Chasing My Blessings

Dear Bill, Fourteen years ago, you asked me to marry you. It was a pretty amazing night and I was really blown away. I knew it was coming, I mean after dating for 7 years one has to expect it. It was either that or I was getting let go really gently. I'm still in awe of all the effort you went to. You actually took the day off work! That alone was a shock. And then to think you spend much of the day in preparation for the evening. We were so excited about the future. And it was pretty damn great. Although too short lived, and I'm sure you'd agree with me on that. For someone who was the very definition of a "planner," I'm guessing this was not in your foresight. Here I sit fourteen years later. Alone. A widow. How did we get here? One minute you were putting on sunblock in the mudroom talking to me and the next time I saw you was 3 days later. At the mortuary. Lying in a casket fully clad in the cycling kit I had them dress you in. Like you had ...

Dear Bill, I bought a cyclocross bike. I can't decide if you would be excited about this, or just annoyed since I never really wanted one when you were alive. Well, someone has to take our kids to the bike park now, so I guess that's me. Honestly though, it's been a lot of fun and your friends have even taken me out on some rides on the dirt roads around here. The kids have enjoyed me taking them out and I've had fun with them. We miss you like crazy, and I so wish you were here to do things like this with us. I feel guilty that I get to be here with the kids and you don't. I'm really having a hard time adjusting to this new life. I feel like I'm stuck in the present moment while the world just keeps going. I cannot, at this point, fathom a future and the past seems quite honestly, like an entirely other lifetime. I still feel numb most of the time. My body can't figure how register any true feelings, except all this heavy grief. Lately I've been...

NOTHING about the last 3 months has been easy. I have been doing paperwork for three solid months. No joke. Insurance forms, victim's advocate paperwork, getting any and all accounts switched over into my name, more insurance paperwork, survivor benefits paperwork, refinancing the house. It has really been non-stop. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter in the mail stating that I needed to provide the life insurance company with a copy of the police report and the toxicology screen from the autopsy report in order to be awarded an additional accidental death policy. Because apparently the official signed copy of the death certificate saying how he died, and that it was in fact accidental, is not good enough. Never mind the fact that the death certificate is sealed and signed ONLY when all of the results from the autopsy are back and the cause of death on the certificate is BASED ON WHAT THE AUTOPSY RESULTS SAY. So off I went to the coroner's office. Can I just tell you how a...

Dear Bill, You think you have your whole life figured out, and then tragedy strikes. You made the grades to earn the degrees to get the dream jobs. You marry your high school sweetheart and have three beautiful kids together. You live in your dream home in your dream location, and you make some really amazing friends and have the best family anyone could ask for. You love your life and live it pretty damn full and really think you've finally made it. You've hit that sweet spot where you don't feel like you are constantly climbing to get to somewhere better. You are there. You just work to maintain it all, but are able to relax about things a little more and have more fun. Life is pretty damn great. You are living the dream. And then a 24-year old, who thinks that her agenda of getting drunk and high is more important than all that, turns that dream into a nightmare. Suddenly the things that mattered to you before don't matter as much now, at least not in the sam...