It was my birthday, and I was turning 39. Shawn had been gone for about six weeks at that point and honestly, I was still mostly in shock. I hadn’t yet hit rock bottom (though I believed I already had) and I was hoping that the blog might be a way for me to start to heal. Or at least I hoped it could be a place for me to tell my friends and family why I wasn’t returning their phone calls.

My friend Caitlin helped me set up the blog in the weeks leading up to my birthday. I did all the writing but she did everything else, including getting a designer friend to make the logo and setting up the layout and all of the other little but important pieces. When I first took a look at the blog layout, I noticed that underneath the title “DC Widow” she had written “There’s No Handbook For How To Do This.”

I read it out loud to her. “It’s just a working subtitle,” she said. She told me I could change it then or at any point in the future. She had decided on that subtitle after listening to me rant about how I couldn’t find anything useful on the internet for young widows.

I liked it. And so, even as the months and years passed, even as I actually did find interesting and compelling writing by other young widows and even as this blog grew and changed, that subtitle remained. Because, no matter how much I wished I could find one, there wasn’t a handbook for how to be a young widow.

I simply had to stumble through my life. No one was going to tell me what I needed to do to “get better”…or even what I needed to do to keep my job or be a decent single parent. I had to figure it out myself. What did it mean to be a widow when I was supposed to be starting the best part of my life?

It wasn’t always pretty. In fact, it was almost never pretty in those first few months. And while I thought I might feel better by the fall, more than six months after Shawn died, it was still quite rough. It took a lot, lot longer than I thought it would to get to a place where I felt like I was truly healing. (Not healed – healing. All widows know there’s a difference.)

And in that time, I wrote about the process. I didn’t actually have any sort of plan for the blog. I didn’t ever think, “okay, in 6 months, I want to be writing about X” or “the arc of the blog this year needs to look like Y.” It was just a day-to-day process, one where sometimes I was mad and sometimes I was confused and sometimes I was just too damn heartbroken to try to write about anything other than my misery.

I didn’t set out to tell the whole story of how someone survives widowhood. I didn’t try and show the ways it was possible to fail repetitively…and then somehow also show that I could have good some days, too. Therapy, unexpected grief, work, home repair, finances, friendships, dating, single parenting, living with my dad – there were so many different aspects of my life that were incredibly hard, and some that stayed incredibly hard. But there were also times when I somehow had a breakthrough – when I realized I was stronger than I thought or when I figured out how to do something hard or when I just felt happy, despite everything.

And all that writing, of course, turned into this blog. 641 posts over 5 years. It may not tell you everything, or even much at all about how you might face widowhood.

But these posts did tell me something, over the years. They became my handbook about how I was doing it. Not how I was “supposed” to move through widowed life, but how I actually was doing it. In fact, when I’d feel unsure about any number of things, I’d often reference myself and read back on my old posts. How did I handle Mother’s Day or Shawn’s birthday the year before? What terrible dates did I have that actually were funny to reflect on months later? How much had I once screwed up and thought it was the end of the world, and actually it wasn’t?

And when I did that, well, it was often comforting. I hadn’t set out to write my own guidebook, but it turned out that by writing, I forged a path for myself. I figured out the way to be a widow by simply being a widow…and writing about my life to anyone who wanted to read about it.

This blog was never meant to be a handbook – not for me and certainly not for anyone else. And yet, here it is. It’s my account of 5 years of my life, an account of one way that young widowhood can look. I am by no means proud of all of my posts (God, some really make me cringe years later) but I am not taking any of them down. I am leaving them here for you to read, whoever you are.

It’s not a handbook. I mean, if I said it was a handbook, I think most young widows would want to read it less. Who actually wants someone to tell you there’s one way to do widowhood? There isn’t, of course. There are about a million good and bad ways to do widowhood, even in one day. Even with some of my most opinionated posts, I truly don’t believe there’s any one right way to approach deep loss and begin to start healing.

All I can say is that this blog is mine. It was the way I began healing, and ultimately, I think it tells my story the best way I could.

Maybe someday, months or years in the future, another young widow will be out there, searching for some sort of answer about how to face a new reality. And maybe she’ll come here, to my blog, hoping to find a path forward.

She won’t find it, not exactly. But maybe she’ll find one thing:

A little bit of hope.

Thank you for reading my story.

Image Credit: Sharyn Peavey.

The post Last Post: There’s No Handbook For How to Do This appeared first on DC Widow.

Right now, I am watching the sunset. It is gorgeous, and I am happy.

It occurred to me that this might be strange for you to hear, all these years later. I was so sure that I’d never be happy without you, but here I am, more than 5 years after you left this earth and I am telling you that it is true.

I am happy.

So if you can somehow access this letter, I want you to know I’ve been thinking of you. I’ve been thinking of all that has changed since you left us and all that is somehow just as you imagined it back then.

When you were dying, you looked into my eyes and told me that everything was going to be okay. You knew you were going to die and I knew you were going to die so we both knew we weren’t talking about you somehow magically getting well. What you were telling me was that I was going to be okay. You believed in me so fully that you never doubted I would make it through the grief of losing you and the other horrors I would face. You told me I would be okay.

You were wrong.

You were wrong that I would be able to pick up the pieces quickly. You knew I’d grieve but I don’t think you imagined that I’d be crying on the floor of the bathroom shower 14 months after you were gone, so bereft I couldn’t even fully voice it to my closest friends.

You were wrong that I would be rational in the months after your death. You thought I could deal with all the financial and logistical details that you left behind, but really, I could not. I had to get a lot of help. I had to swallow my pride all the time.

You were wrong that I would be able to seamlessly transition back to my regular life after your death. You didn’t imagine that I would wake up with screaming nightmares, ones that disturbed the house so much that sometimes Claire ran into our room, worried about me. You were wrong that I would be able to function normally at school events and parties and at work, when all I thought about was losing you.

You were wrong about so much.

But when you told me I would be okay, you were right about that too.

You were right that our friends and family would support me, though I didn’t fully appreciate all the ways that would look. You couldn’t have known that my dad would end up staying for years, that my friends would help me get on dating apps when I felt the time was right, that I’d need my community for much, much longer than the 6 months when they brought food – and that they would be there for me, even after it seemed like “everything was okay,” because it really wasn’t.

You were right that I could parent the kids through the loss of their father. Though it was terrible, we survived it and we built a new family – not just once, but twice. You were right that we all were resilient enough to make it through without you.

You were right that I’d find someone new. You knew it would take time and you almost nailed it with how long it would be before I could really open my heart to someone new. You knew you had to tell me that, even when I didn’t want to hear it.

You were right, thank God.

But in this letter I don’t just want to tell you all the ways that you were right and wrong. I also want to tell you about the things you couldn’t know, all those years ago.

The kids – they are great. You knew this would be true but you also couldn’t see the future, because what parent can? Could you really imagine Tommy all potty-trained and reading chapter books, Austin starring in a musical or Claire standing as tall as I do?

Tommy is the most similar to his 3-year-old self, though now he’s just turned 9. He’s the kid that everyone says is the happiest kid they know, the one who still snuggles with me in the morning and the one who hugs everyone when he leaves a party. He is joy personified, because he does not know any other way to be. He has reached for love over and over again, and because he has reached for it, he has always found it.

Austin is not the shy kid he once was, and though he’s approaching the teen years, he is still just as sure of who he is as he was when he was 6. He still protects his brother, still works hard in school and still always helps me. There are times when he is doing his homework and his focus looks just like you, bent over a book like you always were.

Claire is a teenager, and on the precipice of high school. She has a strong spirit, as she always has had, and she goes after what she wants – she’s even flown across a foreign country without me. It’s different, to be with teenage Claire, but that same 8-year-old is in there, the one who always thought everything in this world was “the best” even when things really weren’t. She could see beyond the rainstorm then, and she can see it now.

And I am happy too. Right now, as I am watching the sun set off our balcony, I can hear the funny tropical birds around me and I feel one thing: contentment. I wanted you to know this, specifically – that I feel joy in this moment, in February of 2023. I am not in the same house where we lived, though I’ll return to it this summer. Right now I am thousands of miles away on a grand adventure, one that is not always smooth but one that has been filled with more experiences that I can write here. And the kids? All three of them understand so much beyond the world in which they were born…and they can all order food at a restaurant in perfect Spanish.

Coming here was not the first risk I took, not by a long shot. Your death, which shocked and horrified me in every way possible, somehow made me into a person who is much less afraid of convention, and a person who welcomes a lot more risk.

That’s how I met my husband, Chris. Because as I said, I found love again. It certainly wasn’t right away, though I tried dating in that first year of widowhood. But really, I didn’t want to let anyone in back then. It was over two years later when I took a huge risk letting Chris in to my life and into the kids’ lives. And it was the best risk I’ve taken – I know that for sure. He is good and he is kind and he makes our lives so much fun. And, most important, he loves me and the kids more than anything. That’s an important thing you share with him.

It is a happy life we have, all these years later. It is one I couldn’t see at all, back in that hospital room when you looked at me and told me that I would be okay without you – that I could have happiness in my future. I didn’t believe you at all.

But somehow, as you lay dying, you could see it for me.

We miss you, today and always.

Love, Marjorie

Image Credit: Stefanie Harrington.

The post Letter to Shawn (Part 2) appeared first on DC Widow.

One day as I began to prepare dinner in the late afternoon, I called my dad. We spoke on FaceTime as I chopped vegetables, and he told me stories about what was happening in my hometown. How were we doing in DC? Was I feeling okay?

I told him about the kids and homeschool and then I told him more about Chris. We’d been on the phone every night for weeks at that point. “He does 100-mile bike races for fun, Dad!” and I watched my dad raise his eyebrows with amusement.

My dad wanted to know more. What else did Chris like to do? How did he make a living? What did he think about the kids?

I told my dad all sorts of things, from the little details of how Chris spent his pandemic days to the more major aspects of his life, like how close he was with his family. My dad didn’t interrupt at all. He just listened, and after a long while, I realized that I had really dominated the conversation. My dad was still staring right at me as I paused.

“Sorry, dad,” I said. “I talk to him for at least three hours a night. I just have so much to say, I guess.”

“It’s wonderful,” my dad said. “You look so happy.”

“I am,” I said, “though it’s strange just to talk to him on the phone, rather than see him in person.”

“I don’t think so,” my dad said. “The thing that makes relationships work is friendship. If you start out as friends, and become lovers, that’s better than starting out as lovers.”

I laughed a bit at this, though not openly. Dating advice from my dad, yet again!

“Your mother and I were friends first,” he continued, “and then we started going out, but quickly it became much more than that. I would bring her home after we went out to dinner and then we would sit and talk for hours. We discussed everything—life in general, what it was like growing up, our families—everything.”

I hadn’t known that my parents had spent hours talking in those early days. I guess I’d never really thought about it. But it made a lot of sense. Even in the dark days at the end of my mom’s life, my parents had an ease between them, and an obvious connection.

My dad kept talking. “When you can sit and talk to somebody for hours, that’s the relationship you want. You can make love to somebody and then walk away and think it was great, but if you don’t want to spend a week with them on vacation, it’s not real. What I had with your mother, that was real. I loved talking to her.”

I thought about my life over the past month. I could feel what my dad was talking about each time I picked up the phone to call Chris. I wanted to say as much to my dad and reassure him that it wasn’t just puppy love I was feeling. But I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.

“I’m really happy with Chris, even though he can’t be here right now,” I said to my dad. 

He smiled. “That’s good.”

I couldn’t tell if there was something more my dad wanted to say. Did he think I was being crazy, falling for someone so far away?

“Are you nervous at all about me? About this new romance?” I wasn’t quite sure why I blurted it out, but there it was.

My dad’s face broke into a wide smile. “I’m not worried,” he said, confidently. “You have great judgment. It’s the good judgement of your mother.”

“I’m glad you think that.”

“And also, you’re happy. Why should I be upset? Let’s say nothing comes of this besides that you’re happy, then that’s great. Maybe it’ll work out, maybe he can come to you someday. We’ll see what happens, but right now you’re happy.”

He took a sip of water, and I smiled. He continued, “I watched you go through so much sadness. So why would I say ‘you shouldn’t be happy?’ You should!”

Image Credit: Sharyn Peavey.

The post From the Archives: On the Phone with My Dad appeared first on DC Widow.

When I was a kid, it was one of my dad’s favorite phrases to say. When he’d realize that frozen grape juice concentrate was on sale or that my mom had made stir-fry or that the local newspaper was delivered early, he’d smile as though he’d won the lottery. As a young child, I was delighted in how he embraced serendipity, but as I approached the teen years, I thought it was annoying. “Listen! It’s my favorite song on the radio!” he’d say in his characteristic Texas twang, and I’d retort, “Dad, every song is your favorite song.”

He never let my teenage doubts get to him. “Well, then I’m a lucky man!” he’d say, as he clapped to the music in his beat-up car he’d been driving since I was born. That was another thing that embarrassed me—his car. It was four different colors of brown and the floorboards were so thin I feared that any moment they might bust beneath me. I knew we could afford a newer car, but he didn’t get one until I was well into my teen years. “This one works perfectly fine,” he said, even though it sometimes stalled in the intersection in front of the high school, causing me to sink as low as I could into the passenger seat to avoid the stares of onlookers. He blared the music from that car and sang along to every song he knew and cared little about our reactions. Sometimes he’d lean across the front seat, putting a hand on my shoulder as he said, “isn’t it a great day?”

But even though I often rejected it as a teenager, his optimism was contagious. He was delighted to have two healthy children (“with ten fingers and ten toes!”), to live in a tight-knit community and—most importantly—to be married to my mom. He loved telling stories to me and my younger sister Lindsay about any topic that piqued his interest. Maybe he’d read about a famous musician or athlete or just a regular guy who was in the news, and he had spent an hour finding out more about that person. “Can you believe this?” he’d ask us, and we’d nod, knowing that it didn’t really matter what we said back. He was going to share everything he’d just learned about some stranger we didn’t know and didn’t care about. To him, the world held so much wonder, and he was in awe of it.

But, “aren’t we lucky?” wasn’t the only thing that my dad liked to say. He also reminded us that no matter what we wanted, there would be times when life was unfair.  

In fact, it was his other favorite phrase to say to me and Lindsay when we were kids. He delivered that line with a shrug of his shoulders, even if one of us was crying. “Well,” he’d say, with little intonation in his voice, “life is unfair.”

Still, like many children, I often expected the world to be fair, and I was disheartened when it wasn’t. I complained about unfair teachers, unfair coaches, and—later, in high school—unfair bosses at my minimum-wage jobs. “That’s life,” my dad would almost always say. “And life is unfair.”

I hated it. Even as a kid, I thought it was strange that he saw both the possibility in the world as well as the brutality of it.

Though he towered over me at 6’2”, my dad’s slim build made him unimposing and his prematurely gray hair made him look more like my grandfather than my dad. He smiled easily and was prone to telling loud stories that ended with him laughing and slapping his leg. In his job as a small-town doctor in Northwest Oregon, he was a bit more serious, but his humanity shone through. When someone would arrive at our doorstep at dinnertime—a farmer complaining of a farm injury, or a neighbor who was worried about her husband’s heart—he would quietly listen and softly discuss the prognosis. Sometimes people would cry in our living room and I’d watch his face change. His features would soften, and he rubbed his eyes when something was particularly troubling.  

He knew what the world held. He worked every day to help people, but it often wasn’t enough. Why does one person die and the other person live? He didn’t have an answer for that. 

I learned how to act in my community not because my dad always told me what to do, but because he showed me. We went to mass together every week, and though no one arrived until a few minutes before it started, my father always insisted that we be there at least 30 minutes ahead of time. I’d sit there in the empty pew, thumbing through the program and thinking about how dumb it was that we were there so early. If I complained about it, he’d say, “Better early than late!” and then he’d laugh as though it was a funny statement. We had to wait until the end of church to leave, so we could say a greeting to the priest. If I tried to sneak out to “go to the bathroom” my dad would set his hand on my shoulder and say, “Later.” As we fidgeted in line, my dad would joke with my sister and me, always laughing if we expressed annoyance. “What’s so hard?” he’d say with a smile.

Image Credit: Sharyn Peavey.

The post From the Archives: Aren’t We Lucky? appeared first on DC Widow.

Chris and I were just texting, I reminded myself. A series of texts didn’t mean true love. Maybe he didn’t want more. But then, we started to talk on the phone. It was innocent at first, just a catch-up to touch base during such a strange time, a simple “hello” that turned into a three-hour conversation during which my kids got way too much screen time and I missed their bedtime by an hour. That same night, he asked how I was feeling about dating and relationships at that point in my life. “I want to date you!” I wanted to say, but instead I told him about who I didn’t want to be: someone who settled. I told him about a widow that I knew, one whose husband had died decades prior when she was a young mother. She had eventually remarried, but when we spoke about her life, she told me that it was her first husband whom she regarded as her soulmate. “I’m not doing that,” I said. “If I get remarried, it will be because I’ve found another person that’s the real deal.”

“Good,” he said. It didn’t mean anything at that point, not really. But I wanted him to know that I wasn’t looking for a relationship bandaid, at least not anymore. 

I’d been sitting on my dad’s bed during our first call, and after we hung up, I stayed there, looking at the pictures still up on the dresser. My eyes rested on the black-and-white photo of my parents in their mid-20s. In the photo, my dad leaned his cheek next to my mom’s temple, a slight smile on each of their faces. My dad’s hair was already streaked with gray, even then, but both of them looked really young staring into the camera. Still, that wasn’t why I kept looking at the photo, examining the bits of white in the centers of their eyes, the glint that showed up even in a photo without color. My dad had this exact photo framed in his room at home in Oregon, too, and it was one I’d seen many times as a child. It was his favorite picture of the two of them, and when I asked him about it, he always said, “Your mother looks pretty in it, doesn’t she?”

Still, I don’t think he liked that photo just because of how beautiful my mom looked. He liked it for the emotion you could see on her face—and on his. Right then, I could see the spark between them more than ever before.

As I stood up to leave the room, I knew one thing. Chris was going to call back. And when he did—the next day and the day after that and the day after that—a new feeling consumed me. I felt light and full and good in a way that had become almost totally foreign to me. We talked about everything, from our families to our past relationships, and I told him more about what the past few years had been like for me. I often laid in bed when the night got late, staring at the white ceiling and thinking how beautiful it looked in its simplicity. I knew, in the back of my head, that the blankness of the ceiling had once made me feel a deep kind of grief—one triggered, I suppose, because back then I was laying in bed without Shawn. It was a funny thing for a ceiling to do, and yet, after a week of phone conversations with Chris passed, and then another, I realized I didn’t have that feeling anymore. In fact, I grew to love staring up at that ceiling as I heard the hum of Chris’s voice in my ear.

In many ways our new romance resembled a seventh grade relationship, full of late-night discussions on the phone. It could only happen that way because we were quarantined hundreds of miles apart. This meant that we ended up talking about all the things that mattered to us even though we’d never laid a finger on each other. I told him that I often sang in my kitchen and that I was learning to make pizza from scratch. He told me more about how he loved to cycle and why he wanted a dog. I told him about Claire’s birth and about holding her for the first time in the early hours of the morning as the sun peeked through the windows, and feeling like all was right with the world. He told me about his 21st birthday in Chile, hiking alone in the Andes and imagining his future. 

I counted on hearing his voice every night. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I saw his name on the screen of my phone and hearing his voice made my legs feel like butter. I knew this feeling. It wasn’t simply a crush anymore.

I could feel it in his voice too, even if we weren’t saying it all out loud. Somewhere in these conversations, I mentioned that Becky seemed excited but also a tiny bit worried about our budding relationship. “I think she’s nervous that things might not work out between us. I told her we were adults.”

Chris laughed, and then his voice dropped a bit as he said, “Well, yes, we are adults, but also, I really fucking like you a whole shit ton.”  

I thought about him constantly, even as I worried about how to keep my kids safe and how to keep my teaching job and how to make sure Tommy was practicing counting to 100. In every in-between moment, Chris was on my mind. Had this once been how it was with Shawn? I wasn’t sure. Maybe falling in love in my 40s was going to be different than falling in love in my 20s.

We talked about nothing and we talked about everything that really mattered in the world. We talked about the people we loved the most and the people who we’d lost. Eventually, I told him more about losing Shawn, about early widowhood, about the messy parts that I didn’t yet have the courage to say out loud to most other people. I told him I admired how Shawn left this world: without regrets. “If I knew I was going to die soon,” I said, “I don’t think I’d change much about my life. Covid has made me focus inward, reconnect with my kids and the people who really matter to me. I would just do more of what I am already doing.” 

He hummed in agreement.

“If I was dying, I would want you to come to DC, of course,” I said. “But also, I wouldn’t want you to come because I know it would be terrible for you. You would hurt.”

“And I would come anyway,” he said. 

Image Credit: Sharyn Peavey.

The post From the Archives: Falling for Chris appeared first on DC Widow.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said as I stepped in the door. Inside were a half-dozen kids and I could hear more upstairs. 

I went and greeted my dad, who was reading in the recliner, seemingly oblivious to the noise around him. “How are you?”

“I’m reading this great book on physics,” he said, showing me the title. “It’s fascinating. I’m learning so much.”

“That’s great!” I was trying to sound enthusiastic. “How’d all these kids end up here?”

He explained that one of my friends had needed help, so he got her kids, and then Claire wanted a friend to come over, and then the neighbor kids also dropped by. 

Backpacks were littered everywhere and I stepped over an elaborate lego set as I went to the kitchen. My dad went back to reading and I began pulling food out of the fridge to cook for dinner. 

As I was chopping broccoli, Claire and her friend bounded into the kitchen. They were both red-cheeked and laughing. “We had the best time!” she said, smiling and showing her braces. “Grandpa Tom let us play on the roof!”

“What?” I barked. Had I heard that right? “He let you play on the roof?”

Immediately Claire recoiled. “He said it was okay!” Quickly, she ran out of the room with her friend.

“Dad!” I shouted, though I didn’t mean for it to be so loud. “Did you let Claire play on the roof?”

“She said it was allowed,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“It’s not allowed!” I shouted, again, and then took a breath so I wouldn’t be so loud. Still, my voice was shrill. “Claire can’t play on the roof. It’s way too dangerous!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, and then quietly added, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said, returning to the broccoli, though I knew it wouldn’t be fine. I’d need to call the other kid’s parents and apologize for what had happened. What was my dad thinking? What if one of them had fallen? 9-year-olds can’t play on the roof!

I couldn’t be mad. It wasn’t how we operated as a team. I swore under my breath and shook my head, trying to focus on the broccoli.

My dad put down his book and came into the kitchen. Peter, Paul and Mary played “Leaving on a Jet Plane” in the background and he hummed to the music as he got out plates for dinner.

“So how was your day?” my dad asked, as though nothing had transpired.

I told him about the minor dramas of teaching and how I was behind returning a test the students had taken weeks ago. I knew he felt bad for letting the kids play on the roof, if only because it upset me, and chatting with me was his way of conveying that. I played along, describing an elaborate scene in my classroom when a student tried to “make a basket” in the trash can with a partially open bottle of soda and had missed. “I hope he cleaned it up!” my dad said at the end of the story, shaking his head and laughing. I continued on, describing everything from the jammed copier to my chat with the maintenance guy.

I looked at my dad, and he smiled at me. He wasn’t my partner, for that man was gone. But we still did so much together in the home that by that point – many months after Shawn’s death – we had learned how to work and parent together.

“I’ll make some cookies after dinner,” my dad said, and smiled at me with a half smile. I smiled back. We both knew in that moment that everything was forgiven, even without discussing it directly. We were going to keep working together, day by day.

Just like partners do.

Image Credit: Stefanie Harrington.

The post From the Archives: Playing on the Roof appeared first on DC Widow.