Free When Things Get Back to Normal by M.T. Dohaney Page B

snatched their spouses. As the time dragged on, I kept saying to myself, For this I’m missing
Sixty Minutes
and
Murder She Wrote
.
    In the beginning, when acquaintances sent widows to me, it didn’t matter that the only bond between us was our dead husbands. We talked only about them anyway. But now things are changing. I want to choose my own friends again. Does this mean I’m healing? Or does itonly mean I don’t want to go around in a gaggle of widows simply because I am one myself?
    Shortly after you died, I joined a widows’ group. I thought anything was worth a try. But some of the women there had been widowed ten, twelve and fifteen years. I thought, God forbid. I don’t want to make a career out of widowhood. I never went back.
SEPTEMBER 15 –
Monday
    Took the car in for its annual rust inspection today and for a heavy waxing to combat the wear and tear of the salty roads to come. This time last year I had never heard of a rust inspection check. See what a fast learner I am?
    P.S. It’s my birthday.
    P.P.S. I need a hug.
SEPTEMBER 16 –
Tuesday
    I walk late at night because I don’t want the neighbours to feel sorry for me, but then when I’m out on the lonely streets I start feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes I’m so blinded by tears I stumble off the sidewalk. I often scold myself for my self-indulgence, but then I ask, Why notfeel sorry for myself? “You’d feel sorry for a stranger,” I say, “if you knew he was hurting, so why not spare some sympathy for the person you love best?”
    I envy widows who wish they’d find a new relationship. They have hope. At this point, I only wish for you. How barren and hopeless my life is.
SEPTEMBER 18 –
Thursday
    Depression is settling in for a long siege unless I can find a way to master it. I come home from work, and I just sit and stare. Sometimes I just sit. I have a buyer for the house, and he is pressing for an answer. I won’t dicker on the price. Perhaps I’m hoping he’ll get tired of waiting. I think that holding onto the house is my way of holding onto the last remnants of you and me.
OCTOBER 1 –
Wednesday
    The anxiety attacks appear to be lessening. I just won’t sit still for them any more. If I’m lying in bed and I feel one coming on, I get up and make myself a cup of tea. I still wake up at night and hear your footsteps moving about in the kitchen, going to the bathroom, checking the doors before coming upstairs. I start to drop drowsily back to sleep, knowing all is well with the world becauseyou and the children are safe in the fold. Then I come bolt awake. There is no you downstairs. There are no children in the fold.
    I came across an old cheque book of yours that somehow escaped the purge. Seeing your handwriting unnerved me. They say time heals, but no one says how much time is needed for that. I know now that if I hadn’t sorted your things early on, I could never bring myself to do so at this time. It seems now that I finally realize you have gone, I want to horde whatever remains of you, even if it’s just your handwriting.
OCTOBER 4 –
Saturday
    Our wedding anniversary! I got through the morning by washing sweaters and hanging them out to dry in the golden sunshine. I didn’t fare so well in the afternoon, and at one point I found myself going up the stairs whimpering like a wounded animal. A friend of ours phoned. She didn’t know it was our anniversary, and I didn’t tell her. She informed me she was going to an engineering dance this evening. How that hurt! I remembered how handsome you looked last year at the dance, and you would have looked even better this year in your brand new tuxedo. I couldn’t recall having told you that night that I thought you were handsome.
    Looking back now, I know I was stingy with my compliments.It’s just something else with which to flog myself.
    I wallowed all afternoon, I even