that’s a question
i used to get asked
a lot in my previous life,
(you know, the one before my wife died)
it was either preceded by,
or sometimes followed by,
“what do you do?”
in my current life,
it matters less where
i’m from & what i do…
what’s more important,
especially to others
like me
(like us),
are questions like,
“what happened?”
or
“how did you get here?”
and
“how long has it been?”
it’s weird for me
to consider that
the questions that
used to be normal
parts of a
“getting to know you” conversation
are now asked as an
afterthought, or aren’t
asked at all.
…
that got me to thinking
about how unimportant
our location is
in all of this.
of course
there are many significant
differences for widows/ers
in different places,
(including how some of us are supported both emotionally and financially after the death of our partners, among many other things)
but where we’re located
is less important
in this community
than our personal stories
of love, death, happiness, sadness
and all that follows.
and the differences that
naturally exist between
us because of
where we’re from
(which is a huge part of who we are)
dissolve pretty quickly
when there’s a unifying
force in our
lives like death.
and as much as it
sucks that we
all have this,
the death of a partner,
as such a huge
and defining
part of our lives,
it’s pretty fucking awesome
that we have each other,
no matter where
we’re from…
(also, this is my last post for the widow’s voice blog. it’s time for another voice to take my place, a voice that needs to be heard, a voice that happens to be from australia. please welcome amanda each thursday as she shares her life with you. and thanks for reading my ramblings over the years. the comments you’ve left for me have helped me immensely, and i can only hope that my words have had even a nominal impact on you. more importantly, i hope that the writing you’ve read by all of the writers on this blog has made you feel less alone as you navigate through the life you never wanted. i encourage all of you to write down your thoughts, even if no one else ever reads them. writing has helped me more than i ever could have imagined, and i’m pretty sure it can do the same for you).