Recently I started listening to a podcast called Rewatcher. It is about the popular late 90’s tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I loved that series and hadn’t watched it in years so with the podcast discussing it

Today would have been my love’s 53 birthday. I have a candle burning for her. I didn’t know what I would do to celebrate her and the 50 years she lived here

I have a spot on the counter where objects that I don’t know what to do with end up. Right now I have a big bowl that captures smaller things, but some objects that end up there

On the road I travel to get home, there is a field. Several times a year they harvest the field to make the big round hay bales. Every time I see them I think of Michaela.

Michaela had a double major in college. History and political science. I voted before I met her, but I only voted for major elections and on topics that were important to me personally.

I don’t think anyone can be prepared to lose someone they love. I think we know everyone dies eventually

It is so weird when things feel like now is the time. I have emotions with those things still, but up until this moment in time I hadn’t been able to face the emotions.

Michaela liked adventures. We would chase storms so she could get lightening photographs, get up at 3am so we could travel a couple hours to see the sun rise over a waterfall

I haven’t dusted the shrine table or anything on it since Christmas. I haven’t been able to touch it.

Grief is not something I will ever get over. It is lodged in me like something heavy creating a deep unhealing wound

It really seems like I should have a tag hanging around my neck saying “Out of Order.” I don’t feel like I have been a fully functioning adult since M died.

Grief is like an earthquake. It really is - my whole world falling and breaking apart. I bend over to pick pieces off the floor and whatever it was before - isn’t even recognizable now.

Art journaling helps me process my feelings around my grief.

I haven’t been out of the house much this month. My grief and depression are playing off of each other. One of my coping mechanisms is reading. I read to escape my life. I read a ton of books to escape my pain.

Words are powerful and I need them to help me as I grieve.

Is it just always the would have been? “It would have been…” her 52 birthday…our 19th anniversary and so on with each birthday and anniversaries. I will now have a “would have been” life.

I cancelled our cell phone plan and signed up with another company in my name.