Three Things

Friends asked how I was, but there was no way to describe my feelings after my husband’s sudden death.

- Paula Dyer

Nothing was the same without him. Not holidays or birthdays. Not my everyday routine. I’d thought getting back into my usual rhythm would bring the comfort of the familiar. I’d attend early services Sunday morning, listening to Father Brian’s homily for a message I could take into the week. I’d head home to change into a suit for my job at an addiction-treatment center, where I worked the second shift every Sunday through Thursday. But every night after work I’d sit in the quiet living room and cry.

My husband, John, had died early one Friday morning in June of what the ER doctor termed a sudden cardiac event. Everything I’d heard, everything I’d read, said that grief would ease with time. Now it was February, the dark of winter. Eight months had passed, yet every day something would set me off, and I’d find myself missing John.

Tonight I was hanging up my coat in the hall closet. John’s coats were in there too. I threw my arms around them, inhaled his scent. For a moment, I could pretend he was still there. I touched his tan sport coat, the one he had worn the last time we went to church together. My hand lay on the chest pocket, where I had rested it when I gave John a quick kiss goodbye before work. If I had known that would be our last Sunday, I wouldn’t have rushed off. I would have let my lips linger on his.

I pulled my hand away and retreated to the living room. I curled up on the couch, more bereft than ever. Lord, why has this gotten harder, not easier?

The funeral home, the phone calls, the wake, the service, the eulogy, the gathering afterward—everything went by in a blur. I must have still been in shock.