When Everyone Goes Home: The Loneliness of Month Two
There is something nobody really tells you about the second month of grief.
Everyone goes home.
For the first few weeks after James died, there were people around me. There were things to do. So many things to do. Arrangements, phone calls, paperwork, government forms, insurance, finances, the estate. There were decisions that had to be made when I could barely remember what I had walked into a room for.
People checked in. People came over. People asked what I needed. There was always another task waiting for me, another person who needed an answer, another box that needed to be checked.
And then, somewhere along the way, most of the boxes were checked.
Not all of them, of course. Death leaves behind administrative hangers-on that seem determined to remind you of their existence months later. But the urgent things were mostly finished.
And everyone went back to their lives.
Which is exactly what they're supposed to do.
Except I didn't have my life to go back to.
I had this new one.
By the second month, I had started developing a routine. Not because I wanted one, but because human beings apparently keep doing things even when their worlds have ended. You get up. Feed the animals. Make coffee. Shower. Answer an email. Put something in the washing machine. Figure out what you're supposed to eat.
Eventually those things start happening almost automatically.
From the outside, I probably looked better.
I wasn't.
The shock had begun to wear off just enough for me to understand what had actually happened.
James wasn't coming home.
And suddenly the house was very, very quiet.
That is the strange cruelty of month two. In the beginning, I was completely out of it. People surrounded me because everyone knew I shouldn't be alone.
But when I became just functional enough to realize how lonely I was, everyone else began to think I was okay.
She's getting back to normal.
Normal.
I still don't know what that word means.
What was normal? Was there ever actually a normal? And how exactly was I supposed to "get back" to something that no longer existed?
My normal had included James.
There was no going back to it.
There were other changes I hadn't expected either.
When one person in a couple dies, you don't simply lose one person. Sometimes you discover that you have also lost the life that existed around the two of you.
Couple friends can become complicated.
Some disappear altogether.
Suddenly you're the single woman in a world organized around pairs. Sometimes you can almost feel the discomfort. Where does she fit now? Who invites her? Does she still want to come? Will it be awkward?
And, occasionally, there is another kind of discomfort.
A newly single woman can apparently become something vaguely threatening.
If they only knew.
I wasn't looking at anyone's husband.
I wanted mine back.
I didn't want a replacement. I didn't want somebody else's life. I wanted the man I had spent sixteen years building mine with.
Meanwhile, people would say things like, "You should get out."
I knew.
I wanted to.
I wanted to meet friends
for coffee. I wanted to wander around a store. I wanted to do something ridiculously ordinary and feel like an ordinary person again.
But anxiety had started making decisions for me.
Going for coffee sounds simple until your nervous system decides it isn't.
Where will I sit? Who will be there? What if someone asks how I am? What if I cry? What if I see someone who doesn't know James died? What if they do know and give me that look?
Maybe tomorrow.
Tomorrow became another day inside the house.
And that was when I started thinking:
Lord, this isn't any better than last month.
Who were all those people who said this was supposed to get better?
Because nobody tells you that "better" isn't necessarily what happens next.
Sometimes what happens next is different.
The first month was shock, decisions, paperwork, people, phone calls and survival.
The second month was quieter.
And in some ways, the quiet was harder.
There were fewer distractions between me and the truth.
The world hadn't stopped. Other people went back to work. They made dinner. They complained about traffic. They planned weekends. They laughed at stupid things. They went home to their partners.
Life continued with an almost offensive normality.
And I was standing somewhere between the life I had and whatever life was supposed to come next.
I wasn't completely lost anymore.
Maybe that was the problem.
I was aware enough to know I was lonely.
Aware enough to miss the people who had gone back to their lives.
Aware enough to understand that the person I really wanted to walk through the door never would.
But not yet ready to figure out who I was supposed to be without him.
Maybe that's what month two really was.
Not moving on.
Not getting back to normal.
Just beginning to understand that there was no old normal waiting for me.
There would eventually have to be a new one.
I just wasn't ready to meet her yet.
Next: Month Three — Month Three: Going Back to Work — When the Rest of the World Thinks You're Ready
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