Our beloved partner is no longer on earth. And now it’s the holidays. Sometimes other people, not realizing they’re doing it, ask us to dress grief up in party clothes. We may even ask it of ourselves. But we don’t have to do it. In the fall of 2004, Richard, my friend Kay’s husband and the love of her life,… Read More
IF YOU’VE LOST A PARTNER TO SUICIDE, EXPECT TO REVISIT THAT PECULIARLY GUILT-TAINTED SORROW EVERY TIME A CELEBRITY EXITS LIFE BY HIS OR HER OWN HAND, OR ON THAT DEATH’S ANNIVERSARY. MAYBE IT’S TIME TO GROW SOME COMPASSION, ALL AROUND. Anthony Bourdain’s suicide four years ago hit me hard. Perhaps this was partly because Bourdain and I work / worked… Read More
SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, IS BLOOMING. NOW. IT MAY NOT BE THE PLANT YOU WANTED OR EXPECTED. ITS TIMING MAY BE OFF, OR ODD, OR MYSTERIOUS. BUT BEFORE YOU GIVE OVER TO DESPAIR, — EASY, IN THESE DIFFICULT AND UNENDINGLY STRESSFUL TIMES — LOOK FOR THE BUD, THE BLOSSOM. IF IT CAN FLOWER IMPROBABLY, SO CAN YOU. 2012 was the last full… Read More
“Her first husband died in a workplace accident when she was 24 and pregnant with their second child. ‘Becoming a young widow changed my life,’ she said.” Suddenly, reading these words recently in the New York Times, sitting there at the old oak table in the kitchen, having breakfast, the hair on the back of my neck rose. There are… Read More
OUR FRIENDS WANT TO HELP US. THEY DON’T KNOW HOW. WE DON’T KNOW HOW EITHER. BECAUSE WE ARE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. DEAR WIDOW, I WROTE THIS LETTER FOR YOU TO GIVE YOUR FRIENDS. A LETTER TO THE WIDOW’S FRIENDS Dear Friend of the Widow, You already know this: ___________, the beloved life partner of your friend __________,… Read More
My dear fellow member of the Club No One Wants to Join, I started Widowhood Wednesday just under a year ago. I was almost seventeen years past my first widowhood, almost three past my second. I was accompanying (to the extent it is possible that another person can accompany another in the freshets of recent grief), my recently widowed friend… Read More
HE DIED. SUDDENLY. AN ACCIDENT. THREE WEEKS LATER, THE WORST WINTER WEATHER IN THE STATE’S HISTORY BLEW IN. SOMETIMES DISASTERS COLLIDE SOMETIMES FRIENDS HOLD A PLACE FOR US WHEN WE CAN’T DO IT FOR OURSELVES. It is easy, looking back on the aftermath of the catastrophic theft of normalcy that is widowhood, to recall the hurtful, bone-headed remarks and deeds… Read More
I would like to tell you, dear fellow members of the Club No One Wants to Join, especially those younger to widowhood than I am, that it gets easier over time. And I can. For it does. It gets easier over time. I would also, so very much, like not to tell you that you never get over it. But… Read More
That last Thursday in November, I had been at Miller Williams‘ sixth or eighth Survey of Western Poetry class, which I was auditing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.I’d drive over each Thursday — it was about an hour from Eureka Springs — immerse myself in Miller’s world, do any Fayetteville errands that I might have, and drive home…. Read More
You expect things like anniversaries. Like birthdays. Like Father’s Day (if he was the father of your children). Mother’s Day (if she was the mother of your children). Like “We would have been married 31 years today.” Like, looking at your watch and seeing the exact dark beat of time, when according to the death certificate, he or she crossed… Read More
Three months and eighteen days after Ned’s death, I took his ashes, as per his written request, to India. This was still relatively early days, so perhaps I can be forgiven for my persistent illusion: I still thought you could somehow outsmart grief. I did not yet know that when grief wants to be felt, it will find a way to… Read More
“For months after Ned’s death I barely ate. (How could I taste, let alone digest, when my sweet partner had suddenly, absolutely vanished from the earth, could never close his eyes again in ecstasy at something so simple as a perfect baked red yam or a plate of pancakes?)” I wrote most of Passionate Vegetarian when Ned was alive. It… Read More
