A Smiling Young Widow

I had a to-do list on the go for what I wanted to remember to do before leaving for the holidays in December. My list included: “ashes” and “poop scoop”. I was hit with how ridiculous my life is right now. Here I was balancing remembering to pack some of my husband’s ashes to spread up north, yet also trying to be this regular functioning homeowner that stays on top of backyard dog poop pick-up (a job that Tom would have 100% taken on if he’d been there, always trying to beat me to it).

Sometimes those weird moments of widow life just hit. I still wash the pillow slips on Tom’s side of the bed too, even though I know he’s no longer using them and I won’t be sleeping in that spot. I put my toiletries bag in Tom’s drawer in our bathroom last week, but it felt so wrong I had to take it out the next day and shove it back in my side. Anytime I go to sign a card I hesitate, still wanting to do my typical “Love Tom, Les & Frank”. I still expect to open my phone and see a text from Tom, even though I definitely do know he died.

After a night of visiting with Tom’s family I climbed into bed, alone, in Tom’s parents’ house. I remember thinking it didn’t even feel sad really, just weird. It was so odd to be there without Tom. I was glad I’d made the trip to visit. If we’d broken up I wouldn’t have been there, but this is different. I have no frame of reference for this. Like how am I possibly in this situation? I had him long enough to make these relationships, but do not have him anymore. My brain certainly cannot fully compute that my husband died. There’s a lot of rewiring that has to happen for that to actually sink in. It’s exhausting.

Since Tom died I’ve heard “I can’t imagine what you’re going through” many times.  Nora McInerny has a really good TED talk about how we don’t move on from grief, but rather move forward with grief (highly recommend it). She responds to people saying “I can’t imagine” with the idea that actually yeah you can and you probably should. I do partly agree with Nora. I think it can sometimes be a bit of a cop-out, like people are protecting themselves with ohh this could never happen to me thinking. However, I have come to find a bit more grace around this too. Until you have had to actually live without your partner, I’m not sure a person could really imagine the full experience. Things pop up and surprise me still. There are so many reminders of Tom in my day-to-day life (I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it’s also impossible to ever not be reminded of the loss). There is still regular life to deal with, plus the extra headache and triggers from all the admin tasks that come after a death. There is a bizarre timeline to this grief – it’s been nine months and it can still feel like yesterday, or like it might not have actually happened at all (I still have nights where I wake up reaching for Tom to tell him about the horrible dream I had of him dying). Then there are all the ways that losing Tom has spilled over into losing who I was and my life plans (I’m sure I’ll do a whole other post on that at some point). This is the kind of devastating loss that rearranges everything, more than I could have ever imagined. And it feels really weird.