Widowz Healing Blog

It seems like the first year is the most difficult.  There have so many firsts without Mike.  Halloween.  Thanksgiving.  His Birthday – that  day felt really empty. Christmas.  New Year’s.  Valentine’s Day.  I thought about him a lot.  He made a big deal of Valentine’s Day.  He surprised me each year with a special gift and card. I’d never had a man be so thoughtful and loving with this holiday.  Easter.  Our wedding anniversary – I wrote April 6^th for two days in a row until I realized why.  I had forgotten our anniversary a couple times before.  I was always happy he remembered it.  Much harder was April 21^st –  six months since Mike departed this life experience.  Every time I thought of this, tears sprung to my eyes. It seemed like it had been so recently and yet, so long ago.  I couldn’t really write about it till now. 

This timeframe feels like a milestone in accepting the reality that Mike’s not here.  I keep reflecting on Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking.  It took a year for her to really accept – or begin to accept – that her husband was gone.  More holidays and remembrances to come.  Memorial Day.  Fourth of July – last year we were at Dillon Beach, as usual.  My girlfriend and I and our daughters have been going every year for ten years.  It was so wonderful to have Mike there, too.  We all had so much fun.  I know I will miss him being there this year.

At first, it felt uncomfortable driving Mike’s Mini Cooper.  It smells like Mike, my daughter said.  It did.  I felt like I was surrounded by him.  He loved his Mini.  Years ago, I read that items that are well loved, hold that love energy  and you can feel that attraction, that love.  I have experienced this with rings  – my mother’s, my grandmothers’, and Mike’s mother’s – and  with the Mini.  I’m driving it more now.  The scent is beginning to fade, or perhaps, I’m getting more used to it.