Liminality - Who Am I? in Month one
Updated: Sep 16
Liminality is such a powerful frame for this series because what we're describing isn't simply sadness. It's the experience of being between lives: the life that existed before the death has ended, but the life that comes afterward hasn't taken shape yet.
The First Month After Your Partner Dies: Living in the In-Between
There is a word I recently learned: liminality.
It describes the state of being on a threshold — no longer where you were, but not yet where you're going.
And I can't think of a better word for the first weeks and months after the death of a partner.
In the first month, you're grieving.
Except you're not just grieving.
You're planning a funeral, burial, cremation or celebration of life. You're calling insurance companies. You're dealing with government forms, pensions, banks, mortgages, lawyers and an estate.
If you're married, some of those processes may be relatively straightforward. If you're common-law, you may suddenly discover that the life you built together isn't necessarily recognized on paper in the ways you assumed it would be.
There may be disagreements with your family. Their family. People may have opinions about the funeral, the belongings, the money, what should happen next and what your partner would have wanted.
Meanwhile, you're trying to remember to eat.
If you have children, they still need breakfast. They need to get to school. They need clean clothes. They're grieving too, and somehow you're supposed to help them understand something you can't understand yourself.
And if you have a dog?
Well, the dog still needs to be fed. The dog still needs to go outside. The dog doesn't care that getting out of bed feels impossible.
Then something in the house stops working.
You don't know why the dishwasher isn't draining because they knew that.
The weather changes and you realize you don't actually know how to switch the furnace over to the air conditioning because they did that.
There are a thousand tiny jobs you never thought about because the two of you had divided up the business of being alive.
Now all of it belongs to you.
And your brain isn't cooperating.
You walk into rooms and forget why you're there. You read the same paragraph three times. Someone tells you something and five minutes later it's gone.
You aren't even entirely sure who you are.
You remember who you were before they died.
Or perhaps you don't.
Because so much of your identity became intertwined with another person: we, us, ours.
And suddenly the world is asking you to become I again.
You have no idea who that person is.
Then work calls.
Your bereavement leave is ending.
Maybe it's been three days. Five days. A week.
And everyone seems to think you should be ready to come back.
You're terrified.
Will they expect the old you?
Will they understand that she doesn't exist anymore?
Will people say your partner's name?
Will they avoid it?
Will they ask what happened?
Will nobody ask?
What happens if you cry?
What happens if you can't concentrate?
And perhaps the biggest question of all:
Why am I going back to work?
Yesterday you were planning a funeral.
Today you're supposed to care about an email, a deadline, a meeting or someone's spreadsheet.
What does any of this matter?
Even going to the grocery store can feel impossible. Anxiety tells you not to go. Exhaustion tells you that you couldn't go even if you wanted to.
Your entire world has changed, while everyone else's seems to have continued without interruption.
And maybe that's the strangest part.
The traffic still moves.
People complain about the weather.
Your neighbour puts out the recycling.
Someone laughs in the grocery store.
Your inbox keeps filling up.
The world keeps going when yours has stopped.
That is liminality.
You're standing between the life you had and a life you cannot yet imagine.
You're not simply learning how to live without your partner.
You're learning how to live as a person you haven't met yet.
And in the first month?
You don't need to know who that person will be.
You may not know next month.
You may not know in six months.
You may still be discovering that person three years later.
Because grief isn't only about learning to live with the absence of someone you loved.
Part of partner loss is discovering who you are when the life you thought you were going to have is no longer the life you're living.
Check in with me, for tips and coping strategies…
The tip that I found the most helpful for me in the first month was WRITE IT DOWN!!!
I got myself a spiral notebook and each day I dated it at the top, then anyone I spoke to, mortgage insurance, funeral home, lawyer, bank… I wrote down the who, what, when, why. Now it’s there, I don’t have to remember, and when I speak to them next week, and they try to tell me something different… well… I have it all written down.
Give your brain a break and do yourself a favour and WRITE IT DOWN. I also got myself a very large accordion folder, and I put EVERYTHING in it, so that if I was going to meet with anyone in person, I simply picked it up and was sure every thing I needed was in there, I didn’t have to worry about getting things together, when just brushing my teeth was too much.
This is the first month.
Stay with me as I take you through the stages of partner loss, month by month and break it down. This will help you to know you are not alone!
Next: Month Two — when everyone else starts going back to normal, and you begin to realize that you can't.
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