3 Years, 2 Months - Black Arm Bands, Reclusive

Society should also implement the use of black arm bands again. I stood in the locker room stepping into a Speedo, pulling it over my old body. I looked at the young girls bodies, laughing. I did not look in lust or even admiration of youth and health. I looked in yearning. I wanted to scream. I was screaming inside. Can you not see me? Can you not see how much pain I am suffering? My husband died! My husband died! Can you not hear me screaming? I looked a little to long and had to turn away. They might wonder why I was staring. All the answers in their heads would never be the right one. I was not jealous of their bodies, or their youth, or friendships. It was not bisexuality that I did not recognize. I was not a dirty old lady or even rude. I was staring blankly screaming in my head. If I could only have slide the black arm band on after my swimsuit. Then they would know. They would quietly turn away and possibly stop laughing, leaving me in my grief alone. Nevertheless, they would know. It would not hurt so bad maybe if people knew. If the lady at the cash register gave me just a little extra patience because of the arm band. If people were a little quieter around me, a little more gracious, then it would not be so hard to go outside.

2 Years, 6 Months - Grief Writing

I thought I could write but I only feel the grief of my words.

2 Years, 1 week - After Mom Dies

Off to Seattle. Ugly brother wars. Sadness. Stress.

2 Years - Second Anniversary of Death

Today is two years and the rain is pouring all our tears. The white lilies, death flowers, are blooming.
When I got in the car, Elton John was playing for me ‘Someone save my life tonight.’ Elton John was special because only you knew I liked him. If you were channel surfing you always stopped for Elton John, turned to me and smiled. Then I would sing for you. Only for you, otherwise I only sang alone in my car.
When your daughter and I checked into the hotel, she found a watch on top of the folded towels. I said we should turn it in to Lost and Found. She said it was a gift from you. Who else would leave something in our room on this day? A watch with white, your favorite color on me, and an orange stripe, my favorite color, that matched the shoes I was wearing, with a silver tone square face, because I only wear silver or platinum and I like squares, and four rhinestones. Four, 04-04-04, the day you died.
I got in my car. The tears fell in a solid stream on the outside corners of my eyes. I held my head in my hands. I rested my elbows on the steering wheel and I wailed. Slowly, then deeper, the wailing mounted, injured, hurt, sadness from deep inside.
Only one of my oldest friends called today. Your daughter and I mourned. We left a rubber duck under a small tree overlooking the end of the Grand Canyon, on top of the highest rock on the ledge, off trail at Canyonlands National Park. We left it at the Grand Canyon because the first time both of us saw it was with you. We left it at the end of the deep canyon because what was deepest in us had ended. We left one of your rubber ducks because we wanted to be there with you. Because it still hurts.

1 Year, 6 Months - Inertia

I cried today
Sadness has weighed me down
I don’t want to move
I was up Friday and Saturday with no sleep
I feel nauseous
I don’t care about working
Moving takes so much effort and I don’t even care if I do move

1 Year, 5 months - Signs

I just miss you honey. I feel your hug in the wind and it comforts me. I think of you and see a large daisy sign. I wish you were by my side and I see a bus with a bee.

5 Years, 7 Months - The Holidays

The holidays suck. I just talked to a friend that is a young widow without kids. She was expecting dinner at the in-laws as usual. However, her phone calls were ignored and then she finally got a cold reception when the sister answered. She now realizes she is spending Thanksgiving alone.

Losing a spouse usually means losing more people as well. Who are the in-laws and the stepchildren after death? Legally they are not related to you any longer. Not only have you lost the person that touches every aspect of your life but an entire branch of your family tree is severed. My brother-in-law called yesterday. I was expecting an invite as well but it was just a message to say 'Have a nice Thanksgiving'.
Sure, I have made plans for the past holidays. I don't just wait to be invited. I went to Mexico and ate lobster with two widows in their 20s the first year. I have hosted several holiday dinners and went to a friend's house one year. Nevertheless, there remains the void. You are now family-less. You are no longer married. Basically you are single. Your in-laws remain family at will. Your extended family spends the time with their immediate family - children, in-laws, and spouse. Another holiday season and I will be alone. This year will be Thanksgiving dinner take-out again. I do eat in restaurants alone all the time now. Yet to go out to dinner alone on Thanksgiving or even cook for one is too pathetic. Better yet to pretend it is just another day. Some years are better than others. It is not a straight line forward.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day he proposed.

1 Year, 3 Months - Getting through the days, emptiness

Another day …
I take off my pants and drop them in the hamper. I pull the t-shirt over my head and let it fall on top of the pants. When I am sitting peeing I see the antenna of a small roach. It is time for me to buy more roach hotels.
I crawl in bed in old panties with a maxi overnight pad and a tank top. I lay on top of the Pemberton wool blanket. I believe the clean sheets are wedged between the headboard and mattress. The other side of the bed is tangled with clean laundry. I have not made my bed in months. I arrange the pile of pillows and lay my feet near the window. For unknown reasons, I sleep with my head at the footboard now.
I hear the crickets and think of you sweating in the sun. You uncovered a large cricket mound digging a ditch by the driveway. I never knew they nested underground like ants. A swarm of crickets flew and swirled around us. I did not hear them in the garage afterwards. However, they crickets are back now. I hear them in the patio.
We wanted a driveway that would park two cars. You wanted to cement the strip of flower beds that separated our driveway from the neighbors grass. I wanted the flower bed as an area to plant tall bushes that would block the view of the neighbors and close off our home. I wanted to cement over the grass. However, the grass was the only part of the yard you liked. We compromised half the flower bed strip and half the grass for the driveway extension. You dug down three feet to get rid of the weeds and poor dirt so I could plant the bushes. We purchased the plants in Cambria on our anniversary get-away and carried them home in the backseat. The trunk was filled with cases of wine you bought while wine tasting. The smell of dirt and Mexican sage enveloped us on our drive home. Two plants died after awhile. The other three grow and spread. The sound of crickets reminds me of you.
My life is led by others now. I don’t do what I want. The phone pages me all day. I work for others. My weekends are planned for me. I have no joy. I must hide to be left alone. I wake when others tell me, I follow their dictates by day, and I eat a little when I remember. I mostly smoke and drink Diet Cokes. I resign to sleep some nights. I protest other nights and stay up so I am free to do what I want, free from phone calls, rebelling against the drudgery of my afternoons. I think of you. Did you send me those birds, those signs? Is the song on the radio your words to me?
I am not as sad anymore. I never cry. I only wail occasionally. The pain is buried too deep for tears and requires an emptying, releasing, a minimum of wailing and moaning. I do not cry. I do not care.
Slowly I resign myself to the drudgery, the emptiness, the loneliness. I accustom myself to daily dreariness and to walking with a hollow feeling. The hollowness is like hunger without satisfaction. It is more of a mild hunger, rather than starvation, as in waiting a long time for dinner after forgetting to eat breakfast and lunch. Maybe this is why I eat less. Why I forget to eat. I am getting used to the emptiness and forget sometimes it is only a hunger for food, which I can meet. I am so used to a longing, the forsaking, the loss of love returned, of love satisfied, of love seen and felt. I must forget that some of the ache is merely hunger for food.

1 Year, 6 Months - Do Not Recognize Self

When I see the old lady in the mirror I know it is not definitive. I can see, just under the surface, where I am hiding. Just under the surface but I can not quite reach her. Nevertheless, I tell the eyes that look back at me not to worry, not to give up hope. I am still there. It is not over.

1 year, 8 months - Do the dead grieve?

For the first time I wondered if you were mourning too? Do you miss me as much as I miss you? Do you miss everyone? Can you see us but miss touching us, holding us, laughing with us, talking to us? Are you grieving too? I was struck by my selfishness. To think you were fine alone.

5 weeks - Scared, Panic

I have bad feelings when I go to do some laundry. It is such a normal routine that I did hundreds of times in this house, with this machine, with you in the living room. Now it is just I. I am terrified when I think of you those last days in the hospital. I am scared that you are gone. Can it be forever? I have been planning a trip with your daughter using your ticket to see your niece graduate. I wish it were you and me or the two of us and the girls. I don’t feel like you are gone and when I try to think of it I feel panic rising up inside me that I have to stop before it reaches my throat. Where are you baby?

3 Years - Expectations

I just need to tell someone. Maybe no one will hear. Maybe no one will read. Maybe I am naive. But someone hear me. No one hears me.

They applaud the steps they see as forward and ignore with mild contempt and frustration the stagnation. I don’t only move forward. I am in a rip tide with my mouth barely breathing, pulling out and under to the sea. You only see when I make a movement towards shore. I know to swim parallel to shore. I know it is what I need. But, the water is cool and warm and wraps me. I can go with the tide without so much strain. I am tired from fighting it. The constant fight and I am no closer to shore. Swim parallel? Swim and swim and pull, arm over arm, turning my head for breaths, keep going. But I’ll only be the same distance I am now from shore just a bit upstream, perhaps downstream. Can’t I just let the tide take me, take it’s time? It will calm in time. The tide will lose its power. It will wane and I will just be floating in the sea. It will be harder for you to see me from shore. But, I will be there, safe in time. Then I can swim without so much effort. It will be refreshing, invigorating. Why is it necessary to struggle so much now? I will be strong enough when the rip tide losses its power and then I can move towards shore.

Grief Walking - A Coming of Middle Age Story

The music was immobilizing me. Song after song of love and loss and moving on. Some of the worst ones from the early years.
I guess that’s what I’ll call it now, the early years, the start of the grief, the start of the end of my life.