He Saw Me
“I’m so afraid that I’m going to mess this up,” she cried, smearing her tears onto her sweatshirt. My half-cooled mocha had already kicked in - her fault for picking the early session.
“Yes,” I tenderly yet matter-of-factly replied. “You will.”
The silent air thickened between us while she blew her nose and added another crinkled white wad of tissue to the collection on the couch. She didn’t need my platitudes or encouragement that morning.
“It’s okay. All of us do. All. Of. Us.”
So many of us with our hearts in the right spot, child-centered, noble-goaled - we all get it wrong along the twists and turns that life throws at us. Regrets? Oh, yeah. Do-overs? Where’s the time portal?
I am privileged to have the opportunity to sit with the old and the young and witness how the arc of time changes narratives. And the older voices chant the same sage wisdom: Self-compassion.
The extra stinky part of parenting children while you’re widowed or widowered after a traumatic loss is the sheer volume of what you’re left with.
“I firmly believe that all parents - single, coupled, solo - for the most part, try our best at any given moment in time. For whatever reason, we will fumble at times. Maybe we don’t always have 100% to give. Or we’re learning and still becoming better versions of ourselves…”
I could tell by her breathing that I hadn’t yet sunk the hook in deep enough to my satisfaction. I had to let her take the bait out farther.
“We don’t want to fumble, but we do. All of us are human, as we are designed to be.” Still not feeling it, I switched positions in my chair. She drew another white wiper.
“The reality of young widowhood is that we’re set up for failure.”
She bit.
“I’m not showing up as the mother I want to be.” Her voice quavered with self-imposed, harsh judgment. At the end of each day, the reflection she saw was a woman failing. I started to reel her in.
“Look at my bookcase.” I gestured to the dusty shelves that hold over 30 years of psycho-schtuff. “If I were over there and that entire bookcase fell on me, I’d be hurt. Maybe a crushed rib. Definitely cuts, right?”
She nodded.
“But imagine if I somehow kept on going as if nothing had happened. 'So, how are you doing? Tell me more?' And so on. What if I still gave you all the empathy I typically do and remained very present with you in that moment? Completely focused on you. Not skipping a beat, even with all these books and the heavy bookcase piled on top of me.”
I looked at the shelves and realized that, actually, it was plausible I’d continue on because I’m stoic and eccentric enough that I could potentially pull it off just to prove a point. The enormity of the scenario wasn’t quite parallel. It had to be more, so I leaned into hyperbole.
“Now, imagine that the roof caved in. The bricks, the ceiling tiles, all of it. It comes down out of nowhere. All around me. On top of me. Hits me right in the face. Hundreds of pounds of debris on my back, my legs, my arms…”
I secretly prayed that the old office building would stay intact, at least for the remaining 17 minutes of our session.
“Now. Do you expect me to conduct a therapy session, give you my absolute best, and knock it out of the ballpark with insight and compassion, placing you in the center of my attention? Which is exactly where I want you to be? Could I?”
“But even though I genuinely care about you and have the academic aptitude, in that moment, I am incapacitated. Regardless of what we both want, I could not be what you need. Although my heart wants to give it to you, and although at some point I may be able to recover—in that exact moment, with the rubble all around me, I cannot be what you need.”
She silently cried.
“Does this make me a bad therapist? A failure?”
“No.”
“Not only have you lost your husband, but it was also a traumatic loss. Unexpected. And you have been left with kids. And you have an entirely new financial situation.” I motioned with my hands as if the rubble continued to cascade downward.
“And you’re fulfilling all the household duties of two parents simultaneously, by yourself. And your future plans have blown up. And you're carrying the shadow losses of what the kids will never have with their father. And… and… and…”
I paused. Collectively, we felt the structural weight of her plight.
“I see you. This is the reality of solo widowed parenting. It is an absolutely impossible task. Yet you expect yourself, with all this debris pinning you down to still show up as the always-engaged, ever-present, scratch-cook, immaculate-house, peppy-at-the-PTA mom?
“You are going to mess up. You are going to run out of energy and be impatient. There will be times you spontaneously cry or come completely unglued. You’ll cry at 7:00 p.m., knowing you have hours yet to go until the last kid falls asleep. That’s just how it goes.
“And you are Superwoman.”
More tears…
“Find someone who sees you. You need a witness on the outside who tells you that you’re doing a good job.”
She enumerated the few people who truly saw her, and my heart felt the welcoming tug of the life rafts.
“And,” I held up a pretend mirror, “you need to start giving yourself support, the acknowledgment that you’ve been handed the impossible task of widowed parenting. You need to see yourself.”
He Saw Me
In the early evening hours of a mild California spring, my late husband, Bob, and I were sitting on the back porch, watching the girls burn off the last of their energy for the day. There was a tricycle chase afoot involving bubbles, squeals, and wild laughter. Our daughters were in the vicinity of 1.5, 3, 5, and 8 years old.
“It would give me great pleasure,” he said slowly as he slid his arm across my back, “if you did something for me.”
It was uncommon for Bob to ask me for anything major, so his puckish plea piqued my curiosity. He tenderly pulled me into his side and I nestled my head into his chest, his other arm surrounding me in a seated, sideways hug.
“It would make me very happy if you would treat yourself on a regular basis to get your nails done. Mani-pedis.”
As both of us came from families who grew up on the opposite side of the rich tracks, that felt entirely unnecessary and decadent. “Bob-”
Gently, he placed his fingers on my lips to shush me. That was a first. Taken aback, I looked him straight in the eyes. He smiled widely, and in an almost-fatherly tone said, “It would make me so happy to love you that way.”
Coming from a practical Pennsylvania lifestyle, I wasn’t used to the California norm of manis and pedis and all the trimmings. It felt awkward, indulgent, and completely non-essential. Sassily, I interrupted in a muffled attempt: “Buhh Bawhhh - ”
His big fingers were larger than my protest.
“Gera.”
I acquiesced and shut up.
Bob brought me in closer and spoke softly but firmly, insisting on his way. “It makes me feel good that I can provide comfort for you beyond us just surviving.”
For someone who grew up in poverty, being able to afford non-essential comforts for his wife and family was a major milestone accomplishment. Bob saw how hard his mother had worked to raise her family, sacrificing so much for them. He saw how hard I was working to take care of the kids and the house. Constantly in motion, life required me to sprint.
“I want you to take some time for yourself and get your nails done. Would you do that for me, please?” Oh, I melted into that man!
Prior to that moment, I cannot recall anyone in my life giving me such explicit permission to stand down, honoring me in a way that allowed me to just receive. It was awkward in a really, really nice way. I felt deeply taken care of. I felt seen.
WWBWMTD? (What Would Bob Want Me To Do?)
We’re coming up on 16 years of separation, Bob and I. So much has transpired in the time he’s been gone. Somehow the girls all made it through high school, launched, and are learning to #adult. As other empty nesters do, I look at this older woman in the mirror who’s on the other side of that accomplishment, and she looks very different to me. These wrinkly hands with early evidence of gnarly-to-be? They must be mine. Truly, they’ve served us well.
One of the hardest aspects of young widowhood is that you lack a witness-partner who sees you. There’s no one around who recognizes and acknowledges the sheer extent of the effort, heart, and metabolic energy required for the solo parent gig.
To add to that, you carry the braided layers of financial fears, double-duty parenting, and learning how to do every single skill they used to handle… all while moving. All while having an audience 80% of the time you go to the bathroom (even when they’re older, they never knock and absolutely have to talk to you at that exact micro-moment when you just need to do your business).
All of this necessary busyness must be managed while grieving and trying to come to terms with the horrific trauma beyond the loss. It is the whole entire building that has crashed down - way beyond a single psycho-stuffed bookshelf! And it is lying squarely on your back.
There are times when I walk past two-parent homes and look longingly at the perfectly edged grass (I’m still afraid of the weed whacker). I envy the cars that are younger than mine, which is most of them (I drive a 22-year-old truck that is mercifully still chugging along). On my harsh days, I self-flagellate and wonder when I am ever going to get my act together. No matter how hard I’ve worked, ever-exhausted, I simply have never been able to keep up.
The Makers of Mess don’t stop contributing. The Weeds of Washington relentlessly return. The Green Grass grows all around, all around. Where are they hiding, all the naughty gnomes responsible for filling up these laundry hampers? “Perfect” left town a long time ago. But it sure would feel nice on any given day to feel just a little bit closer to “caught up.”
It’s not that I’ve given up trying. I haven’t stopped. I don’t stop. I’ve just come to terms with the phrase, “It’s Better Than If I Hadn’t Done Anything At All.”
And I think that was Bob’s exact point. The work is never-ending, but neither is my love for my family.
Bob wanted to acknowledge my hard work and force me to slow down for what? Two hours a month? Three? To sit down, catch my breath, and allow myself to receive. To allow myself to honor the effort that couldn’t be measured in wiped-down baseboards or immaculate bathrooms. Bob saw me.
And after he left, I had to learn how to pick up his slack, part of which has meant learning how to see myself, too.
Doing It All For My Baby
I don’t know if Bob can see me from Heaven. I’d love for him to be able to watch our girls grow and mature into the amazing women they are becoming. Yet, if he had a window into our lives, would he see the struggles, too? If there’s no sorrow in Heaven, I’m not quite sure how that mechanics would work. Nonetheless, on the off chance he can… I talk to him sometimes.
I fill him in, just in case he’s running around up there, playing with our rainbow-bridged dogs, chatting it up with our parents, or watching over our little ones whom I never had a chance to meet. I’m sure he keeps himself quite occupied.
Bob was much wiser than me. I miss his steerage and his perspectives. Selfishly (humanly?), I yearn to be seen. I continue Mommy Salmon-ing in this new empty-nest era, and sometimes I feel like I’m floundering (sorry, had to). The work has changed somewhat, but it hasn’t stopped, and I am getting older. Bob was the engineer, so maybe he has some structural insights.
I find solace in our too-long-distance relationship. I would like to think that if he could talk to me, Bob would appreciate and acknowledge what I’m doing with the house, the kids, and the business. Bob once told me that he admired me, which hit a tender bullseye in my heart. When I come up for a much-needed breath of air in my more tired moments - those times after I’ve pushed myself to my utmost - I try to see my life through Bob’s eyes because my own vision is myopically skewed. How cumbersome this all feels. I, too, sometimes get a whiff of that "I'm failing" distortion.
When I feel the weight of it all, I close my weary eyes and imagine Bob’s bigger-than-mine fingers gently sealing themselves across my protesting lips. He tells me to stand down for a moment. It is an exercise in self-discipline that I force myself to complete, but like a good wifey, I comply.
I slow down.
I put on the shield of my wedding band, slip on a simple house dress and accompanying flips, and hoist myself up into the F-150. Casually, I leave our children’s home that he’s never seen and pass between the cathedral of trees that he’s never witnessed, driving the California truck he left behind, steering myself toward the fancy etched-glass doors with his approval.
To the uninformed eye, perhaps I look like a common, pampered housewife. But if they could see me on the inside, I’m all astir with emotion. No one knows how difficult it is for me to sit in that chair and what that manicure-pedicure really means to me. Transparently, I never get to the point where I fully relax.
The soft, warm bubbles swirl around my tired toes as I stretch, flex, release. Hot, moist towels remind me that I have a body, grounding me. I try to be present. "I am in a salon. These are my feet." The lilac wax is almost too hot, but I love it because in that moment, I feel alive. Succulently alive.
Then, just as I’m starting to stand down, my anxious throat chokes with a grief sob. I want to erupt. My heart pounds loudly in my chest. Can they – should they? - see my pain? I fly out of the chair, waxy and dripping and blurt out, “I’ve been a solo widow for 15 years, and I’ve raised my girls, and I am bone-weary, long-suffering tired! And my husband used to spoil me with mani-pedis, so this isn’t me being vain, and I don’t deserve this, and -”
But I am a swan. And all they see is what’s on top of the water. Inhaling slowly, I repeat a mantra to myself: "Receive…. Receive….. Gera. It’s ok. Job well done. Receive…." I guess I’m still working through the layers of meaning in this self-indulgence. Through the ever-layers of my grief.
Afterwards, when I park in the driveway back at the home he’s never set foot in - the one next to the forest, the one next to the deer - I take a private moment to reconnect with my late husband as I listen to the maples rustling in the breeze.
“Thank you, Bob. Thank you for seeing me. I’m really trying, Bob.”
May 20, 2026