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Grief, Not Sadness
Some people I know have beautifully decorated, color-coordinated Christmas trees currently displayed in their houses. I am not one of those people. My tree is plastic, to start. Claire’s allergic to trees, so we had to get a plastic one many years ago, but also it was just way easier than going out to cut down a tree with three little kids. It doesn’t smell like a tree and it doesn’t really look like a tree, so my solution is to cover it with all the ornaments we have and try and hide the plastic-ness of it. I have some of the ornaments my mom once put on our tree.…
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Ask a Widow: Why Does It Feel Like Cheating If He’s Dead?
It took six months after Shawn died before I took off my wedding ring. I did it on a short trip, unceremoniously, as I sat in a hotel room by myself. Shortly thereafter, I met a man at the hotel’s pool, one who made me laugh and made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. And yes, before you ask, it didn’t end there. He came back to my hotel room, and I let him in. And yet, before it could get too far, it struck me that I had a stranger in a hotel room with me. I’m not cheating, I said to myself, but…
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Ask a Widow: “But We’ve Always Had Christmas at Grandma’s” (with holiday resources)
OMG THE HOLIDAYS. Okay, yes, it’s that time of year. No matter your background or how you celebrate, the holidays are often loaded for just about everyone. Forget it if you’re a widow. Then everything is loaded. My first holiday season was BRUTAL. I mean, I think I cried every single day in the parking lot before school and every single evening after I put the kids to bed. How was my tree all lit up, how was I saying “happy holidays” to everyone I saw, how was I sending out cards to my family and friends…and Shawn was dead? It was all such an act. I didn’t feeling joyful.…
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Feeling Bad That It Doesn’t Feel Bad
Three years is a strange marker in the widow world. The first year of widowhood is just about survival. It’s about figuring out how to get up every day, how to grieve and still pay the bills, how to put one foot in front of the other when you’re so tired you can’t even really think. It’s about making it through to the end of the day. Or at least it was for me. The second year feels easier for some people, and harder for others. It’s when the day-to-day life gets more manageable, and yet the intensity of the loss is still there. My second year, I had a…
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Totes in the Garage
I love spring cleaning. I love getting rid of things I don’t need, wiping down the surfaces of stuff that’s been in storage for the winter, organizing and using my label maker. I’m that girl. I love it so much that I also do a fall clean-out. And sometimes I even add a winter cleaning. But being a widow makes this process more complicated. I’ve always been a person who gets rid of everything I don’t need, and everyone knows this about me. In fact, my kids are so aware of this part of my personality that they’ll frequently give me something (a toy from a birthday party or a…
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Bride of Frankenstein
In our family, we take Halloween very seriously. It’s funny that one of my favorite holidays is the one that’s all about spirits, supernatural beings, and death. You should see our front yard – it’s covered not just in cobwebs and spiders, but also in skeletons and graves. The first year after Shawn died, I worried my kids would hate Halloween, but I was wrong. They weren’t bothered at all by the decorations or by the themes that surrounded them everywhere they went. But I was. That year, I fixated on how – the year prior – Shawn had been so ill on Halloween that he’d barely left the house.…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
