The Seasoning Circle

 

Being a widow is not a project with a deadline.

It is not a chapter that you finish.

It is not a problem that you resolve.

 

Being a widow is a state of being.

Some days are heavy, some are strangely quiet.

Some days are more numb than not.

Some days are sharp with memory, and you wish they weren’t.

 

Being a widow is not only sadness or despair – it is emptiness.

A hollowed-out place where Love once had the space, the weight and the sound.

Where the language spoken was easier to understand.

 

There are many long and lived-in truths in widowhood.

I did not know these until I had moved from days and weeks, through the months, and deep into the years.

One truth is if widowhood had an expiration date

– if somehow that love would dissolve on a timeline . . .

others would be more comfortable with it.

When my truth makes someone else uncomfortable, silence feels safer.

But my silence doesn’t make the ache go away.

It only makes it more lonely.

 

One true truth is –

Seasoned widows,

defined as one who has been a widow for 3-5 years,

need to know that we are not invisible.

That true truth grows more solid when you become a well-seasoned widow,

defined as one who has been a widow for 10+ years.

 

Another true truth is there is a kind of widowhood that lives after the crisis,

after the casseroles, after the phone calls,

after the visits, after the immediate paperwork.

It exists,

even though there is little to no space allowed for it,

because I exist, and you exist.

 

Still a widow.

Still loving, and missing.

Still remembering.

The sighs get deeper, somehow stronger, not quieter.

 

The ache beneath the sigh isn’t loneliness in the dramatic first days to first years sense.

This is the absence of presence.

 

I don’t ask to be rescued.

This is my life now – being a widow.

But I do find myself aching to not be so alone in the ordinary.

 

A seasoned, or well-seasoned, widow is not out of step.

We are simply standing in that place where society hasn’t built a bench yet.

 

Welcome to my bench . . . Seasoning Circle.

 

Where there are stories,

hard-earned wisdom,

and things I wish someone had told me

– long before I got here.

 

Where there is laughter not understood by many.

Where mistakes are learning steps, not shame, not humiliating.

Where Experience is not a number, not an age.

Where no matter what level of being a widow you are on,

1 day or more - 

5, 10, 20 years or more -

there is a place for you . . .

right here next to me, to all of us.

 

I am still becomING.

I am still learnING.

I am still changING.

I am still figurING this widowhood thing out.

 

And to be honest?

I kinda like the -ING part rather than the -ED part.

-ED says it is finishED.

But Love isn’t finishED.

So therefore, Grief is not finishED either.

 

Widowhood does not become past tense

simply because the calendar pages keep turning,

and the clock keeps ticking.

SeasonING is happenING - now.