Widow's Voice

Insignificant, Yet Significant

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Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

There are just some things that I can’t seem to part with. For the past three weeks, I have been trying to get rid of a set of bath towels that the twins have been using. It has definitely seen some better days. For some reason, I just can’t seem to say goodbye to something so simple. It’s one of the few things that didn’t end up in storage after we moved when Erik passed. I kept wondering what my hesitation was. Here I was washing these towels over and over each week. Towels that were so worn that little fuzzies would come off after each wash. But these towels were a memory I just couldn’t figure out how to let go of physically yet. They were the towels we used for the first bath we gave the twins after bringing them home from the NICU. I still remember that first night that we attempted to give them both a bath like it was yesterday. The anxiousness of wondering if we could do this, the worry of trying not to hurt them, the awes of their cuteness, and the laughs from the splashes in our faces. We held them both in these hooded towels with their heads side by side as we stared at them with a sense of accomplishment from making it through their first bath together. I can still feel Erik’s head resting on mine as we stared in admiration at the two beautiful souls we had created. I can still envision both their eyes staring back at us with those smiles so happy that we couldn’t help but smile too even through all the exhaustion and sleep deprivation. These towels. Something so simple. Yet can hold such power over a memory. A memory that I still feel so deeply when I use these towels on the twins for their bath time now. So what do I do? Sometimes a material thing is just a material thing, right? How would I be able to go through an entire storage filled with all the stuff from our life together if I couldn’t even part with something as simple as towels? Would I be okay if I got rid of it? It doesn’t erase the memory. So why can’t I seem to toss out these towels that so badly need to be replaced? Something that seems so insignificant, yet holds so much significance to a single memory.

About Diana Mosson

Diana was widowed at 29. Her love story with her husband Erik began in the most unexpected of places, the Long Beach DMV. That day, it felt as though fate had brought them together. Their fairytale romance blessed them with a lifetime of love that would now be expressed through grief.

Saint Patrick’s Day of 2022 became the time stamp of when Diana’s life changed forever. The day that she became a widow and a solo parent to one and a half year old twins. The day that her husband died by suicide. The day that her training in emergency management kicked in as she tried to save her husband’s life. And the day that she learned her husband was suffering in silence.

Diana is sharing her story and experience as she navigates how to overcome this new reality in the hope that it will be someone else’s survival guide one day.