Today eleven years ago, I wheeled my husbands heart which sat inside of a cooler – to the jet that was waiting to take it to a very lucky young man in NYC.
A man, I am now ready and hopeful to meet. I couldn’t help but feel I was on the losing end of someone else’s prayers, however it gave me some peace knowing my healthy and amazing husband gave better life to 6 others.
Today, more than any other lossversary, I celebrate the love, the life and all of what has brought me to the woman I am.
Today, I see the happiness on the outside of sadness. The joy surrounding the sorrow and the great design of this life. I honor it all. I can’t wish away what was to be, so I breathed a new wish into my life – the wish and the want to live fully despite the treacherous seasons that became me.
It’s like my favorite quote “she wasn’t born herself, she found herself. Over a long and treacherous road and the more treacherous the road became the more of herself she found.” – Atticus.
Surrounded in love is exactly how I will continue my days here, carrying alongside me my husband in heaven and loving next to me my second husband and our daughters and family on earth. Remembering and knowing and feeling the sweetness of love and how it never leaves us and stays and grows within the heart of who we are and who we continue to become.
So on this eleventh anniversary, I am very thankful, extremely humbled and also very much of the mind that I know it could all change tomorrow and so for this day and each day, I will do my best to appreciate that! RIP John, I know you are delighted in what you see and have had a hand in. 
❤️❤️A Widows WorldAddelise Inc.
Sharing my heart, and what I have learned through being widowed young, but also through many life experiences that have somehow found their way to me – this is my calling in life.
The Friday before is always the calm before the storm. The day it happened, the circumstance that would lead to the new outcome that would send me into a realm that was not ever a thought in my mind. As I sat up in my kitchen on Friday, September 1, 2017, these words I felt called to share came spilling so effortlessly to me as did the tears.
Today, eleven years ago I drove 90 mph towards my fate. A bee 
🐝 how bad could this really end?.
I believed and knelt beside his hospital bed. I prayed and asked and prayed and asked and showed my faith uncaring for the audience who pitied and hoped for me. Our last night together mixed with hope and thoughts of the future. So many nights I try to recreate and remember this last night completely and I just can’t.
That last night brought clarity. Unanswered questions like would we have children? That night he said he wanted kids. He didn’t want to..originally…his heart unwanting to bring life into a world that would let them down. That night before he died we visited close friends at a hospital in Rockford Illinois and we celebrated the life of Oliviana. A healthy beautiful baby that just a few days later I would hold at the front of the condolences line that bordered my husbands casket.
I remember very clearly my dear friend coming in and going to the front of the long line with her babe to be with me. Her sweet girl farting so firmly in my hands to remind me that life kept going in the smallest of ways. Its funny the things you so very clearly remember even going through the motions of those days. Like the way he smelled in the hospital, hooked up to the ventilator looking as if nothing was wrong, although everything was.
Her moms look in my eyes burning into mine an unbelieving look, that I could believe. An understanding we both didn’t quite know, but it was now my truth. This day, this hour, this time was somehow as shitty as it was marked for me. AND WHY? I don’t know!
Eleven years and I feel the pain of those exact moments as I’m writing this. This is my day!
It comes every year. The start of my four days of hope, that failed me at that time, but I’m owning it, because it’s mine. It’s the day that changed my whole life. It’s the day that took me through a terrible hell, it’s the day I said I don’t want to live without him.
It’s the day that defined me in a way I never knew. I’ve been fighting and living against this day ever since.
I have found so much joy in this life through it all. A joy I could have never even imagined..a life that I truly couldn’t have even dreamed…within the walls of my home, I have love..outside of these walls I am loved.
I will keep fighting. I don’t know why, but I was born to keep fighting!
SO for some who don’t understand as you or I do – I have written these truths.
Don’t feel bad for me, because I know what it feels like to die but come back to life again!
Don’t feel bad for me, because I see life much clearer than the cleanest glass!
Don’t feel bad for me, because I’ve lived through the lowest lows!
Don’t envy me, because I live in a way that some will not!
Don’t envy me, because you watch me show this life what it’s all about!
Don’t misunderstand me, because you just can’t understand!
Don’t wish you were in my shoes, because I want you to not stand where I have stood!
Don’t compare, because your journey and mine just doesn’t lend itself to comparison!
Don’t believe it’s over, because temporary is just a new beginning!
Don’t deny what was, because it was real, is real and will always be!
Don’t think for a minute, or even hear when others say you should get over it…that’s bullshit!
Don’t forget, there is joy waiting on the other side of unhappiness!
Don’t discount this life, because when YOU are ready to try something new, it may show you something you never thought you would find!
Don’t give up, someday you won’t regret a thing and you will instead see the joy in all of the journey!
Always remember the entrance, the sweetness, the life, the tender moments and listen in the quite to hear how they still speak to you.
This the first night of my four nights of denial which no matter where I stand in line will always be hard, but I treasure them and him and our life. I honor it all and HIM because it is real, it is unending and he can never be taken from me! ❤️
