A Smiling Young Widow

Tom was the head of laundry for us. As soon as he would get home from a shift he’d get to unpacking his bag. I would jokingly impersonate him, “Oh I’ve just gotta get a load started here quick before I can do anything else.” My laundry would often be sitting in the hamper until Tom got home and tackled his favorite chore, kindly doing mine too. Today I was doing laundry and thinking of Tom of course. I have this one hoodie where the string comes out so easily and it is annoying to thread back through. As I loaded my laundry today I was hearing Tom’s voice in my head giving me a little lecture on how I had to tie that string up before I put it in. 

This is how a conversation like that would have gone, “Leslie… [I was usually Les, so this was the Tom means business intro] …. love of my life … I’ve told you this hoodie string comes out in the laundry and it’s hard to put back. You really need to tie it before you put it in the basket.” The love of my life line would get pulled out by each of us for these little annoyances. Something where the other person would be like oh yup that’s my bad and we would laugh about it. If I ever left some of my stuff out around the kitchen, Tom would come in and say “Oh Les you know, well, I just don’t like to have clutter around.” Maybe just maybe I had nagged a bit in the past about someone else leaving their things on the kitchen island or table!

Of course we had real arguments too and would say things that later we’d come back to apologize for. But, that wasn’t a big part of our story. However, when Tom first died I seemed to think it was. I definitely wasn’t focusing on how Tom would refer to me as the love of his life. I wasn’t able to think back on little stories like the one about the hoodie string and laugh. All of a sudden those little moments were something I wondered if I should put blame on. My mind was busy racing through anything that I should have done differently. 

I remember the first time after Tom died that someone said to me, “But if you had the choice to go back and do it all again, you would, right?” I was so caught off-guard. It wasn’t that easy of a question for me to answer, though I figured it was supposed to be. I was supposed to agree that having the chance to be with Tom made this all worth it. Like that Garth Brooks song, I could’ve missed the pain but I’d have had to miss the dance. But the part that’s left out of a question like this? The painful regrets that linger after death, even if they’re not rational.

There’s a line from David Kessler – “The mind would rather feel guilty than helpless”. I talked in my previous posts about how desperately we humans want to feel like we have control. I’ve had several conversations since Tom’s death with other people who have been holding onto feelings of guilt after losing their loved ones. I think it might be especially that me losing Tom to suicide opens up a safe space for sharing these deep dark corners that hide vulnerabilities. There’s things we haven’t even been able to say out loud. 

It’s the conversation that wasn’t your best or a snippy comment you wish hadn’t happened at all, but now it loops in the brain as you know you’ll never have the chance to take it back. It’s how you brushed off the sense that something might have been wrong. It’s a busy day that happened just as part of regular life, but it turned out to be your last day with a spouse. It’s a delay in responding to your person that you worry cost enough precious minutes that they couldn’t be saved. It’s the little things you took for granted in your relationship that you now wish you could go back and truly appreciate. 

I want to rush to reassure each person, yet I know hearing someone tell you not to think a certain way won’t actually get rid of the guilt that has woven itself in with the memories. That is stored deep. I think regret just might sneak in and accompany any death. We hold ourselves to an unattainable standard of perfection. Something that can’t be held up constantly. 

“Imperfect love is all humans are capable of” – I scribbled that line in my journal over a year ago at a time where it seemed like all my brain could do was search over and over for anything I might have done wrong in my relationship with Tom. Around that same time I caught a story on the radio alleging how Mother Theresa was verbally abusive to the nuns that worked under her. I was like, whaaaat even Mother freakin’ Theresa wasn’t perfect? I think I needed to hear that little news snippet!

I’ve slowly added more to that section in my journal. There’s lines from books or Instagram posts or messages I received from people in our lives. Words that remind me things actually were pretty darn great with Tom. It’s a place to go when I need reminders that my brain is just trying to weave stories.  

The way I have looked at our bed is an example of how my thinking has evolved. First, I could hardly look at our bed without regretting times I had asked Tom to make the bed or when I’d roll my eyes and make it myself (sometimes while he and Frank were still in it, groan!)  A few months later, I found my narrative had changed. I could convince myself that a bit of nagging about something so minor as making a bed was irrelevant to the story of our love. Plus, sometimes Tom did just go ahead and make the bed. Or I’d go and make it. Or I would also just leave it unmade. It really was not this constant thorn in our relationship like I’d been telling myself. Then, I noticed a reframing of sorts was taking over. I could imagine if the tables had been turned. What if I had been the one who died suddenly? Well Tom would have been looking at that bed thinking, “Oh my god why didn’t I just make the stupid bed like Les wanted?” I wouldn’t have wanted him to be dwelling on that. And I now 100% believe he would tell me the exact same thing if he could. 

A few months after Tom died a friend was validating how hard it must be in my day-to-day life. As our conversation went on she told me, “You know I was thinking about just how many little and big things my husband does for me as we live our lives. If I were to try to thank him for everything, we’d never get anywhere.” 

Oh right, duh everyone would be left in this position thinking about all their person did for them and wondering if they’d appreciated them enough. Our lives become so interwoven with a partner. Again I needed this reminder though. We don’t/can’t go around thanking the people so intricately linked in our lives for each little thing. You’d get nothing done. That would be so over the top, and it definitely wouldn’t have been our authentic Tom and Les dynamic. But that’s not what my grieving brain wanted me to believe! 

I don’t mean for this to come across like we didn’t show appreciation for each other. This is different. I promise we said a lot of thankyou’s and showed our gratitude to each other. I have no doubt of that (now). I still miss Tom taking the lead on cleaning bathrooms and I would thank him every single time he did that for us. But other things were just such a part of our combined daily life that they wouldn’t have got a thank you every time. Things like taking a turn emptying the dishwasher or throwing away the coffee grounds, paying one shared bill while I had another coming out of my account, warming up my cold feet as we visited, eating the extra leftovers from the fridge. How Tom put the time and attention into making perfect jammy eggs for us on weekends. The way Tom would listen so fully to a story I was sharing, or the way his glance from across a room full of people could make me feel so loved. Did I ever tell him that?

Tom and I did have conversations about how we appreciated us. How our relationship was solid, respectful, and perfect for us. How we couldn’t relate to those people who were always complaining about their spouse. How grateful we were to not be one of those tumultuous couples where you wonder if they really should be together. It took me a while to get back to remembering those conversations in my grief though. 

These pictures popped up in my photo memories this week. I found myself zooming way into our faces. What a gift to have photos that capture so much, that can take me back to actually sitting in those feelings of love. Oh how I wish I could look into those twinkling eyes again.

I was forced to confront the fact that people I love can be taken away instantly. That changes how you live your life. Every time I say goodbye to someone now, I know it could be the last time. I know that sounds dramatic and it totally is, but also illustrates how the mind changes after a colossal unexpected loss. Death is not as abstract as it once was. This revelation fosters a desire to savour every precious moment. To spend time with family and friends. To slow down. To show appreciation. To make the most of those relationships. 

Then life happens. Absolutely grief softens you, but it also wears you down. I’m exhausted. I’m grumpy. I’m annoyed. Sure sometimes I am that enlightened version of me, but other times … well it’s helpful to think back on that Mother Theresa story again. We are human. Imperfection is a part of that. We all just do the best we can. 

Megan Devine reflected on us imperfect humans in her book It’s OK That You’re Not OK. She wrote a poem honouring all that was her husband and their relationship. It was in reply to other people’s comments after her husband died. She shared how one person asked, “Well do you think your marriage would have even lasted? It seemed you were on the rocks?”, like she probably shouldn’t be too sad about her husband dying. (WTF right?!)  So she wrote lines about both of their most annoying traits next to ones about the wonderful times they’d spent together. (I was going to put in a picture of her poem here but I can’t find the page right now, so you’ll just have to go read the whole book!)

I actually sometimes wonder if I had almost the opposite problem? People likely thought I was feeling pretty solid about things with Tom? And yeah, before he died I totally would have agreed with that. I loved us, all of us. It really sucks that a sudden death can change those thoughts. It is sure nice that I am back to laughing about stupid little things around the house that were very much a part of our dynamic versus feeling guilty. But it absolutely is still a work in progress, and sadly I think will stay that way for a long time. A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to write this post, it was too vulnerable as my regrets felt too real. This is another layer of how widowhood has shaken my confidence in a way I never experienced before my world collapsed.

I scribbled out my own version of Megan Devine’s poem in my journal last year, allowing myself to acknowledge the entirety of Les and Tom. We weren’t perfect – not us, not Tom, not me. But our relationship was perfect for us. 

And also friends, it would totally make sense if you struggle with someone being put on a pedestal after dying. I can only imagine how hard this would be if a relationship was strained. Tom was a seriously amazing guy and I am so lucky to have had him in my life, and yet I can imagine how he’d be chuckling away at some of the sentiments that have been shared about him since he died – perhaps a bit overdone for this humble fella!