I wish there was some kind of social mechanism in place for widows where, around the anniversary of your spouse's death, friends came to your house and spent time with you, played board games on rainy eves or took you out as a nice distraction. Maybe even pulled out a few pics and stories of your spouse. A mechanism where people took the time to share your grief but not wallow in it.
Around this time of year, I am haunted by visual and verbal memories of the end of Larry's life. It was not an easy end. There are so many equally bad memories that I can't even share one. I've been through death before and it was different. Larry dealt with it by being in denial. I am not judging him, I don't know what I'd do in his shoes, and perhaps he lived longer because of it, but what it did was create an elephant in the room. Decisions had to be made and because none were made, things were left things pretty messy. April 23 will be the second anniversary of Larry's death I am still dealing with lawyers and paperwork and I'm not even the executor.
I am still bitter about most of his friends disappearing from my life. Bitter about Larry appointing his a friend as executor, about the venom that sprouted from his daughter post fire (quite common yet she was uncommonly hurtful), bitter about people who say insensitive things and yet all this is a normal widow's experience apparently and it helps to know this.
People do not look at me and say, "poor Sharyn". They see that I've made some great choices, that I have a good head on my shoulders, they see my strength, see me taking steps to reclaim my life and spirit. I have gratitude for my strength, gratitude for the people who have been helpful, gratitude that I have the skills to have several jobs. I would prefer to be perceived this way but I think most people don't understand how long a loss of this magnitude lasts. I feel like I'm seven years old. The losses made me feel vulnerable enough but the aftershock of nasty lawyers, townships, Larry's daughter, Larry's friends and your standard workplace dramas continue to make me feel unsafe. People are not handling me with kid gloves anymore because I've done a good job appearing like I'm fine now.
The way that I am employed (several jobs to make ends meet) makes it hard to have a social life. One of my jobs is a little lonely, then I go home to an empty house where I used to have two dogs and husband to greet me and make me feel safe in the world. The losses still hurt like hell. There's positive change, but there's also anxiety associated with any change.
In a week and a half, I will be scattering Larry's ashes. Of course, they are hand made ashes because I lost his ashes in the fire. I took some notebooks that a friend gave me back after the fire and burned them on the grill. I think Larry would like the fact that there was some cooking involved in creating fake ashes.
