It’s been five years since my late husband passed away. I made the mistake of scrolling through Facebook this week. People miss him. They miss the conversations they had–the long talks, his ability to make them laugh, the companionship. I didn’t have those things with him. Even early in our marriage, we didn’t have many conversations that were filled with laughter or deep...
A Pair of Scissors
Many years ago for one Christmas, my then-mother-in-law gave me a pair of scissors for my kitchen. They were nice, sharp scissors with a plastic sheath, and I still use them today. A couple of years later, my now-late husband asked where his scissors were. His scissors? I didn’t know what he was talking about. He clarified that he meant the scissors that belonged in the kitchen drawer. I...
Sh*t I’ve Found: Throwing Stars
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
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...
On Feeling Guilty
There are so many ways a widowed person feels guilt: survivor’s guilt, parental guilt, guilt for not saying the right thing before their spouse died, guilt for doing something that might’ve have changed the course of history, and guilt for feeling relief that “death did us part.” It’s ridiculous how many ways we and other people impose guilt on us. It’s been on...
Old Connections are Difficult or Non-existent
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...
What was His Legacy?
For most of my widowed friends (I know far too many women who have been widowed), they have a ton of happy memories to hold onto. Some find ways to honor their late husbands. For example, one woman took their wedding rings and had them remade into a beautiful pendant. For widows like me who don’t want to hold onto much from him, it might seem harsh to others when we seem to erase those...
The Third Sunday of June
This year the third Sunday of June was the Summer Solstice. For some people, it was Father’s Day. The only thing this day does for my kids is remind them that they had a father who didn’t really know how to love them. On Twitter, people used to hashtag #girldad to talk about all the fathers with daughters. Some of the tweets I read showed how much those dads loved having daughters. It...
On Allowing Ourselves to be Us
There were many times that I wondered why he married me. He spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to change me into something I wasn’t. For 23 years of marriage, I did everything I could to be that person he wanted. The perfect professional worker, the perfect housekeeper, the perfect stay-at-home mom, the perfect sexy lover. Needless to say, I failed to achieve perfection. What I did...
Friendships
I got to see some of my college friends last weekend. These are women I’ve known for more than 30 years. They were among the first people to comfort me after my husband died, even though I’d lost touch with some of them in varying degrees. They have been my rocks when I was finally able to talk about what I went through, why I distanced myself before. They never held it against me...
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