From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

I spent over 14 years cultivating a relationship with my husband and it took less than 5 seconds to decimate it completely. If I’ve learned anything in the 12 weeks since his death, it’s that that old habits die hard. Those habits strive to live in split seconds of the day. Split seconds where your mind reacts before thinking and you’re left a little broken, having to remind yourself that those habits can no longer exist in the life you now have. I notice every time that I slip and refer to John in the present tense, instead of the past tense. I inwardly cringe every time. I hate doing it in front of strangers, it makes me feel like I’m lying to them. John isn’t here anymore, he’s only in the past.  I try catching myself before I speak the words “we” or “us”, forcing myself to acknowledge that I am no longer a part of either. There are no more “Cunninghams” or “Mr. and Mrs.” or couple activities. There is just Katharine Cunningham…neither a wife nor really a mother. Both of those i...

I could never begin to pretend to understand the wonderful highs and devastating lows the last 9 months has brought to me. To have such joy and hope and then to have it ripped away in the most traumatic way possible has been life shattering.   Writing has been the way I process through my thoughts and emotions since I was about 12 years old. So many people talk about how they need to “sit down and have a good cry” but I never feel that, I feel the need to sit down and write it all out. Writing is the pressure release when my heart has just built up so much hurt, anxiety, or trauma. Every single time I have struggled with something in the last 20 years I have gone to my journal and written everything out. I don’t often write when things are going well and I’m content in life. It’s when life is hard that I find those blank pages calling to me.  It took me 10 days to start journaling again after John died. And I really only started again because my mom told me I should write i...

This world has proven that it has the ability to deal the harshest of blows…more than once. When our son died I think I unconsciously thought that, after such devastation, God wouldn’t allow such heartbreak to happen to me again.  And then we struggled for almost 8 years to conceive again. We tried multiple avenues to adopt and were met with so many closed doors. It felt, so often, like a slap in the face. But, at the very least, a somewhat manageable one.  We had each other, and the love for and legacy of our son lived on in us. We made every effort to remember Kimber’s short life in meaningful ways. After almost 8 years, we knew the legacy we wanted for Kimber, and we knew how we could create it, and carry it on in our lives.  And then my husband died.  John died…just like Kimber. And suddenly, I was so very, very alone.  My entire family died and left me to carry on their legacies, alone.  The entirety of my heart rejected the notion of ca...

Sometimes there are collisions of worlds that happen that you never dreamed possible.   Not only are you thrust into a place you never wished to be, but you are left to deal with the carnage of that collision.  On June 6th, 2021, a driver, high on cocaine and fentanyl, veered across the center line. This caused his vehicle to collide, head on, with my husband, John, who was riding is motorcycle home from church.  That driver walked away with just a few scratches. John died. And our worlds collided in a way that damages both so deeply that you cannot pick one apart from the other. A connection born of devastation, but a connection nonetheless.  I actually knew something was wrong that morning. I had checked John’s location own my phone and noticed he hadn’t moved in a while and wouldn’t answer his phone. So I went looking for him. I prayed for a minor accident, for hope of survival, as I glanced down every ditch and road along the route to his last known ...