On March 24, 2010, my husband died. It will have been 5 years in a short time and I have desperately tried to come to grips with what being a widow means in terms of how to go on with my life alone. It is like trying to put back together the pieces of a shattered mirror, one that reflects what used to be. Those pieces will cut you and make you bleed if you aren't very careful, but you have to try to make the pieces fit, so that you can see yourself again.

My life has changed. I live in new city, one where there were no nightmare memories. I have a good job, doing something that I love. I have old friends, new friends, good friends. And of course, I have my family, that I love more that I can say.

My life has changed, but I have changed, too. I am not, nor will I ever be, the person I was before March 24th, 2010. I wish that those people I hold so dear could understand what this life is like but unless you have lived it, that is impossible. Others can think that they understand but no one can, really, because it is so very different for all of us. What I write about what I feel hoping that someday even I will understand.

Another Widow Milestone

I have mixed feelings about the celebration of Valentine's Day because from last Valentine's Day until March 24th I walked what I call "the Death March". It was the last 6 weeks of Dave's life and it was a living hell, with moments of grace sprinkled all through it.  Valentine's Day 2011 marked the beginning of the end, it was the start of the downward spiral that would ultimately claim Dave's life. And it was not a vague feeling. It was a horrific event that changed the playing field in his fight against the cancer. Now I will never have another Valentine's Day when I don't remember what happened that day. It is burned into my memory and has become as much a part of me as anything in my life up 'til now.

Witnessing the destruction of someone so vital, so alive changes you. It makes you cynical, it makes you wonder what the whole point of life is, why go on when a similar fate might await.  It makes you lonely, empty and intensely sad because you know first hand how fragile we really are, how helpless in the end. It takes your innocence because you no longer wonder about death. You know. You've seen it first hand and it is not a beautiful transition to peace. It is the end of life. It is not a moment filled with grace and wonder, no matter what you might want to believe. It is as ugly and as painful as you imagine it might be and it will come to us all eventually and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  All we can do is live the life we have the best we can and hope that it is enough.

Happy Valentine's Day.