Why is everyone so concerned with my dating status? Why the hell does a total stranger on an airplane care if I date people or not? What is with people? Do they think that if I find a new love, maybe get re-married, that I will finally be “over this?” That they will no longer have to worry about me, that I will no longer think about Don every single day, that he won’t be more than half of the puzzle that makes up my life? Don’t they understand that wherever I go, he comes with me? Whomever I love, he loves too? We are a package deal, forever.
When you marry someone; you just assume and hope and think that you’ll be together forever. You don’t think one of you will lose their life this way, this soon. And so when that happens, and you are left here on earth without that person that you vowed to be with for life, it is an extremely confusing time. Most people become widowed when they are old, and while it is still very sad to lose your spouse at any age, they don’t have to face decades of a future without their love. This is why losing your spouse is so different than losing anyone else in your life. Everything you do and everything you are, is intertwined with that person. To lose them suddenly, is to throw you into mass chaos. Who am I now? What am I doing? Where do I fit? What does it all mean without someone to share it with? What is the point without love?
I vowed to love this man until forever; until “death do us part.” But what if only one of you dies, and they die at age 46? Where does that leave the other? Just because he is dead, does not mean I love him any less. In fact, my love for him has never felt stronger and more alive than right now. My husband is gone, and I love him. I do not know how to stop loving him, and I don’t know that I would ever want to. But how do you continue life when you are in love with someone you can no longer be with? I wish I knew. My heart is stuck on forever, and I don’t know how to not love my husband. I am in love with a dead guy. Tell me – what am I supposed to do with that?
I am honestly not sure. It is quite a strange feeling to be madly in love with someone who is dead. It’s not something that people often talk about. But it’s certainly true, and it’s uncharted territory for sure. For the past year or so, I have been dating, and it has been a whirlwind of lessons and growing, and some pretty crazy stuff. One of the biggest things I have learned is that the human heart expands, so there is always room in it for more love. So, I can love my dead husband, and also fall in love with someone new. It will be a very different kind of love, and it will not be like the one I had with Don. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have the potential to be it’s own extremely special and wonderful thing. And at the same time, I will always and forever, be in love with that dead guy – because that’s just the way things are, in this weird and wild widowed life.