6 Months of Grief Project: Day 95

The Last Photo I Ever Took of Him

This is Day 95 of my #6MonthsOfGrief Project. To learn more about this practice, feel free to visit Day One, where I explain this project in more detail.

Today's image is sourced from the very last photo I ever took of my husband. It was my birthday and I was feeling sad and unsure of how to celebrate turning 43-years-old. I was in shock that I had suddenly hit middle-age with no warning and I did not know how to get out of my funk and celebrate my birth and my life.

So my husband rallied and gathered up some good friends and we all met at an outdoor brew pub in Oakland. It was a sweet, fun, easy, silly evening. My husband was so good at rallying. He was so good at pulling me out of my funk. He always made sure I celebrated my birthday. He knew inside I was a extroverted Leo who needed to be with friends, no matter how I was feeling and he always made sure that happened.

That night, I noticed he was much more tired than usual. In fact, he seemed tired all the time, but I just chalked it up to the immense stress he was living with, while trying to get his business out of debt.

He died less than a month after this photo was taken.

My 44th birthday is in a little over two months and I don't want to celebrate it. Another year of my life means a year further away from him. I don't know how to process these feelings. It feels like my heart is breaking all over again.

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I am very aware that this project can bring up a lot around yours or other's grief and loss, I will always follow every post with some online grief support resources that have helped me. Please feel free to let me know of online support that you have found healing in your grief, as well:

Art with Grief:

• Filmmaker Gemma Green Hope made a short animation in memory of her grandmother 
• Photographer [Sarah Treanor] Takes Moving Self-Portraits to Cope with Her Fiance's Death by Jillian Wong
• When the Fall Comes, a film about Grief by Adriana Marchione
• Self-Portraits: Expressing Emotion Through Art on What's Your Grief?
• The Hard Romance of Grief by Mark Liebenow
• The poetry of John O’Donohue

Resources for Widows:

• Widowed Village
• Camp Widow

• Soaring Spirits International

Living with Grief Resources:

• Modern Loss's excellent resource list
• The writings of Tim Lawrence
• The Rules of Grief are for Other People by Shawn Doyle on The Good Men Project
• Grief Bibliography on Grief Healing
• Teresa “TL” Bruce's What to Say When Someone Dies
• They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain by Ann Finkbeiner on NPR
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
• Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief
• The Geography of Sorrow: Francis Weller on Navigating Our Loses, interviewed by Tim McKee in Sun Magazine
• How to Be a Friend in Deed by Bruce Feiler in the New York Times
• 12 Things to Know About the First Year of Grieving Someone You Can’t Live Without by Laurie Costanza in Elephant Magazine

And remember, I am sharing this project on a variety of platforms, including my Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook feeds, as well as my Pinterest page on Grief. I use the hashtag #6MonthsOfGrief, so it can easily be found on any platform. Please share this project with anyone you think might need it.

Thank you, and see you tomorrow.