What I Learned in My First Year as a Widow
Gratitude is how you get through grief.
“It’s been a year since my husband died.”
I say the words out loud for the first time. The house is silent. I look around for evidence that I’ve gotten the date right. Has anything changed?
I take a mental inventory.
During the past year, I’ve removed five pictures from from the walls. Moved three pieces of furniture. Given away clothes, toiletries, canned goods I can’t eat because of food intolerance or it’s watermelon pickle. Razors, lip balm, glasses, dentures, medication. I remember filling boxes and trash bags and loading them into the car. But the contents are blurred, as if I can only see them through tears.
If something bore weight or significance I held on to it. Bookend pairs, for instance: cut-open geodes; Chinese warriors; replicas of the Chicago Public Library lions, both right-facing but I developed a fondness for them and no one noticed.
The dishwasher doesn’t fill up as quickly as before. But I’m careful to run it before I’m down to a single clean fork in the kitchen drawer. Forks are the indicator species among flatware: once you’ve dirtied them all, you can’t set a table for one without a glaringly mismatched fork. That’s when widowhood becomes real.
Besides toilet paper, only one grocery item is essential. After a couple of panicked late-night searches for a last can of Mariner’s Choice, I learned to buy 24-packs of Seafood Platter at Petco. Paying two dollars for a single can of Friskies at Speedy Mart is just too sad.
I’ve learned to watch where I step. Mini’s favorite prey animal, a stuffed panda, could be anywhere. Slightly larger than a baseball, it has painted-on anime eyes, tiny flaps of black fleece representing arms and legs, and a peculiar appeal that all of the toy mice in her basket lack. She catches it many times a day and drops it in my path, yowling with pleasure and pride. I, Mini, am the breadwinner, I imagine her saying. I’ve caught eight billion pandas today. They only look the same.
Mini shares my bed. She nips my shoulder at ungodly hours to inform me that she’s caught many, many stuffed pandas, and is famished. How could I have slept through her announcements? If the windows were open, she’d wake the neighbors. I hope they don’t think I’m torturing her. She sounds like she’s in operatic heat.
“Mini,” I say, “you’re twenty-one years old. Arthritic. Spayed. You can’t have a boyfriend. We’ve talked about this.”
She doesn’t turn around. I’m talking to the woodwork, the dishes in the china closet, the lamp. Her hearing — what’s left of it — is tuned to the frequency of stuffed pandas.
On Monday afternoons, my friend Pam and I go for walks. Sometimes there’s a destination: the library, post office, Whole Foods. But more than anything, we talk. She’s good at drawing me out. We met at the hospice where my husband lived for five weeks, before lung cancer took him. In August, at a National Night Out party, we discovered that our homes are two blocks from each other.
On Friday, the anniversary day, she brings me a dozen red roses. I don’t know if my husband ever brought me red roses. He may have. But you can’t remember everything that happened during forty-three years of marriage. Events eclipse each other; years collapse like telescopes. You can’t open them fully after a while. The memories won’t come into focus.
I begin to sob. She hugs me gently. I’m ashamed to say I’m losing it. I’m losing him.
“I know how it is,” she says. It’s true; she’s been widowed twice. “It gets better. It gets” — she pauses — “different.”
After she leaves, I think Better? Different? It sounds like a Venn diagram, or a two-ingredient recipe with no instructions.
My sister-in-law calls from Salt Lake City. We talk or text regularly. Recently, she’s taken to questioning me about what social workers and health care professionals call ADLs, or Activities of Daily Living. Or is it Life? There’s a semantic difference that I haven’t fully parsed.
“So,” she says brightly, “have you brushed your teeth today?”
“Yes. Of course.” I’m lying. My mouth feels gummy. I’m dehydrated.
“Oh good. Brushing’s important. And food. What’s in the fridge? And the cupboards?”
“I’ll check.”
I set the phone down, on speaker. She called just as I was assembling the ingredients for a Negroni. Gin, amaro, and because I don’t have sweet vermouth I’m adding triple sec. That’s what my husband did when we were out of sweet vermouth. It’s hard to disguise the sound of ice, so I put the tray back in the freezer.
“Uh, crackers. Multigrain.”
“Crackers are good. Do you have cheese? Peanut butter?”
“I have peanut butter. Some.” The strawberries I bought the last time I shopped have gone bad. So soon? I realize it’s been ten days.
“Wonderful. What else?”
“Ice cream.”
I’m being honest with her now, and with myself. Old woman with a cat. Wearing a bathrobe most of the day, exhausted, fretting over my underwear when no one sees it but me.
“Okay. Here’s what you’re having for dinner. Crackers. Peanut butter. Ice cream. In whatever combination you choose. A glass of water. And make sure you brush your teeth.”
I do as she says. Peanut butter actually does make a good topping for ice cream. And after we hang up, I add plenty of ice to my Negroni.
I call my son.
“Hey, Mom.” I hear fatigue, and the ragged outline of his dad’s voice.
“How are things?” I say.
“Oh, you know.” Yes. Yes, I know.
I call my daughter.
“Hi Mom. How are you?” I hear sorrow and self-blame under a thin wash of false cheer. I wonder if this is the shadow of my voice. This year has been hard for her in more ways than I can understand.
“Have you brushed your teeth today? Do you have food in the house?”
“Yes. And yes.” She laughs. A lifting of her mood. Is she lying? I want to protect her; she wants to protect me.
“Can I bring you something?” I make a list in my head: soup, juice, Gatorade. Things she can keep down, with her migraines. Coffee.
“Mom. I’m fine.”
There is only so much I can do.
I work on this post all afternoon on Saturday. A distraction. A good one. At around eight p.m. I feel lighter. Something brushes my shoulder.
I go downstairs to the kitchen. I do have food; It’s just not pre-assembled in the freezer. I get out fettuccini, bacon, eggs. Enough Parmigiano Reggiano to grate a full cup. I make pasta carbonara, using enough pots and pans and to cover every counter. I open a bottle of pinot noir, and set a placemat with the nice plates and flatware. I choose one of his Sonos playlists, a cheerful one, and sit down.
“Ha.” I toast the air. “My carbonara’s better than yours.”
I’d moved his foot-tall bronzed statue of an owl onto a plant stand in the dining room. Is he glaring at me, through its fierce eyes?
I sit down to finish this post. Mini has left a stuffed panda on the floor under my desk. She’s lying on a shelf by the window, absorbing the sun.
Twenty-one in feline years is more than a hundred in human years. I would not have made it to this day without her. I don’t know how much more time we have together. I close my laptop and go to the window. Putting my cheek against her thick and lovely fur, I feel different. Better. Grateful.
The best thing I’ve done since my husband died, that brings me joy, pride, a feeling of accomplishment and — most importantly — connection and community, is to start this Substack.
That means you, my dear readers. You are Writer, interrupted. I love you all. You are the magic.
Scrolling through Notes last week, I was startled to see my name above a poem. I didn’t recall having written it. Four lines: Find a way/above the/mountain/and reach out.
How beautiful is that? But I didn’t write it. Except, I sort of did. But not with such clarity and grace. The quoted text is an excerpt from my recent post, “On Not Loving a Wall.” You can read that essay here.
found the essence of what I was trying to say. He cut through the clutter of my text with a sharp pair of shears. Hidden in the vines and hosta of that paragraph — of the entire essay, in fact — are ten words that tell you everything you need to know to live in this world.Go to Jamal’s site,
. You will find out why I just declared him the Found-Poet laureate of Substack. And I’m delighted to announce that he has adopted me as his Auntie.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I love these socks!
When I wrote Thirteen Ways of Looking at Socks, one of my readers,
, offered to knit a pair of socks and send them to me, in exchange for a poem detailing a fourteenth way of looking at socks. I wrote three of them. I’ll share this one. Who knows, the others may show up in the wash. Maybe they’ll even match.A Fourteenth Way of Looking at Socks
When Mom waxed the floor, we thought she did it only
For us. On her knees with a can of paste, rubbing it in circles
We had to wait for what felt like hours until her nod.
We took off. Racing, sliding, slipping
In our wool socks through the house
From kitchen window to hall closet, sailing
Past stove and counter, spinning under the table, skidding
To the back door that might have stopped us but
Did not: we’d unhooked it to tumble onto the stoop.
Our socks were magic carpets. We flew over dishes in the sink,
Wet laundry, burnt toast. Toys attacked, but we fought them off.
As they banged into walls and cupboards, we shouted Enemy down!
We didn’t see the worn linoleum
Of our mother’s face, never thought she needed time
To just sit. We did not know what she’d knitted into
Those wool socks: the gift of flight.
I was honored, some weeks ago, to be interviewed by a delightful young woman named
, who writes an inspiring Substack, . You can read that interview here. I’ll be printing my interview with her, in installments, along with a few of her aphorisms. In the meantime, some biographical details:At the age of nineteen and still in university, she has already created her own software company. A native of India, she writes about both the beauty of her country and the economic disparities. She has danced for seventeen years, including professionally. Her most important message:
Smile. Read. Sleep. Repeat!
You know. Like my sister-in-law keeps nagging me to do. The things that keep you alive.
Poignant is your writing and there is an honesty, which is what marks all good writing. You have Mini the hunter, who is loyal. I view all animal companions as loyal.
I do brush my teeth, even when I am down. Or tired. I can hear the voice of my dental hygienist. And I always have peanut butter in the cupboard. I am still married after so many years, but losses come in different forms.
But there is a wonderful Substack community who understands and appreciates.
Dear Mary,
I cannot not love your writing, however, gratitude and I are on the rocks and currently in virtual couples therapy somewhere in my brain.
I've only just skimmed this piece because reading it in detail has proven too painful based on to the subject matter - my being only about 9 months out myself. With just that skimming though, there is such brilliance, beauty, heart, truth, vulnerability...love. And I mentally pin all of the words until some time when I feel a bit stronger. Then, when I read this you'll keep me company, with your bravery and experience - and gratitude. And I feel like somehow - that future me - will also keep you company, as you write this, since, incredibly, I feel like things work that way.
Meanwhile, I hope to say that gratitude will get me through this first year. Since I haven't gotten through it quite yet, I don't know what that will be...?
Lately I've developed a close relationships with some feelings that I'm not so used to indulging - but we can't just pick and choose which emotions to be in denial of, now can we?
Hmmm, sounds like something else to be angry about.
Thank for writing this Mary - and for sharing it with all of us. I look forward to reading it in greater detail soon...ish.
(Note to self: Maybe I need to get a fluffy pet?)