April 13, 2026 completes year ten.

When we think of any type of anniversary, we usually say it’s the 5th, or the 10th, anniversary of something happening. And it is. But after that day, the next year has started. So, while April 13, 2026 marks the tenth anniversary of my husband Mark Tracy’s passing, starting the next day, we’ll be in our eleventh year without him.

Today for my yearly memorial post, we’re going to have a look at how it feels to not have him with us. That means we have to talk about the dreaded “G word”, grief. My intention is not to be depressing or sad, but I do want to be real. Instead of writing a lot, I’ll be sharing some photos as well as quotes on grieving that I have found on Pinterest over the past ten years.

That in itself is hard to wrap our minds around. Ten years? How did we even survive this long? After the first year, in “It Will Be Okay”, I said that in some ways it seemed like just yesterday, and yet at the same time it felt like it had been forever. After ten years, starting on eleven, I’m here to say it feels like that still.

Christy and I were with Mark the moment he passed. It is not something I will ever forget. We had begun home hospice on February 5, so we knew it was coming; still, we’d had no idea what to expect. When it happened, I was surprised to find it a very natural, peaceful experience. It wasn’t scary or dramatic, it just “happened”. It was so peaceful, in fact, that at first we weren’t even sure if it had happened.

But it did happen. Then, it was time to begin the business of grieving.

Art became an important source of comfort for me. See “Friends” for the whole story behind this piece.

I felt this way for a long time. It never really goes away.

One thing you have to do after the loss of your soul mate is “reconstruct” yourself. Suddenly the whole purpose and trajectory of your life has changed. Who are you really? Where are you going now? In order to “reconstruct” myself, I began to first reconstruct my environment. The “long and winding curb” and the “Talavera kitchen” were just the beginning. Most of the art and “home improvement” projects I’ve shared in this blog have been a part of that, and will continue to be.

The time it takes for your grief to “walk beside you” is different for everyone. I think I’m there, but it’s crept up on me. I can’t really say exactly how long it’s taken.

As hard as this was to believe, it has proven true. What I hadn’t expected was that memories can pop into your mind unexpectedly, “out of the blue”, while you are thinking about something else. These memories are often of tiny, mundane, every day, “unimportant” things that you thought you’d forgotten, even while the person was still living. They are the moments you don’t have pictures of, that weren’t subjects of any often-repeated family story – just the small details that made up your daily life together.