On Tuesday, April 7, 2020, I woke up at 3:49 AM to my phone vibrating. It was a call from my middle daughter, Laura. It was every parent’s nightmare. As I answered, awakened from a deep sleep I had only fallen into three hours earlier (because as I came to bed I discovered a roof leak coming through the ceiling right outside my master bedroom), I could hear crying. It was my oldest daughter, Rachel, crying. Our family… 20-years ago. Before cancer. Before death. Before being alone. In that moment, I can’t tell you how much it hurt to be...
That word. “Anxiety.” It used to drive me nuts when Suzanne, or my daughters, would mention they had it. The reason was: I didn’t get it—literally and figuratively. Anxiety always seemed to provide a convenient excuse to not get involved or do something. It was never a problem when we had fun things to do… But something serious? That was another story. One or all of them was always getting anxious when something serious was taking place… In all my life (I’m inching closer to 52 years old now), I had never experienced anxiety. In fact, I never really felt...
What is an unalome? It’s a symbol. There are many styles of unalome, but this is a post about the meaning. But one particular unalome has an even more profound meaning for me than the “definition” of the unalome. The unalome symbol represents the path to enlightenment in the Buddhist culture. The dots at the start of the symbol represent when we are conceived and then born. Essentially, this is the moment we become something from nothing. The spirals are meant to symbolize the twists and turns in life, and the straight line the moment one reaches enlightenment, or “peace and...
I had prepared a different post to publish today (not this one), but I changed my mind. Instead, I felt compelled to write about how it feels to arrive at the 18-month mark since Suzanne died. On my personal Facebook page, the memory of what I wrote 1-year ago came up and I posted it—it was from when I was “6-months out.” In that post at 6-months, I said this: Six months. Six months since I last kissed you and you knew I was there. Six months since I had my hand on your heart as it beat for the...
In most other languages, the onomatopoeia that we use to describe these birds does not exist. We call them hummingbirds because, like flip flops and ping pong, it describes the noise made rather than the name of the thing itself. The word most other languages use instead is “Colibri”. This is significant for two reasons. One, I find the word more elegant than hummingbird. And two, I have used this word as the name of my own business (spelled Kohlibri Coaching). Why? When Suzanne died, we sat as a family in mourning. We talked about her spirit. Her resilience. Her...
January 24 will mark my dad’s 7-year deathaversary. It’s significant for a couple of reasons. First, I never really understood why my mom was so different after my dad died. She mellowed. She changed. She was comfortable being alone even though she and my dad had been married for nearly 50-years. Second, my mom also started to wear a gold chain with my dad’s wedding ring on it. I noticed she had put it on there immediately after he died, but never really thought about its significance. When Suzanne died, it was a t 1:13 AM Sunday morning August 19,...
January 1, 2020 was a milestone. I didn’t mention it to anyone. I never said a word. 500 days. Over the last 500 (now 508) days, I have written a lot of words about my grief, the unending sense of loss, the brutal physical and emotional pain, the heartache and the heartbreak, the deep-rooted trauma and post-traumatic stress, as well as many other things related to how I have been since becoming a widower. And my experience is not as unique as some may think. Those who knew me before all this, know how much I adored Suzanne. She was...
What is fear? Why do we sense it and why do we succumb to it? What are we truly afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen if we take the risk, make the call, change the story? Death. That’s ultimately what we all fear and are most afraid of. The second biggest fear I think we have is living. Not just living a life, but living a life of loneliness. Another is fear of failure, but I’m not going to address that here. It’s irrelevant to me… Fear of death holds us all back. It stops us in our...
