I was 24 years old and the mother of three children. I was on a waitlist for legal aid to divorce my dead-beat alcoholic husband. I was on welfare and just found out I was pregnant again. — My story begins with a high school pregnancy. I was 17 and in love; I didn’t believe in abortion. My family is very born-again Christian and religious. Plus, I grew up in Utah, where everyone is Mormon. …

Tom sent a gift for me from the other side of the veil on his birthday. — I arrived at the airport very early on the morning of June 3rd. Standing in the long security line, sleepy, with dark circles, and all the added wrinkles and gray hair from almost 9 months of widowhood, I finally get to the first checkpoint. The TSA officer stops the line…

What is the meaning of the number 13 in my life? — After 13 years together, my soul mate died on September 13th. I noticed his assigned identification number for the crematory was xx13. Every month on the 13th, I count another month lost and alone. Looking back at old journals, trying to re-capture and re-live the memories, I ran across September…

After losing Tom the fear of losing my son has become stronger. — I was sleeping soundly when a slight scream woke me up. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock, it said 3:03. I drank sleepy time tea before bed so I really had to pee. As I got up to use the bathroom I heard the slight scream again. …

Living time backward is what widows do. I thought it was just me, but I just read A Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. She explains her first year as a widow. In her first year, she did the same thing. …

Let it go. Such a simple sentence. Just let it go; sounds easy. Why is it so hard then? The downtime of mourning has me learning so much about myself. I realize I am a pretty open book—an easy target for those with ill-will. My heart is good, so I…

When your person dies, you spend the first year in the fog of the year before. Every morning as soon as I make my cup of coffee, I pull out my journals. There are two of them, this year, and the one I had from precisely a year ago. I take a sip of the coffee and open last year’s journal. …

Today my very distant past, which I thought was long behind me, slapped me upside the head. — I met *ex-husband in 1996, we lived together for three years before getting married. My three children from my first marriage were ages 3, 5, and 7. Our time together was eleven years, nine of them I was madly in love, faithful to a fault. Throughout the years, though, I…