6 things I’ve learned since my husband died

Three weeks ago, I learned that a friend’s brother-in-law had been admitted to hospice after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. I burst into tears. Her simple statement caused my stomach to drop and my face to crumple. I didn’t want to feel all I felt.

It’s been 13 months and 11 days since my husband, Robert, passed away. I started this update with the paragraph above and then stopped myself, “Wait. This is not the entire story of my life today.” Yes, I can cry at the drop of a hat when sad things land in my periphery. This much is true. 

My new life

But this is not the sum of who I am. I am a happy, joyful being, who has come through the worst of grief. Arriving on the other side, I live with the soft touch of heartbreak and a bright sense of belonging. I am still on this journey with its cracks and fissures, its soaring grace and lightness of wonder.

My life is good. I am retired and involved in volunteer activities I enjoy that make a difference in the world. My home has heat and clean, running water. (I can shower in hot water after a walk in the rain!) I have food to eat. 

My children have grown into warm, competent adults with partners I love and cherish. Lincoln and Carson, my grandsons, live nearby. I am extraordinarily privileged to watch them grow and to guide them in some small measure. I am blessed to be a witness to their unfolding.

My relationship with Will has blossomed into a kind, loving, romantic partnership; a gift I never expected in my third act after experiencing so much sorrow. 

I live in a time of excess riches and endless possibilities in comfort enjoyed by just a small fraction of humans on the planet. This is truly unbelievable.

I am nearly faint with gratitude for the good things in my life. 

And yet, I can still be rocked to my core by the tragedy facing a friend. I am fully engaged in living again.

#1: We cannot separate happiness from grief. We experience the fullness of profound joy because we have grieved. 

What else have I learned, how else have I changed in the past year?

#2: The hard edges of my blistering judgments have been worn smooth.

When I was growing up, good table manners and proper etiquette mattered. Etiquette (or lack thereof) was deemed a reliable measure of education and refinement. 

Robert was disinterested in propriety. He never held his silverware “correctly.” He often left his elbows on the table during dinner and his napkin next to his plate rather than on his lap. This irritated and sometimes embarrassed me. 

Will didn’t learn to hold his fork in a standard American dining style either. And guess what? I don’t care. He is a good, kind, thoughtful man. He grew up in an Italian-American family in Southern California, different than my steeped-in-respectability Southern clan. What judgment could be allowed me? 

By an unfathomable miracle, Will and I are blessed to journey through this life together in our final years. That is enough.

Petty judgments obfuscate the love we hold for one another.

#3: I don’t need to be right about trivialities…or much at all.

Will it improve the quality of anyone’s life if I’m correct about where the Golden State Warriors rest in the Western Conference standings?

Does anyone but me care about the difference between “hone in” and “home in”? Is there ever any confusion about what is meant when one phrase or the other is used?

Does it matter that I can correct my friend on the Medicare Part B rates table? 

I’ve stopped being so argumentative about “facts.” Righteousness doesn’t look good on anyone.

#4: People make the home. Without them, we have only buildings.

Throughout our marriage, Robert and I worked to maintain and improve our living situation. We bought a small, old house and turned it into a home. 

We replaced the foundation, the windows, and the roof. The bathrooms, the kitchen, and the bedrooms were all remodeled. When the opportunity arose, we built an ADU (accessory dwelling unit/granny flat) so that one day our daughter and her family might live in the house while we transitioned to the cottage. 

We planted more trees than is reasonable on our small lot and flowers and berms of succulents. We inadvertently invited gophers to the party and they came reliably year after year. These solitary rodents became our arch-enemies, forever living in the cross-hairs of one or another eradication scheme. 

All of this was undertaken with love for our family. All we did, we did for each other. 

Our daughter and her husband have a house on the other side of town. Now I maintain my house because I have to live somewhere, not out of love or pride of ownership. The house is no longer a home for our brood but an “asset” in my portfolio.

I hope our son will one day return to the house with his lovely partner and they will breathe love and life into the property again, but for now, even though it is a very nice house, it is a husk of what it could be.

A house has value as shelter. A home envelopes and holds our loved ones near. Do not misunderstand the purpose of the house. Do not let it take more time than you have to give. Yes, you could mow the lawn this week or you could take your daughter bike riding because she is super excited having just learned how. The house will wait. This moment at home will not.

#5: Say “Yes!” more often.

See above. When you have the chance to teach your daughter the contours of her neighborhood on a bike, under her own power, do it!

When you are offered a job doing exactly what you’ve always imagined doing, quit the easy boredom and secure paycheck of your current position and leap. You will be okay. You have landed on your reluctant cat’s feet many times before. You’ll do it again. This is your journey. Go!

When you are invited to visit a friend in NYC who is effusive about her new job at a fresh publishing house and her tiny studio in Park Slope, Brooklyn, go! (You can still sleep on the floor for a few nights.)

Without fully grasping the importance of my decision, I chose to keep living before Robert passed away. I sought companionship before he died. The loneliness of an empty nest, my earlier-than-planned retirement, and the loss of Robert to dementia flattened me. I needed to interact again. 

I met Will online and our time together was easy from the start. Our conversations were a cherished salve to my crushing sadness. Our companionable silence was a surprise, unexpected, but welcome.

I could have walked away from my budding relationship with Will out of deference to my dear husband and our lost connection. But I did not. I said “Yes” and I am grateful for Will’s presence in my life every day.

(And say “Yes!” to sex with the one you love while all your parts still work. Your body has a shelf life. Use it because you will lose it one day.)

#6: Our time here is brief.

Mortality is ever-present for me now. Mine, Will’s, my parents’, my siblings’, even my children’s. Tragedy could visit us at any moment. Life is much shorter and far more tenuous than I understood before Robert left us. 

Today I live a life bifurcated by a full-throated commitment to seizing the day and a lurking fear that we are not quite safe at any given moment. Of course, life is uncertain. In the end, we control how we behave and to a lesser extent, how we feel. This is the totality of our dominion. Everything else is outside our purview. 

Do what matters.

Several years ago, my dear, sweet mother confessed that she cries almost every day. 

With a tick of alarm and a bloom of sadness, I asked, “Oh, no! Why, Mama?”

“Because life is so beautiful and it is so very short.”

I wish I had understood this much earlier. 

Embrace it all.