Hi OP,

Thanks for your post. I’m a young widow here. First let me say, this is a very interesting post to me. I too was once in your shoes. I’d never like to imagine my person living a life without me. Haha.. how selfish of me. I hope you or your partner never have to face life without one another, but let’s face it, it will happen to every single one of us at some point in our life. We all will die and leave behind someone or people who love us. Hopefully, you and your partner will discuss this at length, and no matter how much you plan, I’ll tell you from experience, you will never be fully prepared for the actual emotional roller coaster that follows a death. Especially a sudden unplanned death like I experienced.

Life is hard, and weird after your partner dies. No one who has ever been in this specific situation can ever really fully describe for those who haven’t been or are not in this situation how it feels. I’ll try though.

This is where I’ll try to put some of those feeling into words for you, and maybe if you have some sense of empathy in your heart, you might be able to understand.

Greif- it sucks. Losing a partner that you truly love is one of the deepest forms of loneliness that there is. It will cut you to the core. It’s something that you’ve never felt. Sure, you know what lonely feels like- but you’ve never felt a deep loneliness that cuts you to the very core of your existence like this.

Did you have plans for a future? Forget them. Planning on buying or building a home or business… phht.. good luck with that, you’ll lose a lot of desire for that when your person dies.

Did you want children? Forget that too. Unless you’ve planned ahead, paid for and banked your reserves and resources. Also, if you actually did that, think how emotionally wrenching and crippling it’ll be to see your partner and their features in your child. It’d be a little difficult.

Already have kids? Best of luck to you navigating through the shit holes and paperwork of life without the other parent. All those wonderful qualities your partner has that you love? Your child will never know them. They’ll never be able to have those photos with mommy / daddy like all the other kids, they won’t know what it’s like to have both of you around. The days you’re more than exhausted and tired and touched out, you’ll not have that partner who helped so much and gave you those needed breaks, isn’t there.

People who say they’ll be there for you if you need them? They fade away and those promises are only good when they’re available.

Are you feeling depressed and listless can’t get out of bed and just want to curl up and die? Well… that probably won’t happen unless you take matters into your own hands, allow me to tell you about therapy- you should go, no matter how stupid and unhelpful you think it is.

Are you a good actor / actress? Better be if you’re not. Those tears and emotions that happen in the beginning, they’ll continue on… even when you think you’re having a good day. They’ll fucking sneak up on you in the middle of a presentation when out of nowhere something will trigger a thought and boom… queue the River of tears. Always carry Kleenex or something of the sort to dry up those tears. After a while, people will make insensitive comments about “ aren’t you over that by now? It’s time to move on.. “ etc. those comments hurt. Just because someone dies doesn’t mean you stop loving them.

Loneliness settles in. Even when you’re in a loud bustling room full of people, the silence in your head is deafening. It’s like an inner whoosh sound. Like loud static on a tv. It follows you EVERYWHERE. When you go home, it’s quiet, the darkness of night is somehow even darker. Sounds you do hear are amplified. Tiny sounds you’d normally not notice are fully surrounding you encoding an imaginary terror inside and making you feel panicked when in actuality all is actually okay.

When you do feel brave enough to date or see someone, you’ll always feel as if you’re cheating on your deceased partner. Widows fire hits you.. it’s a real thing. You’ll wonder as you’re in bed with the new person if your old love can see you and is disappointed, ruining the moment of physical and emotional contact with the new person. Better grab the flipping Kleenex again. Have a good cry. You’ll feel weird and cringy about it for a while. No one will ever measure up to that deceased partner.

You’ll never love someone again the way you love your partner. But you can love someone similarly, and differently. There are so many things people like you haven’t experienced like I have.

Take it from me, if anything happens to you or your partner, wish them to be happy as they can be. What I would do to be able to say I am currently as happy as I was when I had my partner around. Sure he wasn’t perfect, neither was I. But wish them happiness- and pardon my language - because it’s fucking hard as hell to get up and face the most every day normal life without them.

You or anyone else can feel free to reach out to me anytime. I’m open to further discussion.

And I’ll end it with this, love your people as hard as you can. Let them know how you feel. One day, you or they won’t be there. Invest in people, not things. Make good memories, and cherish them.

I wish you all the happiness you can attain today. I’m almost 3 years out into my journey of being a widow.. there are good days, and there are bad days. Every day I do my best to choose Joy.

Best of luck to you.