Dandelion Breaths

"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve." Earl Grollman Today is July 30, 2022. You've been gone a little over six months now Dawn. On this hot, sunny Saturday I wish you were here, and we were planning to go to a movie, perhaps Elvis, or watching our favorite house makeover show on television. Instead your dad and I were at yours and Daniel's grave replacing flowers in the vase on a tombstone so there would be fall colors, and worrying about how the drought was effecting your headstone.  The past few weeks have been pretty rough. Your dad, Carrie, and I miss you so much. We are fine for a minute, then missing you hits so hard we crumble under its agony. You didn't die quietly, peacefully. It was a nightmare. I can't say it any more powerfully than Carrie did on a recent Instagram post. A Treadmill     I don’t feel strong, T...

January was cold with the scent of funeral flowers and moldy gray clouds strangling blue sky.   Grief swam through my veins like an Olympic swimmer. Hungry tears chased me to the edge as if bleak was a gold medal.   I can’t say time heals. I’m in the rawness of losing my Dawn. Each day is heavy, my voice hoarse with why.   Yet, like her name she comes with light to candle me through my darkest days. I feel her urge me toward healing, tell me to go into the space of joy creating brings me.   In the days when I’m stuck, I don’t want to shower, to eat, to talk, I walk to one of her photographs to let myself feel her freedom.   She is where she has no pain, in the arms of her Daniel, a starlight woman leaving notes on my heart of courage and love.   Today I sit among her scarves braiding myself into moments of love, of her presence, of her strength to push forward when circumstances taunt me ...