Hi, I'm Joyce Sorensen.
Following my husband's death, when happiness seemed unattainable ever again, I found peace and even joy in writing his story. Going through Dick's letters (from Korea in the war-torn years of the 1950s) and our records, I found many reasons to marvel we managed to overcome countless obstacles to our marriage and to stay together to the end of his days. In the final chapters of the book, I share some of our intimate, even romantic, conversations at the end of his life.
I invite you to visit the blog in which I described my sometimes erratic reactions to life without Dick. I wrote about finding my way, faltering at times, through the ongoing process of discovering who I was without him.
This month, June of 2018, will mark the fifth anniversary of his life on earth. In the beginning I could not imagine existing another five years; yet I have endured and overcome the intense grief that threatened to pull me under at times.
Already as a young couple, Dick and I talked about death. We told each other to 'move on' after the death of the other, to seek happiness again, reminding ourselves that life is for the living.
Will I always love the boy with the sparkling brown eyes I met at 16, the young man I waited for through Korea, the father of my children, the man I cared for through Alzheimer's? Of course! But now I most often recall him with joy instead of sadness. It has taken five years for me to give myself permission to do as he asked me, to move on.
And so it is.
Dick painted the scene above as a sixteen-year-old.
Following my husband's death, when happiness seemed unattainable ever again, I found peace and even joy in writing his story. Going through Dick's letters (from Korea in the war-torn years of the 1950s) and our records, I found many reasons to marvel we managed to overcome countless obstacles to our marriage and to stay together to the end of his days. In the final chapters of the book, I share some of our intimate, even romantic, conversations at the end of his life.
I invite you to visit the blog in which I described my sometimes erratic reactions to life without Dick. I wrote about finding my way, faltering at times, through the ongoing process of discovering who I was without him.
This month, June of 2018, will mark the fifth anniversary of his life on earth. In the beginning I could not imagine existing another five years; yet I have endured and overcome the intense grief that threatened to pull me under at times.
Already as a young couple, Dick and I talked about death. We told each other to 'move on' after the death of the other, to seek happiness again, reminding ourselves that life is for the living.
Will I always love the boy with the sparkling brown eyes I met at 16, the young man I waited for through Korea, the father of my children, the man I cared for through Alzheimer's? Of course! But now I most often recall him with joy instead of sadness. It has taken five years for me to give myself permission to do as he asked me, to move on.
And so it is.
Dick painted the scene above as a sixteen-year-old.