Widowed: Shouldn’t I Be Over It by Now?

It’s been nearly two and a half years that I’ve been widowed. Shouldn’t I be over it by now?

I should be. Maybe. But I’m not. I weep for Jon still, every day. And sometimes during the night.

You’d think the deepest regions of my psyche would have gotten the message by now. He’s gone. Get used to it. Get real. Tears aren’t going to bring him back today any more than they brought him back on the night you got that phone call.

Yet I continue to harbor an inexplicable, magical sense that if I cry, if I let loose with my sadness and loss, if I give in to it full-on, then the whole dreadful pageant will reverse itself, and Jon won’t be dead any more.

Widowed: Shouldn’t I Be Over It by Now?

When my father and then, two decades later, my mother died, I wept. I felt the sorrow. I still feel the sadness. But mostly I feel glad that I had my father and my mother. Their memory shores me up. It doesn’t horrify me.

With Jon, it’s different. Something is wrong. Something is amiss. The universe has tilted and it hasn’t been able to right itself.

It’s true that the grief at twenty-eight months is not the same as it was at one week or one month or even one year. What I feel now is less of the horror I felt at the now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t of Jon’s sudden death.

It feels more like a missing limb. There’s a blank spot where Jon is supposed to be. I’m attached to something that isn’t there.

Where’s Jon?

It’s time for dinner. Why isn’t Jon calling me from the kitchen to tell me dinner is ready?

I’m just back from the audiologist. I’ve lost some hearing in the higher registers. Why isn’t Jon here to take in the news?

Where is Jon, anyway? He’s got to be somewhere. If he’s not here, he must be somewhere. How else can it be?

Something is askew.

More about Lake Michigan at “On the Shores of Lake Michigan — Eagle Top, a Wild Place Tamed.”  More about Jon at “Who Will Look After Me Now that Jon Is Gone?”