1095 Days of Being a Widow

Whelp. Today is the End of Year Three/Start of Year Four of being a widow. I say that not in a “oh, feel sorry for me” way but in a “whoa, look at everything I’ve done/been through in the last three years.” I usually take this day for quiet introspection, looking back on where I was and looking forward to where I want to be. I allow myself to feel whatever I want to feel; sad, calm, hopeful… anything. Today I am feeling a little sad, but that’s OK. After I finish this post I’m going to my happy place – the handbuilding table, to work on ceramics. And when I’m done with that, I’ll go to my other happy place, my garden. I still need to locate a business to deliver an assload of garden soil, but I want to go ahead and get the cardboard down and start filling the bottom with logs.

No, you know what? I’m going to go play with ceramics first. Hold on, BRB.

Everyone says that the second year of widowhood is worse than the first year, but I’d say the third year was worse than the second. A lot of that was in regards to health problems I had, but not everything. I’ve drifted away from some people, and some have drifted away from me. I’ve lost friends because I didn’t have the ability to meet them with the energy they needed. I’ve made new friends who have never even met Tim, and have never known me any other way that how I am now.

I wonder what the fourth year will bring?

Sometimes Tim dying feels like it happened a hundred million years ago. Sometimes it feels like everything with him never happened, that I dreamed everything about him from getting married to him dying. Sometimes the big dog will shift in the bed and it’ll feel like Tim rolling over and I’ll sit straight up and flip the lights on because WHAT, I THOUGHT I WAS ALONE IN HERE. Sometimes I feel even older than older people I know who are still married, because I’ve already been through what one of them is eventually going to have to go through, and they’ll have it so much worse because they’ve been together longer. No, I shouldn’t say “worse.” I mean that I know how rough it’ll be, and they don’t. They probably think they do — “I’ll miss them” and “maybe I’ll move to a smaller house” and “I’ll be very sad”… but they don’t know how your world will fundamentally shift, changing who you are.

I’ve talked about this a little before, but a friend and I were talking about it over lunch the other day and that brought it back to the forefront of my mind. She’s seen me go through it, now she’s watching her mother go through it, and so we talked about what it’s like to suddenly have to remake yourself in a short amount of time.

Everything, EVERYTHING changes. Some are small things. You’re the only one who makes the bed. You’re the only one who does the dishes, takes the trash out, changes the cat litter, folds the laundry. You’re the only one who does the grocery shopping and now you have to (re)learn how to cook for one person. You’re the only one who can take the pets to the vet, the only one who has to remember to fill the car up with gas, and there’s nobody to drive you home if you have too much to drink or you’re too tired.

But there are also fundamental shifts. Like plate tectonics for the soul. Even if you have been single before. It’s not just that you’re suddenly no longer part of a two-person team… it’s deeper than breaking up, or divorcing someone. Everything in your orbit that depended on you being part of a couple, is gone. All the plans you had with that person in the future? Gone. You need new and different plans. Defining yourself by being partnered, by being part of a couple? Gone. You need to learn to define yourself as just yourself. The direction you were going with your life? Gone. You need to find out if you can even still go that direction, and if you do, how to do it alone.

And Lord have mercy, if you had anything left unresolved. There will be questions you’ll never, never have answers to. You’ll have things that you said that you can never, ever take back. They may have said things that they’ll never be able to apologize for. It’s not like breaking up or getting divorced, where there’s a chance you might run into them in the grocery store or at a bar, if you still live in the same town. You will never run into this person, anywhere. None of your friends will say “oh, hey, I saw so-and-so at Church last Sunday, they send their best and hope you’re doing well.” And if the last bit was hard to see? You’ll never be able to unsee it.

Someone, even before the second anniversary of Tim’s death, told me that I should be “over it” already. (Let’s all have a collective “get the fuck on outta here with that bullshit.”) But. Really? What part? What part should I be over? I have things in my mind’s eye that I’ll never unsee, things that were incredibly hard to bear at the time and they don’t really get lighter with the passage of the years – you just get used to carrying them. Tim, laying paralyzed on the floor, not understanding why I’m not helping him up. His chest shaved and a raw, red, sutured scar running from collarbone to the middle of his sternum. Watching the scar heal while he’s on a ventilator and unconscious for weeks. Losing count of how many strokes he had. Being told that only one other person is allowed in, so choose between his mother and his father. Cleaning him, as if he was a baby, when the nursing staff didn’t have time. Telling his mother she should go home, because you can’t stand watching her heart break, and you wish you could spare her from all of it. Watching him give up on even trying to talk, when he realized he couldn’t any more. And then, of course, him actually dying, not just being in the room for it but also having been in the room with it hovering every hour for a hundred days. And then everything that comes after the death.

What part of that should I be over, already? Do tell me, I’d love to know. (End sarcasm; insert two middle fingers, here.)

I mean, I get through the day, don’t get me wrong. I’m not immobilized by what has come before, but I’m also not immune to it. I will always have moments when I am soul-crushingly sad that he died. Moments when I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all go away, bring him back to life, erase that pain from his parent’s and sibling’s faces. Moments when I want to call him or text him with a bad pun, or the news of a TV show we like, or a Star Trek meme someone sent me. Mundane, boring parts of the days of a long-time relationship that you never even really think about, until those moments no longer happen.

But honestly… most of my moments these days are pretty good. I’m lucky to be surrounded by the people I hold dear. I’m fighting the good fight against fascism the best I can, with the tools and energy I have. I have great dogs and pretty good cats, and funny tortoises. I have a job I love. I’ve made a lot of changes around the house and property that are making it more and more “mine.” Not to dismiss Tim, but to make it comfortable and happy for me to be in. I have a good life, even if it’s not the life I was expecting to have. Every day I feel more and more secure with who I am and where I’m headed with my life. I have good, strong roots, and the confident feeling that I am where I am meant to be. And so I am ready to step into Year Four with my eyes and heart open, doing no harm but taking no shit.

Every day may not be perfect, but every day is a gift.