Sometimes Husbands Die

Here's the thing I've realized about death - especially sudden, unexpected death.   Everyone starts to replay situations in their heads about ways they could have done something to prevent the inexplicable reality that has now become their life. My late husband used to say to me, "Honey, you can what if yourself to death....."  I could too....  I constantly did this with purchases like a car or a house.  We should have gone to see this one, or I shouldn't have purchased that car.  If I would not have taken a vacation day this day I could have saved it for _____.   I kind of had to learn to make a damn decision and stick with it.   Stay the course.  There was a reason that I chose to do what I did.   Some of those decisions were really stupid (I can think of a car purchase that will haunt me for the rest of my life that I should have listened to my gut about).   Our first house was a bit of a disaster. ...

I'm not going to lie, Kobe set me back.   Kobe stung....a LOT. I'm not a Lakers fan, in fact I'm not really even an NBA fan.  I do know and love the game of basketball, but not at that level. I decided today that it's time to start this thing after more than 24 hours of the shock spit out all over facebook, twitter, instagram, and the hallways at work.  I was fixing the girls lunch yesterday and randomly pulled my phone out of my pocket and it was the first thing on my feed: "Kobe Bryant Dead after Helicopter Crash."  I scrolled a little bit more and saw it again and left out a "NOOOO!" Of course, two post grief kids immediately get really concerned and immediately asked what was wrong.   I explained the situation and their response was, "Oh.  Can I have some chicken nuggets for lunch?" Sure, the fact of the matter is that they probably have never seen an NBA game in their life.  While they both play (very entry level) basketball, t...

Well, here we are.  I am trying not to make this sound like Confession or a self help meeting, but it is what it is.   I'm a widow and I have been for nearly 3 years.   This idea has been running through my brain for at least 2 of those 3 years, but I figured I needed more skin in the game before I could become a keyboard warrior.   Truth of the matter, becoming a widow at 37 turns you into a warrior in a flash, but why would anyone else want to read about it? On several occasions, I've jumped up on a facebook soapbox, spouting off a few insights, frustrations, suggestions, and folks have been receptive.  I figured instead a widow diatribes one minute and inappropriate MEMEs the next on facebook, perhaps it would be in my favor to keep this widow (for lack of a better word) crap in one location.   That's how we got here.... Well, technically that's not how we got here - that started on a cold, post snowstorm, very sunny Wednesday i...