The First Month...

It is now one month to the day that my wife Nancy has left us, and it feels like in some ways she's still here. Her spirit is still a large part of me. In other ways she seems to be guiding me through this journey I'm supposed to be flying solo through. My house taxes were due this week, and they hadn't been paid yet, mostly because I couldn't find the tax bill that had an exact amount. In frustration I grabbed a handful of random papers off Nancy's desk (where I do most of my work these days), and raised them above my head as if to throw them down on the ground in frustration - and there was, written in maroon lettering, 3RD & 4TH QUARTER TAX BILL - DOVER TOWNSHIP.

Whew. As if Nancy had willed it.

There have been trying moments, but we are doing fine. I want to publicly thank everyone who's given support, advice, prayers, and good wishes over the past month and change that we've been in this transition. I also want to thank everyone who went to lulu.com and supported Nancy's publishing projects based on her homeschooling of our foster daughter (who is also doing fine). In a few days when the final numbers come in I will be proud to write a nice check for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, who will benefit from all lulu.com transactions of Nancy's books in October.

There are, however, a few that I wish NOT to thank, and that is the handful of death-industry companies that have nothing better to do than to scan obituaries and identify widows and widowers to market monument stones and burial plots to. As we mentioned on this blog a few years ago, Nancy and I had purchased our final resting place already, so there was no need for these vultures to insensitively prey on me.