Dear Diary, Reid wants to be cremated and his ashes flushed down the toilet. I really do wish this was some dream I had after eating pizza late. At first, I thought he was just being “Adolescent Reid,” you know, the Reid that never wants to get his haircut, eat vegetables or change his clothes. […]

      You would think a beach getaway would be the occasion when Carol’s active energy would more closely match my own low wattage level of output. At home, you could attach some wires to Carol as she goes about a typical day, and generate enough power to run a dishwasher or washer/dryer combo – machines […]

Photo credit: Pete Deutschman     One thing was clear from the beginning. There’d be no kids sitting in the back seat of cars eating cold hot dogs, while the parents up front argued who’d started the fight. Even my obliviousness to facilitating the introductions was taken for granted, and everyone knew everyone else before I […]

Photo credit: Lovisa Photo   When Carol returned from shopping the other day, she saw that I had made the bed with fresh sheets from the dryer. “Thank you for making the bed,” she said, giving me a kiss. I thought, What’s up with this? She makes the bed every day of the week, and I’ve […]

   So the least sociable of both the Madigan and Champagne families is the one who decided to resurrect the reception celebrating our wedding that covid had canceled last July.   Why didn’t I let this sleeping dog lie? While it’s true that nobody can outperform the Madigans when it comes to creating social events […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan July 19, 2021 Dear Diary,     Well, Reid truly surprised me this time. In the weeks since he first said “We’re going to Iceland,” I was so expecting him to suddenly look up from the book he was ignoring me with and say, “I said what and we’re going where?” Like […]

Photo by Carol Madigan    Carol decided to go to Urgent Care after a bee sting she’d experienced a week before had continued to bother her. (Never mind she stepped on the bee while walking barefoot on the beach. Barefoot? On a beach? I mean the sand, the surf, the whole idea of bare feet […]

   Mike Madigan died on this day in 2017, on a treacherous stretch of Orange county’s Ortega Highway, two days after Carolyn Marquardt entered Seattle’s Swedish Hospital to begin treatment for a virulent leukemia that would claim her life less than six weeks later. Without any idea of it at the time, Carol and I […]

Photo by Reid Champagne    Carol asked the Mesa, AZ Verizon representative whether, because we’d forgotten the Samsung charger back at home, getting a new charger cable would be covered under our device insurance. I’m not kidding. I asked her to repeat what she actually asked, and she confirmed her question both times.    Although […]

Photo credit: Carol Madigan    Carol dug up one of our first written exchanges, courtesy of my fledgling widower travel blog showing up on her Facebook timeline. It would be a little more than two months before we actually met face to face, but by that time we’d already exchanged the L word. While it […]