This is really becoming a habit. I post a few articles, become silent for a while, take the blog offline for one reason or another and then put it back online again just to repeat the whole cycle again. As usual, I’ll try to get the articles from the last run posted soon. I just have to make the time to fire up the old server and nab them. The new server I’m running things on now should be considerably more stable as it’s completely new hardware – the old server was older than both my kids combined!

Note: For those finding me from Abel Keogh’s site this, believe it or not, is an old blog. Just one that gets a fresh start relatively often. If you’re only interested in the posts related to the loss of my wife and how I’m learning to live on, please check back in a few days when I’ll have a separate RSS feed available for just the Life related posts or you can simply bookmark the section and visit every now and then.

Update: I knew this worked but I had to track it down to make sure… Here is the feed for the Life section.

I’ve spent the last few months trying to figure out the answer to the question: “How do I move on?” A friend recently pointed out that it’s not “moving on” but rather “living on” that I have to figure out how to do.

I’m still trying to figure out what the difference between those are but I think that’s part of what it takes to come back from losing a spouse. For me, part of living on is finding myself again – I let myself disappear into my marriage and my relationship with my wife. I know that it’s in my personality to put myself last and I imagine that is a large part of why I let myself be defined by my marriage and by her. Now I’ve got to learn how to put myself back into my own list of priorities. I have to figure out who I am all over again.

It occurred to me over the past several days that I really don’t know myself as well as I think I do. Even three months after her passing I still define myself by her. I realized that I still do a lot of the things we would do together, at least those I can do alone anyway. I wonder who I really am and what it is I really want and need because I just don’t know any more. Some of this realization comes from reading the various writings of Abel Keogh and seeing a few of the patterns and red flags he talks about in myself.

I’ve made a decision, the reason I’m writing this post, to pursue my definition for a while. I’m going to take some time to understand why I am were I am at the moment and exactly what it is that makes me who I am. I also plan to read Room for Two in hopes that it will help me find those things in myself that I have to specifically define and maybe get someone else’s view on what it means to live on. I don’t know how long this will take but I hope for the sake of certain people it doesn’t take very long at all.

I got a call from my mother late last night, it’s 3:15am CDT after all, saying that a friend of the family had been killed in a motor-cycle accident. I barely knew person but it will still become an event that changed my life. This event has made me decide to move ahead with a few ideas I’ve had lying around for a really long time.

A few years ago, when I had my first blog up, I posted this (with a few spelling corrections):

I think the status says it best, right now this project is really nothing more than some serious thought. However, my plan for CrossesByTheRoad.org is to create a community site where everyone is welcome to contribute a story. The stories are the important part of the site… The stories, or testimonies, are about those individuals/families who died in an automobile related accident.

It dawned on me one day, as I passed a road-side memorial consisting of nothing more than a cross with a name on it and a bouquet of flowers beside it, that the only people who know anything about that memorial are those who are/were directly affected by the accident that prompted its placement. This inspired me to find out if anyone else had setup such a site, and thus far, I have been unable to locate one. Upon realizing such, I decided that I would try and create just that, a site dedicated to road-side memorials.

If you have any ideas for this project, or even a testimony you would like to see posted on it, please contact me.

Now’s the time to make that happen…