I haven’t posted much on this silly blog in a very long time.

It’s been more than 17 months since I lost Stephen, and I haven’t been able to write here. It seemed so frivolous to try to write something — a place where I posted recipes, photography tips and whatnot.

Grief is such a strange bedfellow. You love someone, and live with them for 43 years as your partner, and then they are gone. Nevermore. But I am seeing that is not necessarily the case.

Yes, he is gone. And I miss him like a part of my body has been severed from me. I have some good days, and some very sad days when it is still hard to get out of bed. I put on a brave face, because that’s what I always do. I don’t show the grief to others. I do what I have to do.

I’ve had vivid “visitation” dreams from him. He is there. He snuggles with me, puts his arms around me and let’s me know he is okay, he is at peace. And that he wants me to be at peace, too. I don’t know what to make of those dreams except to say that they give me great comfort. I feel during those dreams that he knows how much I loved him, and that he lets me know how much he loved me. I have come to believe that love is the one thing that doesn’t die. It carries on even in the spiritual realm, beyond our bodies.

I was researching a few quotes about grief that I want to share:

Anne Lamott

“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly — that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

John Green, ‘The Fault In Our Stars’

“You gave me a forever within the numbered days…”

Dean Koontz

“Grief can destroy you — or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it.”

Paulo Coelho

“Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.”

Winnie The Pooh

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”