 19 givun me bad dreams carzin my ptsd 2 go up

cnt

sea a dr coz thy not sean no 1 coz of cov 19

sorry if im rantin to mush or fealin sorry fr  my slf coz im not 

I lost my best friend 3.5 years ago. we met in high school and were together for 18 years. We could never be open about our love. She was married for 10 years and has a son. In spite of this our love was strong and genuine. This selfless pure love comes once in a lifetime. Now that i have lost her my world has changed...i dont know who i am and what i want from life.

So many regrets...

The worst part is that i cannot talk to anyone about this here. no one will be able to understand…

Think I’ve mentioned someplace on this site that sharing meals and cooking was always very important to my husband...it was also a big part of my mother’s life and one of the ways she showed affection and concern for those in her life, they were similar in many ways, including that one.  My husband used to tell people that he’d always “had trouble distinguishing food, love, and sex” — he’d say it in a joking way, but he really believed that in some way, at the deepest level, they were all…

Hello Morgan, Bluebird, Linda at al. I'm sorry it has been so awfully long since my last contact.  A Year? I have always read the posts, though and have felt the same horrible burning pain I have the last, nearly 5 years since Nancy left me. I have had a couple of tia's including a lengthy bout of "aphasia". It was almost comedic as I couldn't talk but kept trying to tell the emt's which hospital to drop me at. This year, I have…

A Stoic Response to Grief

“It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed for ever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people have used, that you divert or cheer yourself by a long or pleasant journey…

I wrote this poem many years ago when my mother and my second mother, my mother-in-law, were both dying of cancer.  They died a week apart.  It was helpful to me then and is helpful to me now.  I hope it can be helpful for some of you.

Children of the Light

We are children of the light,

Burning crystals,

Each fracturing the light

Into his own incandescent dance of joy.

Blinded by our senses

We do not see the light that binds us.

Flames…

The widespread practice of a viewing of the body and wake at a funeral home is not helpful to me as it seems to be for so many people.  But I do need to say goodbye formally, in a memorial service.  As a person of faith, I prefer religious services; but some formal rite of farewell, some ritual recognition that a life has ended is still important, if the family is not religious.  It has always been important to mankind, and it is important to me.  My uncle wanted nothing, no service, no…

Moriturus

Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I could have

Two things in one:

The peace of the grave,

And the light of the sun;



My hands across

My thin breast-bone,

But aware of the moss

Invading the stone,



Aware of the flight

Of the golden flicker

With his wing to the light;

To hear him nicker



And drum with his bill

On the rotted…

An uncle in our family committed suicide.  For five years his wife, Aunt Alice, said the same things over and over again to anyone who would listen.  We are a loving family, so we listened and said the same hopefully comforting things back to her again and again.  And after five years she was done and could move on.  I hope it doesn't take five years, but I need to talk about my Uncle Jim and my cousin Paul and probably repeat myself a lot. 

It took a long time to develop my…

This morning there was a crescent moon.  I always called it a "fingernail moon," but my cousin Paul called it a "toenail moon."  I got all choked up seeing it.  Then the Valentine cards are out at Walmart.  He loved all the holidays, and I always sent him cards.  But no more.  More tears to fight back.  Sometimes his love for you would overflow, and he would just have to give you a big hug and tell you that he loved you right then and there.  I have never had anyone else do that for me.  I…

My grief journey seemed to be stabilizing…I literally went through all the ‘normal’ steps, processes, and feelings again, 30 years after the event, as though I was going through it the first time.  I have mentioned how I stuffed it down, was not able (or willing) to process or adequately deal with it in real time.  Then 30 years go by, a couple of dreams bring the wound to the forefront, and BAM! I am in the thick of it.  In…