One year, eight months, 16 days

I’ve been a widow now for one year, eight months, and sixteen days.

Twenty months and two weeks, if you call it by the way people tell you how old their babies are (and what’s with that month thing, anyway? Don’t answer, I don’t care, it’s weird).

Roughly 620 days.

If you haven’t ever had a loss like that, you don’t know what that feels like. Fuck, it’s happening to me, and I barely know what it feels like sometimes!

Sometimes I wish there were Widow magazines, like there are Wedding magazines. There could be articles like “Hot New Fashions for the Middle-aged Widow” or “Top Ten Reasons to Stay the Fuck offa Dating Apps” or “How to Remember How to Cook for Only One”.

Seriously, cooking for one is STUPID. I get so many leftovers, and I have a blind eye for leftovers. If the leftovers are lucky, I’ll remember about them the next day, but then I will likely forget about them for so long that I just throw the whole container out rather than risk opening it and seeing if I can clean out the mold. Hahahaha. Whoops.

Widow magazines would also help with measuring sticks. Where am I supposed to be at one year and eight months? Am I ahead of the curve? Behind it? Unfortunately I know a lot of widows – well, more than ten, anyway, and that seems like a lot – and we all seem to be in different places. WHICH IS FINE. As I’ve said before, different people grieve at different paces. But I still wish there was some sort of… I don’t know, like a checklist. Not necessarily for emotions, but definitely for Legal Shit What Needs Doin. I still have to get over to Green Cove Springs to register a copy of his death certificate. Obviously I’m really in a rush. More of a rush now, actually, since I called Wells Fargo and they cut off my website access through his account I’d hacked into, so that I could pay the mortgage online. Looks like I’m back to writing checks until I can get them the paperwork they need… which means going to Green Cove Springs.

I feel like if I had checklist of what needs to be done in what order, that I’d be more… I don’t know. More “together,” paper-work wise. So much if it is stuff you find out you need as you go, and you get started on something and they say “well we can’t help you until you get this thing you didn’t know you needed” and then you’re like, fuck, now I have to start at the beginning to get this other thing, then I have to come back to this thing and start all over again? It’s demoralizing! I just want to live my life, not traipse around Florida getting signed papers and trying to jump through what seems like ever-changing hoops of rules and regulations.

But other than being irritated at Wells Fargo (and I mean, who isn’t?!) I’m kind of in a good place right now. They, whoever “they” are, say that the second year is the worst. That during the second year, you’re coming out of being numb, you’re starting to feel it, you’re facing the reality of it. And the people around you aren’t as tolerant of your grief, because if they haven’t been through it, they don’t know how deep the war wounds are. “They” say that about the time people think you should be over it, that’s when you start to feel it and feel that you can bring it out into the light and talk about it. That’s not really how I feel. I mean, yes, I still carry grief, and I probably will for a while. But every day brings a little more sunlight, a little more laughter, a little more lightness.

If only it would bring a little less leftovers, I’d be grand.