Widowing along

Thirteen years ago today, Scott and I got married. We had two weddings (the second one was in Italy a year and a half later), and enjoyed the excuse to celebrate our marriage twice a year on anniversaries. It makes me happy to know we crammed in some extra celebrating while we could.

I watched the movie Other People recently. It’s the first movie I’ve watched since he died. I did most of my movie-watching with him for the past 15 years. It’s hard to settle in for one alone. Anyway, the movie’s title refers to the notion that cancer, especially the deadly kind, happens to other people. That’s me: other people.

My recent reading has been a selection of ‘widow lit’, as I have been calling it. In Joan Didion’s writing, I recognized the unhinged feeling I’ve had while trying to adjust to my new reality. From Liz McNeill Taylor I learned that I won’t be invited to dinner parties anymore because women are afraid I will try to steal their husbands. From Sheryl Sandberg I learned that society will judge me harshly if I ever start dating again (which might be a fate I avoid entirely by choosing the crazy cat lady route). So, surprise surprise, this widow thing is not all fun and games.

The household duties in our relationship mostly fell across traditional gender lines. My newly-acquired jobs include taking out the trash, cleaning the kitchen, going into the attic, driving the car, calling the roofers when the roof leaks, cleaning the bathroom, changing light bulbs, and administering all of the household IT. I’m managing reasonably well at some of them. I’m trying to just ignore the attic, but the heat wave of the past couple days has reminded me that the fans are up there, and I may want them before the summer is over. So far I have been keeping the IT afloat by occasionally turning the router off and back on again, but I’m guessing it is only a matter of time before this becomes an inadequate method for dealing with issues.