The Widowed Years
Life as you know it can change in an instant.
Remainder
Making Meaning
“Bob?” I called out to him, still in bed, slowly waking up on one of those rarest of occasions when all the kids were still asleep.
“Mmhmm,” he replied with a toothpaste-filled mouth from the ensuite bathroom.
“Is it just me, or do you think that we have a special marriage?”
“Mmhmmm.”
“No.” Groggy without my best of words yet available, I was painfully meandering through my thoughts. “I mean, we’re really lucky, you and I.”
“Mmhmmm.” He was really good at brushing.
“No, Bob, I mean-“ at this point I was sitting up, trying to shake the cobwebs out. “I mean, we have an exceptional marriage. Like we’re really lucky.”
“Mmmhmmm.” He tried to emphasize it in Toothpaste-ese, sensing my mounting frustration.
My brain, still not quite online, continued its search for precise language. “No, no. I mean… like, did you ever think that perhaps we were blessed with such a great marriage, and that maybe God is asking us to do something with it?”
Bob turned off the water. Wiping off his face with a towel, he peeked around the corner and gave me his warm smile. “Mmmmmmhmmmmm.”
Yup. I jumped out of bed and pounced a hug and kisses on my husband. I can honestly say that I was fortunate enough to wake up every day with a heart full of gratefulness to be married to my best friend.
That morning stands out in my memory. It was a particularly beautiful and tender way to greet the day during what felt a new chapter in our marriage. We were being led to discover how we could progress in our spiritual journey together and take things to a deeper level.
The painful part is that this conversation happened about 2 months before he died.
Two Shall Become One
A thousand cuts, a million steps, and countless wished-upon stars. Sometimes breathing, sometimes holding my breath, and most times just trying to catch it. All the stretching and burning, the pulling and throwing me back down, time and time and time again. Relentless.
I have earned every battle scar along this path to where I am today. I did not get here by choice, but through an astonished discovery of an inherent prowess I never realized I had. I am uncertain it could have been forged any other way.
I often find myself in awe of the shoots that grow off the cliffsides. I see the baby trees and ferns, filled with promise and mettle, determined to make use of the minuscule scraps of soot and silt available to them. Somehow, and not by any conscious effort of my own, that has been my widowed life. Life, I have discovered, simply wants to keep on living.
Zero
There’s nothing I can do to make Bob come back. His loss, and all it means for me, is a permanent alteration of the life that I now have. My grief will always remain, as it should; my late husband claimed a very large part of my heart. This conclusion is my acceptance.
If I allow myself to linger in the mire of grief, focusing only on the "never again," I am merely smearing my own lenses, obscuring the world's remaining beauty with the gritty gray of his ashes. To do so would mean Bob’s death claims two lives. That is neither healthy nor ethical.
Infinity
"The end of my life's going to be hard. And I can either be a self-pitying sh**head, or I could suck the marrow out of what's left of this amazing life. No more living in Why Me Land."
— Dr. Paul Rhodes (Harrison Ford), Shrinking, Season 3, Episode 1
In the scene, Paul is reflecting on his future and the progression of his Parkinson’s disease. After a season of grappling with his diagnosis and his estrangement from his family, he delivers this line as a declaration of his intent to stop living in "Why Me Land" and instead embrace the time he has left. Paul uses the classic Thoreauvian sentiment¹ to ground his own journey toward acceptance and resilience.
By carrying Bob’s legacy into the present and the future, the sum of his love can continue to grow in meaning. His goodness will still touch the lives of others. His integrity, his good-natured humor, and his focus on family represent the best of him. These qualities tint this alternate universe with succulent color, adding to the beauty that remains. Bob is not lost, and I will not be, as long as I bring his legacy along with me and my one wild and precious life.²
Footnotes
¹ Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854). The quote referenced is from Chapter 2: "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."
² Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day," from House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990).