Today is the anniversary of Will’s death 11 months ago. The first year is almost over.

In most ways I am ready for it to be over too. I am tired of the restrictions that being less than a year out from his death have placed on me because in some ways I was farther ahead of those widow/ers who are blind-sided by their spouse’s death.

In other ways I was just as vulnerable and unprepared.

I was talking with a widower friend who is farther out than I am about my aversion to the newly widowed women in my daughter’s children’s grief group. The hollow eyes and blank yet tragically mournful faces made me want to run from them. I wondered aloud if I had looked like that.

“Of course you did, honey,” he told me. “We all do.”

I guess. I must have. I know people avoided me who didn’t actually run.

Truthfully I remember very little about the day to day of the first 4 months. Partly because I was buried by a brutal schedule that was killing me as much as it was providing me with a template for surviving. Mainly though, I was not paying attention to anything out of sight. If it was not in my line of vision, it didn’t exist.

I remember events from that time out of order too. I couldn’t tell you what happened first or next or last. It just happened. Things just happened and I rolled or didn’t or was so deep inside myself that I didn’t notice or didn’t care if I happened to. Five months brought the beginning of the descent to a bottom that I alternated between snuggling into like a favorite blanket and clawing at like a cat in a sack.

Between 8 and 9 months the discontent and searching began and really haven’t ended. Except….except that the feeling that I should be getting ready for something, someone, someplace?

I am shedding. Possessions. Ideas. Beliefs. People. In the emptiness…..because I needed more emptiness….comes….well….people, though most of them are not real but virtual and virtually necessary in ways I can’t explain.

Possessions are not being replaced at the rate of loss which is encouraging. New ideas and beliefs are being explored with no promises. When I think about it “no promises” is the current running theme of my life. Not sure how good or bad that is.

I haven’t cried today.

Don’t have that impending meltdown feeling that the widowed come to know so intimately.

I do have that fight or flight chest pounding, constricted throat, short of breath feeling that is reminiscent of a panic attack.

In some ways, I would rather cry. And I hate to cry.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. A day of people.

I seek people out more these days but still wonder why I bothered when I am around them in large numbers. I still make them as uncomfortable as the newly widowed mothers make me.

Tomorrow night I will put out my daughter’s Santa presents….by myself. I anticipate tears. I think I will stop here. Christmas morning will take care of itself without any preconceiving on my part. Thirty days to go.