A Smiling Young Widow

The week after Tom’s funeral I listened to my mom try to access her credit card account over the phone and fail every one of her own security questions. I laughed, like really laughed. I think I remember this moment so vividly because it was such a foreign thing to experience the deep darkness and laughter at the same time. How could this be happening to me? We need those escapes though – it originally happened in such tiny little blasts like that – but it’s been a process of learning to carry both.  

I can be at a wedding dancing the night away, and I promise you I am truly happy for the newlyweds, yet there is this shadow behind it all that Tom should be there. The vows I hear so similar to my own. It’s not fair. It hurts in such an unfathomable way, so I dance.

It’s in all the memories of an incredible road trip I took with my boys (Tom and Frank) spinning around in my head as I revisited some of the same spots again on a girls trip, celebrating an old friend and appreciating the value of real friendships more than ever before. Moments that are all that more precious now, the ones I am lucky enough to be in now and the ones I now hold preserved in memories. 

“The truth is you don’t get over it. You become someone who knows how to be heartbroken and happy at the same time.” – Jameson Arasi

There’s a popular analogy about grief where it starts off as a big hole that feels huge and overwhelming at first, but over time you grow around it. Honestly, I have always kind of hated this one! To me it’s dismissive of both what I’ve had to go through and the hard work I’ve put into this healing journey. The hole analogy makes it sound like my grief could have been contained ­– as if there was grief over here in one spot, and then the rest of my life was over here continuing on. When Tom died my world shattered ­– it didn’t simply develop an empty space for me to then grow around ­– I was left sifting through shards and splinters of who I was, picking up the pieces that still existed and saying goodbye to the ones that couldn’t survive this.

I’ve been building myself back-up on a foundation that also crumbled, where so much of what I believed about the world and myself was destroyed. Becoming a widow at 33 years old didn’t leave a tidy space in my life that time could just simply help feel smaller. Any growth and change that has happened has been something I’ve taken a very active role in. I’m proud of where I’ve come to, but it sure has not been about peacefully waiting for grief to feel like it takes up less space in my life. This has taken work.

There’s been a shift in me this past year. I really am doing a lot better. As I reflect on the past several months, I’m filled with gratitude for all the moments of happiness and connection, for the life I’ve been able to build. Alongside that joy there is often a whispering voice that questions, Did I make it? Am I over it? Sometimes it feels like exhaling a long-held breath, please tell me I’m through this and healed. Other times it’s more of a groaning sigh of guilt, gosh I never imagined I’d do this good without Tom. The reality is none of these are true. Even as I reflect on the joy I have found and all that I have to look forward to in the coming months, this is not black and white. I had a great month. I also had nights where I bawled. Times where I was so overwhelmed, I found myself journaling to Tom again, wishing so desperately for just one last conversation. The surrealness of my reality still hurts.

A big part of the shift that has happened in me has been with gratitude. In the early days, gratitude felt nearly impossible. Of course, I always had things to be thankful for, but the vastness of what I had lost tended to swallow that. Now I find myself in a place where I truly hold so much gratitude for the life I’ve managed to craft for myself, for the work I’ve put into my healing, and the fact that I got myself to this place where joy and grief can both exist almost seamlessly. What an incredible day. I am so lucky. Tom would have loved this. He is still dead. That will never be ok.

There’s also a hard truth I’m still confronting – I sit in gratitude more now than ever before. It can be really, really hard to swallow there are parts of me that are better now. Pieces my Tom won’t get to see, won’t get to experience the benefit from. I slow down. I show up more consistently for the people I love. I search for deeper connections more often. This is both a wonderful way to exist in this world, and painful to hold that this happened as a result of Tom dying. Couldn’t I have got to this point a different way? Maybe I’m not giving “old me” credit as sure I did live with gratitude too – just not at the level that comes from deeply understanding that everyone and everything I love can be taken away in an instant. This has unlocked a preciousness and intentionality behind gratitude to soak in all the moments.  

Healing and rebuilding a life are happening in synchrony – I’ve now given up the notion that these things can be separate. I am finding a version of myself that dances in the duality of carrying my grief and love for Tom, alongside challenging myself to truly live in the present.