couples who met through the YWBB

Us


This time last year I had known Rob for about ten days. He introduced himself to me via a PM (private message) on the YWBB (young widows bulletin board) in response to my response to one of his posts. He had posted about his daughter, Jordan, commenting on his teenage like behavior and I had replied, jokingly offering to be his evil twin as we seemed to share many of the same behaviors. His reply message to me was entitled, Hey there Evil Twin. Our hailing each other as twins proved more prescient than either of us could have known at the time. He offered an ear via email despite the fact that he’d recently had a bad experience with another person on the board. Someone who had contacted him, and he misunderstood the true intent behind this woman’s reaching out to him. Despite that he reached out in friendship to me anyway. He had been reading my posts, sensing that we had much in common and also they occasionally made him laugh.

We began writing to each other off the board on December 18th which was just short of a week later. We nearly stopped communicating a few days after that when he told me I reminded him of a character from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, Fight Club, and I googled the character only to discover she was a support group junkie and a nymphomaniac. I was more than taken aback, and he was profusely apologetic, and persistent, and we continued writing. Now Rob tells me that his initial impression of me, based on my posting on the YWBB, was way off, but I have since watched Fight Club and I can see why I reminded him of Marla Singer. He remarked the other day that “last time this year I was on the verge of fucking things up” and I had nearly forgotten all about it. Later that evening I went back and reread the letters from that week and the week of January 1st. I was at a low point then, and I remember how much I looked forward to hearing from him, reading his emails. They weren’t necessarily grief-related, and they certainly weren’t romantic or even leading to that way. They were just the kind of emails you would send to and receive from a new friend. Full of information about daily goings on and sharing interests and interesting things. They are long letters. I have plans to print them out someday and bind them for posterity – whoever that might end up being.

A year ago tonight, Rob was in Vancouver with the girls and Katy and I were just getting back home from Christmas Eve dinner with friends who are like family. Tonight, I cooked a Chinese feast and we were all together. I don’t think I could have imagined this back then. Even though I knew I would someday meet someone and know love and marriage again, and even though I thought I would be lucky to find someone just like my new friend, Rob, I don’t think I was quite ready to imagine it was Rob. Or he me. But we were closer than we knew.

Merry Christmas to all my friends out there.

Newlyweds


Back in my early days on the YWBB, I corresponded and posted  back and forth a bit with a man from New Hampshire. His wife had died after a a long bout with cancer about 5 months after Will died. He was one of the first posters I ran across who subscribed to the theory that it was possible to have loved your spouse, grieve for your spouse and still want to forge ahead and build a new life…..maybe even with someone else. 

Bob caused quite the stir on the board at the end of the year when he revealed that he had met and was dating a widow he met at a bago in Boston. Though dating through the board and hooking up at bago’s is officially verboten at the YWBB, the truth is that it happens a lot more than most people would care to admit. People meet like Rob and I did through PM’s and email and progress from there. They meet at bago’s. They meet in chat. It happens. It’s just a man/woman thing that nothing gets in the way of when it is meant to be.

Bob and his lady friend, Shel, disappeared from the board not long after the first of the year. I suspected that they were too busy living and being together and building a new life to have time for the board. Today Bob reappeared to announce that he and Shel were married on the first of this month. Although I could be wrong, it is an announcement that will be met with a tepid response at best. Most of the people on the board are too mired to offer congratulations to someone else’s happiness. 

I wish Bob and Shel the best. 

I think I am Falling in Love


Love for Arts

Image via Wikipedia

I sent an email to my gentleman this morning. He told me last night that he had “fallen” for me and this morning I told him I felt that same way.

Why do I just want to cry now?

It’s nearly noon and I am still in my pajamas. I still love Will but I love R too. And it isn’t as if they conflict or even overlap. They don’t even run parallel. But, they do exist in the same space. I don’t even know what to compare this too. It is so outside of any reference frame I have.

People on the board have compared it to the love you have for your children. Different for each one but just as intense and special. But isn’t quite the same. You expect to have enough love for all your kids, you never expect to meet someone so amazingly wonderful that you would risk losing them forever….again. I have said that I don’t know if I could sit by a man’s side and watch him die, but I wouldn’t want R to be with anyone but me when that day comes. And between now and that far away day, I want to spend every minute I am allowed just being with him.