be happy again after being widowed, my heart is so broken

I married when I was 21. Two months later, Dan passed away. It was real strange and like it was meant to be. I still, to this day, think that it was. Without those moments from my past, I would have never started believing in a sense of spirituality. I do believe that his passing was meant to be and that I was meant to move on, move forward and be happy again. I wasn’t happy with him and I am now.

This may be premature, but I am marking this done nonetheless. I have achieved a plateau in my grief. It will be with me for the rest of my life, but I’m not thrown around by it like I was before. I have a measure of control now. I know what the pitfalls are, such as the reflex of feeling sorry for oneself and mindlessly persuing the past. I am accepting of how things are, I’m open to how things will be, and I’m starting to leave my life with Wendy behind.

I’m just past the 18 month point in my grief. I have had some severe depression over the last few weeks, but a lot of that, I think, is related to my mother dying.

It’s odd. My mother dying provokes grief for my wife more than for my mother. This is probably common. A widow friend of mine observed the same thing last year when her father died nine months after her husband.

The thing about acute grief is that it’s a massive black star in your soul. Its gravity attracts every bad feeling that normally happens to anyone; every frustration, every rage, every disappointment, every fear reflects back on, and is made worse by, that singular loss.

Because Wendy’s death has robbed me of so much identity (husband, business partner, would-be father), grief has filled in the gaps. I am now, in my head, the Griever.

I know that the best way to move on is to move my grief into the past. I must let go of Wendy, let go of the sorrow, and create a new identity. That’s what I’m resolved to do.

Surprisingly, the whole run-up to Christmas this year wasn’t bad. I have always loved the holiday, and it’s a very public one to be shared with neighbors and friends up until the 24th.

I did find it impossible to write Christmas cards for reasons that are obvious to me now but were mysterious to me at the time.

I spent the holiday with Wendy’s brother’s family and her mom and dad. It was good to be with them, but at the same time, I felt numb.

My mood started going down after that. I went out with friends on New Year’s eve but came home before midnight. I proposed to Wendy on New Year’s eve, 1998, and she screamed yes over the booming fireworks.

I started 2007 with a major set-back in my grief. I’ve made up a lot of lost ground in the days since. I started going to a “young widows” group, which I hope will be helpful. The leader, who was widowed 15 years ago, says the second year is very difficult. “Everyone is over it,” she told me, “and they expect you to be, too, but you’re not.”

She said it took her about three-and-a-half years to get to where she would miss her husband, but was no longer sad. I’ve still got a long way to go.

And I’m getting there.

I’m more than two weeks out of a two-week depression. I’m not sure what put me in or pulled me out. I’m just happy to be here. I want to do the things that will make it easier for me to keep from falling through the trap doors.

Today is my seventh wedding anniversary. My first without her.

So yesterday I got up; ate breakfast; knocked out enough work from 9am to 10am to pay for the rest of the day; went into town; met an internet acquaintance at my club, for a drink which turned into lunch which turned into most of the afternoon (and the acquaintance turned into a friend); got told I was cool twice; picked up my comics; didn’t buy a wardrobe; but did buy a splendid jacket after someone complimented me on it as I tried it on; stepped out into a torrential downpour, but didn’t take out my umbrella, better to get completely and utterly soaking wet; was smiled at by at least four cute girls; took a bus to the South Bank; bought a ticket on impulse for a film I’d never heard of; played with a free DS while I waited; drank a pint of wheat beer; was selected to receive a free bag of anime goodies; watched the film, which was refreshing and affecting in equal parts; left the cinema; abruptly found myself participating in an my book; slept like a very tired log. It was a good day.

So, following the “keeping track of how I’m feeling” entry, I decided to do precisely that. I started carrying a Hipster PDA, and in it, I created a Moodometer template.

The Moodometer is just a table that has columns for date, AM, MID, PM and notes on the day. In the AM, MID, and PM columns, I put in a number between 1 and 9 for how I was feeling during that period. 1 for utter hopelessness and 9 for agape. I chose a scale of 1 to 9 because that puts 5 conveniently in the middle.

The tricky thing about the Moodometer, for me, is that there’s a relatively short window for entering the values. I don’t want to enter an AM value in the AM since what I’m trying to put down a value for the whole morning, not just the moment of my writing. It takes a little reflection, but if I wait more than a couple of days, I don’t trust my memory of how I was feeling. Normally, it takes me about a minute to write down yesterday’s values.

I’ve been doing this now pretty regularly for a couple of months. I’ve even put the table into a spreadsheet and graphed out the numbers. Here’s what I’ve found out about myself:

• I average a little above 5 for all three parts of the day. This is very good for me. 5 is my target, not 9. Whatever goes up must come down. I’m setting my goal for the middle path.
• Mornings are the best for my mood, middle of the day is hardest, on average
• There’s a definite up-and-down pattern. The graph of my moods looks a lot like an EKG.
• Keeping track of my feelings, which takes only seconds per day, makes me much more mindful of how I am feeling at any given moment. That awareness helps me know what to do and helps me spot other patterns. For example, I could feel my mood change at the end of day on Friday from about a 6 to a 2 between the time I left my desk and made it to the office lobby. Why? I figure it’s because weekends were traditionally time I would spend with Wendy.

Bottom Line: The Moodometer is easy to keep up and might tell you a lot about how you’re feeling and what you can do to feel better.

I had a dream about Wendy a couple of weeks ago. The house was filled with neighborhood kids—she had offered free baby-sitting and the neighbors responded gratefully. She was in the kitchen cooking. She came back to life.

I kissed her and held her close. We realized that because she had died and come back to life, we would have to get remarried as a legal formality. We were discussing this when the dream ended.

That dream happened on a Friday morning. I spent the next three days in utter despair. Usually, the down moods last for hours, but I couldn’t shake myself out of this.

A friend came into an emotional crisis of her own and that took my focus off my own problems. Helping her made me feel better. Last weekend, I volunteered to pull weeds at an environmental center. That made me feel better, too.

I guess I’m learning that helping other people and feeling useful is a way out of my despair.

When I picked up Wendy’s ashes a couple of months ago, the undertaker (they don’t call themselves that anymore, do they?), who’s been a very nice and helpful guy, asked if I was starting to move on with my life. I said no, not really. “Wendy would want you to move on, you know.”

A brief flash of anger moved through me. After all, he only knew Wendy as a corpse. It was a “How dare you” moment, but it was only a moment because, even though he didn’t know her, he was right. Wendy would want me to be happy again.

But now it’s about what I want, and I want to be sad. Being sad feels natural, comfortable. I realize, however, that being sad is unhealthy.

So I’m trying to be mindful about my moods and to not linger in sadness. It’s important to mourn and to accept grief when it comes, but I must consciously turn toward positive thinking and happiness.