18

During one of my grief sessions, my counselor asked me who I was before.
Before I was a bride.
Before I was a newlywed.
Before I was a widow.
She asked about things I enjoyed before.

It was a hard question.
At that point, it had been a long time that I did not have any of those titles.
We were engaged for fifteen months.
Married for six.
And I had been widowed for about six months.

I started to talk about photography.
How I loved taking photos.
How I always had a point-n-shoot camera in my purse for years and years.
My smile started to appear.
She encouraged me to pick my camera back up.
To start finding things to enjoy again.

Photography relaxes me.
It makes me smile.
To capture a bit of beauty in a strange new way or a true smile of a child or the expanding belly of a pregnant belly.

The past few weeks I have been struggling so much.
Sadness is been sweeping over me.
Loneliness is sitting on my shoulders.

I wanted to take some beautiful photos this past weekend.
While on a tiny vacation, I wanted to find some things to capture.
Things to photograph.
But... disappointment is all I found.
While Mr. X and I explored Charleston, rain poured from the sky for two of our three days.
I saw tons of things to take photos of but I could not risk all the rain.

Sigh...