I’m learning to live like a widow – and I do not like it

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One really shouldn’t tell just anyone about the death of one’s loved one. Just because you are having trouble pumping gas in the car because the nozzle won’t secure itself in the locked position and the gas refuses to pump, you don’t have to say to the kind person who has come out from the Quickie Mart to see what the problem is, “My husband died.”

Does he need this information? Nope. But once you have experienced loss such as this, I find it is the only sentence that is always, without fail, at the ready. 

When you get to the front of the line at the bank and you realize the transaction you need to make is going to take some time, you do not have to turn to the gentleman behind you and say you are sorry this will be a while, you do not have to add, “My husband died.”

And yet you throw that little bon mot out there and he is kind enough to catch it and put his hands in the prayer position and wish you well. 

At New Leaf, after filling one’s reusable shopping bag with items only a single person might purchase, one small chicken pot pie, one single-serving pizza, one single serving of Amy’s enchiladas, and on and on, one needn’t explain to the clerk the reason for such sad purchases. And please, a round of applause, I did not offer an explanation to the clerk. But once in the safety of my car, I burst into tears. I had just, for the first time, shopped like a widow. 

Later that evening, I did my best to reframe the shopping experience; I shopped like a college student. 

Michael, beautiful, wonderful, exuberant Michael, died on February 25 at 1:07 p.m. I can’t honestly tell you much about the first days other than the fact that I survived them. And it will take me time to reflect back and share what I recall. But it has been rather like being on a strange planet where even though everything around me looks familiar, it also appears to be new and strange and even a bit frightening. 

And I do not like it. For anyone asking, I do not recommend becoming a widow. 

When we were first given the news in late December that Michael’s days were extremely limited, I had a difficult time accepting it. I mean, I nodded when the doctor asked if I understood the hopeless prognosis, but once back home, I found that I could easily frame this predicament in a different way. Yes, I knew we had very rough days ahead, but in my mind, I kept thinking that once this was over we would resume our lives as if nothing had happened. This was simply something to be gotten through. When it was over Michael and I would look at each other and say, “Man, that was weird.”

Wishful dreaming I suppose I would call it. Magical thinking. And it continued right up to the very last. The night before his death, knowing he would be following through with his decision to end his life using the legally prescribed medication he ordered himself, I still could not wrap my head around it. Soon this will be over, was the voice in my head. Not soon he will be dead.

As our daughter, Kira, and I sat next to him in the last hour of his life, I still did not fully comprehend that after he took the end-of-life meds, he would really be gone. Oh, I knew it intellectually, but emotionally I hadn’t landed on that reality. And then, when I actually watched him breathe his last, there was shock. 

Only I would be left to acknowledge how very strange this unexpected event had been. Michael really was gone. He still is gone. Oh, I keep him in my heart and I whisper to him in the dark, but I will never be able to hug him again. I will never again feel his heart beat when he holds me close.

So I am on this journey that millions have been on and trying to find my way. 

Evenings have been the toughest. I can no longer watch “Jeopardy!” because that was something we did together. Late-night comedy is also off the menu at this point. I climb into bed and stick to my side while Michael’s side fills up with books about grief I’m reading, along with New Yorker magazines, my laptop in case I need to get lost in episodes of “Sex and the City” as well as my bathrobe and sometimes folded laundry that just hasn’t been placed in the drawers. It is comforting to bump up against that mound of objects. I don’t feel so alone. And I wonder when I will remove all of those things and claim the bed for myself. When will I splay across the middle of the queen-sized mattress, limbs stretched wide, a starfish on a bed of 600-thread count, soft, white sand. 

When that day comes I know I will have made some progress.