One Really Empty Closet

It’s done. It’s been a long time in coming but all her clothes are gone. There’s now a large gaping hole in our closet where just days ago a whole bunch of happy cotton and polyester reminders used to hang. The sight of the half empty space is jarring but I feel rather numb about it all.

This was my last big rip of the band-aid, the last big step that needed to be taken, my last mountain to climb. The thought of starting that task still somehow strikes me cold, a mental game I’ve practiced so many times in the last four years. But then I remember the task is done and suddenly I panic with questions:

· Did I forget to save that special whatever?
· What if I forget about that time she wore whatever?
· Blah blah blah whatever?

The questions are rapid fire and they all lead me in one direction – the past. Since I can’t go back in time (And, oh trust me! If there was a way to mentally force time to go backwards, I’d have figured it out by now by sheer willpower and mental force!) by standing looking backward I’m still moving forward, just not the direction I choose. I’m in the passenger seat letting life drive me around while I sit and wish for what can’t be had.

It’s time I got in the drivers seat again. It’s been a long time.

I'm So Tired

This image seems so familiar...

I’m tired - surprisingly tired.  My determined effort to make progress on the things that need to change in this big house continues.  But even the most minor movements forward are exhausting.

I remember this type of tired.  It’s not the “I haven’t slept for 10 days” tired.  It’s not even a “I’ve been re-roofing my house” tired.  It’s different but familiar.  I haven’t felt it since, well, Maggie was with me to lift me through the exhaustion with her smile.  Now, I have no reward.  I have no sweet angel's smile to push me forward.  Even progress is no reward.  I only have what It Is.

It Is me sorting through books wondering if she read them, when she read them or why the heck she read them.  It Is me flipping through the pages of the books and finding purchase receipts or random notes used as bookmarks, looking at the dates on the receipts and trying REALLY HARD not to go down that If I Only Would Have path to Crazy Town.

It Is me sorting through the silverware wondering what the heck this particular serving spoon was used for or if this thingy was expensive or if this what-the-hell was a gift someone gave us that I should be remember and maybe offer back as a memorial.

It Is me wondering why the heck we have so many wine glasses…. And then choosing to separate those down to only the matching sets even though I don’t drink (and have never drank) wine.

It Is me doing every possible thing I can do to stay committed while I push with every ounce of strength I can summon as I stumble clumsily yet with surprising clarity through this insanity. Yup.  That's what It Is.

…..

Last Wednesday and Thursday I took pictures off the walls.  (Yes, it literally took two days.)  Saturday, slowly and with many, many tears, I took the pictures out of the frames and placed them on the coffee table.  Sunday…. Oh, lord, Sunday, I put the pictures away in a box.

I’m so tired.

I will not stop.  I will honor my wife, my love, my Maggie by completing this task.  One life was lost despite every desperate effort we made otherwise.  I refuse to allow one lost life devolve into two.  It's now my job to look after the one she cared the most about.  Thus, to honor her, I will exert every effort I have left in my soul to find my new life.  I will not fail.  I have little to lose because I have so little left. But that's more than Maggie has and, for her, I will not stop.

But I’m so tired.

Pushing Toward Happiness

(Yes, this is totally a picture of me, in case your curious....)

I’m not angry.  I’m not specifically unhappy, really.  But I’m very, very dissatisfied with my life, and that dissatisfaction is driving change.  So I’m pushing with all my might against that smothering bubble that is grief.  This time, rather than being focused on what’s in my head or what’s in my heart, I’m focused squarely on what’s in my home.  Excuse my directness, but I’m living in a home that’s not really mine and I’m done.  It’s time for change.  It’s past time for change.

For years (Years!?  Really!?!? How can it be years?), I’ve opened up kitchen drawers with the best intentions, looked at the contents, sighed, and closed those drawers, not to be touched again for weeks - sometimes even years.

I’ve walked around Maggie’s clothes that haven’t moved since I last cried into them.   I’ve kept my clothes on a spare bed because my chest of drawers is full of designer jeans that I don’t know what to do with. They looked great on her. But they are in the way of my future.

I’ve lived around pantry and cabinets full of dishes, kitchen tools, and mementos that represent a life I’m not allowed to live any more.

I’ve kept expensive dishes (our incomplete wedding china set) up on the top shelf, collecting dust because just what the heck do you do with wedding china when by death we did part?  (Dear Abby, got an answer for that one?)

I’ve kept piles of various gifts given to Maggie because what the hell was I supposed to do with them?

I’ve avoided touching the nicely stacked piles of flyers given out at Maggie’s memorial.  I’ve buried stacks of condolence cards way, way, way deep in the back of the Bookshelf of Painful Memories.  Hidden throughout the house are stacks of photos from our wedding given to me from friends after she died, photos assembled specifically for the memorial service, photos assembled especially for our wedding video, and photos I’ve taken down in a fit of “Damn it!  I’ve got to make some sort of progress!  I’ll just take this down and hide it!”  (I call those little glorious, proud moments “progress seizures” which may, or may not, be followed immediately with a shot of tequila, a large beer or other assorted bad choices.)

I’ve pushed hard before and made some minor progress.  But this house is big and over the 10 years she and I were together, we accumulated a lot of stuff and, frankly, I’m flat out overwhelmed.  (At the rate I’m going, I’ll totally have my life together around 2035, just in time for time travel to be in vogue. Now, don’t get me started about the very first trip I’ll be taking in that time machine.  It will not be a trip to tell the 1994 me to buy Dell stock.)

Pushing hard sucks. But this time I’m doing things differently – I’ve called in reinforcements.  I’ve hired a friend to help.  She’s a good friend of mine, is friends with many of Maggie’s friends, and knows (and is deeply touched by) our story.  She’s also a tender, thoughtful, sincere, genuinely sweet person who truly understands both how difficult this is for me, what role she plays and what the big goal is (and recognizes when those three ideals collide.)  Fortunately, she’s also a manic, Type A, anti-hording, neat freak that knows how to problem solve and get things done.  Together, we make a great cleaning-out, re-organizing, crying machine.

For our first big push, she suggested a genius plan. For everything, choose one: A) Throw it away, B) Give it a new life somewhere else, or C) Keep it in a special box.   It’s amazing how much progress we’ve made just placing things into those three categories. Notably, it’s also amazing how few things went into the special box.  Most of the stuff has fit perfectly into the New Life category.  And, because she is wonderful and sensitive, she reminded me each timed I stumbled emotionally, that wonderful things deserve wonderful lives, even after they’ve had wonderful lives with Maggie and me.

I like to think that those re-lifed items are blessed, even though the unknowing recipients have no hint at how much love surrounded that shiny new object they’ve welcomed into their lives. In some ways, Maggie and I are sharing the aura of our love with them, whether they know it or not.  Now, that’s pretty cool.  We had a lot of love, she and me - more than most, I’ve learned.  Maggie was a person who truly wanted to make the world a better place. So, by letting the things she loved find new, happy homes, she lives on.  In pushing through this difficult time to my new life, I honor her legacy.

Most of all, I honor her legacy by refusing to live any life other than that which is wonderful to me.  I have a lot of work to go.  I will not quit.  Wonderful is around the bend.

Open for Business

“So why don’t you throw a party for the 4th?” asked my friend.

My reaction startled me: “Ok.  How about a cook-out that afternoon?”  Game on.

Maggie and I used to throw parties. (I should probably be clear about this: Mostly it was HER parties.  I was just a happy helper - a very busy happy helper.)  There were big parties and bigger parties, but there were no small parties.  She loved to entertain and so we did.  This house was designed for parties and rarely did a month or two pass without a crowd getting their fun on in the living room.  Those were heady days.

To all good things, an end must come.  Or does life just transform into something different?

Apparently I was standing, perched, ready to pounce when my friend asked about the 4th of July party.  I didn’t realize that.  I certainly would not have suggested it.  But with just a little push, I sprang happily to action performing the tasks I knew all too well to produce a great party.

But this time was different.  In fact, this would be the very first real party in this big house since the last official (yet anemic) wine party in December 2009. My right-hand woman wasn’t there by my side directing, educating, and socializing.  But, you know what?  It was ok.  It was more work because, well, it was just one person whereas before it was two.  But it was ok.  And by work I mean I had several years of entropy to tidy up before I could even begin to do those things that get the house in shape for a good party.  And some of that plaque scraping was a little tough, as you can imagine.

That day, with the party in full swing, thirty or so good friends ate hamburgers and drank beer and played with dogs.  Kids painted windows with greasy fingerprints while the dogs cleaned up any food droppings.  And someone (or a few mischievous someones) fed Kali, my curious-but-dumb puppy beer*.  It was a full-on party.  The house was busy with happy people, smells of good food, and good fun.  Things were like they were meant to be.   Again… But it was different.

* Before anyone gets freaked out about the care and safety of my pampered and spoiled dogs, it’s fairly likely she found her own beer from all the orphaned glasses of vino and beer.  That girl finds all the trouble you didn’t even know was there.  Seriously.  She's like a two year old with a 6 inch tongue and a nose for danger.  That said, I won't rule out the mischievousness of my friends.

One of my guests, a wise been-there widow who is the mother of one of Maggie’s classmates from Baylor, pulled me aside during the hustle and bustle and said, “This is a great day. You have sent the signal people have been waiting for.  You are sending a message that you are open for business again.  From here, everything will change.”

July 4th, 1776 we as Americans declared our independence from an oppressive British rule under King George III.  On July 4, 2012, I declared myself open for business.  I’ll never be “independent” from Maggie nor do I ever want to be, but to be open for business again, I’ll take that.  Let the parties begin again.

A Message in a Dream

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.” – Calvin & Hobbes

Night before last I dreamed about Maggie. It has been a long, long time since I’ve seen her – in person or otherwise. Even in my dream, rich emotions were quickly whipped up. Let me set the stage.

In my dream, we were traveling with a group of friends. The one and only scene in which she played a role involved her sitting at a table or couch, surrounded by friends while she animatedly told a story. (Such a scene wasn’t unusual; she always had LOTS to say and was almost always the center of everyone’s attention. And she was ALWAYS animated!) In this one and only scene, she never even looked at me or acknowledged my presence. In the dream, this wasn’t odd. (Dreams are very odd ducks.)

When I saw her in my dream, a deep feeling overwhelmed me that I now struggle to describe. The feeling definitely wasn’t sadness but, instead, euphoria but way more basal or primal than that specific word implies. The only way I can possibly describe the feeling was as if my heart had long been locked tightly in a cramp. Then, very suddenly upon seeing her – the way she moved, the way she spoke, the way she just… was – my heart instantly and completely relaxed. It was like the day we first met when my soul said, “Ah, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” This time, my soul added, “God, I’ve missed you.”

Euphoric or not, I knew instinctively that she was upset with me because I was obsessing over the pictures that I was taking while we were traveling. I had spent hours pouring over this or that photo worried that it didn’t capture the scene like I thought it should. Some photos were too dark. Some photos were off center. One specific photo I remember all too well was very washed out and didn’t capture clearly her face like I wanted it to. In addition to pouring over failed photos, I was trying to stage and re-take more. Yup, I was obsessing. And she was unhappy with me. She wanted me to put down the photos and just be a part of the trip with everyone else.

(It’s funny how without a single word could tell exactly why my lovely wife was upset with me!) (And, just for the record, she was rarely upset with me.) (And just for another record, God, I wish she had said anything… ANYTHING to me!)

I’ve pondered that silly dream for many hours now but my interpretation hasn’t changed since the second I woke up. The message is simple and clear: a life spent focused on trying to keep memories alive is a life spent living in the past. Living in the past tends to keep us from appreciating what’s going on right here, right now. And it’s really hard to see and smell roses when you walk down the path of life facing backwards.

I hear you, Maggie. I’ll keep pushing forward. It’s time to breath new life into the Business of Change.

(P.S. And, uh, Maggie, if you appear in my dreams again, could you please at least say hi or even have a conversation with me?  It'd be real nice.  And can we, uh, have some, you know… *cough* “adult” time?)

Through the Looking Glass

(Click for source.)

I’ve now made it through her birthday, both our anniversaries, the 3rd Christmas, 3rd Thanksgiving and 3rd Halloween. And I’m coming up on the 3rd anniversary of my sweet wife’s Angel Day. I feel like these are wins in some ways… and losses for us both. But what stands out the most is that I have a new perspective that I’ve begun to recognize. The perspective is neither good nor bad but that familiar widower guilt is stubbornly attached.

I see, or rather, feel two worlds now. The first world is made up of ‘us’ and extends backward for 10 years back to when we met. The new world is mostly ‘me’ and goes back not very far, actually, maybe only six months. (Oddly, I don’t really know what exists in the in-between years. I call those the “dark days.” All several years of them.)

When I think about the first world, the ‘us’ world, it’s like looking into a fogged mirror. Actually, it’s as if I were standing above a deep, still lake looking into the water watching my former life play out underneath. It’s sort-of clear but the visions are warped. While many moments are clear, other (poignant) moments are dream-like, especially the last weeks with my sweet wife.

When I reflect on the new world, the ‘me’ world, I’m struck by how emotionally dry and uneventful it is. The new world has less taste, less color, less smell, and less everything than the old world, yet it’s more familiar to me now. It’s like the “awesome” has dialed down. Maybe the awesome was never actually there and life now is the way life should have always been. Maybe I was just imagining things.

The best I can describe the sensation is that of just exiting an amazing sci-fi movie and re-entering the world of the real. Where there were flying cars, now are just cars. Where there were fantastic creature of wonder and mystery, now there are just cashiers and pizza delivery folks. Dramatic orchestral soundtracks are replaced by wind and road noise. And deep, emotional climaxes have been replaced with simple tasks like paying electricity bills and taking out the garbage.

The two worlds exist in different planes of reality and it’s hard to get my head to accept that one of the starring roles in the last world is the same two-bit actor in the world of the ‘now.’ And when I do get it, I feel guilty. (Ah, yes, that widower guilt - guilt for being happy, for living life, for NOT being sad or for NOT being completely and utterly obsessed with the old world.)

But because I can see two worlds that can only mean one thing – that I’ve begun to rebuild my life as a new person beyond my grief. I’m definitely re-engaging in life and creating a new world for me. Good lord, it’s about time. It’s been almost three years. Good grief. Part of me feels like a complete failure that it’s taken me this long. Another part of me feels terrible for even seeing two distinct worlds. And another part of me just wonders when all this will be over. A big part of me sees what the old world looked like and wonders how the hell I ever made it through all of that with any sanity left.

Geez. I wonder what today will look like through the looking glass next year.

a better widow than me

Photo from here...

Last night, I finally threw Jeff's toothbrush in the trash. 3 years, 7 months and 22 days, since he used it to scrub his teeth clean.

This action was precipitated a few days ago when I had spoken to a dear friend who is known for being outspoken and blunt. She doesn't mean harm at all but is very Northern European in the delivery of her very strong beliefs and feelings.

During our visit, she told me that I had to "get over" Jeff. She said it was time to stop grieving and that I needed to get rid of the active reminders of, not only his death, but his life as well. Photos, personal effects, etc. All these should be removed.

She told me that I was teaching the kids to grow up grieving. That they would never "get over it" if I didn't move on. My lovely friend told me that she had lost grandparents who she had been close to and favourite friends and that she had had to move on.

Although I told her that I didn't agree that I was stuck in my grieving process and defended my beliefs and action; the confidence that I have grown in the last three years in my abilities, my intuition and strength took a bit of a bruising.

For the last few days, I have intensely analyzed all my post-Jeff actions. I have wondered if they are "normal" and "appropriate". I have scrutinized my grief and that of my children.

I find it interesting that to someone outside our home, it looks as if I am still struggling horribly in my grief. But inside our home, Jeff's life is celebrated and because of this, ours is so much richer. We have lost so much but manage to laugh and share a closeness that many other families do not. Death is not a taboo subject in our home. Neither is joy, anger, frustration or love. All types of emotions are wrapped into the learning experience we have all had due to Jeff's death...and we don't hide them. Just as we have these thoughts/feelings due to Jeff's death, we have a truly rich life that has nothing to do with our loss. Three lives that are celebrated everyday for the mere fact that we still live and will do so, richly and happily, until each of our time comes.

Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that grief, specifically the loss of a spouse, is something that you have to live through to truly "get". I feel that just as everyone is the best parent they will ever be and know exactly how to parent BEFORE they ever even have their own children, everyone is the best widow/er before they have lost a spouse to death. I, too, have lost my beloved grandfather, very close friends, even an ex-boyfriend, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could have prepared me for this.

So this morning, I fished that old toothbrush out of the garbage bin.....and put it in my sock drawer. No one has to see it any more, but it is still there, marking his place. Marking his existence until I am ready to remove it from our home.

Don't get too close

I went on a date a few weeks ago. It was a truly enjoyable evening spent talking, laughing and being with another adult....a man.

Although he talked a lot, he was funny, kind and really, really sexy. I wanted to reach out and touch him almost immediately.

The day after, he texted me to make plans for a few days later. I was thrilled!

But the day before our next date, I found myself finding excuses to not go. I could hear my mind scrambling for reasons that this particular day was just too busy. Searching for reasons to feel guilty for spending any more time with this man and sussing out any and all failings in his personality and appearance.

I am not proud of this behaviour. And when I left him a message that I had to cancel, I felt a bit sick to my stomach. But I managed to convince myself that he wouldn't care and that he probably had a lot to do as well thus alleviating some of my guilt.

Days later when he phoned, I acted cold and distracted. And when we were scheduled to hang out again, I cancelled....again.

To any outsiders, it would appear that I had found him lacking and was trying to shake him off. In actuality, I had developed a crush on him. I liked him. A lot. I wanted to be with him. To tell him things. To snuggle up to him.

But therein lay the problem. If I "liked" him, I might one day "love" him. And as I am well aware, he is going to die. Then I am just where I have been for three years, in love with a dead guy.

So instead of allowing myself some companionship, I chose to sabotage any amount of fondness that someone may have for me because I don't want to add to the *collection of urns under my bed. Ridiculous.

Because don't get too close....or I'll ditch you.

*The collection of urns under my bed isn't as morbid as it sounds....at least to a widow. It contains just one husband and two family dogs.

Adventures Not Taken

Shoes. We take for granted that these little bits of leather, plastic and rivets will be ready for any adventure that pops up. We assume they will support and protect us as we walk over hot sidewalks and soft carpets. And at the end of the day, it's nice to take them off and place them next to another pair of still-warm, well-traveled shoes. Shoes are at the start and the end of every adventure.

Maggie loved shoes. Her eyes would light up when she saw a pair that tickled her fancy. She’d be so excited to bring them home that she’d walk around the house wearing them like she was a model putting on a show. I don’t know for certain but I imagine that in each pair she saw a lifetime of adventures to be experienced. She loved adventures, large and small. I loved seeing her happy. Ergo, I loved her shoes.

Sunday I packed up 118 pair of adventures not taken and put them into boxes to be given away, or rather, set out on adventures that wouldn’t include she or me. The careful process of moving each pair from the closet where they’ve sat for more than two years frozen in time was painful. Each pair represented a thousand adventures we’ll never have together and a million memories we’ll never create.

Some shoes looked pristine as though they had never been worn. The mysteries surrounding these shoes made me wonder what grand adventure she was dreaming about when she bought them. Where was she planning to go or what was she planning to do while wearing these shoes? I am sad that she never got the chance to walk a mile in those shoes. I’m sad that each of these pair of untouched pumps, flats, boots or heels represents so many unrealized dreams and adventures not taken. For each pair, I mourn the loss of what we didn’t have. I’m sad because she was sad that life was cut short too soon. She definitely wasn’t done living. She, rather, WE had miles and miles still to go together, hand-in-hand.

The others, obviously her go-to shoes, showed her love with well-worn soles. Touching those shoes hurt because so many of those scuffs and scratches we made together and I miss her and those moments dearly. I suppose now is the time to be reminded of the sage advice of Dr. Seuss: "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

Crap. Why is it that the shoes hurt so much? They are just f-ing shoes.

Crap.

Because it happened… Yes. I’ll smile. I’ll keep smiling through my tears.

The business of change presses on.

old shoes and wooden spatulas

Photo from here....

I've been sorting through our cupboards and closets and purging the least needed/most outgrown items lately in anticipation of living mostly indoors again after a summer in the backyard and beach.

I have found mismatched gumboots, lost flashlights, a dried up snail and the odd coin. Most surprisingly, I have unearthed copious amounts of Jeff's clothing despite thinking that the vast majority of it had been distributed among family, friends and the Salvation Army.

As I have worked on this task, the kids have been playing together...or re-enacting small-scale wars in the back hall. Today, their fighting somehow led to the playroom door (for which there is no key) to be locked.

Since I imagine myself to be somewhat of a handi-woman, I attempted to pick the lock. Failing this, I attempted to break into the room from an exterior window. Then, I removed the door knob not really realizing that the bolt would still be intact...without a knob. After this, I tried to shoulder the door open with brute force. Sometime later, I gave up and called a friend.

As he kneeled on the floor peering through the impenetrable knob hole, I stared at his large sock-clad feet which brought to mind a pair of new, brown leather shoes I had unearthed at the back of the laundry room closet.

"Hey, Dave," I said, "Do you need any shoes?" He turned and looked at me quizzically.

"I found a pair of brand-new shoes of Jeff's at the back of a closet and thought that maybe you could use them."

"Um. Well. Not...I don't know, Jackie," he stammered, "That's...um, very nice of you. But, um, weird." He went on to explain, "I have never had anyone offer their dead husband's possessions to me. It feels really odd...and wrong."

I sat and pondered for a moment. I thought about how uncomfortable I would have felt in the same situation three years ago. How I may worry about accepting some one's beloved's possessions would ultimately upset them or that I may be terribly close to catching "dead".

But then I started to laugh, "Dave, I am sure when we are in our 90s and most of us have lost many of our loved ones and close friends, offering a pair of unused shoes or a wooden spatula that once belonged to a dead person will be nothing short of common place. This is just the beginning, my friend! And really, Dave, I do not think that you have to worry about Jeff needing them back."

But this evening as I washed dishes, I wondered again if it was wrong of me to ask a friend if he had use for something that had once belonged to Jeff? WAS it odd? Did I cross some taboo barrier? Was this a "widow's faux pas"? Am I still too young for my peers to "get" how ridiculous this attachment to a dead person's unused possessions is? Or is my way of thinking off-track?

I truly just wanted someone who could use them to have them....I suppose it will have to be a stranger who will use them. And that is okay too....they won't have to know that the shoes have "dead germs" on them. :)

Business of Change

Today marks 869 days since Maggie’s Angel Day. Being that specific implies more preoccupation than is truly representative of my mental state. But being that specific makes me think about how far I’ve come and how far I’ve still to go. (I’ll save you the math: 869 days is roughly 124 weeks, 29 months or just nearly 2 ½ years. From official diagnosis to her Angel Day, 850 days passed. So as of today, 20 more days have passed since her Angel Day than the length of her “official” illness.)

For nearly 2 ½ years I’ve let a bouquet of roses sit on the counter on her side of the bathroom. To me, those dried flowers were just part of the room. I can’t even say I really noticed them every day. Beside the vase that held the dried roses sat her driver’s license, placed there the day I stopped carrying it around in my pocket several hundred days ago. Several hundred days - it’s uncomfortable to call that out but it’s very real. It’s my life.

So, without fanfare or grand circumstance, I made a change. No lighting struck. No drums rolled. No sad music played. It was just me, the puppies and my staid emotions as I carried the dried bouquet of roses to the back of our my house. I grabbed the bunch by the stems, crunched them together as the brittle peddles disintegrated, and tossed them onto the compost pile. It was done.

How is it that I’ve been ok with a bouquet of roses that has been sitting in the same spot for years? My psychologist, the one I’ve seen weekly since Maggie became very ill, calls this state of inertia “business as usual.” In my professional life, I’ve never stood for business as usual. Yet, in my personal life, I had a bouquet of roses sitting on the counter in my bathroom for years – more than 850 days. From now on, business as usual is now the business of change.

What started in the bathroom has been spreading. A few days ago, the business of change overthrew a pile of crushed dreams in the corner of the kitchen that has gathered much dust. Stacks of receipts from closed bank accounts, letters from the court, change of relationship forms, and unused death certificates have lied where they fell after completing their last call of duty. Now, untouched for probably more than a year, these papers have become a pile of pins and needles that I occasionally ran my hand through but mostly avoided. As of today, that pile is gone and its contents appropriately sorted and filed in the filing cabinet under “Crap That Sucks.”

While I was meddling in that area of the kitchen, I took down five pictures of Maggie that I had taped up to the tile years ago. In some of the pictures, she was cuddling Nurse Jolie’s new-born daughter Anya making loving baby faces I’d never get to see as she held our own new-born children. Another picture was a favorite that she had given me to keep in my briefcase as I traveled. Her glowing smile reminded me of happier, more-innocent days. All those pictures are packed away now and that wall looks bare.

It’s an odd feeling, doing this. Yes, I feel sad but I also feel a sense of cleansing or of refreshing. I don’t feel like I’m betraying Maggie and that’s the best thing. I really thought I’d be struggling with that but that specific feeling is conspicuously absent and its absence is, well, welcome. In fact, I feel less like I’m putting away and more like I’m making room.

Heartbreak, Hot wings, and Hope

Here I am, one of nine men sitting on nine bar stools, all of us without wedding rings. The others look a little older than me but it’s an unfair comparison; in my mind’s eye I’m still 30, the age when I met my wife. But here we are, nonetheless, peers, or at least men of similar relationship status – lonely.

Every guy on every stool is sitting on a story, each probably just as sad. Some, no doubt, are worse than mine: cheating spouses, abusive ex-girlfriends, .... (hmmm… I seem to be all out of “worse.”) Others are here because they’ve never found love at all (which is definitely worse.) Regardless of the specifics, we are united on our stools as society’s misfits, the ones for whom the fairytale has failed. We missed our chance. So now we sit together in a crowd of nine, at a bar eating hot wings, alone. Camaraderie, I suppose, sad, wing-sauce flavored camaraderie.

It seems so unfair to me that I’m on this bar stool, with my partners in single life. I didn’t screw up and choose an incompatible mate. I didn’t not make her happy so she had some (albeit arguably shallow) reason to cheat. I didn’t not tell her I loved her every day. I didn’t fail to be a good husband and a good friend. I didn’t fail to support her in her dreams. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t abuse. I didn’t do anything wrong… other than fail keep her alive. Thus, my butt is stuck on this bar stool alongside my new friends eating hot wings in a sports bar wondering if I’ll ever be where I was again – in love and loving being there.

I feel like I should have some sad theme song playing, maybe with piano and saxophone, as I sit here on my stoop, lonely and a little pissed off (that my friends think I should be “over this” by now) and craving even the simplest of human touch. I can’t talk about how I feel to my friends because they don’t understand the depth of my loss. The very thing that strengthened the cement in my relationship with my sweet wife is the very same thing that scares people away now - I cared too much. Why is that a negative? Why can’t that be a badge of honor? Why do I have to go through all this 'being single' crap again? Why can’t there be a t-shirt that says “Hey, it is ok! I’m a great guy. A beautiful girl loved me and I loved her, too. Let’s talk.” Just something to break through all the bullshit. But no. I’m just some older guy with a sad story sitting on a bar stool at the bar with all the other single guys, eating hot wings.

Coming Friday (just days from now) I saddle up to a different bar. This one’s in California and is filled with other folks who understand what it means to not be “over this.” Every person there also speaks the language of death and loss and heartbreak. I’m hoping that a few might even understand and appreciate raw but appropriate dead spouse humor (Maggie and I can’t possibly be the only ones that find humor in this ridiculous tragedy.) I’m anxious about my trip but as a good friend of mine suggested “It’ll be good for you to be around people who have shared the same type of loss as you have.” I hope my friend is right. If she is, maybe for the first time in years, I won’t feel like such a stranger.

See you soon. I know we haven't met but to help you recognize me when you see me, I'll be the guy with the broken heart (and possibly some hot wing stains on my shirt.)