Hi,

I'll start from where I am.  My husband died last month.  He had just turned 59 two days prior.  I am 49.  I live alone with two dogs.  What is hard for me today is that I am making space for a housemate.  A housemate that I don't really want but I have bills that I can't pay without that housemate.  And so I'm cleaning out the downstairs bathroom closet.  It feels good to be clearing clutter.  When Larry was alive, he was such a pack rat that I felt like I didn't know where to start.  He left so much stuff.  Ugghh.  Grief experts say that you should go slow, but these grief experts don't acknowledge that you might be in financial circumstances that you have to go fast.  It's so strange to come across things that were left as if Larry intended to keep on living.  I just came across his summer pool backpack.  It had New Yorker magazines in it given to him by a friend at the pool, a book he was reading, flippers and goggles.  He loved the pool.  Even if I had the money to renew this year, not sure I would.  I'm annoyed by the public having fun.  I need lots of quiet time and time to cry when I need to.  I cry every day and I make sounds like nothing I have ever experienced.  But I do think it's absolutely essential to cry and shut yourself off for as long as needed.  Otherwise, you skip the grief process and don't heal.  I went to a grief group last week.  I didn't really feel a strong connection with the other women so I don't think I will be going back.  At the end, one of the women said to me, "You never get over it, but it becomes tolerable."  Tolerable?  Since I'm left behind, I'd like it to be more than tolerable.  I have to go on living, not walking zombie-like through life because my husband died. But for right now, it is perfectly ok to be a zombie.