Musings of a Meandering Mind

I’m not certain why, but this holiday season, I’ve been filled with fervent sentiment and emotions. The intensity grows with each pulse of my heart, and a yearning rises like a tightening in my throat as I go through the motions of Christmas preparation. Memories of loved ones; and images of past Christmases dance in my head, bringing me joy entwined with longing for those who are no longer with us. I didn’t have opportunity to spend many Christmas mornings with Walter, only one in the eight years we had. He would fly home to Nova Scotia so he could spend the holidays with his mother, children and grandson, Jase. But we did our best to spend it together across the miles. Texts, calls and Skype video calls at 7:00 pm. The one Christmas we spent together ended up being his last, little did we know. We enjoyed the togetherness. I’ll always cherish the memories. Like he and Dad, sitting together, sipping coffee, chatting away like Waldorf and Statler from the Muppets, up in the balcony,

  Moving forward.  How do you know if you're ready? After losing a spouse, the thought of life without them is overwhelming. The confidante who helped you navigate the unknown isn’t there. The one whose arms around you provided comfort, is gone. You’re faced with an all-encompassing grief. Logically you know that one day you’ll get to the ‘moving forward’ part of the process. But how do you know if you’ve finished mourning? How long does that take? How do you know if you’re ready? If only there was a litmus test. One must go through the grief process, not around it. Experts say there are five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although for every loss, we experience each stage, they present themselves differently, from intensity to length. For me, I had nine months to ‘prepare’ or maybe ‘brace’ myself before he died. We tried to savor the time we had left, to experience joy, laughter, and happiness. But no matter what we did, we could feel the da