The Diary of A Widow

There was a time that I was a wife. I was so fortunate and never truly realized the beauty around me, not until it was gone. Maybe it was being young, not enough experience in the world. Maybe it was naivety. always focused on what I didn’t have, rather than what I did. I still wear my wedding band. However, I am a widow now. At the ripe age of 30. It makes me nauseated when the word leaves my lips.

We had plans, he and I, a lot of them. We wanted to go out West when the kids were just a little bit older. We planned to take them to Disney next year. We wanted to take them to the Great Lakes this year. We even had a whole life of adventures planned for once the kids grew up and went to college. We always said that we had them young so we could travel and enjoy each other in our 40’s. I struggle with where to put those plans now.

I often feel like a shell, a stranger in my own body. I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror anymore. Her eyes are dark, sad. Wrinkles more defined from months of crying. I suppose that’s another part of losing the love of your life that nobody prepares you for, your loss of identity.

Nearly every part of who I was before, died with him, too. Every part of my has changed. No more good morning kisses. No more lunches together. No more cooking dinner together or folding laundry together. No more conversations and laughs. No more raising our kids together. Nothing is the same, routine or otherwise.

The version of me that is left, is one he never got to meet. I wonder if he knows her, too. I wonder if he can hear me when I talk to him, cry out to him.

I’ve wondered so much since he’s been gone. I wonder if he still sees me. More than anything, I wonder if he can feel how much love the kids and I have for him, then and now. Or how deeply our hearts ache for him. I hope with all of my heart he knew how truly beloved he was to me.

This new me, the one riddled with grief, is a work in progress. Maybe I always will be. Starting over at 30 with no choice in the matter. A single mother in the blink of an eye. As devastated as I am, I’m angry, too.

That’s one of the stages, right? Anger. Anger so deep in my bones that sometimes, on bad days, it spews from my lips like poison. It causes me to look away when I see a happy family or an older couple, jealousy. I am jealous they have their love, and I feel shame for the emotions that accompany me. Anger that I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. Angry I lost my best friend. You were everything to me.

Truthfully, nothing I feel seems normal. That’s the beauty of grief though, never linear, always unpredictable. A loose cannon, waiting to blow.

I used to love afternoons after work. They were filled with conversations from him, sports playing on the TV in the background, kids playing. A happy home. But now, once the kids go to bed, I just sit. In an empty living room that used to be filled by you, your presence. It’s so quiet now. It’s cliche to say “don’t take it for granted”, but damn did I. What I would give to go back in time.

Part of me wanted to follow him so badly. Be with you again. But, he knew why I couldn’t, why I can’t. I am still a mom. A mom to two little kids whose entire world has fallen apart, whose hero disappeared into death. I will do my very best for them, I promise. I will wipe tears. I will try to explain death, and why it come’s so prematurely for some of us. I will hold the blame they place on me. Because they are our children, and it’s my job to protect them from the pain of reality. It is not my place to make this harder on them. I can carry the burden of them thinking it’s my fault until they’re old enough to know.

I will do it all for you. Always.