The day was dark and cold. Gloomy. My house, when I arrived home that day, was also dark. And empty.
No one was waiting for me as I stepped indoors from the garage. No Jon, in his office, sitting at a laptop, his back to me, slogging away at his thriller novel.
Nobody.
Jon has been gone nearly three years now. And on this dark and rainy day, he was still gone, his office chair empty.
When I spotted that chair. I was overtaken, once again, by — what? Grief? Sorrow? Anguish at the loss of Jon?
Or just plain loneliness?
Am I Grieving — Or Am I Just Lonely?
I was entitled to be in a good mood that day. I’d finished up a batch of pressing errands. I was home now. The evening hours were mine to enjoy. By all rights, my house should have felt like a clean, well-lighted place. Warm, dry, safe. But on this day, home felt like none of those things. It was too full of emptiness.
My memoir writing friend, also a widow, described a similar coming home to nothing. She’d been on a writing retreat and was now back at her house. “I walked in the door,” she said. “And he still wasn’t there.”
Three long years have passed since our husbands left the planet, but for my writer friend and me, the moment of departure is still palpable.
At times like this, I ask myself — am I grieving? Or am I just lonely?
The Many Parts of Grief
There are many parts to grief, I’ve noticed these past months — sadness, remorse, helplessness, the proximity of death, pity for the one whose life was so brutally wrested from them, and simple loneliness.
Loneliness. We are alone now. No one is here to see us or listen to us report on our quotidian doings. “Whew. I finally got those Christmas cards in the mail.” Or, “Dang. The drugstore ran out of covid tests.”
Home, once the place we felt most seen, is now the place we go to be invisible.
If Jon was not at his desk when I came home, he’d often be in the kitchen making dinner. Read about that at “Confessions of a So-So Wife: The Night I Forgot to Make Dinner.” Revisit the days of shopping for groceries during the pandemic at “We’re Pushing Eighty. Do We Stay Out of Supermarkets?”
Our city, up in Washington, is full of people living alone. We try to see as many of them as possible. It’s kinda rough, but manageable . . . I think.
Visits and invitations from friends is what has made the past three years possible for me. I am enjoying and appreciating friends more than ever.
another excellent essay. your last sentence hits hard.
Thank you.
Dear Barbara, The grief of the widow of a long and happy loving companionship is very specific: leaving one lonely for that one person, a loneliness that does not seem to diminish. I wrote a poem two years later honoring my husband entitled “Prison of Loneliness,” which I will send you. Kathleen
Hmmm. You are saying that, yes, I’m lonely for a particular person.