I wonder at times if we put more pressure on ourselves because of being widowed. I feel like I am always trying to keep everything running smoothly, as if since being widowed I just want life to operate as a well oiled machine with as few hiccups as possible. I guess that’s understandable... to want to avoid anything particularly surprising or messy after having been widowed. Sometimes it’s easy to think think that doing more, or being more organized or more productive is going to prevent more pain. Or somehow give you control over things that can’t be controlled - like death.

It’s odd for me that I do this, because I know it doesn’t work. Drew still died. And my life still fell apart. No matter how good my credit score was or how tidy my house was or how many ducks I could keep in a row. None of that mattered on June 12, 2012 when he died. It still all fell apart and none of that stuff I spent so much time on even mattered.   

Before I was Mike's widow I did not know the depth and breadth of grief. 

I had no idea that grief lasts forever. 

I never considered secondary losses. 

I did not think about how the dead are missing from our futures. 

The day Mike died, I did not know that my grief would stay with me throughout my lifetime.

I just didn't know. 

                                       I couldn't know.                                           

Now, I intimately understand that grief profoundly changes who you are and how you see the world.  From the outside, people in my proximity, think that I am moving forward and getting my shit together.  

Well, I am a work in progress at best.  In nineteen days, I will have been widowed for three years.  What does that even mean?   Am I good at this now?  Am I used to living without Mike?  Am I thriving in this alternate life?  Am I okay? 

The truth is, I am not okay.  And, I still don't know how to live fully without him.  Yes, I survived his death, but am I thriving?  Not yet.  Maybe not for another year, or two or ten.  Who knows.  Nothing is simple anymore, even three years later.

Well, I made it through the long three days of Mike being out of town for work the other week. He made sure to text or call at every turn so that I knew he was safe - which helped so much to keep the panic at bay a bit. So no, he didn't die. Much to my relief. Although I will say, the whole ordeal of having to cope with my new person on a work trip after my previous person died on one, has stirred up a lot. In fact, Mike is currently fixing my car and as I watch him underneath 3000+ lbs of metal, the thoughts just come again. Before I know it I’m imagining the entire thing crashing down on him and me, standing there, not knowing what to do. Or what if it crashes down on him and kills him instantly, and there I am, standing there, my whole world flipped upside down again. Only this time I have a kid and no job. How will I take care of her? How will I get a job to pay for everything? There goes my mind... off on it's own horrific adventure. Although this is all highly unlikely, you all know, that doesn’t stop the stories in my head, or the physical reaction. 

I wish I could do something about this. I wish I could go back to not knowing what that would be like for my partner to die suddenly and instantly have my entire future taken away. Most of all, I wish my body didn’t remember the trauma. Seven years later, the thoughts, feelings, and sensations are quieter though. Or at least, I have gotten much better at calming myself and just allowing it to mildly be there.

So, Sarah wrote last week about my leaving for a work trip.  It was the first time I have done so since we’ve met.  Sure, I’ve left for a day or two here and there to go backpacking, but being required by my job to board a jet to Chicago for three days is, quite obviously, a bit more of a trigger for her.  Especially when it’s a trigger she hasn’t experienced in the seven years since Drew’s death on a work trip.

I get it.  I know it sucked for her for me to be gone (for the record, I’m home safe and sound), but I can never feel what she feels.  She’s in New York, visiting her sister for the past few days. While I miss her, and want to make sure she’s safe, it’s not and never has been a “please don’t die” issue for me.

Here’s the thing.  I didn’t have a sudden loss.  What I had was long expected. Megan’s death took years.  If I was going to have a trigger or anxiety, it would likely be more when Sarah is sick or, god forbid, hospitalized for any reason.  Just a little 6 hour drive to New York? That’s simply not a trigger for me.

It seems like there is always something in grief you are experiencing for the first time. After seven years as a widow, I would have thought that I had already gone through almost every “first”. This week though, I discovered another first I had yet to go through, and it’s had my emotions all over the place. 

Tomorrow, my new partner Mike will be flying out to Chicago for a few days for a work trip. This might not initially seem like a big deal - Chicago isn’t even an hour away by plane. And at first I didn’t really think of it as a big deal. He has left to go backpacking for a weekend several times, and that was fine. But this is something different. It is the first time since we met that he is traveling for work specifically. Which initially didn’t feel like a big deal… Until the other part of me remembered… 

Seven years ago, someone else left for a work trip, and never came home. Someone else traveled for a job and died far away from me, in a horrific crash. It always feels like that part of me still doesn’t really understand what happened, where he went, or why I am now in an entirely different life. And I’ve accepted the fact that this part of me will just never understand - I suppose you could call it the trauma part. So I guess it makes sense that when Mike was telling me about this work trip over the phone last week, that trauma part of me suddenly woke up and began so sound alarm bells.

My whole life, I’ve played it safe and small because I grew up within a family that taught me to be practical and frugal and not take risks. I’m sure a lot of us grew up in that kind of family. They did their best, but the illusion of safety and security was always a pretty big focus. Even after my mom died and it became apparent that safety from pain really wasn’t a thing, we still went on trying to be safe from pain for the rest of my childhood. Needless to say, it didn’t set me up so well for all the rest of the pain I was going to experience in life.

When Drew died, a lot of the tactics my family taught me about trying to achieve safety fell apart. It was like watching a sandcastle that I had carefully constructed for years be hit by a tsunami while I was busy putting the last touches on it. All I could do was watch as his death smashed into all of my tediously laid out walls and smartly built turrets. Suddenly, it didn’t matter how skilled I was as building walls, or how cleverly or beautifully I put them together. It didn't matter how much time and effort I had put into it all. The entire thing dissolved and all I could do was watch as the sand slowly disintegrated between my fingers and left me standing there... empty handed. Exposed. In shock.

I will never forget that feeling. Or that moment, which for me, happened in one phone call. 

I recently had a scare over someone close to me dying again. It wasn’t even a true emergency, or anyone in fact having a close call by any means. But this wasn’t just anyone. This was one of my oldest friends and someone who has been a mother to me since my own mom died when I was nine. Now that both of my parents are gone, she is one of only a few people left who were there when I was growing up. And really, she is the last of the keepers of all of my history. All of my stories. 

The other week, after having just returned from a Texas where I got some time to visit with her, I found out she was in the hospital. It wasn’t anything life-threatening, an intestinal issue that she has dealt with before. But, she is getting older, and I’ve been becoming more aware over the last year that her health isn’t as good as it could be. So my brain went into immediate overdrive when I heard she was in the hospital. Made worse by the fact that I had just seen her 3 days before, and was now sitting in my house, some 1400 miles away in Ohio. The pain of not being able to be right there by her side was so big. 

I don’t usually react to triggers in such a big way. But this time, I did. My brain immediately went back into that place of shock and trauma that hit me when Drew died seven years ago. That place where suddenly my life is completely altered and though I am there, still breathing, and my life is still there, something about it is very very wrong. Suddenly I felt the room spinning around me, just like when he died. I began to hyperventilate and exploded into panicked tears that I could not stop for what felt like ages.

Summer has a feel,

for all who love it's rays

of sunshine 

family vacations 

lounging by the pool

warm nights with just a twist

of warm breezes. 

Ice-cream dripping 

down the cone, 

car rides with the top down, 

and tunes blasting. 

Carefree and endless guilt-free hours, 

sipping on tall iced-teas. 

Summer has a feel

of drive-in movies

and walking the dog

in the park

with Italian ices or lemonades,

to stay cool. 

Staying up late,

road trips and reunions,

graduation parties 

and weddings. 

Flip-flops and 

water parks

and 

looking at the stars. 

Since becoming an involentary widow almost 8 years ago, I have changed in many positive ways. 

I am more empathetic. 

I am more sympathetic. 

I am less judgemental of people's lives and situations and circumstances. 

I listen better. 

I stop to talk with people more. 

I find more meaning and beauty in very tiny things. 

I exist in the moment more. 

I love profoundly and deeply. 

Soon after the sudden death of my husband, almost 8 years ago now, I began trying to navigate my new reality and world that I never asked for or wanted.

I didnt know what the hell I was doing. 

There are no guidelines or handbook for how to "widow" properly. I hadn't even put away all of our dishes and kitchen items and gifts from a few years prior, when we got married. Things were still in boxes. We were talking about having a family, moving out of Jersey, things that married people talk about in the first few years of their marriage. I hadnt even begun to figure out the rest of our life together, and now, I was left to figure out how to cope with my husband and my world and my future being dead? 

I didnt know how to do that. 

Looking back now, I see that I made a lot of mistakes. 

I made a lot of mistakes that I will now call "grief mistakes." 

I am probably still making them, but hopefully way less often. 

Sharing a few of these mistakes and lessons with my grief community may be helpful or beneficial for some to read.