This Side of Sunshine

When there is deep loss, and one is in the midst of grief, it is difficult to imagine a time in which you will feel normal again. Everyone that experiences loss, also experiences grief of varying degrees. Lyn’s illness, passing, and the grief that ensued, changed me forever. Since 2017, I have intentionally sought out…

More than two years ago, I sat and outlined my blog. This is blog 36. Out of all the posts in the outline, this was the one post that I did not know if I would be able to write, or if I even wanted to share the information. Death is painful because it leaves…

Nothing truly prepares a person for the end of life. We can attempt to convince ourselves by thinking about the end and trying to imagine how we will handle the end, but it falls far short of what it feels like once it happens. What I mean, is that while most of us have had…

I have always been one that liked to control my situation in life, to the best of my ability. I used to think about it as, being prepared. However, when it came down to, “being prepared,” it was more about attempting to control the outcome. I used to think that being prepared, or controlling the…

Happy new year! We just emerged from the year 2020, and it was a worldwide mess! The holidays were extremely strange. It was a year ago, when I struggled through the 2019 holidays and was ready to start writing a new chapter in 2020. The holidays in 2019 were especially painful, because they were all…

We have all been touched with the sudden illness or passing of a loved one. I have written much about the journey that my wife (and our family) went through, and I will continue to write about that journey for some time. However, many of my friends have asked how we are doing as a…

I think most, if not all would agree that 2020 has not turned out remotely how we envisioned it would go. What started off as a hopeful new decade, has turned to worldwide struggle as we work through the pandemic. For me, 2019 was a rough year with my wife’s passing, and I was eager…

During my wife’s illness, we tried our best to carry on living the best quality life possible. Obviously when there is an illness as serious as what Lyn had, it was almost always in the back of our minds. However, there were amazing times where Lyn was responding well to her treatment. It was in…

Everyone has thoughts about his or her mortality. For our family, we were forced to think about this quite often as we saw my wife go through her illness. During my wife’s illness, I would lay in bed, and wonder what life would be like if Lyn would not experience healing. At first, when those…