I care just enough to stay in business. I delegate a thousand times more than I used to. I don’t live to work anymore, which is another painful lesson I’ve learned after losing everything that truly mattered to me.
I’ve received multiple offers for my company, and lately, I’ve started to pay more attention to them. I’m still not sure I want to let it go, but the thought of being free from that grind appeals to me more than it should. Reviewing the latest offer is on my agenda for tonight. My CFO tells me it’s a good one, the best yet, and I should consider it.
In my new home, I have one photo of Nat and the girls on display. It sits on my dresser, where I see it every morning and every evening and at times in between when I seek out the reminder that they were once the center of my universe.
The girls, Ivy and Hazel, were about six in the photo, their blonde curls the same exact color as their mother’s hair. Nat and I used to joke that there wasn’t an ounce of me in either of them. Except, as they got older, I started to see more of myself in them, especially in Ivy’s love of watching baseball games with me—and her desire to play the game—and Hazel’s affinity for learning how to use the computer.
I’m left now to wonder where those interests were leading. Would I be coaching Ivy’s softball team or teaching Hazel how to code?
Standing before the photo of them, I run my finger over Nat’s gorgeous, smiling face. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I hope you know I never would’ve been with someone else if you were still here.”
If she were here, Nat would tell me to knock it off and quit feeling guilty when I didn’t do anything wrong. She was the most practical, keep-it-real person I’ve ever known, and she had no patience for bullshit or manufactured drama, as she liked to call it.
The path my fingertip cuts through the dust on the photo makes me feel guilty, too.
I grab the frame and take it into the kitchen to clean the glass with Windex, wiping it until the glass and silver frame are shiny again before returning it to my dresser. For the millionth time since I lost them, I wish for a handbook on how I’m supposed to do life without them. After being at Iris’s chaotic house, the quiet in mine is surreal.
Nat and I used to long for quiet with two crazy girls underfoot. They kept us hopping from sunup to sundown every day of their too-brief lives. I recall weekend deals with Nat in which we’d each take a morning to let the other sleep in. Inevitably, our rest was disturbed by the crying, screaming and laughter of the two little girls who ran our lives. Now I can sleep in any time I want, but years later, it still seems weird to not be abruptly awakened every morning.
After I unpack and throw in a load of laundry that smells of woodsmoke, I sit down at my desk and check my email for the first time in days. I respond to several inquiries from my team and review reports they’ve submitted on current projects. Finally, I check the email account that’s devoted to new business and find ten inquiries from potential new customers. I pass them on to one of my assistants to deal with.
Back in the day, I took on every customer who wanted my services. Now we triage new clients to ensure we’re a good fit before we even reply to their inquiry. We have more work than we can handle, so we rarely take on new clients. In this interconnected world, our services are in greater demand than ever, so I can afford to be choosy.
After the work email is attended to, I open my Instagram account. I think this is the area of my new life that would surprise Nat the most. That I share my innermost thoughts on widow life online every day and have a huge following hanging on my every word is a shock to me, but she’d be floored. I used to grumble to her about privacy when people would tell me they loved a family photo she posted. Airing out our life online ran counter to everything I preach in my work about less being more in the internet age.
Now I post every day and have more than one hundred thousand followers waiting on my insight. Some tell me they live for it, depend upon it and draw immeasurable comfort from knowing they’re not alone in their losses. It’s become far more than I ever expected when I sat down a month after my loss to thank all the people who’d been there for me since it happened and to share a few thoughts on coping with such a huge loss.
I was immediately overwhelmed by responses from other widows, some who’d been at it for years and others who were like me, just starting their journey. I’ve developed close friendships with many of them and rely on them as much as they do me to get through the days. My connection to Christy began on Insta and led to her inviting me to join the Wild Widows group that she and Iris had founded along with another woman named Taylor, who has since moved on from the group.
The Wild Widows has been my greatest source of support. I love those people like family and am rooting for each of them as they work to put their shattered lives back together. Nat would be amused by my many widow friends because of all the times I grumbled about plans with people I barely knew. She was forever making new friends, and I was happy with the friends we had. She’d think it was hysterical that I’ve made hundreds of new friends since she and the girls died.
And yes, in thinking about this stuff, I do see there was a lot of grumbling on my part. That’s just another thing to add to the list of what I’d change if I had a do-over with her. I wouldn’t complain so much about the things she wanted to do. I’d be more accommodating of her friends and her interests, of which there were many. It’s funny how you miss things you used to disdain, such as gallery openings and annual opera outings. There wasa lotof grumbling about the opera, which I despise.
Thinking about that now, what I remember most is Natasha’s enraptured expression as she soaked in every precious second of it.
I was a dick about it, and I took something away from her enjoyment of it. I hate myself for that now and hope wherever she is, there’s opera on-demand.
I’ve written a lot about why it is that life has to kick us in the teeth for us to wise up about what’s important. I’ve written about the opera and how much I regret not making a bigger effort to enjoy it simply because she did. That should’ve been all the incentive I needed, but it wasn’t. How I regret that now.
Regret has been a regular theme in my posts, especially the many ways it serves to remind us to give of ourselves to others while we can.
I create a new Insta post and start typing.I’ve just spent a weekend away at the beach with some of my closest widow friends and had a great time resting and relaxing with the crew that has become so essential to me. Funny how that happens, huh? The people you were closest to in the BEFORE are still there, still an incredible source of love and support. But it’s the people in the AFTER who truly understand the journey the way no one else ever could. I’m eternally thankful for both groups, the before and the after, because there’s no way I’d still be here without all of you.
I post photos from the weekend, add all the usual widow hashtags that connect me to my core audience and post it. A few months ago, I was shocked when a blue checkmark appeared on my account, because I’ve heard how hard it is to get an Instagram account validated. After the checkmark came endorsement offers, some of which astounded me. If I wanted to, I could probably make being a widowed Instagrammer my full-time job.
I don’t want that. A few minutes a day wallowing in my widowhood isn’t the same as a full-time job would be. It’s enough to live with that reality every day without fully immersing myself in my grief.
Work gives me an escape that I still need, even if it often drives me crazy. I just wish I could find the passion for it that I once had. That, more than anything, has me thinking more about a buyout than I ever have before.
I cook a frozen pizza, because Iris got me thinking about pizza earlier—and yes, I would’ve liked to have stayed to have it with her and the kids, but not with the brother-in-law giving me the stink eye. I have just enough produce to make a salad to go with it and eat in front of the TV while watching the Patriots play the Ravens. I’m a low-key Ravens fan because I just can’t stick with the Washington team that’s broken my heart so many times—I’m done with them.
That’s another thing I can add to the list of things Natasha would find shocking. I surrendered the season tickets I had for more than twenty years—long before I could afford them—because of the chaos surrounding the Washington team. There was a time when I never missed a home game, no matter what else was going on. Those days are also over.
I want to text Iris, to tell her… What is it I want to tell her? That this weekend meant a lot to me? It did, but if I tell her that, will she read too much into it? What if the BIL is still there and sees the text? What’s the deal with him anyway?
“That’s none of your business,” I say as I shut off the TV at eleven and head to bed. I’m working in the office tomorrow and have back-to-back meetings, which means I need to get some sleep.
I never took a sleeping pill in my life before the accident. Now I require them if I want to have any prayer of sleeping. In bed, I’m awake for a long time, thinking about the weekend and the two nights I spent with Iris. I pick over every detail of what we did, arousing myself to the point of pain as I relive it. I forgot what it was like to connect with another human being like that, and now that I’ve had a taste of what it’s like with her, I want more.