One Year In

So, while Teresa's journey ended a year ago, mine continues. It's been a tough year for me. Nothing else bad happened, but finding myself bereft of my best friend, my sounding board, and my calming influence when I wanted to rage against the world has been a great challenge.

Teresa had a loving funeral, and I lot of people I didn't expect turned out for it. I don't honestly remember much of that day, so much was a blur. I do know that she looked at peace, and I'm every so grateful for our ladies from St. Elias who prepared and dressed her body. I know it was a great blessing for me, and a labor of love from them. And she was grateful to them as well, since she had discussed it all beforehand.

Since the funeral, I have days where grief seems distant and days where it haunts my every thought. I am grateful that the love we shared is still evergreen in my mind. I find my thoughts drifting to earlier times in our life, and I spend more time than I probably should looking at old pictures. Sadly, I don't have as many as I would have liked.

I have found that I am leaning more and more on prayer and spiritual reading to channel my grief. I am comforted by the words of the Psalmist:

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.

Many days I am crushed in spirit. But I am truly comforted by the knowledge that Teresa died to this life and was born into a new life. Because our God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Luke 20:38). And in that newness of life, I know she is praying for my soul and that of many other people at the foot of the Throne of God. I have seen this with myself and my children. My (step) grandaughter has been baptized and my daughter in law will soon become a catechumen to enter the Orthodox church.

I have decided that I hate the term widower. It's just too modern. Even more modern (it seems to me) is calling everyone who lost a spouse a widow. So when I describe myself I use the archaic usage widow man. It just fits my character better.

Now, that's enough of the maudlin stuff. I have been blessed to take a couple of overseas trips. One to Nicaragua at my own expense, and an0ther to Prague for work. Both were places I had never been before and were very educational.

In Nicaragua I was touring a cigar factory (along with a great group of friends), and was able to learn a lot about how cigars were made. We had a blending class that covered about 2 days and the end result of that was 50 cigars of my own blend. I made them as  a memorial (a remembrance in older usage) to Teresa and called them the "Sweet Teresa". I don't know what the final cigar will taste like but the test cigar (unaged, no wrapper) had baking spices and sweetness in its taste profile. It brought me back to Teresa making cinnamon rolls in the kitchen for the kids. So I'm happy with that. It won't be ready until right before the 1 year memorial for Teresa, so I'm planning (heat be damned) to go and smoke the first one with her at the graveside.

Prague was delightful, lots of history, I saw the Orthodox Cathedral that is also a memorial to the paratroopers who slew the Nazi "protector" of Czechia and the Orthodox clergy who hid them who were executed during WW II. Every Orthodox bishop, priest and deacon in the country was executed by the Nazi's, and the church wasn't restored there until after WW II.

So those are the low spots and the high spots. I still have many tasks in the coming months to continue getting my life back on track. I still haven't ordered a headstone. The money for that ended up bailing some of my kids out of a financial problem not of their making. I also need to work on getting the will probated, but there are some complications on that I want to discuss with my sister in law.

I still have pictures I need to clean up and upload here. So expect more stories coming along. It's time to remove the mourning clothes and continue on with life. She would expect no less.