Can I please speak to a manager? I want my husband and the life we had back

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It happens every night around 9:30 p.m.

Anger and frustration begin to build and it feels similar to the feelings I have when trying to call a business, doctor’s office or a bank. Connection with an actual human becomes an impossible task.

The more time passes, the more frustrated I become. I would like to have my husband, Michael, back now. I want to take back his sudden cancer diagnosis and death two months later. I would like to make my wishes known to whoever might be in charge. I want an actual person to ask, “How may I direct your call?”

Haven’t we all played the number pushing game hoping to eventually connect with an actual human? “Operator … manager, please.” 

But no one answers. Blood pressure rises. Satisfaction seems as distant as the full moon. 

I do fairly well during the daylight hours. If you don’t count staying in bed well past sunrise. If you don’t count the time spent simply staring out the window while trying to block out any visions of spending the rest of my life without Michael. 

I make sure to get my walk in down at the beach. I try to tackle one of the many projects that have been hanging over my head since Michael died. Making sure the mortgage has been paid and is up to date. Filing for Social Security. Checking to make sure that AAA is still active. Filing our taxes. And on and on. I often get overwhelmed by it. 

But, once I can see the pile shrinking, my shoulders relax just a bit and I feel I have made some progress in this strange, “I-never-asked-for-it” life. Until the next time the mail carrier leaves unexpected documents in my mailbox and I have to try to figure out what I am supposed to do with them. 

I just keep at it. But by evening, after cooking for one and watching Netflix until I am tired enough to climb into bed, I get so tangled up in feelings I sit frozen in my chair. I don’t like how all of this has transpired. I do not enjoy living without Michael. I want to complain to someone and demand they make this right. 

I want to call the manager. Tell them this was not at all what I had in mind and would like my husband returned to me now. 

Like a refund. Because living without him just doesn’t seem to work. But I am stuck on hold. No human ever comes on the line to tell me how to fix this. 

I have felt like this before. Decades ago, while pregnant with our daughter, Kira, I told the doctor I did not want any pain meds while giving birth. A natural childbirth is what I wanted to experience. Michael agreed. We had been to birthing classes where we watched women have smooth and apparently almost pain-free deliveries just listening to music and breathing in a “he he, ha, ha,” rhythm and then go on to catch their newborn with their own hands. Easy peasy. 

Then my contractions set in, unrelenting waves of pain ripping through my body over and over again. I did not panic, I just waited until one contraction ended and then before the next one began, and said I had changed my mind. Meds please. 

“Sorry dear, it’s too late for that.”

I kept trying. “Ha ha, he he, please,” I begged, to no avail. 

This is what it feels like right now. I am breathing, trying to remain calm, but just like 39 years ago, I am not being heard.

I am in some kind of limbo, trapped between my old life and whatever is next. It is too soon to make any big decisions, so I make small ones. I invite my friends to pop in or I join them at their houses for a bite to eat or a happy hour cocktail. And I am oh so grateful. Even though I have been known to cancel at the last minute, just too exhausted to be social. I am trying not to stagnate.

I made the decision to continue writing and am keeping my commitment. In a few days I will go to L.A. and visit my daughter and my grandson. But these are brief respites. The evening always arrives, the darkness falls and I am faced with the reality that it is I who will go around turning out the lights, locking up the doors and closing the windows and then slipping into bed alone. Forever without Michael. 

I am a very dissatisfied customer. I believed we had a lifetime warranty. I took that to mean Michael would be by my side for my entire life.

Once in bed, there is the slightest bit of relief. I have made it through another day without him. Like a prisoner marking off the days in their jail cell, I am marking the days without my best friend. But while the prisoner may have hopes of being released, I have none. 

I don’t mean to whine. I know all the many ways I am lucky. Forty years together. A beautiful life. A ferociously devoted daughter, a grandson who has a heart so big I worry for him. He loves hard and deep and that can lead to pain such as this. 

The other day, I was at the bank meeting with a gentleman who was trying to help me untangle some financial issues. He asked how long Michael and I had been married. After I told him, I asked if he was married. He said no, that he was afraid to commit to someone because he knew it would eventually end and he would be heartbroken. 

Sitting across from him, I was proof of his theory. 

But I asked him, would he never order a delicious meal because at some point the meal would be over? Would he never choose to dive into a great novel because there will be a last chapter, a final page? Oh how much joy one would miss if life was lived in fear of losing what one loved. 

So, I know this. And yet, I struggle to live with the emptiness. It is yet too soon to remember the good times without feeling the weight of loss. The crushing reality that those wonderful golden days of being married to Michael really are in the past. 

I have been on hold now for more than three months. Every day, I wake with the same unanswerable question: May I please speak with the person in charge?