after death did us part
It’s been five years since my late husband began his rapid decline from liver cancer. At this point, he refused hospice care, deciding he’d live at home and distance himself from everyone so no one would know he was getting weaker. I’ve told that story. This is about now. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, my kids and I are staying home. I’m not risking our health. My...
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...
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...
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...
I’d spent a great deal of my marriage hearing that I wasn’t capable of making decisions. “Make a decision… but not that one,” was something he said to me often. It was infuriating to decide what to have for dinner or which route to take to go somewhere and then be overruled. “Why did you make that?” “Why did you drive that way?” It got to the...
after death did us part
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