Widowed: I Got Caught in the Act of Crying for My Husband

I was crying.

And I was making a lot of noise doing it.

Usually these days, twenty-two months into widowhood, I cry for for my husband quietly. And usually there’s no one with me in the house, in the car, or on the trail to hear it.

But sometimes I get caught up in a noisy, protracted weep. I’m alone, something reminds me of Jon and his radical not-there-ness, and I cry out for him.  I rail against the forces that took him from me. I demand to know where he is.

On this day, I had just come home from doing errands, and as usual, the first thing that came into view as I entered the house was Jon’s office. Normally, late on a Wednesday afternoon like this one, Jon would be at his laptop working on his thriller, or paying bills, or on the phone talking with his brother.

Jon’s Office, but No Jon

But today, Jon’s desk and his threadbare, past-its-prime office chair were unoccupied. They gazed at me from across the room where, of course, Jon was not.

I did what I often do. I gave in to one of those long and noisy weeps. I sat down on Jon’s old chair, plopped my arms and face on his desk, and cried out for him.

Like I said, this was not quiet sob or two. This was noisy. Wails and cries and protests filled our empty, three-story house.

The tears went on and on, two minutes, three minutes, five, until I heard a crashing noise coming from — where? The front yard? The neighbor’s house? The kitchen? The laundry?

I went downstairs to investigate

More thumping and crashing.

The noise was coming from inside the house.

Things That Go Bump

For reasons I can’t explain. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t suspect an intruder. I was mostly curious — what was that crashing and thumping? Had I left something in the dryer? The dishwasher?

I called out, “Who’s there?”

A head popped out from behind a door.

It was my housecleaner.

Oh, my gosh. My housecleaner is still in the house and here I am crying up a storm, no holds barred.

“You’re still here?” I said.

“Yes!”

“I thought you were gone.”

“No.”

The housecleaner had arrived a couple hours earlier, before I’d headed out to do errands. I thought she’d be long gone by now and that I could be alone in my noisy grief. But there she was. She had witnessed, loud and clear, the shameless goings on — for how many minutes? — up in Jon’s office.

This was embarrassing. For me. For her. For her cleaning crew.

Widowed: I Got Caught in the Act of Crying for My Husband

My husband has died. That means, according to my understanding of the universe and what can befall anyone who shows up in it, it’s OK to cry. It’s OK to cry long, loud and a lot.

All the widows I know do a lot of crying. (And there are quite a few widows in my life these days. I like my widow friends. More about that on another day.) Crying is OK, we tell each other. No, it’s more than OK. Crying is a necessity. There’s no way to survive this widowed state without tears, frequent and, when necessary, noisy.

But most of us keep our tears to ourselves. There are many reasons for this. Here are a few of mine:

First, this is a solitary life I’m leading, so when I am with other people, I want to spend it looking outward at them, enjoying their company while I have it.

Yes to a Life Without Jon

And — I do have a life without Jon. It’s not all bad. It holds my attention. I don’t succumb to tears when I’m at the plant nursery, asking about the California fuchsias, or in the canyon photographing the shy black cottonwoods holding on for dear life down there, or on the trail with my hiking friend, talking, talking, talking.

Also, my tears for Jon are private. They’re personal. They’re between me and Jon. Just the two of us. It’s me complaining to Jon for leaving me. It’s me imploring him to undo this death thing, to find a work-around and come back from wherever it was he went. It’s me wishing I could make things better for him, to ease the sting of death, to comfort him through the agony of death. If that’s what death is, agony. (Is it?)

And so, there was my housecleaner the other day, dropping things and thumping things in the hopes, I’m pretty sure, that some well placed noise would alert me to her presence and to the fact that she and her crew could hear the ruckus going on up in Jon’s office.

What do I do now?

The Elephant in the Room

I had two choices. I could go back upstairs, pretend nothing had happened, and shout a brave and cheery “Merry Christmas” from Jon’s office when the cleaning crew finally got around to leaving.

Or I could double down on the embarrassment.

I decided to double down. I walked toward my housecleaner, leaned against the kitchen door jamb, and sobbed. “I miss Jon.”

She put a hand on my shoulder.

“Jon was a good person,” she said softly.

I believed her. She and her crew had been cleaning our house for years. She knew Jon.

When I looked up, I saw eyes filled with tears and a face contorted with compassion for me and grief for Jon — for Jon, who was not in his office where he’d always been when she comes to clean.

Does this mean that, twenty-two months in, other people are still crying for Jon. Quietly and in private?

What was Jon like? I can’t tell you. I don’t have the words. More about that at, “How to Describe My Late Husband? I Can’t Find the Words.”   For thoughts on whether to be happy or not happy, go to “Religion Scholar Huston Smith at 93 — Be Happy!”