"It's awful, but it's not fatal.
That's the dispatch I'm sending back from exactly one year into this shadow-slog. A year ago today -- an hour from now, I'm just realizing -- I came back from dropping Alice off at school. I'd let Michelle sleep in. Got our daughter dressed and ready for school -- lunch packed, class folder in her backpack. I stopped on the way home to buy Michelle an Americano and left it on her bedside table around 9:30am. Went up to my office, did some writing, answered some e-mails, Tweeted some thoughts on Prince dying. There was an art show at Alice's school in the afternoon and my wife and I were going to go, get dragged around the room by Alice as she chattered about her artwork and the work of her classmates. Except instead I came back down into the house and the life i knew was gone.
I'm one year into this new life -- one I never even imagined, and I can imagine some pretty pessimistic and dark contingencies, some stomach-freezing "what ifs." But not this one. This one had such a flat, un-poetic immediacy. The world gazes at you like a hungry but indifferent reptile when you're widowed.
Last night I took off my wedding ring. I couldn't bear removing it since April 21st, 2016. But now it felt obscene. That anonymous poem about the man mourning his dead lover for a year and a day, for craving a kiss from her "clay cold lips." I was inviting more darkness. Removing the ring was removing the last symbol of denial of who I was now, and what my life is, and what my responsibilities are.
But it's not fatal."
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