The Thing I Know

I’d like to write about something other than my wife but given that its only 90 days since she died, you’ll have to excuse me, maybe even forgive me. Although, we’re probably not really close to the point where you’d walk the other way to avoid talking to me because I’m going to talk about my dead wife, but you never know. Personality types are distributed pretty evenly through the population, from the oh-god-let-it-go type, to the I’ve-been-there-and-know-what-you’re-going-I through folks.

In a way, it’s probably akin to soldiers, home from war. It’s a miserable experience and only those who have touched the elephant really know what’s up. It’s why we have VFW and American Legion posts all over the country. Soldiers need a place to gather with kindred spirits. I know how that feels. Lately, I’ve been making a mental list of my friends who have lost spouses and they’re clumping together in my brain, and their positive responses to my little soliloquies help me understand I’m not losing my mind, even though it feels like it.

I do wonder why this grief feels so different from the time at 21 when my mother died and the day at 60 when my father passed. Neither immobilized me. I’m going to have to give that some thought. I am getting a fair number of referrals on books that helped people deal with grief. I imagine at some point someone will have written something about the subject and I’ll get to read it. It seems fruitful ground for exploration. For now, referring back to the start of this, I’m going to follow the age-old dictum that a writer should write about what he knows. And right now, I know sorrow, and that, my friends, is an understatement.