{"id":54312,"date":"2023-03-04T20:39:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-04T20:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=54312"},"modified":"2023-03-04T20:39:24","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T20:39:24","slug":"mourning-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=54312","title":{"rendered":"Here come the &#8216;firsts&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one knows about the subject with which I will deal in this post.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;firsts&#8221; are on their way for my family members and me. Indeed, my granddaughter&#8217;s upcoming birthday will be her first birthday without Grandma &#8230; my beloved bride Kathy Anne.<\/p>\n<p>More such firsts are going to follow and I am preparing to deal with them as they arrive. The first Easter, my bride&#8217;s first birthday, our first observance of our wedding anniversary (which will be No. 52), our first Thanksgiving, first Christmas &#8230; and on it goes.<\/p>\n<p>You get my drift, correct?<\/p>\n<p>As I have noted already on this blog, I am far from the first and far from the last person who undergo this level of grief. I am reading some books on how to deal with it. Part of my therapy is writing about it, as I am doing with this post.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, I am preparing a lengthy feature for KETR-FM radio&#8217;s website that will publish soon. It deals with grief and mourning and I look forward to completing that task. Heck, I even look forward just to <em>performing<\/em> the task, as it gives me a measure of relief as I continue along this dark journey.<\/p>\n<p>That journey is going to contain is occasional gut checks along the way. Those are the firsts I have mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>Most of you have been through it already. So have I, with the loss of my parents when I was a younger man. I remember sitting on my living room floor in late 1980 and tearing up when I realized it was the first Christmas without Dad, who had succumbed a couple of months earlier.<\/p>\n<p>This one, however, is dramatically different, to be sure.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll need to be ready.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"mailto:johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com\">johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one knows about the subject with which I will deal in this post. The &#8220;firsts&#8221; are on their way for my family members and me. Indeed, my granddaughter&#8217;s upcoming birthday will be her first birthday without Grandma &#8230; my beloved bride Kathy Anne. More such firsts &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=54312\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Here come the &#8216;firsts&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6688,8436,10129],"class_list":["post-54312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-grief","tag-ketr-fm","tag-mourning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54313,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54312\/revisions\/54313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}