A Smiling Young Widow

This week brought with it a quiet realization that I’ve now carried the title of Tom’s widow longer than I carried the title of Tom’s wife. Of course I’ll always think of myself as being Tom’s wife and will forever cherish that the title was mine to hold. But this life sure looks different. 

I’ve been looking back at pictures and videos of our wedding day. Our plans were turned totally upside-down by the pandemic. We’d planned for a 10/10/20 fall in the mountains wedding with friends and family from many different corners of our lives coming together. It was a last minute pivot to have a summer wedding with just our immediate family (and some pretty special wedding crashers sneaking in on the patio). The venue we ended up getting a last minute deal on (everyone was cancelling) was stunning, our own ballroom and patio looking over the river valley. We put together our own plan for the ceremony and together came up with the vows we would share. My brother married us. The dinner had each household sitting at small, spaced-out tables. It rained and then cleared up to give us amazing skies, even a rainbow. It was a perfect day full of joy and love. And so much hope for a future ahead. 

We used to have a wedding picture hanging on our bedroom wall in a frame that read: “Every love story is special, but ours is my favourite”. That frame was one of the first things to go in the donation bin after Tom died. I had loved our story, but I loathed this turn. How dare this love story become a part of my life that was now both preciously and painfully preserved in time?

And perhaps just as cruelly, time stretches and folds and warps. But it continues. I recently passed the point where I’ve been on this earth longer than Tom was. I’ll hit 37. He never will. What a privilege, yet there’s so much that feels wrong about that too. (And I wonder, will I always love a 36 year old man? Like I guess at least there’s several more years to go before that would seem too creepy!?) Puts all the jokes Tom would make about getting old into a new light. Or how he’d been known to introduce himself to someone with, ‘Hi I’m Leslie’s first husband Tom”. I would roll my eyes. A typical Tom joke that perhaps didn’t exactly land if someone didn’t know him. Definitely one of those jokes that hits real different now. 

I was reflecting back on the idea of grief math – I wrote about that almost two years ago. I’d shared how the timeline of a grief like this was surprising even for me as the person living it. That line is still true today. How much the outside world tends to think this is now old news and how little that is true.

There’s that grief math question I shared of, “How long were you married?” I’m still not sure what someone is looking to understand with this question. My young widow reality is crashing into years I thought laid ahead for continuing to build a shared life, to keep adding memories to the bank. The reality of how different this life is than the one I would have imagined for myself a few years ago still cuts. How painful it can be to see other relationships hit milestones we’ll never get. 

I don’t want the milestones of how far I’ve come as a widow. Sure I can reflect on my progress in this grief journey with pride. How I’ve been determined to confront this and keep living. What I’ve been able to do. It is wild to think back on what I’ve had to get through, again even as the person who is actually the one in this. Reflecting on how at this point two years ago I was still quite often physically ill from the intensity of my grief and this loss reverberating through my life. Pondering at what point I stopped feeling my heartbeat pounding in my abdomen, knowing it definitely didn’t stop in that first year. I do distinctly remember the first time I felt that though, noticing it when I first sat next to Tom’s ICU bed. How long was it before I was able to get any sort of decent sleep? How many awkward conversations did I have to stumble through before I learnt how to navigate those better to protect myself? How many times have I had to check off the box of widowed as my marital status? Examples of more math I’d rather not have to think about. 

There’s going to be more to come too – the widow journey will continue to bring more steps and hurdles, some I know to expect and more that will pop up as a surprise. Like one grief-filled night when I realized Tom’s scent in clothing had officially faded (I would laugh and cry at the same time as I wrapped myself in his stinky plaid shirt that absolutely should have been washed while he was alive, but then I was so grateful that it hadn’t been – grateful for his sweaty smelly shirt he wore that last weekend out cutting wood!) Or how I catch myself wondering if 40 years from now, will I still remember that signature twinkle in Tom’s eye or be able to hear his chuckle in my head?  I already find myself in moments of grief going through videos or playing live photos to catch that precious glimpse of the aliveness that was my Tom. 

Tom was a huge presence in my life and that won’t disappear … even if his signature stink has! I often come back to a quote from Maya Angelou I shared before – “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I know with certainty I will never forget how Tom made me feel.
A love like that can’t fade with time, it stays.