How to Talk to a Widower

They have expressed their rote concern, and “fine” is their receipt for tax purposes. But you’re not fine, you’re a fucking mess, often drunk before lunch and talking to yourself, weeping over photos, losing hours at a time staring into space, torturing yourself with an infinite array of if-only scenarios, feeling lost or devastated or angry or guilty or some potent cocktail blend of all of those at any given moment. You want to move on, but to do that you have to let her go, and you don’t want to let her go, so you don’t move on. Or maybe you do, just a little bit, and then you feel the grief of losing her all over again, and the guilt of trying to stop feeling that grief, and then you get pissed because you feel guilty when you shouldn’t, and then you feel guilty for being pissed about your dead wife. Does that sound like “fine” to you? And to say it is to somehow discredit everything you’re going through, and, in some way, it feels like a slight to your dead wife, the mark of an inferior love, for you to be fine. But no one wants to hear the ugly truth, and even if they did, you don’t really feel comfortable sharing your grief like that, so once again you just say “fine,” and breathe deeply until the impulse to commit a gory, ritualistic homicide has passed.
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    Yes, now that you mention it. Go back in time and stop my wife from getting on that goddamn plane. That would be a big help, actually. I’d be eternally grateful. Short of that, what could you have possibly thought you were going to offer that would solve my problems here? Cook me dinner? I lost my wife, not my microwave.
    And whatever you do, do
not
attempt to empathize. Don’t whip out your own tragedy like a secret fraternity handshake. This misery wants no company. I don’t want to hear about your father’s car crash, your mother’s heart attack, your sister’s slow death from leukemia. My sorrow trumps all others, and I don’t want to be mucking about in your grief any more than I want you mucking about in mine.
    I know you mean well, but that doesn’t make it any easier to listen to you. If you want to demonstrate your friendship and support, here’s what you do: Leave it alone. Don’t address it directly. I know you think praising my wife or sharing a warm remembrance will somehow ease my pain, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it won’t. If you can’t look the other way, then a simple greeting is really all that I can stand right now. If you feel you absolutely must acknowledge my tragedy, then you can do one of those somber nods, with the pursed lips and the raised eyebrows, and I’ll let it slide. But beyond that, keep it light. Ask me the time, and I’ll check my watch. Invite me along to a movie. I’ll say no, but you’ll have offered and we’ll have shared a simple exchange that didn’t make me want to flay the skin off your face. And maybe, if I have enough of those simple exchanges, just basic human contact that asks nothing of me, maybe I’ll start being able to start maintaining eye contact once again, start engaging the world at my own pace.
    And then, who knows? Maybe one day you’ll catch me at just the right moment and I’ll actually agree to go to the movies with you, because it will get me out of the house and I’ll know that for two hours I won’t have to make conversation. Then, when it’s over, we can talk about the movie. You won’t have made anything better, you won’t have helped me come to terms with my loss, but the sooner you give up on that dream, the better off we’ll both be. Healing is a deeply private process and, honestly, you’re not welcome to be a part of it. But you will have given me a short furlough from the dark, sorry prison of my mind, and that gift, precious in its own right, is really the best you can hope to offer.
    And it should go without saying that if you bring me to a romantic comedy, I will shoot you dead before turning the gun on myself.
----

15

    From:
[email protected]
    To:
[email protected]
    Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006
    Subject: It’s On

    Talked to Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, and Riverhead. They’re all interested. I can start entertaining offers as soon as you get me a formal proposal. We might even be talking auction! Come on, Doug, let’s do this! What the hell else have you got to do?
    —K

    From:
[email protected]
    To:
[email protected]
    Date: