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From the Archives: My Mom’s Diary (Part 1 of 2)
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face my mom’s diary. What was it going to tell me about who she had been? How might it change the memories I had of her? Was it even right to read someone else’s diary, even if she had left it for us to find? I knew I couldn’t do it at home. For some reason, I wanted to be away both from my kids and from my dad. It wasn’t just about the constant interruptions that happened at home, but rather more that I needed a clear head. Becky and Michelle offered to go away with me for…
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Thanks on Thanksgiving
I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’ve decided that it’s time to end the blog. Don’t worry – I’m not stopping right now! At this point, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to stop writing this blog. But for the past few months, I’ve been wrestling with whether it makes sense anymore for me to write about widowhood. The early, intense months of widowhood are now in the past for me, and even the big changes that occurred over the past 4 1/2 years – living with my dad, raising kids as a single mom, dating, falling in love, the pandemic, getting married and having Chris…
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From the Archives: It’s Hard for People Who Don’t Know the Whole Story
Fall seemed too quick the year Shawn died, though maybe it was better that way. I didn’t want to spend the whole season reliving his illness. Instead, I spent a lot of time writing in the safety and warmth of my bedroom, though I also found refuge in my kitchen after the kids’ bedtime. I still wasn’t cooking much, but I could brew a cup of tea and eat a bowl of chocolate chips and feel like I was getting some sort of treat. One night, when I was up finishing a blog post about my life just after my mom died, my dad came downstairs. “You writing?” he asked…
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From the Archives: Look Good in the ER
Looking at my sister is like looking in the mirror. The shape of her eyes, drawn down just a bit on the ends, and the curve of her mouth when she smiles are just two of the many physical similarities we share. As a kid, it grated on me that people thought we were twins. “I’m older,” I’d reply, indignantly. But we were always close, joined together by love and also by the difficulties of growing up in a house with a very ill parent. When our mom died, we grieved together even if we didn’t know exactly how to go about it. I’d been away at college for much…
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Ask a Widow: Dating With Kids
I’ve talked so much about dating as a widow that it’s strange that I haven’t written much about dating and kids. When I have written on this topic, it’s usually about how to date with small kids. Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote that’s titled, “Could My Date Be a Father to My Kids?“ Once I started dating, I found that I would very quickly move from “do I want to kiss this guy?” to “could he be a father to my children?” That made dating really difficult. I’m not a total idiot, so I didn’t say these sorts of things out loud on a first or second…
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From the Archives: A Walk With My Dad
That summer after Shawn died, we all traveled to Texas for our annual family reunion at my aunt Nancy’s house. It was a place my dad loved, even in the sweltering summers, as it had been his home for his entire childhood and young adulthood. It was a place where it was so hot we sometimes tried to fry eggs on the sidewalk, a place where cacti dotted every front yard and the place where he had met and fallen in love with my mom. My parents originally met on a double date, though they weren’t matched with each other that night. They went out a few times after that,…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
