Woe is (not) me

Poor me.Look at me.Look at me, a woman alone, a widow.Feel sorry for me because I feel sorry for myself.Boo-hoo.Wait. I am learning, I am coming to understand, that grief is not about me.“I can’t imagine how terrible this is for you,” people say. (Which, by the way, is not only an actively unhelpful thing to say, it is an actively hurtful thing to say. And seriously, who the hell cares what YOU can imagine?)“I can’t imagine how terrible this is for YOU.”The one this is terrible for is HIM.He is the one who will never eat a plate of dry-cooked green beans again, who will never play cribbage with his sister again, never climb the butte again, never explore the back streets of Chania again, never again pick an apple from a tree he planted and pruned and fertilized, never again watch the bluejays dive-bomb the bird feeder, never record another dream in his leather-bound journal. Never write another book. Never see his grandchild become a boy, a man.Me? I get to sleep between flannel sheets, to hike and run, to write and read and plant and weed. I get to dance in the kitchen to the Allman Brothers, to walk on the beach with Karuna, drink coffee with Julie, workout in the park with Celina, bake cookies, photograph clouds, hold my children tight, roll on the floor with Henry.I get to live.And every day—I mean every damned day—something astonishes me, takes my breath away, makes me deeply happy to be here.I long for the future we won’t share, the one I took for granted. But my grief is for him, for the life unlived, not for myself.