after death did us part

CategoryStarting over

Sh*t I’ve Found: Throwing Stars

S

The garage is mostly the way he left it. We use some of the tools when we need to. No doubt, I’m grateful to have anything I might ever (and will never) need. I’m getting ready to paint my front door. It’s long over due, and it needs some care. I need a putty knife. I know there’s one in that garage somewhere. In the toolbox, I found throwing stars and a throwing knife...

Sh*t I’ve Found: The Front Door

S

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about random stuff he left behind–the things he kept or did but would have flipped out if any of us had done the same thing. I’m preparing to paint the front door, and I see how the door handle base doesn’t match where the original door handle was. The newer one is a different shape. He’d said he would fix it but never did...

Old Connections are Difficult or Non-existent

O

In the widowed Twitterverse, I see quite a few widowed people talk about how friends disappeared after their spouses passed away. I think there are a few reasons that this happens. First, the friends don’t know what to do or say or how to act around us. One of my late husband’s friends of over twenty years has never reached out to me after the memorial. We’re still Facebook...

Navigating the Fog of Grief

N

Even though we didn’t have a great marriage anymore and I’d thought about escaping him many times, I was hit by a huge fog of grief when he died. The trauma of his illness, the violence of that illness in his last three days, and the feelings of not knowing who I was were the beginning of a surreal fog that is a common thing that protects grieving people when they need to make...

On Not Being Helpless

O

It was weird when I became a widow and noticed most of the marketing of services or help for widows showed smiling, little, old ladies who were widowed in their eighties, like my grandmother. I am not one of those women. I’m in my mid-forties with a few gray, glitter strands that have been accumulating since my late twenties. And I didn’t feel much like smiling for a long time. After my...

When the Loss of a Spouse Feels More Like a Breakup…

W

The other day, I was talking with my best friend about how sad to hear about our friends having trouble in their marriages or divorcing. Some are trying to save their marriages. Others had divorce papers sprung on them by their cheating spouses. Others drifted apart. They have those choices. Being widowed can feel like a type of breakup–one you can’t control, didn’t expect...

Slowly Healing and Purging

S

It’s taken me a long time to be able to talk about the abuse my kids and I endured when my late husband was alive. Lots of therapy and soul searching have let me see him for what he was and allowed me to reclaim myself. There’s nothing like that feeling when we realize that we are more than capable to take care of things—whatever those things are. I have found so much strength that I didn’t...

A Letter to the Former Sister-in-Law

A

In the first few months after he died, you called me to talk. Those two or three phone calls were for you to cry about how unfair it was and for me to give you comfort for losing your brother. He was selfish enough on his deathbed that he didn’t want you to know. In his own twisted, not-right mind, he thought he was helping you by not allowing you to see him waste away into nothing. He...

Anniversaries After He’s Gone

A

Some widowed people commemorate their wedding anniversaries with fond remembrances or celebrations. Not me. Surprisingly, he didn’t want me to memorialize him at all—not on holidays, his birthday, his deathday, anything. “That just roots you in the past. Move on,” he said. I thank him for that one moment of clarity on his deathbed. Still, the societal norm of posting old...

Rebuilding… Just about Everything

R

I got to visit with on of my absolute best friends from college the other day. It was only for a couple of hours while she and her family drove through town on the way to visit family, but it was so good to see her. It’s been almost three years–long distances and busy lives do that. But our friendship was icy for many years. We talked for a long time about what most people...

after death did us part

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