Working Through Grief

What Am I About?

May 16th, 2013
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One of the presents that my insightful son gave me for Mother’s Day is a book about blogging.
From the very first post I wrote, he has always been my biggest supporter.  I love it!
He is always asking me what I am going to write about and I run ideas by him to get a younger point of view and I also ask him for permission to write about him or something he said or did.  Some writers would disagree with requesting permission from him but I feel it is the polite thing to do and asking also prevents … Read More

Grief In the Office

May 13th, 2013
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Even though your world probably stopped when you lost a loved one, the world around you has continued  with its usual routine. I know it’s kind of a shocker to find this out but it’s true. You are racked with pain but unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the bills and other responsibilities that need your attention from smacking you in the face.  What kind of responsibilities you may ask?  Well, for some it might include feeding, clothing and housing children, continuing to work full-time and managing to keep your wits about you as you try your best every day to stick… Read More

A Solid Sistahood

May 8th, 2013
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When I am with my good solid girlfriends — women whom I have known for years and years and years — I know I am blessed. When we get together we may be going on about our children, our hair color, a new diet or some story we heard about on the news, but the under current of all of that warm wonderful and familiar chatter is the inner knowledge that we are sistas who have each other’s backs and always will! Through beautiful and great times, times of trauma and then those other ugly times when you need to… Read More

I, Poet

May 7th, 2013
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When I was in high school, I used to write a lot of poetry.  I liked the deliberate way of choosing and using words and trying to find the right rhythm of each line.  I had a special notebook that I used to write down thoughts and words that I wanted to remember for images in future poems. I even entered a poetry contest in high school and surprisingly one of my poems won and was published in a national anthology of high school poetry.  That was a confidence booster! Then it was time to go to college.  My interests… Read More

Moving Day

May 6th, 2013
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I received a couple of texts over the weekend from a friend who lives in another city about how he now lives in a new place. I didn’t know he had moved from his home of almost 20 years so I was surprised by his news but I also knew that there was more to the story than just a regular heave-ho move from one place to another. My friend lost his wife to cancer a number of years ago and she was a wonderful and talented person, but she also was the kind of person who kept everything.  She… Read More

That’s What Friends Are For

April 26th, 2013
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This is a beautiful and moving story about a husband and wife and their love and respect for one another. Sadly, the time recently arrived for one of them to say good-bye to the other. In the following column by The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy, he writes of the spirit of the union between Washington Post reporter Lynne Duke and Washington Post editor Phillip Dixon in the essential phrase “sometimes yin and yang, sometimes nitro and glycerin.” Milloy is an awesome friend, doing what friends do best, offering emotional support and condolences to Phillip Dixon, and at the same time… Read More

Widowed Fathers Reaching Out

April 23rd, 2013
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I know a few widowed mothers and have great respect for how they handle the role of single parent.I don’t know any widowed fathers so I have always been curious about how they juggle the demands of raising children and handling their work careers. I imagine that a family member helps them; maybe a mother, a sister or even a brother.  Or maybe the fathers had already hired someone to help them when their wives sadly became too ill or were weakened by treatments. But after reading the insightful New York Times story below, I found that widowed fathers and… Read More

Possessions R Us

April 18th, 2013
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Though memories of a loved one who has passed on continue to be vivid and stored forever in a special place in my memory bank, isn’t it incredible when one single possession can have the power to bring back all the complications of your relationship with that person? For me, it is a red and blue knit cap with a New York Giants logo sewed on the front. My husband treasured that hat and wore it every day that the temperature allowed.  The year after my husband died, my father gave me tickets to the NY Giants-Washington Redskins game at… Read More

Divorce v Death

April 16th, 2013
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I’m not sure why people compare getting divorced to losing a spouse. But they do. Hmmmmm.  One of these things is really not like the other. Yes, both situations are the end of something, but one is final and the other is not. Both situations are traumatic and force you to assess your life and eventually rebuild it in a new way. But the death of a loved one is final.  You will never see that person again. With divorce, you might feel like you never want to see that person again but they’re still alive. Lots of widows and… Read More