This was from 2021 and I just published it today, going into the third holiday season without my husband.

Tomorrow would have been Jim and mine's 36th Anniversary. I've been a widow for 9 months and a few weeks. I still do not recognize myself. Who I am outside of the partnership we forged is still a mystery. I'm rolling with it most of the time because I've had a lifetime of learning to live with death and loss since I was 8 going on 9. Dad, 1963. Mom 1989. Baby brother 2006 (age 41). Middle sister 2016 (age 59) Two lifelong friends in 2015 and 2017. I'm no stranger to grief.

There have been a lot of changes. Lots of cleaning up. Donated nearly a thousand bucks worth of Jim's tools and left over building materials our local Habitat For Humanity's ReStore. Built a new DYI fence. I don't have long crying jags over Jim not being here because mostly he is. Or his shade is anyway.

(Oh. "Shade," you ask.  From Merriam-Websters:  " : a disembodied spirit : ghost" .)

I wish I could cry it all out. But throughout the 9 years he was sick, I grieved - often with Jim and over all that he lost and was continuing to lose as his COPD progressed. I will never forgive the tobacco companies for their dirty work. Don't believe me? Read Wigand's The Tobacco Papers. It's hard to cry. I weep. I get silent. I drift in a memory. My nose gets congested or runny. My eye tear up, but I haven't had an hours long purging raging cry since just before my kid brother died. That's a solid 15 years. I know that sooner or later the dam will break but not yet.

It is almost Christmas. We're in the period of the Winter Solstice now. Tomorrow is our anniversary. Unlike last year when we were both quietly celebrating our 35th and a subdued Yule tide with nothing save a few wreaths hung on the doors and in the windows as we mourned for the over 400,000 dead from Covid and all the families bereft of their loved ones, I decorated this year. I'd like to say I put everything up, but I'd be lying. I put up our tree with ornaments I bought over the years that were sentimental - hearts, birds, cats, books, along with the shells, eggs, miniature wreaths, snowmen, and more. Strings of light were run along the fence and along the eaves. From the Solstice when we wed through to January 6th, we celebrated love. Ours and the worlds. Our part in the world

Now, times are perilous. There is talk of civil war. And as an older widow, that's a daunting prospect. But for the season, I put up the lights and await the return of the sun. Because that is what one does.