Honoring Barb

03/17/2026

It has been 10 years today!
In her last letter to her family, she wanted no headstone on her grave. She felt there was nothing good to say about her. Her wish was to be cremated, so her remains could stay with Mike, "so they could eventually be buried together". Or, if he despised her that much and could not follow her wishes, "please give me to my Mom so she can hold me and my Dad with her".
It has been 10 years today!
She never for one minute stopped loving her daughters. Even though they turned their back on her, or "the hatred they had for her never overshadowed the love she had for them".
One of her many regrets, was that of her then only granddaughter. She was unable to see her, yet the thought and hope of seeing her, kept Barb going. She is now the guardian angel that watches over her.
It has been 10 years today!
Barb had a million-dollar smile and vibrant presence and could change the mood in any room simply by walking in. It would be a surprise to many to know that Barb struggled with anxiety and depression her whole life, it was one of the reasons he continuously worked to surround herself with joy, laughter and friends. She said it was the perfect distraction, and that "When I am with people I love and care about, wherever I am, I know someone has my back." She always tried to make others feel the same way. Her attempts to quell her fears or lift her spirits, led her ultimately to where she ended her own life.
It has been 10 years today.
She told him "Well honey, I'm going to die with the most money we have ever had and guess what?? It doesn't fu***ng matter. All of that didn't fulfill the emotional emptiness you left her with".
It has been 10 years today!
Barb, you are close to Dad, and where one day Mom will join you both. They will hold you. "To have and to hold".
You are held, by those of us who knew and loved you dearly and miss you deeply!
It has been 10 years today!

It never does get easier!

09/10/2025

It’s not the moment they died.
It’s not the funeral.
It’s not the “I’m so sorry” texts or the casseroles dropped at your door.

It’s everything after that.

It’s the part no one warns you about—the gray space of grief.
Where the world keeps moving, but you’re suspended.
Not fully in the past. Not fully in the future.
Just… here. In between.

Where you forget what joy used to feel like.
Where smiles feel foreign and guilt creeps in if you catch yourself laughing.
Where people assume you’re “doing better” because you showed up to work or answered a text.

But inside?
You’re lost.
Not broken exactly. Just… altered.
Like a radio slightly out of tune.
Like a photo that won’t come into focus.

The gray space is quiet.
But not peaceful.
It’s the space where grief settles when the world stops watching.

And if you’re in it—
You’re not alone.
You’re not doing it wrong.
You’re surviving the part no one talks about.

And one day, color might return.
But for now, it’s okay to sit in the gray.

It is not just today, but every day that I continue to think of you Barb! A beautiful sister, whose absence is still so deeply felt!
Take a moment today to recall a happy memory.
💔

05/06/2025

Happy Heavenly 59th Birthday Barb! 💔

Forever is a long time to miss someone.
Especially when their absence leaves a lasting mark on your heart.
They say time heals all wounds?
But, some absences create such deep scars in our hearts, that time
moving forward only seems to deepen our longing.
Yet in this ache there is comfort in small things - old pictures, a familiar scent, a song...a connection that existed on earth, that is now in heaven.
To miss someone forever, is to keep a part of them alive within us,
to hold onto who they were and what they meant to us.
As life moves forward, you will learn to carry them with you,
not only in your thoughts but in who you are.
And so, life goes on,
New memories are made.
Yet that special place in your heart always remains theirs.
Forever is a long time, but it is also a testament to the ever lasting
power of love!
Until we meet again...

Love and miss you Barb,
Linda 💔

03/18/2025

Nine years Barb! It’s been nine years.
Today I listened to the clip I’d saved from when you met Mitch. You’d donated your bone marrow to him and give him nine extra years of life with his beloved wife.
Little did we know then, your life would end before his.
I tried hard today to reclaim my anniversary. Today was 38 years for Kurt and I. The last nine years, you’ve taken much of our joy on our special day, with you, when you ended your life.
So today I struggled with all that you took from us (all of us), and yet I know it’s okay to still feel these feelings.
Most of all Barb, I missed you…
I have missed you every single day for 3,288 days. That’s a long time to carry this grief. But carry it, I will. The burden is heavy.
I will honor you always Barb, and yes, occasionally I will be sad and angry.
Angry, for all that could have been, for all you’ve missed. Mostly because you are my sister and I miss you!
Even though you didn’t make it to the end of my story, I will always have the corner folded down on your page, because it was one of my favorites!
Missing you always…
💔

01/01/2025

As we close yet another year without our beautiful Barb…
The loss of a sister is not small, unimportant or invisible. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It is truly the loss of a lifetime, because we expect to have that relationship stretch our entire lives.
I would be remiss, if I did not end the year 2024 with some closing thoughts. While I think of her each and every day, these are some that have been filtering around consistently for awhile. That’s when I know its time to put them to paper.
I’ve used this word here before, hiraeth, grief for the lost places of our past. Do we all still grieve for Barb? Do we grieve her presence in our lives? Or have we moved on? Is she a thing of the past? Forgotten? Do we acknowledge her existence? Do we continue to speak her name? Tell her stories?
I know grief is not linear. Barb stated in her last letter that she foresaw us moving on, moving forward, but these are the questions that still linger.
Is there a new wife? Will she be driven by him, to the same end Barb was pushed to? Will she to perhaps, see no other way out, like Barb? A new Mother? Will a new Mother be treated any differently than the one that’s now dead? Interesting thoughts. Sadly, Barbs daughters girls have a Grandma who is dead, and another one, that I hope they cherish. Great Grandma, they have one they do not even know who will turn 90 this year. I do not know of the other. Do they tell of Barb and her stories?
I speak of Barb at every opportunity that is appropriate, and that presents itself. I have always looked at Barbs su***de as happening because of how she had been treated by those who were supposed to love and cherish her. To me, all of my questions, boil down to one overarching set of alternatives: Was her su***de avoidable, or was it inevitable? I do not know which answer is true, or which is better.
A family torn apart, still to this day, this is the trauma that su***de inflicts on what was once a family! I have considered the life my sister left behind, examining it like the hollow husk of skin, shed by a snake. Noting the ways her world had narrowed in those last few horrific months. I still feel the need to pick apart her final weeks, to square her behavior with lists of suicidal indicators. Was she tired of riding the waves of depression? Maybe she couldn’t face pulling herself up one more time from the depths? Always, always looking for answers as to why. “Why?” is entirely the wrong question, and yet it is the one I cannot stop asking.
It is the scars that you can’t see that will do the most damage.
Barb will always have a presence in my life. She rides with me everywhere I go now. My license plate now initiates many conversations. With every plate renewal a portion of the fee goes to the American Foundation for Su***de Prevention. Perhaps this will make a difference in someone else’s life. There is also a fairly local walk for mental health awareness and su***de prevention; I have Honored Barb’s memory in helping to facilitate this rewarding endeavor. We held our inaugural walk this last year and are already looking forward to next year’s walk.
While not my poem, I dedicate this to Barb, lover of daisies.

11/23/2024

Wishing you were somehow here again….
Sometimes is seems, if I just dream, somehow you would be here…

I miss you Barb! 💔

09/11/2024

For Barb!
Forever missed!
Forever gone!
Forever loved!
There are no words…
This just never gets easier…
💔

05/06/2024

Happy Heavenly Birthday Barb! Today you would have turned 58, and the world would have been a better place with you here.
I was dragged into a new chapter that day, one that started when your life ended. I grabbed at the previous pages, but life ripped them away. New chapters now come, some of them good, but I find myself still wanting to go back. To be able to spend time with you!
Today would have been my forever 49 year old sister Barbs birthday. Those of us lucky enough to have been graced by her presence are forever changed!
May is also Mental Health Awareness Month. Barb would want us to reach out to others and try to help.
While the pain of her loss is still very real and very deep, I leave you with my thoughts today for her...

You were worthy of having support.
You were worthy of having true partnership.
You were worthy of love!
You were worthy of having your heart held.
You were worthy of being adored.
You were worthy of being cherished.
You were worthy of having someone say, "You rest. I got this". And actually deliver on that promise.
You were worthy to receive.
You were worthy to receive.
You were worthy!

We, I, miss you Barb. My heart breaks for you, and for those that abandoned you in your greatest hours of need! Perhaps you would still be here?

Love always my baby sister,
Linda

03/16/2024

It would be her life sentence!
One moment you were here. Living life. Making plans. Dreaming dreams. Talking, sharing, hugging, and loving like only you could do. And then in one moment – you were just gone. And, on this 17th day of March in 2016, our lives would never be quite the same again, ever.

She was gone before she left. Her heart started walking away long before she physically made her way out. She started leaving when her spouse and children began to put her in the shadows. When he found more important things to invest his time in than being in her presence, when things that made her smile became a burden, one he had once carried for the sake of winning her heart. When her ears became a well that you dropped your promises into, with no intentions of picking them up and fulfilling them. She was gone mentally and emotionally. Her physically leaving was just her final act of letting go.

Was it the countless hours he spent emotionally connecting with his brothers’ ex-wife? Perhaps it was the introduction of a third party, by someone who would later lose his own son to the same reason we lost Barb, one that would to this day, take a place (her place), in his life? The children? Was it the one who’d stood over her mother’s dead body in that cold, sterile hospital room crying “I’m sorry Mom, I didn’t mean it, I don’t really hate you, and I never hated you”? Barb never heard those words, how could she? She went to her grave, thinking that yes, you did hate her. Another daughter, one that would dangle her child, a granddaughter, like some pawn in a game of chess, a game where the one true loser, was Barb herself. Each of them saw to that! Her life sentence.

Do not underestimate the ones who have suffered the kind of grief that does not seem to end. Those who have been broken in places you did not even know existed. The ones who fell into silence because their lungs had no words left to speak. It was her life sentence.

Barb took her own life, because of how she was treated by the very members of her family who were supposed to love and cherish her. She saw no other way, the pain to great, the loss to significant. Their treatment of her certainly became her life sentence!

Yet they continue to live their lives. Free of the cumbersome burden they saw in Barb. They are happy, carefree, going about their everyday lives. What price have they paid? This certainly never became their life sentence!

Barb, she has paid that price, everyday for the last eight years. It will forever be, HER LIFE SENTENCE!

Your memories Barb are sweet gifts from you, ones that allow my heart a breath. To let me be lost for a moment, to remember your life, and not just your death. Because there is a last time for everything and you don’t always get to know that it’s the last time when you are in it!

While I do not write here as often anymore, not a day goes by that I do not think of my beautiful sister, gone way too soon! You will always be my baby sister and I will always be your big sister!
Forever missing you!

05/14/2023

For our Mom, Carol. She has truly never recovered from the death of her baby, Barb! 💔
She misses you deeply.

BEING A MOTHER WHO HAS LOST A CHILD
There’s an order that life is supposed to follow.

An order of breaths we are supposed to take,
as if we are passing a torch from one generation to the next.

And our torch is supposed to go out before our child’s flame is extinguished.

We are supposed to watch them take their first breath.
But not their last.

We are supposed to hear the thud-thud of their heart when it starts beating.
But never the silence when it stops.

That heart that we once carried inside of us. That breath that we gave them. That life that we kept safe, protected.

So when the order of life is disrupted,
when their torch goes out before yours,
it is as if you too have been robbed of your breath
and as if your heart has stopped beating as well.

There is nothing that can make it less painful.
You would happily blow out your flame if it meant theirs could burn.

But you can’t. Even though that’s how it should be.

So all you can do is carry them inside you -
like you did once before.
Except now they have to stay in your heart forever.

And though it hurts,
just know that they are safe there.
They are protected.

Because a mother’s love is unending.
Because it burns forever with every breath you take and
with every beat your heart makes.

Because a mother’s love
is a flame that can
never
be extinguished.

💕 Beautifully written by Becky Hemsley 💕

Sending love to anyone in this position.
A little reminder that this is available to download for free from my website for anyone who might want or need it. BeckyHemsley.com
—
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Sending special love to anyone hurting on . 💕 xoxo, Angela

05/06/2023

Today you would have turned 57, and I find myself thinking of how that would look on you? Would you be pleased with the look, or would you have tried to change it? I think you might have tried to change a part of it. The one constant though, would have been your smile! That never needed fixing, and there are many of us who miss it dearly, along with your laugh.
Mom misses you the most; she has never recovered from your death. None of us have truthfully. We have just learned to move forward differently, through this journey called grief. She however, daily continues to struggle with the void left by you; she will never be the same.
All of this has been made so much more difficult by the way the families have become so fragmented, family ties broken, shattered. Left alone we struggle to deal with the grief that at times engulfs us. It seems as though no one talks to hardly anyone anymore. Once close families have been cast off, abandoned, as though they never really mattered to begin with? This one doesn’t talk to that one and that one doesn’t talk to this one. Why?!
We all lost Barb; however that looked to each of us. She was a daughter, sister, co-worker, aunt, grandmother, mother, wife, friend… She was someone special to each of us! Why then are there those who have felt it better to cut those family ties that once bound us together? She was a daughter-in-law, a nephew’s wife, a sister-in-law, someone special to each of us. ALL OF US! No ones loss is greater than another’s, just different, but loss none the less.
It is not healthy to deny either how or why it happened. Barb died by su***de, and no matter how you try to avoid saying those words, they are the truth. It really happened that way! What is tragic is how many family members have been cast aside for acknowledging the truth.
None of this will bring you back, you will forever be 49. Your loss has cost all of us, so much more than you!
She lies under the stone, so dead, so alone.
But the lies that he told, had pushed her to the edge,
She turned around at the sound of his voice,
she looked in his eyes, but this was her choice.
She turned forward again; she steps off the ledge,
The ground moves faster toward her, this is her end.
For his words were to late, to save her lost soul,
She’s dead, she’s gone, but he was never alone.

In memory of Barb, love from her first family!

03/17/2023

It was seven years ago that our lives would forever be changed on this day. The day you decided your pain was too great. That your only way to end that pain was to take your own life. How hopeless and helpless you must have felt on that day? Was your decision the right one, probably not? There are those in your family, who have moved so beyond you, that you are probably not even a passing thought anymore. Yet there are those of us, who daily carry with us, the burden of your choice that day.
Hiraeth, it is a word that comes to mind. It is homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. Was it ever really that Barb? What was it like for you in those last cold, dark months? You tried so desperately, to show that brave face to the world. All the while your inner world was literally crumbling at your feet. Your home Barb, what was it really like? Answers forever buried with you, the burdens of your choice.
While you were never close to all of your siblings, there were those insurmountable years that separated some of us, a chasm not of our own doing. Who can say how it happened? Siblings aren’t born with some genetic guarantee that they will become best friends, or even get along. There are the lucky ones who start out close and stay that way, sailing smoothly into adulthood. There are others who never quite find a way to gain the connection that the word family suggests. Our relationships as sisters was tested and damaged time after time. We could only help you with as much as you were willing to share with us. While I suspect your path was so dark, you could not find a way to any of us.
And so, here we are seven years later, with just as many questions as the day you left us. None of us, closer to the answers we seek. Do we ever really move on from this grief? How do we do that?
Yet today, I remain a little angry with you. For the past seven years (as long as you have been gone), I am angry for what you have taken from me. It is our 36th Anniversary today. Every year since your death, I have struggled to find that balance between the joy of such a special day for us, and the horror of having lost you on this day too. I have come to accept I will quite possibly never find that perfect balance. And so, it is alright that I be angry with you too.
Lost love is still love Barb. It takes a different form, that’s all. I can’t see your smile or bring you things, or help you. As time goes on, those senses weaken, yet another one heightens. Memory. Memory has become my partner. I nurture it, I hold it. I treasure it. Your memory is all I have left