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Aging, Arizona, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Death and dying, Diagnosis, Family, Fireworks, Irish culture, Irish mammies, John Hiatt, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Muriel Rukeyser, New Year, Newgrange, No Country for Old Men, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Themes of Childhood, Time
my ‘slow turning’ ~ winter solstice 2013
It is a magic time, captured before clocks and calendars and compasses measured time and the distance between us, signifying the turn towards a new year. I’m not ready for it. I am not ready for days that stretch out even longer than each of the thirty-six that have passed since the day my husband died. Thirty-six. I cannot bring…
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silent night again . . . from newtown to dunblane
December 14, 2012 Cold and lifeless, the bodies of twenty little children lie where they were gunned down that morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is a crime scene that the day before was a school. The medical examiner’s team has begun its work through the night to make sure there are no mistakes, no shadow of doubt about the names of those children…
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Birthdays, Castledawson, Dying, Family, Funerals, Loss, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Thanksgiving, Themes of Childhood, Tommy Edwards, W.H. Auden, Wedding Anniversary
not half thankful enough ~ thanksgiving with funeral blues
A friend, one who knows, told me the other day that it will take at least a year before the sharp stone of grief will shift from the very center of my being. She told me not to make any big decisions until I make it through all the “firsts” – the first Thanksgiving without him, Sophie’s first birthday without…
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Arizona, Awesome Women, Books, Bridget Jones, Death and dying, Door into the Dark, Family, FInal wishes, Friendship, Grieving, Helen Fielding, Marriage, Memoir, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Ordinary Things, Poetry, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, The Devil Wears Prada, The Midnight Anvil, Wedding Anniversary, Wendy Cope, widowed
newly widowed ~ instructions not included
They tell me I am in a state of shock and to take one day at a time. They tell me he is in a far better place now. Really? How could any place be better than in our dining room next month to light sixteen candles on my daughter's birthday cake or in the audience to cheer our girl…
