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Letter to Myself: 1 Year (Part 3 of 3)
(In this series, I write letters to myself at three different time periods: 1 month after Shawn died, 6 months after Shawn died, and a year after Shawn died. This is what I wish I could have known.) Hi you. How’s it going? You hanging in there? I know. The 1-year marker is terrible. The anticipation may have been worse than the actual day, but the actual day is pretty rough too. I know you’ve spent weeks re-living every moment of the year prior. Did you ease his pain sufficiently? Did you tell him you loved him with enough conviction? Did you make the last days of his life good…
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Letter to Myself: 6 Months (part 2 of 3)
(In this series, I write letters to myself at three different time periods: 1 month after Shawn died, 6 months after Shawn died, and a year after Shawn died. This is what I wish I could have known.) Me again. Well, here you are: the 6-month mark. You’ve made it past that terrible, terrible time between month 4 and month 6. Those two months were when the reality of losing Shawn hit and you couldn’t bear the days without him. You kept going. You got through it. You got here. But what is here? What is the future? What are you supposed to do now? It’s the not-knowing that’s so…
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Letter to Myself: 1 Month (part 1 of 3)
(In this series, I write letters to myself at three different time periods: 1 month after Shawn died, 6 months after Shawn died, and a year after Shawn died. This is what I wish I could have known.) Hey – it’s me. Yes, it’s your future self, the person you’ll be two-and-a-half years from now. No, I cannot tell you everything about your future. But I’d like to talk to you a little bit about how things are going right now. It still doesn’t seem real, does it? Shawn was just alive. He was at Austin’s baseball game just a few months ago in November, but he’s missing all of…
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Why Widows Always Think About Death
If you want to believe that you’ll live forever, do not get into a conversation with a young widow. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to get through a whole discussion with another young widow without talking about death. Even the young widows who are my closest friends – the ones who I talk to about mundane daily events on a regular basis – even with them, pretty much every conversation of any length will inevitably include at least a brief conversation about death or dying. I don’t try to have these conversations with my widow friends. It just happens. I guess it’s because at this…
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Sometimes Bad Things Don’t Happen
The crash was so loud and the impact was so close to me that I screamed involuntarily. “Are you hurt?” the man working at Goodwill asked as he ran up to me. I looked down. The car hadn’t touched me, somehow, but it was close enough that it had brushed my long skirt. “I’m okay,” I said, grateful that he’d come over, even if he was violating the 6-foot social distancing rule. I wasn’t so sure about my car. I had been parked and standing next to my car when the other car ran into mine. The driver of the car had gotten out and was profusely apologizing. The other…
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And Then I Am Crying
Tommy is outside, screaming with joy. He’s hanging on the side of the above-ground pool that’s killed all the grass around it and he’s laughing really hard. “Don’t splash me!” he screams at Austin, but it’s obvious he wants his brother to keep playing this silly game with him. I watch him for a moment. Upstairs, my partner Chris is working. He’s sanding down a wall he just spackled, and I can hear the sports talk radio he’s put on for background noise. It’s Sunday, and we are both trying to prep for the week and get projects done around the house. I am peeling cucumbers for soup. I decide…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
