Sixty. Unimaginably Sixty.
May 18, 2024 1 CommentImage by Nick Fewings on Unsplash 28 July 2023 Yesterday, 27th July, Mike would have been 60. His birth date – 27 07 1963. My birth date – 27 03 1967. Same digits. Just turned around in a couple of places. I love number patterns, and I always loved that our birth dates had the […]
Read MoreA love letter to my parents
May 18, 2024 1 CommentPhoto my own 28 July 2023 Last weekend my parents had their 60th wedding anniversary celebrations. A little prematurely, in truth, for they were married on 7th September 1963 (“seven nines are sixty three!” being the clever little ditty for each and any one of us who wanted to be sure to remember their special […]
Read MoreWidows Walking in Wild Weather
May 18, 2024 1 CommentPhotos my own 16 July 2023 It is almost fully five years since I wrote a piece called “Widow Walking in Wild Weather”. It’s here: http://www.widowingemptynests.com/2018/09/23/widow-walking-in-wild-weather/ And, potentially lacking in imagination, this piece is called “Widows Walking in Wild Weather”. Plural. Simply because this time it is not just me, but me and fellow widbud, […]
Read MoreEndings, endings, endings everywhere
May 18, 2024 No CommentsMain image by Ben Wicks on Unsplash 9 July 2023 One of my favourite “change” models (and I know quite a few) is that of Bill Bridges – and crucially, it’s called “Transitions”. I love this man’s work for so many reasons – not least because I trained for my first marathon, back in 1997, […]
Read MoreFour Years – p l e a s e let him be right
May 18, 2024 1 CommentPhoto my own 30 June 2023 Most of my death and dying, and grief and loss reading, has been in English. While my French is “fluent for a Brit”, it’s nowhere close to perfect, and by golly does grief take a cognitive toll. I don’t often willingly pick up a book in French – much […]
Read MoreThe Trickiness of “How Are You?”
May 18, 2024 4 CommentsImage by Markus Spiske on Unsplash 24 June 2023 Yesterday, a fellow widbud, a woman I have never met but who someone connected with me, and who lost her husband just before Christmas 2022 after a very short illness, wrote the note below. I responded to her with both sharing some of my recent writing […]
Read MoreTime After Time After Time After Time
May 18, 2024 1 CommentPhotos my own 17 June 2023 This is – and will continue to be – a weekend full of experiments. A lot of my life is still versions of experimentation, if not in the ways it was immediately post-loss(es) when even just venturing out of the front door and heading to the shops felt like […]
Read MorePress “send” for instant panic
May 18, 2024 No CommentsMain image by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash 9 June 2023 Last Sunday, after I had arrived in Milos in the early morning but still too late to join the other intrepid swimmers for all day open-water swimming, I just pootled around. It was a blissfully leisurely day. I enjoyed a second breakfast, unpacked my belongings, […]
Read MoreΠαρακαλώ και ευχαριστώ
May 18, 2024 No CommentsMain photo by Sergio Garcia on Unsplash 3 June 2023 Back in the very early 1980s – or perhaps it was even the very late 1970s – I am not entirely sure… my mum started to learn Greek. I don’t know why she started, (nor why she eventually stopped), but she engaged a private teacher […]
Read More“The relationship I always wanted….”
May 18, 2024 No CommentsPhoto of my parents from their photo archives – Córdoba, 1961 29th May 2023 Medjool and I have just had a lovely 10 day “working break”, based mostly at my parents’ house in Céret in the Pyrénées Orientales, just inside France on the Franco-Spanish border. Now into their 80s, I try to get down to […]
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