I am....

  In my 49th year on this blue marble hurtling through space, I built myself a life raft. Or, more simply, I finally started building myself a life.  I uprooted my entire existence and, without a job on the horizon and a rapidly dwindling savings account, I moved to California. Now, a year later, I celebrated my 50th Birthday in a most perfect way. I took a day off from a job that I truly love. I spent the morning with my grandsons followed by a quick swim. Opened touching gifts and messages from friends and family. Went to a spa for a glorious massage and facial as a gift from my family. After turning into a puddle of goo, I tracked down a beachfront restaurant and splurged on a chilled seafood appetizer platter (was it made for 2 people…yes. Did I care? No. Did I eat it all? Also, yes.) Lunch was followed by a photo jaunt meandering drive up the coast while listening to an “Andrea’s Top 50” playlist from my BFF. This evening has been spent FaceTiming with my kids and now cud...

Today could have been my 10th wedding anniversary if my husband hadn’t killed himself.  But, to be honest, we never would have made it that long. I had considered leaving for several months, I knew I had to leave when he disappeared for a second time. I needed to get away from his addiction and mental illness for my own wellbeing. This is not to say I didn’t love him or wish that we could have had a long life together. I just don’t want to pretend that I’m grieving for a happy marriage. It’s a complicated set of emotions. I mourned the loss of my husband many times before his actual death. When he checked himself into rehab in 2016 — who am I kidding, when his daughters and I checked him into rehab — I prepared divorce papers. But rehab brought out the best parts of him, the parts that I fell in love with, and so, I threw those papers away, gave it another shot, trusted that sobriety might take hold and our plans of growing old together would work out.  What didn’t get address...

This is the face of a depressed, bipolar, suicidal, alcoholic who took his own life on March 22, You’d never have guessed it. I didn’t know he was bipolar until after his death when I obtained his medical records. I had my suspicions there at the end. I chalked up his depression to my grandpa’s death. I fight depression daily, have for a long time, and it didn’t seem out of place in our home. Things got chaotic in the final weeks but, for the most part, our time together was pretty good. My husband was a giant goof. When he was happy you knew it. I have hundreds of photos of him just like this on my phone. He is only melancholy in one of them — taken just a few weeks before his death — as he stared out at a frozen lake. He was deep in a six week manic spiral. We’d left town because I needed a break from being inside the house with his energy, but I also didn’t want to leave him alone. I’d been trying for weeks to get him help. Unsurprisingly, a fifteen minute appointment with a psychia...

I’m about to share a bunch of details on the timeline of my year. Typically I just look at the highlights. Instead I went through an interesting exercise that included looking through the thousands of photos I’ve taken throughout the year, reading through my journal, and going through my calendar. If you’re not into the “and then” aspect of my year feel free to skim or skip.  January - I’m on sabbatical after experiencing a burnout inspired breakdown in December. The plan is to return to work or find a new job by April. Grandpa Bill dies. His body gives out before his mind. He was 98. He loved his children and grandchildren deeply and unconditionally. His death causes my husband to suffer a manic breakdown and a severe relapse. I go to therapy three times. February - Dad is diagnosed with prostate cancer. Plans are made for surgery. My husband vacillates between manic and depressed. I worry for his physical and mental health and plead with our local hospital for the earliest possib...

It’s been just about seven months since my husband took his own life. In month four I stopped counting the weeks. By month six I wasn’t spending the 22nd of the month in silent anguish. Throughout, I was leaning into therapy and learning how to find words for the emotions I was feeling, trying to soothe myself with healthy behaviors but, I’m realizing now that my greatest coping device was finishing my book.  My husband was a distraction. He had some severe mental health issues and it was only after his death that I learned just how severe they were. His addiction was a distraction. It fluctuated between active addiction and tenuous sobriety more often than I realized. Once again, only after his death did I realize the extent of just how bad it had become. My husband was an enigma. Just months ago I learned so many things about him that were not in line with what I knew when we were married — possibly a whole book’s worth. When he killed himself I wrote a brutally honest obituary. ...

On December 14th I announced I was leaving real estate to explore new opportunities. I sent a blast announcement via social media and email to my past clients and my sphere. What I didn’t say in that message is that I was taking a break for my own mental health. I was burned out, I was exhausted, I was fighting through a depressive episode, I was spending a lot of time looking at career paths I might enjoy and, while I was good at real estate, I no longer found any joy doing it.  My plan was to take January and February to just relax, focus on introspection, detox from my phone and email. Maybe read a book, take some more photos, go on long, relaxing walks. My kids showed up on December 18th. We had a wonderful holiday that included bringing Grandpa to our new house for the first (and only) time. The knots in my shoulders started to unwind and I could feel some level of stress abating. The kids flew back to their respective homes for New Years, Pete and I had friends over for the f...

In the early days after Pete’s death I searched for “ways to navigate estates without going through probate”.  I also searched for “easy prep meals for one” and “where to donate glasses after someone dies”. Because of those searches I’m inundated on all social media platforms with “how to widow” content and occasionally I take the click-bait and end up down a rabbit hole.  One of those adventures lead me to the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory , a 43 question survey designed to determine your stressors from the last 12 months and, if your score is above 300, you have an 80% higher chance of a health breakdown in the next two years.  My score was 572.  Their recommendation to lower my stress? “Avoid future crisis situations.”  If I gave blind credence to this type of derivative test I would become stressed about getting out of stress. I would work to control that which cannot be controlled. I would speed towards that health breakdown. I was tempted to just toss ...

Grief doesn’t come with a checklist. I’m fully aware that if it did it would be never ending - written on a roll of paper that stretches to infinity.  This the first time that I’ve let myself feel grief deeply without working to shove it into a box that I then put in another, sturdier, box and then stick it on a shelf never to be revisited. And, damnit, the act of feeling grief this time has caused my shelf full of boxes to fall down and every single one of them has opened and the things that have spilled out are wild. Why am I sad about miscarriages I had in the 90s and remembering details I haven’t thought of in years? Why do I suddenly grieve the loss of my aunts and uncle more deeply than I did 10-20 years ago when they died tragically young? Why am I painfully aware of all of the losses that my friends have gone through that I didn’t show up for because I was avoiding feeling? Why am I terrified to mourn publicly because if I open these boxes I’m not sure how I’ll ever put eve...

Flashback photo memories are a bittersweet gut punch every morning. I’ve considered ignoring them but I think it’s important, for me at least, to see the reminder, feel the feeling(s), and acknowledge both the joy and the grief that the photos bring me.  Pete and I went on some incredible trips. There are a lot of photos. A LOT.  Right now I’m in the midst of the four year anniversary of our one month trip to Europe. We were going to go back next year for our ten year anniversary.  What I’ve struggled with this week is this question: “How do you bail on a life that includes Trdelnik ice cream cones?”  Obviously, it’s not just the cone. It’s the vacations, the ballgames, the family events, the quiet walks on the perfect spring evening when the clouds are so puffy and white they look like they were drawn by Pixar artists? How do you tap out of that life? How do you make that choice? Then you remember that mental illness doesn’t give a shit about an ice cream cone....

This may seem sacrilegious to say but I did not like my husband the day he died. Or the day before. Or maybe even for most of the few weeks ahead of his death. I loved him, yes, but I did not like the version of him that I was living with at all. Not even a little bit.  I was hopeful that after he worked through the grief, and the mania, and the relapses that I could figure out a way back to the comfortable camaraderie we had for much of our marriage but that I also needed to be a realist and understand that I was losing a lot of my own mental health gains in this relationship and needed to protect myself.  This may seem insulting to the dead but when I bemoaned to my therapist that “I did not understand how spouses who actually liked their partners went back to work quickly after their death because I still feel somewhat disembodied by the whole thing” she said “It’s actually often easier for people that are in healthy relationships.”  I sat with that for a minute and sa...

There’s nothing quite like when you find yourself having a full conversation about the day with your dog and truly wonder how long you’ve been talking.  My brain, even prior to the death/cancer/suicide trifecta of 2022, was never been a quiet place to exist. I’ve described the world in there as a place where I’m reading an entire orchestral score, with a stock market ticker tape running across the top, a perpetually refreshing Instagram feed on the side, but I’m riding a unicycle while doing long division and juggling Rubix cubes. On the outside, generally, I appear fairly calm. I have a reputation of being a very aggressive (and creative) problem solver.  Navigating those worlds, internal and external, takes a lot of energy.  I’ve been very open that I see a therapist regularly. However, I did not initially visit her for the chaos in my head or even the sexual assaults I’ve experienced. I went to her because I was having bad dreams about a jury trial and wanted a quick f...

The anguish of loss is, for the loss of a better word, weird. There’s the initial shock, the overwhelm of the first days and weeks, and then there’s the moments that you think “Oh, I need to tell him that my dad’s surgery went well” that simply punch you in the gut.  And then, in the butterfly effect of bullshit that is suicide, you’re reminded that you’re still so unbelievably angry with your loved one. Can you even use the phrase “loved one” if you’re this angry?   When I dive into the “why am I angry (today)” question it really falls more under the fact I feel betrayed. Pete was supposed to be my support system as I was the support system for my parents. That was the deal. He was to help do the heavy lifting, literally, of things around their house. He was supposed to be around to listen as I shared my fears surrounding the ninth surgery for my dad in the last two years. He was supposed to the simple things like caring for our dog while I drove with my parents to out of tow...

Easter has never really been my holiday. I gave up religion years ago and I gave up this holiday in exchange for Thanksgiving in my divorce negotiations. So, while today is a holiday, it’s not one that I associated with any real traditions but it is the first one that I’ve flown solo. Maybe it’s a gift to have a gentle introduction into all of the social media happy family posts be of pastel colors and jelly beans and that by the time we reach turkeys and trees I’ll be settled into this new routine.  I think in this whole transition I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I’ve never truly been on my own.  I met my first husband at 18, married him at 20, had kids at 22 and 23, divorced at 33, had primary custody of the kids as a single mom, remarried at 38, widowed at 46. And, while I wouldn’t change a thing about the path that led to my children, I think that the challenges I’m facing right now might be easier to navigate if I’d spent more than a minute (and part of every ...

I am a 46 year old widow. I am neither a young widow, with a life of tragic possibility and young children to raise, or an older widow mourning the loss of the only love she’s ever known. I am someone who deeply loved a very damaged man for ten years before he took his own life.  I am finding that I am struggling to not quantify our relationship by the limited amount of years together that we actually had. I did plan on growing old with this man. I’d stopped dying my hair, stopped wearing anything that wasn’t designed for cozy living, hell, I started wearing Crocs.  I was comfortable in my skin for, maybe, the first time in my life. He was my favorite travel companion. We had found a peaceful home that we both loved. He had his first grand baby and another on the way - I got to be “Grandrea”.  He was a protector, a bit of a clown, definitely rough around the edges. We challenged each other, we were both in our own therapy, battling our own demons, talking them through, ge...