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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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October 10th
I heard the story so many times, I could tell it verbatim to the doctors and nurses who asked. Yes, Shawn went to a baseball game early in October. Yes, he had at least one hot dog. Almost immediately after, the pain started. We thought he had food poisoning at first, and then maybe an infection. But it was that day – the day the pain crippled him for the first time – when things became truly concerning. That day was October 10th. He had some small warning signs before that. An upset stomach here or there, a twinge of pain every once in a while throughout the few weeks…
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Do This, Because You Are Her Friend
Let’s say you have a female friend that’s you’ve known for a number of years (and it could be a man, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s imagine it’s a woman.) One day, her husband falls ill and soon after, he dies. She is bereft, and also needs to figure out how to afford her house payments, continue with her career and care for her young children. In the initial days, you knew what to do. Maybe you didn’t know what to say but you knew what to do. Bring food, lots of it. Donate to an online campaign to pay for funeral expenses. Offer to pick up her kids from…
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After a Year
I got involved with the Hot Young Widows Club about a month after Shawn died. It is a place where widows of all backgrounds can share their most raw emotions and daily experiences (and contrary to the name, there is no litmus test to get in!) I found it comforting that other people struggled with similar issues that I faced and I often found myself scrolling through its newsfeed at night. But there was one thing that made me nervous about what I read there. Sometimes I would see a comment about how the second year after loss can be more difficult than the first year. Eventually, I discovered this…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
