Friday, December 25, 2015

Christmas Mourning

Merry Christmas my love, my heart is breaking today. I’ve had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit and here it is Christmas Day and I am missing you so. Staring at your picture, staring at your urn, wondering how to stop hurting so much over the past and what is gone and focus on what is in front of me and the love and joy in my life now. Christmas hurts. Christmas is awesome. Christmas is joy. Christmas is sorrow. Christmas is love. I want to just feel one or the other – the constant tug of both is exhausting…

I want to be full of joy and remember you with the love we shared. I want to look back on our life together and think of all the good times we shared and the path we walked together. I was once told that you grieve as hard as you love. I love you enormously. I grieve for you enormously. It’s been a year today. My life has changed in so many ways. I would do it again, even knowing the outcome, the ending. I would again love you, marry you, I would hold your hand and kiss your forehead as the life left your body. There is a lyric in song that says, “Love is Watching Someone Die”, and I think that is exactly what it is. Being there even then and not looking away. The pain of your loss and trauma from witnessing it and feeling so helpless to save you will be with me forever.

╬ Rest in peace my cowboy ╬

I will see you again one day. It isn't goodbye, just later.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Day 335

I'll never get used to me without you. Today marks 335 days since I saw your face, felt your touch, smelled your smell, and kissed your lips. To say that I miss you is understatement. You are missing from me. And yet somehow you are a part of me. You are in every breath I take. You are in every thought. Your soul has been intertwined with mine. Your existence forever a part of mine.

And though you aren’t here physically. I still see you. I see you in the shining sun. I see you in the colors of the rainbow painted across the sky. I see you in the leaves that fall to the ground. I see you in stars and the moon.

And although I can’t touch you, I still feel you. I feel your presence in the dark of the night. I feel your love when I am all alone. And oh how I feel your absence. I’ll never used to the absence of you. I’ll never get used to me without you.

Then there’s the love. The love I feel for you. Just as there’s no way to explain the pain of missing you, there’s no way to explain the joy of loving you. No collection or arrangement of words can accurately describe what we had together. It is a love that exists in every cell of my body. It is a love that continues to grow, I love you today and I’ll love you everyday until I am with you again.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Happy 1st Anniversary

Thank you for your endless love, that helps me through each day, and thank you for the memories that never fade away. Though now your gone you'll always be the one who chose to marry me. Like a flawless red rose, our love for each other will forever be precious and rare.

You’re the man I loved and I was proud to be your wife, and every day in some small way I celebrate your life.  And though it’s sad to think about the way that things were before, when we’re re-united it will be forevermore.

Happy Anniversary my Darling Steve. I love you, I miss you, I wish I could be with you to celebrate our special day.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

My "New" Life

I became a widow on December 25, 2014. Since then I have gained 40 pounds of the previous 53 pounds I had lost. We had only been married for 3 months and had been together for 3 years.

I don't care about what I look like, just getting out of bed, going to work and coming home has been a struggle. I have no desire to work but since we had purchased a new car in October and moved into a new apartment on December 1st I have no choice. I am barely sleeping. I have no desire to exercise as this was something we always did together and I am physically and emotionally just to tired.

I am an emotional eater. For the last six months all I have ate is fast food, snack cakes, potato chips and I drink Pepsi by the gallon. This was something that I had learned to control in my previous weight loss journey, but with his death all control went out the window. Before his death I was drinking 100 ounces of water daily and now water is just something I bathe or swim in.

Today I made a conscious decision that it is time to make a change. I feel horrible, I look horrible and I am almost back to my starting weight from 2011. I said I would never be here again and yet here I am sitting looking at 300 pounds in the very near horizon.

I am sure there will be lots of stumbles, slip-ups and tears while I try to figure this process out again. I know I can do this I have done it before. I also know I can not do this without the support, friendship and love of you folks that are going through this weight loss journey also.

My Short Term Goals

1. Walk 20 minutes a day 5 times a week.
2. Drink 64-70 ounces of water a day.
3. NO SODA
4. No eating after 8:00pm.
5. Lose 10 pounds. (286.6 starting weight)

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Day 156

I tried drugging my way through it, drinking my way through it, shopping my way through it. I tried talking my way through it, laughing, crying, bluffing my way through it. I tried apportioning blame and getting angry.

But I discovered you don't get through the depression and pain until you face it, work through it. You have to move through it, not around it, you have to feel it to deal with it. You have to grieve in order to move on.

It has been 156 days since that horrible day. I think I have, like the countless widows before me, found a way to live with the grief. It is my constant companion. I function. I go to work. I live my life. I have happiness, I have love and I even have joy. But I still have the grief with me and always will. I carry it with me because I never stop being aware of the loss of you.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Dear Easter Bunny,

Dear Easter Bunny,

I just had to write today to see if you stop in heaven as you hop along your way? You see a part of me is up there that I miss with all my heart. You see my Husband Steve lost his battle and tore my life apart.

So, I wanted to know if you go there, and if I could ask a favor of you? Can you take him a basket to heaven? Filled with colored eggs and bunnies too?

And could you please add a green egg? Green means new life and rest, for he is now resting in heaven no more pain and no more tests.

And could you add an orange egg? Orange for the color of a candle flame, for his light will always shine although our lives will never be the same.

And could you add an egg so blue? For blue is the color of the cloudless sky and when I see the geese flying over me. I know it’s a sign from him way up high.

And we can’t forget a yellow egg too. For yellow is the color of the sun and his love will shine down on me for all my days and nights to come.

And we also need a rainbow colored egg. For the rainbow way up in the sky. He said he will always live within me and his spirit will never die.

And last but not least a red egg if you could? For we all know red means the color of love, and I love my Husband oh so very much.

Please send my love to him above. Thank you Mr. Easter Bunny I really appreciate your time today and I will say a prayer for you too as you hop to Heaven for me on Easter Day.

When you take his basket up to the Heavens can you please whisper in his ear and wish him the happiest Easter from me and tell him I miss him more and more each passing day!

Saturday, March 28, 2015

3 Months

Steve died 3 months ago today. I remember it like it was yesterday, I don't imagine I will ever forget. I still can't wrap my mind around how one day someone can be fine, the next day have an inoperable tumor, and the next day die. If nothing else I have learned to appreciate and live every day to the fullest because tomorrow is not promised and you never know when it will be your time to go.

“I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain and the words that dance between people and; for me, it will always be this way, walking in the light remembering being alive together.”

Monday, January 26, 2015

My Protector

We found out December 22 that I could possibly have cancer and you vowed we would walk down this road together. Three days later God called you home. I am just writing to let you know that I received my results today and I am cancer free. I can not see you but I know you are here walking down this road with me protecting me and still taking care of me. I love and miss you my darling.

Monday, January 12, 2015

I want to be Okay

People know I’m grieving, they just don’t know what it looks like. Or how long it takes. Or that it’s actually time consuming and can’t be scheduled for convenient times like, perhaps from 6-8 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

For one thing my brain refuses to take time off, preferring instead to whirl frantically the moment my head hits the pillow.

For another, because there are things to do. There are so many things to do. The world keeps spinning. The garbage still needs to be dragged to the curb, laundry needs to be done, I have to remember to eat and shower.

If you ask me how I am, I will tell you I am okay. Because I’m working hard to make it so but it is going to take lots and lots of time.

"There's that woman whose husband died."

I have a new title and I wear it with great sadness.

My new title seems to be "There's that woman whose husband died."

I have a name and I have feelings. My husband had a name.

It’s all happened so quickly. He is so much a part of me I can barely remember living a life without him.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

I miss you

My Darling Steve,

You would have enjoyed today so much. It is 52 degrees and raining, we would have a fire going in the fireplace, and be sitting on the couch snuggling and enjoying the football games today.

Later we would enjoy a nice bowl of homemade soup and some loving conversation before getting ready for bed where we would go lay and watch some television, while listening to the rain gently tapping on the window pane. Then we would fall asleep all snuggled together under the warm soft covers. I miss you so much my love.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Bittersweet Final Gift

Those who knew Steve know that in the last three months of his life he had a major surgery and was hospitalized twice before the incident on December 24 that took his life. Steve was having a great deal of problems sleeping anytime not just at night.

Sometime in the early morning of Christmas Eve while he was not sleeping before he started coughing up blood I have found out that he went online and ordered me a gift from Bath and Body Works. I had no idea about this gift until I received a message sometime the end of December the beginning of January telling me my gift had been shipped. I also noticed he had sent it to my office address no doubt as a surprise to make me smile or brighten my day.

My gift arrived at work sometime this past week and I picked it up when I stopped in the office this past Friday. I finally got the strength to open the box today. It was a bittersweet moment. He knew me so well and he got me the exact scent I loved and apparently he had been listening all the times I told him you could only buy it during the Christmas Holiday and I never seemed to buy enough.

I love you Steve Murray, and I will treasure this last gift always.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Happy Birthday My Darling

My Darling Steve,

This morning I whispered Happy Birthday to you my love. I could not send you a card, kiss your lips, touch your hand, or give you a hug. I only hope you are looking down on us and know how very much I love and miss you. I'd give anything for you to be here with me today and forever.

Every morning I wake up and wish that this was all a dream. That I've been stuck in this nightmare that I can’t escape, and I'll wake up and find you next to me. Where you are supposed to be, where you said you would always be.

Everyone says that you will be with me for the rest of my life, in my heart, in my mind, and all around me. While most would take comfort in this thought, it just makes me mad. I miss your voice, the beat of your heart when I would lay my head against your chest. The sweet names that you would call me when you wanted to see me smile. The effortless way you could make me laugh when I was annoyed at the world.

I love you with every part of me. Our time together was not long enough, nowhere near it. I would not be who I am today without everything you did for me in our short time. I will be that woman again, but not any time soon. Right now, I need to concentrate on our love and how I am to go on in this world without you.

You always made me see the silver lining in things, and now the world is just grey.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Day Seven

Last night I spent New Year's Eve all by myself in our apartment where we were to spend our first New Year arrival as a happily married couple. I am emotionally exhausted and I needed to be alone to try to come to terms with the cold fact that you are actually gone. Ten minutes before midnight I turned on Dick Clark Rocking Eve and saw all the tourists in the streets kissing each other happily and giggling with silly glasses and party hats on their heads and I began to cry and curse at God for taking you from me.

New Years is supposed to be about new beginnings and resolutions and new goals and hopes for the future. And maybe in a few days, I will be able to see it that way. But right now, right this very minute, the only thing I can see is that a new year has started and my husband will not be part of it.