WHAT TO DO WHEN THE REGULAR PARADIGMS DON’T WORK Most of us, before widowhood was thrust upon us, gave little thought to what that state would actually be like. And when and if we did try to conceive of it, most of us got it wrong. ” … In the version of grief we imagine (before we are widowed),” writes… Read More
September is National Suicide Prevention Month. It is also the birthday month of the late David Koff, with whom I lived for almost a decade, and who ended his own life. I wrote this exploration of the collateral damage of suicide, six years ago, three years after David’s death. In 2014, I had a new cat come to live with… Read More
WE CAN NO LONGER HAVE WHAT WE HAD. SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY TO REORIENT IS TO QUIT RESISTING DISORIENTATION. MAYBE EVEN EMBRACE IT. FOR NOW. Thanksgiving, it turns out, is a great day on which to travel. The Thanksgiving after I was widowed for the second time, I spent much of Thanksgiving literally in the air. And that — strangely,… 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
How do we travel through widowhood and grief towards whatever the next phase of our life will be if, as we said last week, “healing” doesn’t work as a model? And let’s look at a couple of other commonly used phrases that also don’t apply; “getting over it,” and “closure.” How can you “get over” the death of someone you… Read More
“What’s on your mind this morning?” Facebook asked me cheerily last week. As it does daily, to any user who opens it before noon. That morning happened to be September 10th, 2017. What was on my mind? Quite a bit. It was the day before the 16th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. It was the day before Hurricane Irma was… 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
We are so tired of our story, so exhausted by it. We hate going over it and over it, yet we do, obsessively (one reason we feel insane, though we are not; we’ve grieving). We have exhausted all our friends, and we try not to burden them any more; they have been so good to us, they know our story…. 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
Grief, in the early stages; grief, after the first layer of shock has worn off: so excruciatingly painful is it, and so discontinuous with the reality we knew before death took the person we most loved in the world, that we do not want to feel it. And, as we struggle against it— for who would willingly accept such pain?… Read More
About a year ago, a friend who’s a fellow widow wrote on Facebook about the then-current phase of her grieving. She allowed me to quote her here, without identification. Her words: “… it happens, even two years down the road, this stage: the ‘stay at home, don’t want to see anyone, or do anything’ stage. “As any of you who know… Read More
