Imagine my surprise last week when my email box showed dozens, then hundreds of notices from WordPress announcing an uptick of activity on my last blog post on my scare with breast cancer. I'm grateful to Cheri Lucas at WordPress for featuring that post under Discover, "a daily selection of the best content published on …
Continue reading Thank you, WordPress Editors and WordPress Friends!
I had a health scare last week that slapped me, once again, into awareness that I’m alone. I no longer have a husband; I no longer am married. After 56 years, I no longer have someone at home who's there for me the minute something goes wrong. There have been many challenges as I’ve assumed …
Continue reading Please! No more cancer. Been there, done that.
Marv passed away six months and fourteen hours ago. I'm feeling it is time for me to move on. To leave these “grace” related posts on dying and death and move increasingly toward my “new normal.” I don’t mind that expression, although I know some do. They say there will never be another “normal.” But …
“Can I help you?“ a butcher yelled from a packaged meat display. A few feet away, I was standing, clueless, in front of an impressive array of glass-encased chunks of red meat. “Yes, I guess,” I bellowed back. When he was situated across from me, I asked, “How many pounds of a chuck roast do …
If you're ever in a situation like mine, do NOT tell your daughter you have a few days free before your winter schedule of activities begin. I did, and I paid! My so-called free days were a recent Friday and Saturday; I was already babysitting for her that Saturday night, so I was looking forward …
This time I didn’t have to lie on the floor; this time I used the chair. The occasion? A purposeful visit to my closet. I’d awakened the day after Christmas with a feeling of optimism. I’d made it through Christmas with my eyes misting up only once, and that was during the Christmas Eve service …
"Ladies and gentlemen, put your cameras away," our guide yelled into her microphone on the tour bus, followed by a louder, more urgent command, "Guys, no cameras." Such was my introduction to Bethlehem, the tranquil city I'd always sung about: Oh, little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie Above thy deep and …
I’m very glad the last few days are over. “Everything is out of control,” I bellowed to my daughter over the phone. Then I listed legal and financial paperwork I was dealing with and added that I needed a window washer and someone else to check my eavestroughs, and did she remember my evergreens are …
At book club last week, we finished Joan Chittister’s The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully. Many things in the book resonated with me, but I needed her chapter on “Future” right now as I emerge from the two-month mark of being a widow (there, I said the word I don’t like, but it seems …
When Marv had his first cancer, prostate, in 1999, I fell off the rails. As I was telling that story to a mutually grieving friend last week, I thought back to what a therapist told me at the time: "Sounds like you're bouncing along the bottom." Here’s the situation as I described it in Caring …
Write Along with Me 