The Great Escape

Any of you who follow me on any social media site know that I've been quite focused on Sarah McLachlan lately.  I had the good fortune to be able to travel to Toronto this past week to see Sarah perform at a small club and had the chance to meet her after the show.  For any Sarah McLachlan fan this would be a big deal but I wouldn't consider myself a die hard Sarah McLachlan fan... well maybe I would now but before this past week I would have considered myself to be a casual fan.  There is more to this story than just being able to meet a Canadian music icon.  The truth is this obsession could have been something completely different and triggered in any number of ways but in this particular case Sarah happened to be the catalyst to elicit emotion.  I have a feeling she's quite good at doing that. For the past four months I have been dealing with the grief brought about by the sudden loss of the love of my life .  Dealing with intense grief I found that...

Just when I start to think, "I've got this.  Things are getting better." something surprises me and makes me re-think that budding confidence in my ability to cope.  Today it is three months since I said goodbye to KB.  Yes, I know that she died on January 9th but it was just minutes before midnight and I stayed until everyone else had gone home and I said goodbye one more time not because I needed to be alone but because I just couldn't let go.  It's still difficult.  This morning, when I woke up and realized that this was three months since I said goodbye, everything I was feeling that night returned and I wasn't prepared for the flood of emotion.  They did warn me about this in my grief support group but I still wasn't prepared. I know that everyone at the hospital did their best to help us all through this and at the time I wasn't immediately aware of some of the things that the doctor had asked me and maybe I wasn't fully aware of everything...

The past 2 weeks (almost 20 days) has been a bit of a blur.  I wasn't sure if I would share this but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was important to share yet one more thing that I learned from my beautiful wife.  This is very personal to me and having had time to reflect on my life with KB and this letter, it is a very precious gift and I hope that those of you who read this can understand why.  KB had recently started to do some exercises that were meant to help stimulate creativity.  She wanted to really focus on developing her writing skills as it was something that she wanted to spend more time doing when we made the move out to BC.  One of her exercises was an unblocking exercise.  I'm not exactly sure what the unblocking exercise was all about but the Monday after KB passed away, I checked my mail and there was Christmas card addressed to me from someone right here in my own town.  I thought that was odd becau...

My beautiful wife, K.B., died ten days ago.  I would love to write something eloquent and beautiful but I'm afraid that I'm not quite there at this moment.  I just know that that I need to say something.  I want to express my grief, my anger and intense sadness but every time I try the concoctions of words and phrases that come out fall far short of capturing my feelings. I have decided to post my eulogy to K.B. (with some editing to protect names and the privacy of others): I met K.B. for the first time just a little more than two years ago when our good friends had invited us both out to supper.  I could tell you the story about falling in love with K.B. and I certainly will tell the story to anyone who wants to hear because it’s one of my favourites.  But today I want to tell you about the woman I fell in love with and will miss terribly for the rest of my life. K.B. didn’t see herself the same way I see her.   To me she was strong and...