Slickery

38

Today, 18 October 2005, would have been rog's 38th birthday.

Today is also my parents' 42nd wedding anniversary.  My mother loved that they shared that day with rog's birthday, she always said it was a sign that he was destined to be part of our family.  It breaks my heart for them that now this day will always have a sad association.

This day sucks about as much as I expected.  I was sick yesterday and I'm swamped at work so staying home wasn't an option.  That's probably for the best as lately I'm fantasizing more and more about quitting my job and fleeing to the woods to live alone with my pain.  Apparently cableboxes with DVR are thin on the ground in the Hermit Woods so I don't think I'll actually act on this plan.

I miss him.  37 years wasn't enough.  Not quite 8 years together could never begin to be enough.

I worry about his memory living on through the years, all the little details that made him rog that I remember.  We have no children and neither the dog nor the cat show much sign of plans to write his biography.

So one day no one will remember that he organized a give-away of over 10 tons of government-donated cheese as his Eagle Scout project but that he actually hated the taste of cheese.

No one will remember how much he loved animals and refused to do any harm to animals or bugs or spiders.  He'd get so mad at me for killing spiders instead of ushering them out the door with a blessing like he did.  No one will remember the time we were driving down the road and saw a seagull with its foot stuck in the slats of a wooden fence.  rog calmly walked up to this giant, smelly, screaming bird and freed it.  I swear by all that is holy for months after that seagulls would appear where ever we went. 

No one will remember his insane love for Whining Ovaries Alt Pop and his need to own every bootleg and import ever from Ani Difranco, Sinead O'Connor, Garbage/Shirley Manson, No Doubt/Gwen Stafani.  Or how much he loved the Blues (and how appalled he was to find out I thought Eric Clapton was American).

But mostly I regret that even now people mainly remember him as an alcoholic who lost his battle to stay sober.  But he was so much more than that.  He was the kindest, most loving person I've ever known.  He was insanely smart.  He went out on Saturday mornings to buy me lattes and bagels even though he hated the smell and taste of coffee and didn't really like lox.  He was an amazing cook, usually working by instinct, and made the most incredible chedder-horseradish mashed potatoes.  He was deaf in one ear.  He had a full blood transfusion in utero as part of an experimental study to prevent miscarriages due to RH factor incompatibility.  When he was five his parents were told he was probably mentally retarded and would never graduate high school.  He went to college on a full scholarship and graduated summa cum laude.  He liked chick flicks, and Julia Roberts, and could quote almost all of Pretty Woman, but he thought Kit Deluca was the sexier hooker.

He was my best friend.  He was my husband.  He was my lover.  He made me feel whole and he broke my heart.  I will never forget any of it.

This is my favorite picture of us, taken in October 1997, just a few weeks after we moved in together (and just a few months after our friendship turned into love).

There is a Serenity spoiler in here. If you haven't seen it yet you aren't a real fan anyway so nyah!

Is it me or is widowhood, especially fairly young widowhood, the new hot thing in pop culture?  There's Bree in Desparate Housewives, Zoe in Serenity and although they were only engaged (and he may not really be dead) Sydney in Alias.  Plus there's the success of Good Grief, the "Chick Lit gets serious" book about a young widow*.  I feel like I should have some brilliant idea to grab this sudden spotlight on the loss of young husbands and fix my financial woes.  Or at the very least I should hit the gym and hard because apparently all the other young widows are wicked hot.  Zoe in that white dress during the memorial service?  Bree in black suits?  Sydney all glowy with pregnancy?  I look nothing like any of that.  Although I am getting my hair dyed red again this weekend.

Randomly changing the subject, next week is rog's birthday.  rog's birthday is also my parents' wedding anniversary.  My mother always loved that coincidence, she felt it was a sign that rog was meant to be part of our family.  I am in a really busy time at work with government reports due by the end of the month and a database query that suddenly doesn't work so I can complete those reports.  I have no time to wallow in misery so I'm trying to turn my grief outward and help others.  (That's my knitting blog, which I call a klog.  Because I am a dork.  Still, everytime I think/read klog I giggle.  Klog.  Hee.  It's times like this when I crack up only myself that I miss rog.  He wouldn't think klog was funny but he'd laugh at me laughing at myself.)

So, that's about it these days:  Hollywood thinks young widows are hot, I knit a lot, my dog is fat, my cat is crazy, and my hair needs to be cut.  I think normality is finally closing the distance.

*Re that book.  I read it less than two weeks after rog died and really, really hated because it seemed so fake to me.  Months later, I think the author did the best she could as someone who had never lost a spouse.  Parts that pissed me off make more sense now.  And I suppose if I had a life insurance settlement and wasn't so worried about money I might have gotten to the "houserobe and slippers at work" stage.  But I still think her life came together too easily with the new boyfriend and hugely successful new small business in an area she knew nothing about.  I'm pretty sure that if I had a life insurance settlement and I opened a sporting goods store in a strange town it wouldn't be a sign that I had moved on but rather a sign that something large had hit me in the head.

Just checking in

I've had a couple of concerned emails from readers and realized I should probably post an update on how I'm doing.  I knew it had been a while since I posted but I didn't realize it was that long.  Time flies.  I'm just going to expand on what I wrote in an email to one kind reader.

I'm doing as well as I can.  I've been neglecting this site because, to be honest, I'm dealing with a ton of financial and legal issues resulting from rog's death and in order to get through them and get it all dealt with I pretty much have to ignore my emotions and just plow through it.  Writing about it makes it all too immediate.  I know I have to deal with it eventually but right now I have to concentrate on getting moved into a rental house, selling the house we built, finding a car I can afford, and negotiating with creditors (including both the IRS and OH income tax people).  Plus so much of what I'm feeling right now towards rog is wrapped up in the personal and financial stuff and how angry I am that he left me and left me to deal with it.  And a lot of the financial and legal stuff, not to mention my feelings about it all, are too shameful to share with the general internet public. 

I know that's a cop out most journal readers hate.  "Something big is happening to me but I can't tell you."  It's not that I can't, it's just that when I try to tell you about it without dying of shame or breaking down into sobs (and since I usually post from work that would be bad) I can't do it.  Let me just say this.  No matter how old you are, single, married, polyamorous, with kids or happily childfree, get some life insurance.  Even if it's a low cost, $25,000 policy, I can promise you that whoever is left behind to close out your life will be grateful.  Not, "Woo, new car!" grateful.  "Okay, now I can pay the estate bills" grateful.  rog had no life insurance since we always relied on work for that and he wasn't full time when he died.  The car insurance paid for the service and cremation and the blue book for the car, which wasn't much.  Lots of very kind, generous people sent me money, including two amazing donations from the two internet communities that meant the most to us.  I can never tell you how much all of it helped, it kept me from losing my house or car immediately and gave me time to figure out options.  But the fact is the income got cut in half, the expenses remain (because anything in both our names is now my sole responsibility) and times were tight before he died. I don't want to share the details of what I'm doing to fix all this because I don't want to think about them.  These issues are not what you think about when you get married and like many young couples we thought we had years to make plans for how to deal with death and associated issues.

And these days my issues seem very small compared to what so many people are going through right now.  I know how devastating and hard just losing my husband was - I can not even fathom how much worse it must be to deal with losing everything you own, your job, your house, any idea of what the future brings and your loved ones all at once.  I have family, friends, tangible memories of our time together, and I won't be homeless anytime soon because too many people around me refuse to let that happen.  So I'm trying to keep busy, count my blessings, do what I can for those that have lost so much more, and Scarlett O'Hara ("I can't think about that today, I'll think about it tomorrow") all the rest.

Keeping busy has led me to knitting, the required craft of internet bloggers.  (I'm kidding.  Mostly.)  Knitting is happy and fun even when frustrating and I could talk about it for days on end.  So I'll be launching a knitting blog but I'll keep it separate for those of you that don't care about the status of my clapotis.

Thanks to all of you who keep me in your thoughts and prayers, check up on me, and generally lend me strength you didn't know you were giving.  It means the world to me.

Warning: This is long and probably very depressing.

I'm not sure why but in the last two weeks, mostly the last week, the realization that rog is really dead and gone keeps hitting me out of nowhere as if I just found out.

What's really weird is that the day he died I was devastated but I wasn't surprised.  I realized a long time ago that if rog didn't find a program and stay sober he was going to die before me and probably from driving drunk.  When my brother, Jason, called me that morning to tell me that rog had been fired for being drunk at work again (he worked with my brother and was on probation there and had to take daily breathalyzers) I knew that the day would end up with rog either arrested, hospitalized or dead.  When I pulled into the garage that day my across-the-street neighbor came over and asked if I was Sharon.  When I said yes she told me I need to go down to my relative's house (my brother and his family live three doors down).  "Is he drunk?  Is he hurt?  Is he dead?" I asked.  She just repeated that I needed to go down there.  And in that minute I knew he was gone.  I walked into Jay's house and two strange men were standing in the living room with my sister-in-law, Heather.  She started crying and walking toward me, saying how sorry she was and all I could say was, "He's dead, isn't he?"  And he was, he was gone and it was all over the news and everyone we knew was trying to find me so I wouldn't see it before I found out.

It was awful and horrible and as cliched as it sounds that whole week felt like I was dreaming and couldn't wake up.  But it wasn't a surprise, it wasn't a shock, it was the feeling of the other shoe finally dropping.

Which is why it's so weird to be dealing with the shock now, four months later.  I don't know why now, not much has changed.  Other than one small box of nice work shirts he never wore anymore none of his stuff is packed away or gone.  His drawers are still full, his desk still displays an insane amount of Ani Difranco, Garbage and Shi memorabilia with assorted Star Wars figures, casino chips and tiny airplanes thrown in for good measure.  His ceramic knife is still in the block, his cast iron pans are still off limits to everyone else and the closet floor is still stacked with the Ani Difranco, Garbage, assorted blues and Eric fucking Clapton CDs he loved that I will never listen to if I live to be 100.  I gave away some books but they were in a stack he hadn't looked at in months.

Since he died I've had lots of dreams about rog.  When he was alive rog wasn't in my dreams very often.  I rarely dream about real-life people from my present; my dreams are populated by television, movie and book characters rounded out by high school and college friends I haven't spoken to in years.  But now rog is in almost all of my dreams.

Sometimes he's not doing anything, he's just there, like dream wallpaper.

Sometimes he's dead but he's there anyway.  He's not a zombie or an angel or miraculously resurrected.  He's just there, sitting on the couch or in the car, nodding and grinning when I explain that he is, in fact, dead and shouldn't be there.  "But I am," he always shrugs.  I am always freaking out in these dreams, explaining how he is dead and he needs to go because dead people aren't supposed to sit on the couch and he is always calm, smiling and laughing at how bent out of shape I am, advising me to just accept it. 

But the most upsetting dreams are the ones where he is alive.  He never died, it was all fake, and now he's back.  Sometimes I see him in a store or a park, part of the crowd, and I chase him down.  When I finally catch up with him he can never explain why he let everyone think he was dead, why I had to go through it all, just that he's alive but not coming home.  Sometimes in my dreams he just comes home and explains why he had to do it - witness protection or secret spy life usually.  (This is where my mother and sister always point out that I watch far, far too much TV and perhaps should back away from the Alias.)  He always seems perplexed by how pissed off I am at him for deceiving me that way.

For a while my real life felt like the beginning of those dreams.  rog wasn't around but he could be back any minute.  The dog would have to move out of rog's favorite spot on the couch but not much else would have to be done for him to pick up his life right where it stopped.

That feeling is mostly gone now.  Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch and when I wake up and go upstairs still half-asleep I'm confused when he's not in bed.  Sometimes I still save things on the TiVo because rog hasn't seen them yet.  But that happens less and less often now.

Lately when I wake up on the couch I wonder why I should bother going upstairs since he's not going to be there anyway and then I'm crying.  I delete shows off the TiVo and find myself crying because rog didn't get to see Lorelei propose to Luke or that bullshit "I am not Michael Vaughn" cliffhanger on Alias.  I've found that I can't watch most of our favorite movies anymore.  I can make it through Moulin Rouge until they start singing "Come What May" (the Lovers' Secret Song) because "I will love you/until my dieing day" hurts too much.  For some idiot reason I thought I'd watch the broadcast of Titanic on NBC the other night.  That was just stupid.  But now even Best in Show makes me cry because we can't sing along to "God Loves a Terrier" anymore.

Last week they gave me a new, upgraded phone at work but it's got a bigger footprint and I had to move rog's picture.  Now it's partially behind my monitor and only part of his face shows, I have to turn my head to see it all and I cried when I realized it.  Saturday I went shopping with my sister and found a great deal on sheets and a new quilt/bedspread for the bed.  The sheets are pink and flowery and the quilt is in shades of plum with embroidered flowers.  They are the girliest things I've ever owned and as I was making the bed it hit me.  I would never have bought these if rog was alive.  He'd hate them, he wanted everything to be black or forest green or boring neutral earth tones and to compromise we ended up with everything in our bedroom in sage green.  I lost a husband and gained freedom to decorate with colors other than black, tan and green.  It's a sucky deal.

I really have no point with this entry except that I don't understand why now, why these weird things are setting me off.  The other night I was watching Pretty Woman on TBS and she said, "Hey, there's a band!" and suddenly I was hysterically sobbing.  rog loved that movie and that line, he quoted it far more often than you'd think possible.  I cried because he'd never say it again, I cried because we'd never watch it again, I cried because even if I do move on and meet someone else what are the chances I'll find another guy who loves chick flicks?  I walk down the hall at work and see Sarah, who has the most adorable baby boy who will be one soon, and I start to cry because I will never have babies with rog.

I feel like I'm mourning backwards.  I was sad when he died and I cried but I kept it together.  People kept telling me how strong I was, how much they admired how well I was handling it.  Now, four months later when it should be getting even easier I'm falling apart twenty times a day.  It really sucks and I'm ready for it to stop now.

You'd think 4 would be harder to forget than 1.

I forgot to put on my engagement and wedding rings this morning, all four of them, and it's turning me into Sybil.

• First, I feel guilty for forgetting them as if I forgot about him, his death and our marriage.  Which is clearly stupid because I'm never going to forget those things.*
• Second, I feel kind of relieved that I forgot them because it means my daily routine is getting back to normal because forgetting shit is an essential part of the Shae DNA.
• Third, I feel sad that my life is getting back to normal because I don't want normal, I want rog.
• Fourth, I feel guilty that my life is getting back to normal because a real wife would be going to work in her pajamas and having a nervous breakdown in meetings and requiring attendees to remind her to eat and all the stuff that girl does in Lolly fucking Winston's stupid book.
• Repeat above in random order for hours on end.

When rog and I got married we bought $60 white gold rings from Service Merchandise two days before our wedding.  We had a very small wedding that we paid for ourselves.  But we wanted elegant and unique so we had to get crafty and clever and we were so busy making everything we possibly could ourselves that we totally forgot about rings until my family came to town and asked about them.  So we just went to Service Merchandise and picked out simple bands and got them engraved with "my secret love."  (There's a story there that I can't tell yet because I will cry and I'm at work.)

When we were both laid off in 2002 rog got an insanely good severance package and insisted on buying me a diamond engagement ring.  So in spring 2002 we did that.  It's very simple, a round cut solitaire set in white gold but we got the best diamond we could and I love that damn ring.

Until a car accident in August 2003 bent it so badly he couldn't wear it rog never took his ring off.  I took mine off constantly.  I can't stand to wear jewelry when I am sleeping, showering, doing anything crafty with my hands, or cleaning.  After he recovered from the accident (he had to get 68 stitches in his left arm and 20some in his forehead) we got new rings.  This time we spent more money since these were going to be our forever rings.  They were both white gold with rolled rims, but mine has a pattern on it and his is just that brush finish.

At the job he was working when he died rog built computer systems.   He had psoriatic arthritis in his hands and that much manual labor with his hands really hurt and his fingers swelled up so he had to stop wearing his new ring.  It was sitting on the nightstand when I got home that night.

After a lot of debate, I gave the funeral home his original, bent wedding ring to put in the pocket of his jeans.  (Uh, yeah, I had them dress him in his favorite jeans, his second favorite Ani Difranco t-shirt, and his favorite woolly socks, no shoes.  He hated dressing up and I'm not sending him to his eternal rest complaining about wearing a tie.  He hated shoes too and would take them off everywhere, including work if they let him, and I don't want to be haunted by the grumpy-ass ghost of my dead husband complaining about the shoes and the tie.)

So I wear four rings now (when I remember them).  My new wedding ring and engagement ring on the ring finger of my left hand, rog's new wedding ring on the index finger of my right hand, and my original wedding ring on the ring finger of my right hand.

rog's ring is a bit too big for my index finger so sometimes I put it on my middle finger.  But then the two rings touch each other and it bugs the hell out of me so I tend to move it back and forth about twenty times a day.

And every evening when I get home from work I take them all off and put them in a little crystal bowl on my night stand.  Every morning when I get dressed I put them on.

Until this morning.  I was running late, as usual.  My back was killing me, which hasn't been usual for a few years but is back (heh) with a vengence.  Last Friday when I got up to let the dog out before showering it started with the spasms and I had to stay home.  I spent the weekend either in bed or on the couch, popping muscle relaxers and putting heatpacks on my back.  So I hadn't worn them since last Thursday.  This morning putting on my bra hurt and got me all distracted and I left without them.

Which brings us back to the beginning, the merry-go-round of emotions I'm riding today.  It doesn't help that my back pain makes me all weepy and sorry for myself under normal circumstances. 

I know that one day I'll probably stop wearing them completely.  I'll put them in a velvet bag and put the bag in my nightstand drawer.  I'll be ready to think of myself as more than just "Shae, widow of rog."  I know the day will come when looking at his ring on my finger doesn't make my heart skip a beat and I won't cry at my desk because I'm not wearing my rings.  That day isn't today and most of the time I wonder if that day will ever come.

But as much as this day hurts, as weird and light as my fingers feel as they pound on the keyboard, it doesn't hurt as much as I imagined it might a month ago when I forget them when I got dressed but remembered before I left the house.  And that's the worst part of today.  That it's not as hard as I thought.

*Barring, of course, a soap operaesque accident that results in me washing up on the shore of some small town in Missouri with amnesia where I meet a coy and attractive nurse with a young son and quickly become wrapped up in their lives and illegally married only to find out I already have a wife and young son (and strangely round-headed young daughter) in a small town in Illinois plus the coy nurse is on the run from many very bad man and will soon turn into a raving bitch because my writers care not about character development.  (This random footnote brought to you by the crackheads who write ATWT.)

Dude. That's so tacky it's suitable for framing.

A couple of weeks ago Jim from the funeral home started leaving vague "please return my call" messages for me on my home voicemail.  I figured they were about the bill and ignored them since the car insurance would pay the bill once I actually gave it to them.  (Grieving really helps a person justify a natural tendency towards procrastination.)  Then last week he left a confusing message about info he wanted to pass on about a widow's support group and a gift the funeral home wanted to give me.

So I called him back.  He said that the funeral home had received a letter from a Young Widow's Support Group with a request to forward it to me.  But he didn't want to mail it in case it was a "scam or bill collector" but that if I made an appointment with him I could pick up the letter along with "some things" they had for me.  So I made an appointment to see him last night figuring he'd just hand me the letter and maybe some gloves that were left at the funeral or condolence notes they'd received.

But when I got there he took me back into the "plan the funeral and pick out a casket from this wall" room.  The room that I sat in with my sister, Donna, my brother, Jason, my father and my mother just three months ago for what seemed like hours making hundreds of decisions that had to be made immediately by me, the crazy weeping woman making really bad jokes the whole time.  Which is a long-winded way of saying that room is full of unhappy memories and really creeps me the fuck out.

Jim was chipper and hearty, greeting me with a wide grin and a firm handshake.  It seemed a little inappropriate given why I was there but I decided he was probably one of those "let a smile be your umbrella" people.  He gave me the envelope they had received which had a stamp and my name so they could fill in the address and mail it.  It was exactly what it claimed to be, a letter from a local Young Widow's Support Group with their condolences and an invitation to attend their monthly meetings.

Then Jim asked if I'd brought a picture of rog as he'd asked.  He hadn't asked me, I would have found that odd enough to remember.  He assured me that I could drop the photo off later but that they would need it to create the free "memorial photo suitable for framing" they were going to make for me.  He pulled out a binder to show me samples with background and verse options for me to choose.  They were similar to these plaques but were just printed on photo paper, not mounted on plaques.

Frankly a memorial photo suitable for framing is the last thing I want.  I think they are twee and kind of creepy.  If you have one of a loved one that's great, everybody is different.  But I have photos of rog already and he would have laughed his ass off at these things.  However, my mother would like something like this quite a bit and I respect that.  She and rog were very close and in some ways she's having a harder time dealing with his death than I am.

For instance, a few weeks ago we were sitting at her kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon, just eating lunch and chatting like we do most Sundays.  I was facing the living room and admiring how nice her mantle looks since we repainted the whole room last summer.  My thoughts went from mantle to mantle decorations and then to the Christmas stockings we hang every year.  My mother made a personalized stocking for each of us years ago, with a patchwork quilted body and a cross-stitched cuff with our name and holly leaves.  Without thinking I asked, "What are you going to do with rog's stocking?"  Her eyes went wide with shock and she started sobbing and shaking her head.  "I don't know, I don't know, poor, poor Roger," she cried.  And I felt about two inches tall because I knew she wasn't dealing well and I spoke without thinking.

So I decided to get the thing and give it to Mom.  I made my choices, a simple photo of the sky and ocean and a non-religious poem (and I apologize for the music and graphics on that page) because rog wouldn't have liked a Bible verse on his suitable-for-framing memorial photo.  As he was filling in the order form Jim remarked, "Wow, he really was very young to die."  Yeah, really, I knew that, but thanks for the heads-up Jim.  "Was he sick for very long?" he asked.  I'm fairly sure that I blinked 87 times before I answered, "No, he wasn't sick at all.  He committed suicide by driving his car into an overpass support."  That was probably more blunt and rude than was warranted but I was kind of pissed that Jim hadn't bothered to look at rog's file because he never would have asked that question if he had.  Closed casket, temporary death certificate with unknown cause of death, information about the car insurance paying the bill, it's all in there in the file. 

Jim said that he was sorry to hear that but that he had been so much older than I am that I had to focus on the years ahead and not the years lost.  I was starting to get really pissed off.  "He wasn't that much older than me," I huffed, "I'm 35."  Jim looked shocked.  "Oh, yeah, just a couple of years then.  But you must realize you have a baby face, I thought you were only 24 or 25." 

I think Jim honestly thought these were helpful, comforting comments he was making.  He was very, very wrong.

I thought that would be the end of my meeting with Jim.  I got my letter, I ordered the free memorial photo suitable for framing, I listened to the idiot man spout off unhelpful advice and observations.  But I was wrong.  Because Jim then asked me if I had given any thought to pre-planning my own service. 

And then I had a heart attack, fell out of my chair and died.  I'm actually typing this entry from Heaven.  Jesus told me he thinks the memorial photo suitable for framing is kind of lame, too.

Okay, that didn't happen.  But I was pretty damn shocked.  I just got finished choosing the appropriate poem for my dead husband's memorial photo suitable for framing and listening to Jim make comments that make it clear he has never looked at our file then he tries to sell me my own funeral.  That takes some balls.  So I told him no but that my mother had expressed some interest in pre-planning hers when we'd been there before making decisions about Roger's service.  Jim totally missed the "this is inappropriate and I'm pretending you aren't a jerk" snap and kept going.

He whipped out a copy of the bill for Roger's service and pointed at the total.  "Funeral service costs double every 10 to 12 years," he said.  "So even if you live to be just 45 this same service will cost you $2X.  If you live to be 55 it will be $3X.  But if you set it up now the costs will be locked in for life."  I couldn't believe he was going to sit there and give me a whole sales pitch but I knew I wasn't going to sit there and listen to it. So I thanked him for his time, took his cards ("one for you, one for your mother") and left.

I was incredulous on the way home but after I got home and talked to Donna I got pissed.  It was just so tacky and wrong, asking a widow to come in to get a letter and then trying to sell her funeral services.  It's a total bait and switch.  And he couldn't even be bothered to read the file and familarize himself with situation before I got there.

But the thing is until last night I would have sung the praises of this funeral home from the rooftops.  Brenda, the Funeral Director we worked with, was so kind, compassionate and helpful.  She was patient with my crazy family that travels in packs and crowded into her room because they were afraid to leave me alone.  When she asked, "What do you want?" and I answered, "I want to not be here, not be doing this, I want my husband to be alive and I want all of this to not be happening" she was patient and gently guided me through all the damn decisions.  She was honest about what people would expect but firmly said that I should only do what I want and forget about everyone else.  She was everything a Funeral Director should be. 

Jim's card doesn't say Funeral Director.  It says Family Services Associate.  I wonder if Brenda knows what he did.  I wonder if the funeral home (which is a huge chain) endorses this sort of behavior. I have a survey from them at home that I've been meaning to return because I want them to know how much we valued Brenda's guidance.  Now I'm going to be adding a note about how crass I found Jim's behavior.

Today I'm not as angry and actually kind of amused at my own reaction.  I was all "I'm a recent widow, dammit, it's just unseemly."  It's too bad I didn't have pearls to clutch or a bun to pat.  Plus I'm glad I got the information about the Young Widow's Support Group.  It's specifically for widows in the 20s, 30s and 40s and I think it might help to talk to other women in similar situations.  They meet monthly and I missed May but I'm going to check it out in June.

Still, I kind of want to shove that memorial photo suitable for framing up Jim's ass.  Sideways.

Why I'm Doing This

I'm Shae, 35, and I live in Dayton, OH.

On Monday, February 7, 2005, my husband of five years, Roger, committed suicide while drunk by driving his car into a highway overpass support.

Losing your spouse at 35 is more horrible than you can possibly imagine.  I'm sure some people will view this journal as a trainwreck.  It may just be a trainwreck.  All I know is that all the sources of support for widows I've found are geared towards women much older than I am.  Women with grown children and pensions and AARP and support systems that I don't have.

What I'm going through sucks in the worst way.  But maybe if I write it down it won't tear me to tiny pieces as I fear it will.  And maybe one day it will help another young widow know that others have gone through it and it can be survived.

I hope it won't all be tears and anger though I know a lot of it will be.  But the sad truth is that my life goes on without Roger and I have to learn how to live that life.  So there is also laughter and hope.