I was thinking of my late husband Kevin today. Sometimes I watch a video or look at a picture that makes me smile. I'm sharing one of the videos that I made shortly after he died below.
My children, Chris and I still watch these Kevin videos and look at photos from time to time. Chris (My husband) understands this and is very supportive. We keep Kevin's memory alive. We remember but we don't live in the past. As a fellow widow once said "I love my husband but think of [and love] my first" To view copy and paste link to your browser: Hawaii ... http://youtu.be/IIRN3wqF-30 Family .... http://youtu.be/KiUfKAC_NAE
Kevin and Cyd's baby boys .... http://youtu.be/KiUfKAC_NAE
Forget-Me-Never: The Reality Of Remarriage After Widowhood
Posted: 07/15/2013 8:07 am
A few months ago, a well-known and much respected actor
mentioned in an interview that he still thinks about his late wife.
People were shocked at this "stunning revelation", as the same actor has
been happily remarried for a number of years. This sort of "shocked" reaction begs an obvious question. Since when did remarriage become an equation formula that reads:
Remarried = Forgetting
This latest in a long line of widowed-myths implies that once
remarried, the life previously lived somehow fades into oblivion because
the widowed has now found new life with new love in it. Because of
this new life, the remarried widowed is apparently never again sad or
wistful because their late beloved is no longer here. Conversely and equally perplexing is the companion myth that once a
spouse has passed away, the widowed should assume an attitude that they
have "caught their limit"; that once their beloved has passed away, a
widowed's destiny is to remain alone and longing for a life that is no
longer here to live. A widowed should thereafter resign themselves to
functioning in life with grief and mourning as their core and living a
destiny that they did not choose. The reality of spousal loss that is so important for both the widowed and those who surround them to understand is that: You can honor your past
You can treasure your past
You can and should love your past
You do not have to live in your past When it comes to love, our hearts are truly without capacity or
limits -- if this were not the case, we would each have only one child
because how could our hearts possibly expand to love more than
one? We all have an infinite capacity to love and should that be a
widowed's choice, finding love in a new life can and should absolutely
be part of their dynamic. Love is also not mutually exclusive one of the other. Loving again
does not mean that the love for a late beloved somehow goes away. It
doesn't. Furthermore, loving again does not dishonor or disrespect the
person who is no longer here, nor does it disrespect the memory
of that person. This is a concept that can create a fair amount of
discord (especially within families) when a widowed finds companionship
or love once again. People who surround the remarried or re-partnered widowed can also
interpret newfound happiness as not grieving "right", not having
experienced grief at all, completely "forgetting" the past (as if that is even possible) or believing that we have collectively dusted off our hands and are glancing around as if to say, "OK, that's done and over with.... who's next?"
The fact is that even in a wonderful new life, things like holidays,
birthdays, anniversaries, "angelversaries" (the date of a late spouse's
death) and children realizing various life milestones can all serve as
painful reminders that someone who a widowed loves without measure is no
longer here to celebrate, witness and in general, be a part of a life
that was built with love Almost thirteen years after losing my late husband, I can tell you
without reservation that I still love him and I still treasure the life
that we had together. However, I have also moved forward into a
beautiful new life. Eleven years old when her daddy passed away, our
daughter Kendall is now a young adult who enjoys a thriving career.
After seven years of widowhood, I met and fell in love with a wonderful
man in 2007 (who actually fell in love with me too), we married in 2009
and together, with my fantastic English daughter Michelle, we have built
a beautiful blended family. To top it all off, I have the privilege of
being on a mission of service and support to others in need.
Now, by living this incredible new life, does that mean that I have
forgotten about or betrayed my past life? Absolutely not. Does it mean
that after Mike died, I should have stayed inside the house in my
pajamas and kept the blinds closed forever? What would that have
accomplished? I chose instead to grieve in my way, in my time, help my
daughter with and through her own grief recovery and slowly, yet
steadily, move into a life of my own design - a design that happily
included new love and new adventures to go along with that love. The love that you have for your late beloved will never go away. Not
ever. Not with the passage of time. Not with the introduction of a new
person into your life and into your heart. Not with the 8 jillion people
around you saying things like, "Well you should be over it by now".
I am honoring Mike's legacies of love and service by continuing to move
forward; by modeling the best example that I can for my daughters, by
serving a community that I love and by building a family and living a
life with my Dave, whom I love deeply. By doing all of these things, I
am indeed honoring the legacies of love and service that Mike left to us
to carry forward. You can do the same, if and when you choose to do so. Remarriage does not equal forgetting -- let no one tell you otherwise. Loving again does not imply lack of or the end of love for the past. You are not
destined to remain in mourning forever... that isn't why you are here.
Embrace and carry forward the legacies that were entrusted to you by
your late beloved. If you choose it, living your new life can include
companionship... and love. Choose carefully, choose wisely -- and love
again abundantly. Because you can.
I have forgiven mistakes that were indeed
almost unforgivable. I've tried to replace people who were irreplaceable
and tried to forget those who were unforgettable. I've acted on
impulse, have been disappointed by people when I thought that
this could never be possible. But I have also disappointed those who I
love. I have laughed at inappropriate occasions. I've made friends that
are now friends for life. I've screamed and jumped for joy. I've loved
and I've been loved. But I have also been rejected and I have been loved
without loving the person back. I've lived for love alone and made vows
of eternal love. I've had my heart broken many, many times! I've cried
while listening to music and looking at old pictures. I've called
someone just to hear their voice on the other side. I have fallen in
love with a smile. At times, I thought I would die because I missed
someone so much. At other times, I felt very afraid that I might lose
someone very special (which ended up happening anyway). But I have
lived! And I still continue living everyday. I'm not just passing
through life and you shouldn't either... Live! The best thing in life is
to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to
live everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win
while being grateful. All of this because the world belongs to those
who dare to go after what they want. And because life is really too
short to be insignificant. ༺♥༻ Charlie Chaplin ╰დ╮❤╭დ╯
Sometimes
we have to be willing to let go of the relationships that do us much
more harm than good. Too many times we work so hard in life to only be
discouraged and told by others that we should be grateful for even
having them in our own lives. I would
much rather be alone than deal with someone who makes me not want to
feel loved.At the end of the day, if we keep receiving negative signals
from the people that we are in a relationship with, we shouldn't just
avoid these feelings, we have to know that a change is needed. Deal
with the change that is needed. Don't pretend that your relationship is
working out when it isn't, if it isn't going great, don't sacrifice your
dignity
~Chumzee
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can And no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
All I will say is that if you haven't been watching Enlightened check it out, … though it may not be for everyone, you’ve missed out on something pretty damn amazing.
"UGH, ‘Enlightened’ is so painful to watch. It’s so good, but everyone is just so horrible towards Laura Dern’s character and I just want to give her a hug and tell her that everything’s going to be okay"
LAURA DERN QUOTES:
"I’m speaking with my true voice now, without bitterness or fear. And I’m here to tell you, you can walk out of hell and into the light, you can wake up to your higher self, and when you do the world is suddenly full of possibility of wonder and deep connection. You can be patient, and you can be kind, and you can be wise and almost whole. You don’t have to run away from life your whole life. You can really live. You can change and you can be an agent of change”
“My first love, my husband. My heartbreak, my pain. It feels so easy
now. Here, you’re not the cheat and the liar. I’m not the nag and the
shrew. And we’re not old or young. There’s no bitterness or illusions,
no need for fear or hope. We’re just spirits drifting through this
perfect earth together. We can be free of our sad stories. They float
away till they’re like memories of a dream from the night before;
shadows under the water and what’s left is pure life. Life is the gift.”
—
Amy Jellicoe (Enlightened S1E4)
“Everything can be transformed. Every single thing. Goodness exists. It’s all around. It’s just sleeping. It can be wakened.”
—
Amy Jellicoe, Enlightened
“Let’s be hopeful, you and me. We can try to do something and not just be dying. I’m so sick of dying.”
—
Amy Jellicoe, ‘Enlightened’
“Sometimes, late at night, visited by dread and shame, I lie in bed and think of somebody else’s life. I imagine the love that they’re getting, and the relief that comes from being really known. The private pleasure they share. The friends they have and the pressures they don’t. Their sense of importance, the satisfactions of their work. I imagine how fulfilled they are, how rich their life is.
And in these moments, I feel empty, and wanting.
Sometimes I think about someone else’s life. I imagine all the love they do not have. I see the passion that’s missing. The friends they don’t know, and the awful pressures that crush them.
In those moments, I realize how much I have, and how much I have to give”
—
Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern)- Enlightened
“Blessed are the moments in life when the decisions are clear, when doubt shrugs and slinks away, ashamed of itself, and resolve embraces you like a long, lost lover.
Sweet certainty, where have you been?
No matter…
No longing.
No looking back.
Welcome the consequences when your heart is alert and lucid.
What bad can come?”
—
Amy Jellicoe, HBO’s Enlightened
“I’ve lived in a world full of not-good-enough mothers. Imperfect, bad mothers. But the mother is a child, too. She is a child. I will stop waiting for you to be the perfect mother. I will be patient with you. I will be tender. I will be the mother I wanted you to be."
“Everything can be transformed. Every single thing. Goodness exists. It is all around. It’s just sleeping. It can be wakened. If Levi can change anything is possible. I will not be afraid, I will be bolder. I will go straight to the top and breathe light into the darkest hearts. “ —Amy Jellicoe
“You can try to escape the story of your life, but you can’t. It happened. The baby died, the dog died, the heart broke. I knew you when you were young—I know your heart broke too—I will know you when we are both old—and maybe wise, I hope wise—I know you now, your story. Mine isn’t the one I would have chosen in the beginning, but I’ll take it. It is my story, it’s only mine, and it’s not over, there’s time. There is time. There’s so much time.”
—
Amy Jellicoe (Enlightened 1x04: The Weekend)
“This kingdom; this amazing kingdom we have made. This monstrous kingdom; its castles are magic. They are beautiful. They are built on dreams and iron and greed. They are inorganic and cannot sustain. No kingdom lasts forever. Even this will end, and life and earth will reign again.”
—
Amy Jellicoe, Enlightened
My family finally got the slow-mo miracle we'd been working, praying
and healing toward. But the problem with miracles is that they don't
necessarily make you mildly euphoric. They're not caffeinated, which is
what I would prefer. You can be grateful and amazed beyond words that
God, heard your prayers, jiggled things around, and speitzed them, to somehow
help a huge problem in your life to resolve in a beautiful, surprising
way. But it might leave you exhausted. I think a better system would be
for God to honor frequent buyer punch cards, so every 10th resolution or
miracle you got would be free.
I'm just saying. Your mind can
actually be blown that, against all odds, things have shaken down and
turned out in a way that you would have barely been able to hope for.
But it still might mean your heart will ache.
If I were God, or God's West Coat Rep, I would have a much more organized and predictable system.
Take Lazarus, or instance. His sisters get their miracle; and even
though he ends up dying eventually, we still see thatthat's what it was.
Or say, for instance, that you have anorexic teenage daughter, who
almost died, and instead, was shown a way out of No Way. From extreme
secrecy and isolation, she ends up with a pit crew, or at least she has
one amazing person to walk with her. She not only survives, but
blossoms, fully, and then gets herself into a college 3000 miles away.
Well, a miracle, right? If you've been through this, you know how close
you came to losing her. You know how far away from you the disease took
her. And yet, now she's thriving, and your heart is so filled with
gratitude that you could burst. You're Zorba the Greek.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou.
And yet, she's about to go live 3000 miles away.
That's all I'm saying: miracles aren't the same as nitrous oxide, which
would be SO great, if you ask me. But no. Miracles means Grace must
have tiptoed sneakily into the picture while you were busy with your
clipboard, making lists and writing down all your Good Ideas on how to
save, rescue and fix everyone. Miracles--even little brown paper bag
miracles--are when you absolutely could not have gotten to where you are
now, from where you were. But it may come at a cost.
God's
provincence does not mean No Storms, which I hate hate hate. I would not
agree to this, given a choice. By the same token--given a choice--I
would not have agreed to grow four inches when I was 13, as my knees and
elbows ached sharply for most of a year. And anyway, I've shrunk an
inch--so I want my money back. Growing in body and spirit I hard.
That's what I've been thinking about, that sometimes you don't notice
that you got a miracle, or ARE a miracle, because it's more of a mixed
grille than you'd been expecting. There's joy and relief, but maybe also
bittersweet feelings, and exhaustion. It turns out to be a quiet
consignment store miracle, instead of something snazzier and perfect
from Ikea. So for today, a) who asked me, anyways? and b)
thankyouthankyouthankyou
“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.”
― Anne Lamott
3/11/13 My youngest continues to have some difficulty here and there about his father's death and also an odd family rift which happened several years after Kevin's death.
Lately I've noticed him playing a song over and over called "Don't you worry child" by Swedish Mafia. This morning I downloaded the song (it's catchy and fun -- thought it would be a good running song). I listened to the words for the first time and couldn't stop crying. I now realize this has been a coping song for him. I love you Zack - I'm listening and Chris and I are always here for you, buddy -- don't you worry my sweet child, heaven's got a plan for you.
I was bawling this morning when I heard the lyrics.
As
the grief counselor told me soon after Kevin's death, the loss of a
loved one never goes away ... especially for young kids. It's all too
much for their young brains to handle. He told me that through the
years Zack and Austin would continue to go back into grief. Young children relive grief over and over . He was correct. This year was the first time that Zack connected
the fact that Kevin's death day was also my birthday. He was very upset
at school that day and had to come home. This is around the day he
started playing this song. I like to believe it helps him. It also
helps me to share this with others who may face the same thing one day http://youtu.be/1y6smkh6c-0 "Don't You Worry Child"
There was a time
I used to look into my father's eyes.
In a happy home
I was a king, I had a gold throne.
Those days are gone,
Now the memory's on the wall.
I hear the songs
From the places where I was born.
Upon the hill across the blue lake,
That's where I had my first heartbreak.
I still remember how it all changed.
My father said,
"Don't you worry, don't you worry, child.
See heaven's got a plan for you.
Don't you worry, don't you worry now."
