A recent entry from my diary: Learning to be a Widow

I don't like being a widow.

It's a damn hard thing to live with.

I doubt I am presumptuous when I consider that for all widows and widowers there is never a day that goes by when one does not mourn back 2 or 3 years and will that you could be back there and be living that normal life again.  

There is no normal now.  No day is 'normal'. It can't be and will not be for a very long time.

It is not that one is refusing to face reality;  indeed, it is more that reality is so not normal.  

Oh well.  There are some upsides. And if he were here now he would be reminding me of the upsides, the positives. He always found the positive in anything I found negative.  And some of the positives of being a widow would make him grin.  I know they would.  He'd be happy for me to share.

One positive is: I don't have to shave under my arms on such a regular and religious basis anymore.  Always had the fear that I would lift my arm one day and he would view a most unfeminine hairy mass to remind him that women too have descended from apes.  Well, maybe not women in general, just me, his wife.  

The same goes for the daily lady shave routine: no more do I have to fear that on putting my legs on his lap when we are stretched out on the couch is going to have me do a quick reversal of repose and rush off to the bathroom to rid oneself of a hairy leg dilemma - cause I lived in the belief that Tony just presumed I was so femme fatale that hair would never grow anywhere it shouldn't, particularly on the legs.  If it did, it would not be normal.

Well that is two positives of being widowed.  There must be more ....   aahhh, yes.   Another one is:  I can now go to sleep and sleep reasonably well without the fear that one night I might just snore and once again prove to him that I had flaws...  well, a flaw.  I would go sleepless rather than have him hear me snore.  Nowadays I can now sleep making as many zzzzzzz's as my unconscious sleep wants.  Indeed, I wish I could sleep better and make more zzzzzzz's.

And that reminds me of another positive: I used to have a great fear of having flatulence, most particularly nocturnal flatulence.  Heaven forbid that at any time during sleep hours my body would emit a mass blast of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane and hydrogen sulfide at a precise moment when he was conscious or semi-conscious from his own sleep.  So many times over a twenty year period I would bolt myself upright mid-sleep with the fear that some of those gasses had been emitted at a highly audible volume, the sulphide gasses proving even the most feminine can have an internal constitution of a cow.  There would be no way I could contemplate the possibility that Tony would discover my bodily functions were able to be that basic, or complex (cause I think cows have lots of stomachs - and I wouldn't want him thinking that either).  I'd rather die than have him think so of me. 

Oh gosh - all those 'benefits' are so lowbrow, so puerile, so profane. 

So normal.