I’m taking some time off this week, ostensibly to prep the foods without which our family cannot acknowledge or celebrate a holiday (deviled eggs, strawberry pretzel “salad”, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie).  I also thought I might unpack some boxes and continue to find homes for things.  And address holiday cards so they can arrive in your mailboxes with my new address on them. But when I was writing yesterday’s post I noted that I dislike the word “widow” and th

It’s Thanksgiving week so Hello There, to another of the terrible “firsts”.  More about that maybe even later this week.  I went to dinner last night with two parishioners who are also widows.  (Birdwalk:  I don’t like the way that word actually sounds.  Where did it come from?  Am I resistant to it because of what it means?  Word study coming with coffee later today).  Anyway.  One of these women is about to experience her wedding anniversary this week and so we toasted to t

The move to a new home is mostly complete.  A few things remain in our former home, but for all practical purposes, I’ve relocated to a cozy space just a couple of miles from the home Bruce and I shared.  Home, as I’ve noted before, is as much a feeling as it is a place.  Of course, this means that the home I had in Bruce is also gone.  And while that is true of a physical space that we shared together, it is true in a much deeper way.  In each other:  in each other’s presenc

Last night my daughter made the observation that there seems to be grief everywhere we turn.  And that feels true.  Hardly a day passes that I don’t meet, either in real life or online, someone new to me who is living with grief.  Who is lamenting a loss.  Who is mourning.  There’s an explanation for this, in science, of course.  It’s called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or, the frequency illusion.  This cognitive bias occurs when you encounter something new, like the loss of

Yesterday the Church observed All Saints Sunday.  This is the day when many congregations say the names of those who have died in the previous year and ring a bell and light candles and it has always, always, always been one of the most meaningful of liturgies to me.  And we sing.  We sing For All the Saints and maybe When the Saints Go Marching In and I Sing A Song of the Saints of God (really, ELCA, how did we leave this gem out of our hymnal?)  The Gospel reading this year

I’m taking some time away from work this week, in part because as the end of the calendar year is in sight, I have some unused vacation time I must either “use or lose”.  And in part because I’m tired, or as the Germans would say Ich bin müde.   And, reluctantly, I need to shift into full on relocation mode soon.  When Bruce and I first moved to Olympia, we weren’t sure about neighborhoods and homes.  We searched the Zillow listings for both Homes for Sale and Homes for Rent.

Ah, technology, social media, and those small computers we carry in our pockets all day.  They all let us keep up with each other and life in ways we might not have imagined even a decade or so ago.  On Friday morning I spent an hour chatting with our dear cousin, Sally, who is in…..Ireland.  The use of a free app meant we could leisurely talk about laundry and life as well as worry about the state of this nation and the world as well as remember things about Bruce together. 

Did you ever have possession of something that, by all rights, belonged to someone else?  A friend of mine tells the story of her free-spirited, “hippie” aunt, who was disowned by their conservative, stuffy larger family.  When my friend’s grandmother died, it was this singular aunt who did not receive anything from their childhood home, which was full of memories, and held nothing of any monetary value.  A couple of decades passed and my friend’s mother died, leaving her to

Today and tomorrow the weather will inch us into the seventies to remind us one last time of summer’s beauty, especially here in the...

Earlier this year I was introduced to the idea of taking a three day retreat in every season. The person suggesting it noted that it is...

The autumnal equinox has arrived.  I’ve long said that this is my favorite season – the changing of the leaves and the cooler...

The Pacific Northwest is in that season that Bruce used to describe as “the curtain is closing”.  What he meant was that the light was...

It was a few weeks after Bruce died, maybe more than a few, that I thought to wonder about the last image Bruce took.   He’d asked for...

Yesterday marked three months since Bruce died.  Writing that here makes it no easier to believe.  In some respects, it seems as though...

In four months it will be Christmas Day.  In a few days it will be three months since Bruce died.  Time has taken on an almost slippery...

I’ve written so much about Bruce’s death and my grief.  But Bruce lived a big life.  And he would have been the last person to tell you...

The Pacific Northwest is having a heat wave just now….we reached 90 degrees yesterday and the same is forecast for today and tomorrow. ...

There’s so much that I learned from Bruce over the almost two decades of our relationship.  It was fortuitous that, while we held the...

I am really just winging this grieving/bereavement thing.  Honestly.  Someone recently chastised me, me, over here still counting in...