Widowed: I’ve Been Writing a Memoir in Essays All This Time

It’s been three and a half years since Jon died, and I’ve had a lot to say on these pages about that sorrow.

Just before his death, I had been thinking about cutting back on the weekly posts I was writing for this website. The deadlines had become onerous, the posts were taking time away from my “real” writing, and I had run out of things to say that felt worth taking up my readers’ time.

Some Words From My Social Media Guru

But a few weeks after Jon’s death, a conversation with my social media guru, Cheryl McLaughlin, convinced me to keep on going with the posts.

Write about your life without Jon, she said. Let your posts — your writing — go in that direction.

I took Cheryl’s advice and I committed to posting here once a week on deadline, without fail, no excuses.

The regimen did wonders for my writing process. Grief was — is — not easy to write about. The heart does not want to go there. It wanders off to more comfortable topics: the yellowjackets burrowing in the front yard. The prickly thistle growing out back. Posting here — and being read here — has kept me honest and on task.

Starting With Jon’s Obituary

The first post about Jon went up on February 27, 2021. It was his obituary.

Others followed, with titles like:

“My Husband Passed Away and Took the Encyclopedia With Him”

“Her Stolen Car Came Back. My Husband Didn’t”

“Widowed. Or How to Wrestle a Christmas Tree Into Its Stand Without Calling a Neighbor for Help.”

“Marriage Mistakes. If I Could Have a Do-Over, Would I?”

Widowed: I’ve Been Writing a Memoir in Essays

Whether I felt like it or not, the writing got done. And now, three-plus years later, the essays have piled up, dozens of them. Together, they could — with some heavy-duty editing — pass for a book. I’m thinking, a memoir in essays.

A memoir in essays — it’s a genre several writers I admire are experimenting with. People like Maggie O’Farrell, Maggie Smith, Abigail Thomas and Maggie Nelson.

More about those writers and their books on another day. Stay tuned.