I am....

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 addressed at reh

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 everyth

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 said “maybe that

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 fix and because

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 town appoint

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 other wee

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, getting stronger