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Ask a Widow: What to Say to a New Widow
Right after Shawn died, a colleague of his contacted me. He wanted to express his condolences, but also let me know that his wife was available to talk to me, if I wanted. She had been widowed before they met, and though it had been years, she might be able to help me. He was right. Though we only spoke once – maybe two weeks after Shawn died – she helped me see that people can recover from loss. She didn’t tell me how to grieve or how to heal, but she showed me a path forward, even though I don’t think she knew that she was doing that. So…
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If My Wedding is Cancelled, Then I Can Make Jury Duty
I came home a few days ago to a letter in the mail with the dreaded “official jury summons” stamp across the front. I sighed and picked it up. I guess it was time to me to have jury duty again. The last time I’d gone, in fact, was just a few weeks after Shawn died. Here’s part of what I wrote that day, from one of my oldest blog posts, Chuck E. Cheese and Jury Duty: It’s 8:30 am and I’m sitting with 200 of my fellow DC residents, waiting to be called for jury duty. My friends all thought I should defer, that coming to jury duty would…
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You’ll Survive
When I was a kid and I’d fall and scrape my knee or get the stomach flu, my parents would comfort me, because that’s what parents do. But they had different approaches to this. My mother was a very gentle person, someone who worried a lot about my sister and me, and she would gingerly pat my cut dry or give me a cool washcloth. I have such embodied memories of her touch, especially when I was sick, and how it felt to have her sit next to me and comb her fingers through my hair. Every time, it soothed me. My father was not like this. As any child…
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Shawn’s Birthday, Year 4
I bake at least four loaves of bread every week. I know, it may seem excessive, but I’ve got three kids! Still, that’s not really the reason I bake so much bread. Mostly, I do it because I love it. I haven’t always baked bread like I do now. I learned how to do it in my 20s, but it was a “special event” sort of thing, something I did maybe once or twice a year. I didn’t have any special equipment or techniques (I used Jim Lahey’s no-knead recipe) and mostly, I just bought our bread at the grocery store. Shawn used to love it when I made homemade…
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To Read on Memorial Day
Every year around this time, there’s a pause to remember those we’ve lost in service to our country. I’m never quite sure what to do about this day, as I feel such a connection to any widow, but I also know that military widows have other layers to their loss that I don’t know. Today’s post are two short articles that have stuck with me. Both pieces are about widows who lost their husbands while they were serving in the US military. Shari Tolbert was a young mother and military spouse whose life was upended when her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Otis Vincent Tolbert was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11.…
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A Happy Ending
One of my favorite authors (who I profiled for the Post a few years ago) is Nora McInerny, a young widow who is a writer and a podcaster. She wrote a book that came out a few years ago called “No Happy Endings” which, as you can imagine, was about how there is always going to be grief that remains after losing someone, even if we find a new love. (It’s about a lot of other things, too, so check out this link if you’d like to read what I wrote.) In any case, lately I’ve been thinking about the idea that grief never really goes away. I think it’s…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
