Navigating Grief at My Window

***TW: REALISTIC ELEMENTS OF GRIEF***

It's the first snowfall of the season, but it's been cold all year. 

Normally, the first snowfall is a special, quiet day with my love. This year, this snowfall feels more like bitter closure than a sweet tradition. 

You'd think that eight months without him would mean there's less of a sting, but it seems about the same. Usually, I hear of people hitting one year and they've at least been through all the firsts - the first birthday without them, the first summer without them, the first snowfall...

I’m not ready for those firsts but some have said it gets easier. Soon it’ll be the first Christmas without him and the first time our house has no lights strung across it.

I sit here, and the window view is the same, with the town clock in the distance. It's quiet like normal. The snow has fallen like clockwork around when it always does. But it's the coldest, darkest snowfall I've known. 

The flurries almost seem like ashes falling to the ground. It almost brings me comfort more than when they touch the ground to melt away or join the crowd of snowflake mush. In a way, it feels like the final trace of him is gone when they hit the ground. Almost. I don’t want the seasons to keep changing as it has been for months. Life keeps rolling on when my heart stands still. 

My heart's been in winter since long before this snowfall. 

"I miss you..." I utter in a whisper to my invisible husband, choking back tears. I hate myself for stifling a good cry. It’s not like my whole house isn’t stained with all my tears from recent months. It's not like anyone's here with me to care. The ones who were with me in the early weeks have long since moved on with their lives. 

The wind gusts and makes my house rattle from loose panels I've yet to fix. He said he'd fix them, but he never got around to it. I was annoyed for weeks about it when he kept putting it off, but now I'd give anything to be annoyed at him. His socks on the floor and chin stubble shaved into the sink... The house is missing those elements. Proof of his presence. I’d rather be annoyed with him alive than existing with him dead.

“You always put clothes anywhere but the hamper, you goof.” I said as I chuckled and smiled, and I drifted into a recurring memory of him dropping his work clothes onto the dining room chair, the living room floor, and so on. At first, I’d angrily grab his piles to put them into the hamper immediately. Eventually, I stopped putting them into the hamper or washer because he had his own system of re-wearing some things a couple times before tossing them to be cleaned. I could barely keep up. A tear streams down my cheek as I leave the memory and plop back into my living room mentally, staring out the window. Reality hurts.

He still exists, but only in my memory now. My mind has been both a safe haven of memories to escape to and a torture living with.

Everything I think, feel, and do has changed after he died. I have this horrible core memory of him dying and how life was before him and after him, before his death and after. My new normal is less vibrant than before. Everything is gray. Food isn’t enjoyable. It’s not gross, but not enjoyable. I hydrate enough, but barely. I have stayed in bed too long most days. Even watching a favorite show has been numbing. Yesterday, the apple cider seemed bitter. When I wear my favorite sweater, it is itchy, not soft, and the smell of him on his most worn shirt is almost totally faded.

I even find myself getting annoyed at children playing at the neighborhood playground and people walking their dogs because it’s so… normal. Normal and happy.

The most I’ve moved today was from the living room to the kitchen to make some hot tea, then back again to sip it as I continue watching snow. Even that was exhausting and the tea tastes more like medicine than a treat. 

Normally - the old normal, anyway - I'd get cold by being outside in this chill. Now... Well, now I go outside to just feel something. It’s, in a way, colder in the house.

As I open the door and listen to the screen door creak into the wet snow beneath it, I step into the reality that is the first snowfall without him. I can still recall his playful voice saying “Sugar, come give me some sugar!” He’d be especially flirtatious on the first snow of the season. It was the most romantic day of doing nothing but be together in our own home. If we went outside, it was to make snow angels, build the ugliest snowman filled with dirt and sticks, or to catch snowflakes on our tongues then run back inside because I’m usually a baby in the cold.

I watch as perhaps the last snowflake of this start of winter falls. My chin falls with it and the sob I needed bursts out of my eyes. My chest feels warm and constrained all at once. Snot drips viciously out of my nose and it falls into the snow. My mouth utters wails that echo in the wind. I somehow feel less embarrassed being near neighbors, ugly crying outside, than being inside choking back tears. It’s backward, I know. I’m not as embarrassed to be exposed as I was in privacy. Grief has changed everything.

I allow myself to collapse to my knees to kneel. My tears melt the tiniest circles into the snow next to where my nose dripped.

On the snowy ground I continue to kneel as I look up to a silver sky. No obvious clouds, though the whole sky looks like one big cloud. No sun or color. I see the silhouette of naked trees. A lone bird passes my view and I think to myself that I hope he finds his family. What was a pile of autumn leaves near our driveway is almost gone now. The snow piles onto any trace of the last season. 

"I wish you were here..." I say in the direction of that nearly gone pile of leaves, trying to imagine him standing there. He was usually the one to rake them in the past. I didn't care to take his job. Maybe next year. 

In my snow-covered hair and wet-kneed pajama pants, I see the mailman sheepishly drop off my mail and smile at me with a tiny wave - the kind that is quick and pleasant, where his waving hand has stacks of envelopes he’s trying not to drop. He nods in his friendly smile and says “howdy,” then moves to the next house. 

He didn’t seem to care that I was a hot mess in that snow.

Or he just didn’t want to make me feel bad and he cared very much how ridiculous I look. He - like most people in this small town - knows I am the grieving widow. Everyone tries very hard when they see me to treat me like I don’t have dried up mascara caked onto my face, unwashed hair, and a general gloom.

Human interaction has been on the low side lately and this brief exchange made me want to come back to the land of the living. I feel slightly okay again. Slightly. Progress is progress, no matter how small. Grief has been a close friend, but it can’t stay forever.

My sweet moment with the living human that is the mailman was short lived because I know that the only mail left lately contains coupons I won’t use, credit card proposals, and a bill that belongs to the prior owner that keeps coming for some reason. No more sympathy cards or baskets of goodies to temper the sting of grief. Although, they didn’t help as much as people wanted. I feel bad for that. I’d thank them of course, if I was around to see them. But it all felt meaningless in the depths of despair.

I muster up the motivation I had moments ago with the mailman and tell myself under my breath, “get back to the living.”

For me (as I take baby steps back into the routine of life), I know that means that today’s steps are getting dressed, making a decent meal, and calling a friend. If that’s all I can do today, that’s okay.

As I resolve to enter our home again for some true warmth, I feel a breeze on my back that almost swings the screen door closed behind me. 

"I love you too," I say to him.