I am in my mid-50s as I start this blog so there’s a LOT of back-story, but now is not the time for that.

This blog is coming into existence to fill a need I have to write, paint, post, create, and just generally document my life since involuntarily joining “The Club You Never Want to Join” – widowhood.

For the past 32 years, I have been part of an “us”. Everything I did was based on having a partner to share it with. I spent about a dozen years with my first husband, a very talented So Cal artist named Michael. I may or may not write about him at some point. Those were not good years.

The nineteen years I had with my second husband, Chad, were the highlight of my life. We fit each other in ways no one outside our relationship could ever understand. To say we completed each other doesn’t even come close. We were both very independent people because of how both our first marriages had been and we used to say “We don’t need each other for anything. But we want each other for everything.”

But then Chad got sick and he actually did need me. After being diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, we made the decision to fight for his life even though we were advised it was a long shot. Our fight lasted six grueling months and, despite the misery for both of us, we cherished our time together as we knew it could end sooner rather than later if our work to heal him wasn’t enough. We both had a strong belief that we were going to rewrite the books on what his diagnosis had meant, so the news in early November that the cancer had gotten very aggressive and the doctors could not longer offer any solutions came as an unwelcome shock to us both. They thought he might have one to four weeks left and they sent him home with me to die. He continued to fight, he didn’t know how to quit, but he passed away five days later.

And here I am.

At this point, his passing is just over six months ago. I am re-learning to be just me.

As if grieving weren’t enough, COVID-19 descended on the world and I am now a “bubble of one”. So I am learning to adapt, to remake myself, to carry on.

Who I was with Michael and who I became with Chad no longer exist. The person I was at those times is gone. I don’t get to be who I was before – that’s no longer an option I have. So now I have to be someone else. As continuing some of the things I had loved to share with Chad are still raw and painful to me, and some are not possible due to the pandemic, I am exploring other interests. I am becoming a new person. I am reshaping what it means to be me.

During his last days, Chad requested I live well, travel, make new friends, explore new hobbies, so that we will have something interesting to talk about when I catch up with him. The pandemic is slowing that down a little, but I won’t let it stop me. And I won’t let the grief, the pain, the tears, and the hole in my soul stop me either. They are just becoming part of how the new me is built and the jagged edges of them are beginning to smooth over just a little already.

So this is me.

I am just Kai.