Happy Birthday

Yesterday would have been my late husband's 40th birthday. Not that we would have celebrated it (he never did celebrate his birthday), but he did like to indulge in having cake anyway. We used to joke about how "old" he was getting as he crept up towards this birthday..... little did we know he wouldn't make it past 38.

I don't have anything much to say about it, no wise words, good quotes or advice to give..... just another day where I stop and pause for a minute & indulge in a  "what would have been" moment. But these days don't seem to hit me with the same amount of impact that they had the first year. Instead, after my brief pause, I continue to go about my life -- although it is always with the knowledge that even the most mundane moments are now the most precious.

Re-married widows

¹wid·ow

noun \ˈwi-(ˌ)dō\

1 a : a woman who has lost her husband by death and usually has not remarried

In just over 2 weeks I will be re-married. And so in the technical sense of things, I will no longer be considered a "widow." I am ok with this.

There are a number of widows, well, former widows technically, who write about the topic & continue to refer to themselves as remarried widows. To each his own, but I personally would not want to do this. I don't necessarily think we need to get all technical about it, after all there are plenty of people I know who didn't even get to legally marry their loved one, prior to the death, that also consider themselves "widows," and I would too, but for some reason this whole concept of a "remarried" widow gets under my skin.

I understand the need to maintain a connection to the spouse that has died. I don't want to be told that just because I become remarried, that somehow my first marriage no longer "counts." And if I am blessed with a long next marriage, I don't feel it will somehow mean my first (and very short) marriage was somehow less significant to me or my life. I just don't like using that word.

I had a love/hate relationship with even being a "widow." At first, I just considered myself still married, so I didn't even want to use it. Then I reluctantly took it on, because it was better than having people call me "single" (still gets to me, FYI) and I was certainly not divorced -- a reason I also reluctantly began to use "late" for my first husband (to avoid confusion once I started a new relationship), because he is not, nor will ever be my "ex."

But here's the thing -- when I remarry, I am agreeing to become the wife of my new husband. I will be a wife again, albeit to a different person. To me, this means that he needs to get the priority, after all he is the guy who is still here. As much as I loved my late husband, that marriage has ended. Death does that. It's that whole "'till death do us part business" I am about to say again. If I were to continue to refer to myself as a "remarried widow" I feel that this somehow would always bring up the fact that my new husband is second. Yes, he is technically second, but I mean second in the sense of where my priorities are. If my first husband had never died, I would not be about to remarry..... but he did. And since he can no longer be with me, I do admit that I was open to finding someone new. After all, as all those DGI's liked to remind me, "I am still young." But it was less about the fact that I am still young & more about the fact that I just could not see myself spending the next 50-60 years of my life all alone. We are not made to be alone, we are made to be with people, and to love people and these things oftentimes lead to finding someone in particular you love and who loves you back. To have found this again feels more like I was given a second chance to have a happy life, not a second (i.e., back-up) husband. And I intend on loving him as much as if he were the first and only man I have ever known, and feel he deserves no less from me. Sure I will always remember, and in my own way, continue to love my late husband -- but this does not mean we make our subsequent relationships less significant. Our hearts can grow to accommodate as much love as we want, there is no limit on how many people can fit in there (and wouldn't life be so much more lonely if there were?).

So yes, in a few weeks I will be remarried. And I will say good-bye to being a widow, and hello to being a wife.

Mike and his Apple

"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."

—President Obama on the passing of Steve Jobs



Ever since I knew him, Mike loved Apple. He was always an early adopter of whatever new device came out. Even when he had no money to spare, he manged to find enough to buy the latest laptop, operating system, or whatever new gizmo came next -- iPods, iTV, iWhatever-you-can-think-of, and finally..... at long last he got his iPhone.

At the time we lived in Manhattan -- and the flagship store on 5th avenue was a favorite hangout of Mike's. He would go there before we had a steady place to live, just so he could use their free wi-fi and sit amongst his favorite products. When Apple finally announced the long-awaited iPhone, Mike could not wait. He went down there early that day and stood in line for about 4 hours just so he could say he was the first person he knew to get one. In all the absurdity I even turned on the world news that night to watch the coverage of all the people going into the Apple store. Being New York, they of course were filming the 5th avenue store -- infamously recognizable as the big glass cube. So who do I see? Yes, that's right, just as they were filming, I see Mike walking into the store, giving out high-fives to all the apple employees who were there cheering everyone in. It was crazy.

I have to admit that because of Mike's Apple stuff I did grow to understand why people go gaga for Apple. The stuff is just neat. And it does neat stuff. And no one else's stuff does the same neat stuff as good as, or as easy as, Apple. They are always first. But that was because of Steve Jobs....

He was one of Mike's biggest heroes. To him, the genius of Apple was more than a cool product that did what you wanted. It was also in the design -- being a designer himself, Mike appreciated and recognized the complexity in the simple designs that Apple created. A phone with only 1 button? Who thought of that before Apple? A portable device that is as smaller than my hand, but can hold my entire CD collection? Again, who thought of this first? And besides, Apple is cool.

Every time there was a new product launch, Mike would watch the live stream of Steve Jobs' keynote presentations. He would then call me up, usually while I was at work, to tell me about what it is they were coming out with. By the time I came home, he would have the details in all the specs and all the cool stuff it did, and then would try to convince me why he needed to buy it.

He was just as excited for the iPad to come out as he was for the iPhone. He knew what the rumors were, but eagerly awaited for the keynote for it. It is one of the things that sticks in my head about that day.... they announced the release of the iPad on January 27, 2010.

I'd like to think that now Mike is able to finally meet his hero.

Thank you Steve for what you gave the world -- more than just technology, you gave us a sense of wonder and a unique way to view our surroundings, and I am quite sure it will never be the same again. And the today the world is just a little bit darker for those that are left.

The day he got his iPhone