The Widowhood │ The First Days Back

I had my first contact day with students today. It felt like slipping into an old glove. For the first time in years, my professional life felt good and like I was where I belonged. It made sense.

I stood up in front of over 100 kids today and began setting up what my classroom was going to be like with them in it. It went well and the kids responded positively to me.

I had one student in my morning classes stop me from speaking and told me I was a beautiful soul. That touched me deeply. Sometimes I think that as we grow older, we become so jaded that we can not see or speak of what we see freely. It is something that kids, of all ages, I have felt hold onto and you will get these little quiet moments with them beyond teaching and learning that just hit you right in your heart.

I held onto that for most of the morning until my final class when another student who is severely disabled raised her hand to remind me that God loves me and has a plan for me, and that there is love out there for me that will forever change me. Another sweet moment that was totally unprompted that makes me stop and reflect on my life and day. I am in a season of wondering what God has in store for me and for my kids and sometimes I think he works through people to remind me that even though I do not have it all together, that I am where I need to be and that the hand of God is always near.

For now, I am enjoying the quiet in my life as lonely as it is most days. The quiet also gives me more time and focus on my own kids and things that I am passionate about like creating art, reading and teaching myself how to knit socks on my new loom.

That all said, I have enjoyed sharing segments of The Widowhood: A Semi-True Story of Surviving Widowhood Without the Fairy Tale Ending. These segments are smaller pieces of a larger manuscript that I am looking to publish next year, so be sure to stay on the look out for it!

For now, I am picking up the pieces that were left of myself following having my husband die in front of me only to find out he was cheating on me and then to try for love again with a man that decided to simply leave one day, which was something I always feared because I always felt my kids and I were at the harder side of risk than he was. We had suffered a traumatic loss and were allowing someone in again, he was a single man with nothing to lose. What if it worked out, he would say to me when I would talk about it, but in the end he did just that. The hardest part of it was when I had to tell my kids and I sat them down and said how he had chosen to not be a part of our family. My younger two were upset, my younger son even saying, “But I wanted him to be part of our family.” And I did too.

I am very lonely and I am sad quite a bit, but my new professional life and my children are what keep me going and the hope that somewhere out there is a man who will love me completely, my children included. I think the saddest part of my story is the reality that my younger two will have no memory of their dad and my eldest will only have some fuzzy ones. If God does have a life partner out there for me, he would ultimately be their dad and I think that is what keeps me hoping beyond my shattered heart that there is someone out there because they are great kids who deserve to have a dad that loves them beyond measure.

Until that day comes, I find my happiness in being their mom and looming socks.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment

The Widowhood │ The Hand of God

     By the time that Violet was born, I was losing my mind at the idea of having to go back to my job in the Capital City. I wanted to be home with my kids or at least able to be more present for them. However, I never seemed to be able to get something closer. When we lived at the shore, I never got an interview and then when we moved, I would get to the final interview and then not be the candidate. It was a difficult time and I was terrified about how I was going to be a mom of three and go back to a job that because I had been identified as a good, strong teacher would often be given the hardest kids without much support.

     Into my lap fell a long term substitute position at a bougie district that would have kept me paid for the rest of the year and would have turned into a tenure track position. I was ecstatic and so was Phil, I would have an under 10 minute commute to work and I would be present for the kids. I would actually be able to teach kids who wanted to learn my subject. My days would not be spent on mitigating behaviors and getting to some of what I wanted to teach. The relief was palpable in our house. I resigned from the Capital City, I was board approved, I was ID’d and I was being given an email. I left to go to ShopRite and pick up overpriced cheese for Phil and I to eat with the kids as a celebration of my new job and for our wedding anniversary.

     I went to Kohl’s and spent too much money on new clothes so that I could look the part of the English teacher who worked in a more well-off district. I was so excited that I would be able to get my eldest from school. I remember how the day felt like change and newness and I was looking forward to getting to see my new room. I was pulling into my driveway when I saw the school’s number come across my car dashboard. I eagerly picked it up.

     “Hi Katherine, this is Sandra Fellows. I am so sorry to have to tell you this so late on a Friday, but they decided to make this tenure track so you won’t need to report on Monday.”

     I was too shocked to speak. “Wait, what?” I manage to choke out.

     “Your interview stands. I am going to have to interview some other people, but you will hear from me soon.”

     She hangs up and suddenly I am just sobbing in my car, wondering what I was going to do because I was now at the end of my maternity leave and was depending on getting a paycheck. I couldn’t fathom the idea of having to go back to the Capital City even though I knew that was what was going to have to happen and since they never responded to my resignation, it was probably going to be easier said than done.

     I cried harder at the idea of not being able to get my eldest from school and then got myself together enough to go inside and tell Phil. I remember walking inside and going straight for a drink and sitting down in my recliner with it, sobbing and telling Phil through broken sobs about what had happened.

     “And you need to be drinking,” he interjects, not at the right time.

     “Seriously? SERIOUSLY,” I am about to lose my mind. He walked away. He never liked when I drank and would judge me for it exponentially.

     Phil never took care of himself unless I made him. He would make promises about working more or getting a better job, but it never came to be and when it came to paying for our house or for caring for the kids like making sure everyone had health insurance, I did not want to put that into his hands even though I was beyond burnt out from having three kids in four years and working 16 hour days and taking care of him on top of it because I knew he would mess it up which he would ultimately do later that year when I let him have the summer.

     If I could pinpoint a time where I would say it was where I began to hate my husband, it was in that moment. How much more could one person take on for everyone else while they drowned and their husband allowed it? The loss of this also hit my ego hard and I began to believe that the best I would ever be is overworked in an inner city school that was happy to leave me in an unsupported position as opposed to giving me something that better supported me. I began to believe that this was just going to be my life.

     I never got a phone call again from that principal, just a form letter a week later that told me I was not selected for the job. I went back to the Capital City, full of rage and hatred for my marriage and for my job. I was very much over it all and after the 16 hour days ended, I would sit up with a baby and apply to anything I was remotely qualified for that allowed me to pick up my kid from school. It ultimately would lead to my job with the state which would give me the one skill I would add to my resume that would make me stand out to the public school I would ultimately leave the state for. That decision would lead me to be sitting next a woman in a training at the new job that would pick up on our connection to the bougie school district. It would turn out that she had left the same school that had hired and fired me within a week and she knew about the events that surrounded that event in my life.

     “I was there when that all went down. You were replacing a guy that grabbed a kid and then all of a sudden they pulled a long term sub from another building to be you but she left already. The entire district is out of money and everyone is leaving, be thankful it fell apart for you. You had someone up there on your side because you would have been cut either the next year or this year because the principal that hired you died suddenly and she was the one that was stopping all of it from happening. Once she was gone, the district came in and gutted everything,” she explained.

     My jaw was on the floor. Had I not lost that job, I would have either been struggling more leading up to Phil losing his job or would have been a fresh widow dealing with Phil’s financial mess he left me with and no job to save us.

You would think that with all that has happened to me in the last two years of my life, that things like this wouldn’t be so shocking to me, but it still surprises me when I learn about the hand of God in my life. The first time I truly saw the hand of God was the morning that my husband died. He died in our back yard, out of the house. He died an hour before I wouldn’t have been home and he would have either been at home with the kids by himself or worse, he would have been driving them in the car to what they had planned to do that day. He would have died and potentially killed the kids with him along with whoever he hit in the van that he would no longer be in control of. However, the hand of God protected us.

Then by keeping me in my old position, I was afforded time off to get my family together after my husband died before I went to the state. I think God delivered me to the state because it gave me almost two full years after Phil died to recover. The state was less work than what you do as a public school teacher and for awhile, I enjoyed the break before it was clear it would be in my best interest to return to public school. And in came the hand of God, delivering the position to me that I ultimately took. I do not think God does everything for you, but I think if you are working hard at your life, he has a way of directing you to where you need to be.

After meeting a new friend in training, I went back to my new classroom and began to unpack the bags of things I have had sitting in my garage since the spring from the state. I came to the bag of things for my desk and found the pictures of my kids and one of me and John. After setting the ones of my kids on my desk, I sat back in my chair a little teary eyed and ran my hands over the edges of the brown frame that had the picture of me and John on our first date. I began to wonder if his choice to leave was also another moment where the hand of God was involved. Was it all to lead me to whatever it was that was supposed to happen in my love life? I started to think about what I did not like about John. I did not like how he would be so intensely with me, but at the same time so distant with his own life. I also didn’t like how he would sometimes do things carelessly and when I would react, I was ultimately wrong and selfish for doing so, like when he really hurt me when I brought up a future and then had avoided talking to me about what our life would look like for two weeks and then just decided to throw us in the trash overall. It was beyond hurtful.

With a heavy sigh, I wiped my tears on the back of my hand and put the picture in the bottom drawer of my desk. I laugh when I see the name on the drawer. Apparently, this desk used to be Mr. Love’s. How ironic that a Dr. Hart is replacing a Mr. Love. This was a new beginning and wherever God was leading me, I told myself it was time to trust in the hand of God and build a beautiful classroom for my new students.

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The Widowhood │I Wanted to Ask You Something 

August has been a very slow month for me overall, but I have been enjoying precious time with my kids and going on adventures together, creating memories that I will cherish forever. We’ve explored nearby parks, visited the beach, and even tried our hand at baking some fun treats in the kitchen. I am looking forward to the start of school again, as I believe it will bring a renewed sense of structure to our lives. At night, after my kids are asleep, my mind will often wander to what my life was going to become, filled with dreams and aspirations, and if I would ever stop crying all the time, wishing for brighter days ahead. I find myself reflecting on my personal journey, realizing that it’s okay to have these feelings, but I still struggle with them. I am gearing up for another night of telling myself that crying myself to sleep is not the way to go when my phone rings, interrupting my thoughts and pulling me back to the present moment. It’s Sasha, whose voice I know will offer a comforting distraction and perhaps even a bit of laughter amidst my swirling emotions.

“Hey, sorry I know it’s late, but I wanted to ask you something,” she says in a tired voice.

“Sure, shoot,” I say as I sit down at the foot of my bed.

“If you and John had worked out, but for whatever reason, you weren’t getting pregnant would you have left him?”

“No,” I sigh. “I could have made my peace with not having another baby if that happened. I wouldn’t leave a marriage to a man that I loved just because of that. I just don’t want to wake up one day and be 50 and not being able to, and regretting that I hadn’t even tried.” I lay back on my bed. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Something I was sitting here thinking about. You know, how much you would have held onto the dream of another baby over your love and relationship for a man.” She yawns.

“I want the husband too. I want a relationship too, this is not just about another baby, but the person I wind up with will want to at least try for our own, and if it’s not in God’s plan and it doesn’t happen, then so be it. I will make my peace with it. Just like if I never meet anyone again, I will find a way to at least try for that baby on my own.”

“Good. That makes me feel better hearing that because I didn’t want you to go full baby crazy lady.” She chuckles and I do too.

“I am realistic. I just want a chance with a new husband who loves me, loves my kids, and wants to create a family, and if that means we just have my three kids, then that’s okay too.”

“And I think you’ll get that. That is not a crazy wish.”

“I just don’t know why I have to go through John first. Some days it feels like grief all over again, and I am so tired of feeling it and so tired of crying. I really thought when I had that kind of connection with someone again that it would have gone very differently.”

“God has a plan for us all and you are grieving him. He meant something to you, and you wanted a life together. I think it would be weirder if you weren’t grieving it,” she says half-asleep.

The tears that I had been fighting off for much of the night start to flow. “Well, it looks like I am about to have another cry fest, so here is where I say good night.”

“Let yourself cry as much as you need to. It will cleanse you. Good night—one day it will feel better again.”

We hang up, and for another night of the second longest summer of my life, I sit alone in my room crying. I wonder why I had to go through this after all that I went through with Phil. It just didn’t seem fair. If I were a bad person or if I cheated people—I would understand the difficulty level of my life. But I am not those things. All I have ever done in my life is help people, work hard, and want to love and be loved. I cannot comprehend why God has me on this path when I look at the people around me living happy lives. I think, why hasn’t it ever been my turn?

I can usually pull myself out of the pity party thoughts, but tonight, I allow myself to wallow in them and cry as hard as I possibly can. I let the grief erupt from me in choking sobs until I am too tired to continue. As I lay down, the release feels both cathartic and exhausting. To my surprise, I eventually drift off to sleep, hoping that tomorrow might bring a little more clarity and peace to my heart. It’s a cycle of grief and longing that I am beginning to recognize but fear the weight of it still wears heavily on me. What does it mean to love so deeply, only to feel such an emptiness? I can only hope that with time, the answers will find me.

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The Widowhood │ A Sperm Donor

After John left, I had the pretty stark realization that when he left, he also took a year and a half of my life with him which now put me just shy of 40 and further away from my late thirties. It made me sad in ways all over again because when I had made the decision to start dating again, I had done so because I wanted to get married again, I wanted my children to get a father figure in their life and I wanted to have one more baby. I wanted my family dream that I have had since I was little and to my core, I have always wanted a happy traditional family because I think it is important for a woman to have a husband and I think it’s important for children to have two parents.

Between the tears I cried over John that summer, I also found anger too. Anger towards him for taking all that time from me with no intention of having a life with me even though he knew from the very beginning a life with someone was what I wanted and up until that night in my driveway, he had led me to believe that he had wanted that with me too even telling me things like he could never leave me and that he didn’t really understand it but when the kids and I weren’t around, life felt weird. In the end, I guess it was what guys do—feed you a bunch of lines of things they know you want to hear. When I would get to that thought, the anger would become a new level of hurt all over again and new tears would come. It was a very hard summer.

Towards the end of it, I found myself in the same spot I was in when I had decided to start dating again. I started thinking how I could make my family be what I had always wanted it to be without a man involved in it. I was excited that my job with the state had ended because it meant that I would be eligible to be a foster mom if I chose to be. Only after nearly two years of working with kids in the system, I pretty quickly realized that I did not want to be a mother to a kid that had been in the system, and I did not want to deal with the constant presence of a social worker in my life until the adoption was finalized.

I thought back to earlier times in my life where I wasn’t convinced that God was leading me to physically create the children that I knew in my heart I wanted, and I thought back to private adoption. It had been something that I had looked into briefly before Phil and I had gotten married, and I remembered how expensive it all was outside of the cost of raising another child on my own. It was not going to be a viable option for me. Which then led me to googling sperm banks in the quiet of my bedroom after my children had gone to sleep and what I continued to do the following morning when I got to work. I was pretty invested in it when my co-worker came in to check in.

“What are you doing,” she asked.

I shut my laptop and looked up at her. “Good morning. Promise not to laugh?”

“Maybe?” She sits down in front of my desk and eagerly awaits my explanation of what I am so engrossed in.

“Sperm donation.” I flip open my laptop and show her the website.

She doesn’t laugh. “You must have an interesting search history,” she adds as she starts scrolling through the list of potential options.

“Oh, never look at the search history of a widow. In the early days, I was so obsessed with what was happening to Phil’s body that I was constantly researching body decomposition because I couldn’t fathom the idea that he was dead let alone no longer Phil and, in the ground, becoming a skeleton.”

“And now you are here. You have had an interesting life.”

“I guess you could call it that.” I take back my laptop. “It surprised me how easy it is to knock yourself up if you decide to.”

“You know most people find a friend that they trust and make some sort of arrangement for this kind of thing.”

“No, if I must do it alone, then I will do it alone. And look how easy it is. For up to $1500 you pick your baby daddy and how good of a sample you want or need, they send it to your house or to your doctor in your ovulation window and bam you try to knock yourself up.”

           “That is very…expedited. Are you going to do it?”

          “I don’t know, I think it is kind of weird and I still hold out hope that I do meet someone, but now I am even more afraid of allowing someone around me and my kids for them to get attached to a man again only for him to decide he doesn’t want us.” I grab a tissue and dab away the fresh tears that have come.

          “You’re not ready for this if you want my unsolicited opinion.”

          “You’re right, I’m not, but at least I am starting to think about it.” She nods. “And then I also think about my luck with things. Knowing me, I would commit to doing this, knock myself up and then meet the man of my dreams and have to explain how I got pregnant.”

          She laughs. “That would happen to you, yes.”

          “And then he wouldn’t want to deal with that level of crazy and I would once again get hurt and become a hermit with my three and a half kids.” I exhale and force myself to stop tearing up. “Then I also think about that episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche’s daughter decides to go to a sperm bank to get pregnant and every time, she has to say sperm back, she cringes and whispers it all awkward.”

          “That’s a pretty good episode. I also like the one when she has the baby and Blanche keeps calling the baby Oreo.”

          I chuckle. “I always thought it was weird that she had a son named Skippy but made fun of her daughter for Aurora.”

          She agrees.  “Maybe look into having your eggs frozen and then that way if you do meet someone you bought yourself back some time.”

          “I don’t know what’s weirder to me, a sperm bank baby or a petri dish baby.” I grab another tissue and dry my leaking eyes. “Alright, enough of this, I have to get it together to get through the day.”

          My co-worker offers to make some coffee and I gladly accept it, eager to be away from my depressing thoughts about the state of my life and the weird things I find myself looking into.

When I was younger, I used to like that my life wasn’t planned out and that the uncertainty of life brought with it exciting surprises, but now after being widowed and after John, I found myself not liking that aspect of life so much and I really began to crave comfort and consistency. And I had begun to realize that as much as a good relationship brings that, you can also bring it to yourself. I began to out more things into God’s hands by the end of the summer and began to truly believe he does have a plan for me even if it meant I was alone with my kids for the rest of my life. It just hurt to think about it that way, never getting to have a husband or raise our child together along with my kids I had with Phil. The loneliness of it all really began to sting even though I knew I was going to figure it out either way in the end even if it meant, a sperm bank.

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The Widowhood │ Manhattan

John and I aren’t in the part of our relationship where he knows about my life in my early 20’s. He doesn’t know about my love for the city or the life I was set to have there at that point in my life. Back then, I was a senior at Rutgers University and I was graduating with a dual degree in art history and journalism and media studies. I had been accepted into some of the best programs for art business and curating, including a new program being offered through Sotheby’s. And that spring I fell head over heels in love with a boy that was several years older than me and we had a very intense relationship that ended in him one day telling me that his love for me had stopped growing and so I broke up with him. For years, he would talk to our former mutual friends about me and I would avoid relationships all together because of that hurt that Landon had left me with. 

        This was in 2008 and at a time where the economy tanked overnight. Within days I had a choice: was I going to fight for the loan that I had to go to my dream masters program or was this the universe telling me to pursue graduate school elsewhere and be closer to the boyfriend that I thought was it for me. I chose to begin to look at graduate school closer to him. And within a couple of months, the relationship was totally over. I often look back at that time in my life as a crossroads where I could have had a life of Manhattan, but instead my life brought me to teaching and in turn to Phil and to my children and South Jersey. I do not regret that crossroads because my children are the loves of my life, but I sometimes do wonder if I had chosen differently, what my life would have become?

        Once I was with Phil things like Manhattan trips stopped all together and I was very much swept up into his life and his friend circle. I had lost myself in my relationship with him and then again in motherhood and becoming his caretaker. Standing just outside of Penn Station with John, looking at the big buildings and the craziness of the streets, brought a little light back inside of me that had been dimmed for many years. This moment in time felt like a return to myself and a day that I hadn’t really known that I needed until I was living it. And I was there with John, a man that I was trying my very best not to stare at. 

        We walked from the station to the hotel that we were going to be staying in for the night. We faded in and out of small talk as we walked.

        “Are you still nervous about the hotel room,” he asked me.

        I probably blushed somewhat. “No, I don’t think you’re a serial killer.”

        He laughed. “Ok, well let me know we can always get another room or separate keys…or whatever, whatever makes you comfortable.”

        I am taken with John in a multitude of ways. There is physical chemistry between us, but I am also taken with him for the way that he considers me. This was our first actual date with one another and he had gone out of his way to make it extra special for me. Despite myself, I had already begun to feel myself falling for him over our late night phone conversations, but since we were together I was feeling that pull even more and it surprised me because as artistic and romantic as I am, I am also very logical, but being with John, logic seemed to be leaving me quicker than I could try to grab it back. 

        When we get up to our hotel room, I put down my bag and walk over to the huge window overlooking the city. You could see the statue of liberty very faintly off in the distance and I just stood there and took all of it in. This weekend in so many ways was the return to myself and to the possibility of new beginnings with John. Eventually, John finished getting himself in order and I turned around to face him. 

        I laughed when I turned around, because the bathroom was totally illuminated and showcased the open shower to the room. A design feature probably included so that whoever was staying here could shower and still have a view of the city. John’s eyes follow my gaze and he too now sees the shower.

        “I’m sorry, if I am honest I had help with booking the room. Geez, that is one heck of a shower,” he adds, clearly embarrassed and nervous all at once. 

        I lightly touch his arm. “It’s okay, we will figure it out, but that is some shower for a weekend where no sex was agreed upon.”

        He laughs and smiles at me, it is his coy smile that he would go on to give me many times over the nearly year and a half that we would be together. It is when I know that he is humored, but reflective at the same time and the flash of his eyes that would always follow that coy smile of his, that would make me want to do everything and anything with him. 

        John excuses himself from the room to give me some privacy so that I can get ready to go to dinner. A new wave of excitement has found me and I eagerly take off my jeans and slip back into the dress with the pretty underwear that Sasha said all went well together. I feel beautiful and I feel like myself in those moments. John eventually comes back up and changes and then suddenly we are back on the streets of Manhattan walking to the Irish pub. 

        The food at the pub is not the greatest, but I am thankful for my first rum cocktail in many months and picking apart the tacos that were the only slightly appetizing thing they had to offer. We send back the flavorless mozzarella sticks and make a joke about how food in Manhattan and especially places like this are always hit or miss. John got a steak sandwich and after a bite, he immediately takes some off of his plate and puts it onto mine. It stops me for a moment because I am taken back to one of the many conversations that I had had over the years with dating and finding the right guy for you before she passed away a couple years before. One of the things she always told me about dating was to wait for the man who feeds you off of his own plate. To my grandmother this was a sign of both respect and care, because it showed that the man would want to provide for you and cared for you enough to take something away from himself and to give to you. I try to stop my mind from wandering into things that it is too soon to think about. 

        John pays for our food and drinks and we begin to walk towards the theater. He is attentive and talkative and constantly making sure that I am near him, not in a controlling way, but in a protective way that once again strikes something deep inside of me and I find myself beginning to fight with myself about how far I was going to allow this to go. In the back of my mind, I always think about my kids and that they too are part of the deal with whomever I wind up with. Will it all be too much for a single man used to his own life and the way he likes things? Despite myself and the reality of my situation, I allow the soft feelings and little butterflies to take over because at that moment, it is just John and I and my kids are a state away enjoying their first sleepover with their grandmother. 

        The broadway version of The Notebook totally butchers the book and the movie that I had loved for years. It gave into the need for wokeness that entertainment has turned to in recent years and both John and I leave confused as to who people even are in it as they frequently changed actors based on race in each scene. In one scene Noah was the black man, but in the next he is white again–it served no real purpose to the story and made it hard to follow. By the end of the show, neither John nor I stood for the ovation. 

        Turning to me, John asked, “Why aren’t you standing?”

        Knowing why, but not wanting to hurt his feelings since this was our first date and I knew the kind of planning that he did for it, I hesitated. 

        “I am not standing because it was awful.”

        I exhale with a smile. “Yes, I feel the same, but I really enjoyed being here with you.”

        His smile widened. “Yes, the company was made for a standing ovation, but not the singing by screaming at the top of their lungs.”

        I nod. “And I don’t know about you but I was confused as to who was who in every single scene change.”

        “Exactly! What was that?!”

        Afterwards, we meandered around the city in search of coffee for me and things to do. We find ourselves in Times Square, John buys both of us a New York hat. My body begins to feel the end of the excitement and the toll of a day steeped in travel and activity. I am growing tired as the night begins to unfold. 

        “Would you like to go back to the hotel,” John asks me. 

        “I would, but I would still like to do something when we get back there.” 

        “Well what should we do?” He stops walking for a moment and I follow suit. “Do you know how to play UNO? Or any card games?”

        I smile. “Yes to both. And I hate to brag, but I am one heck of a game of war player.”

        “Sounds like we better stop at a drug store and get UNO and some cards then.”

        We walk a couple more blocks and find a store that has both after a creepy elevator ride into a New York store basement and questionable people all around. Afterwards we walk back to the hotel and John excuses himself so that I can shower and change. When he comes back he readies himself for bed and we sit in our hotel room with Manhattan lit up behind us playing several games of war until I feel my eyes fighting themselves to stay open. There is heavy banter flying between us as we play war and make jokes about the physical tension between us. 

        Towards the end of our last game, John stops joking for a moment and looks at me. It is a gaze that he won’t go on to give me often, but when he does give it I know he wants me to clearly hear what he has to say, it makes me feel loved and protected. “Katherine,” he says, my name always sounding like honey from his mouth. “In all seriousness, I know how to be a gentleman and I will be one until you tell me that I no longer have to be.”

        I can feel my face flush ten different shades of red while my body can’t decide what it wants to do with itself. I clear my throat, trying to hold onto my composure and these sudden waves of intense feelings that have come sweeping into me. “Well then, do you like to cuddle?”

        He smiles and cleans up the rest of the cards. “I am a very good cuddler.”

        John slides into bed next to me. My head is all over the place. I am still breast feeding my youngest and I think to myself what if my body ultimately betrays me and I have to explain soaked sheets in the morning. Or worse yet what if one of the panic attacks that I have frequently been getting since Phil died takes over in the night and I wake up into it again, terrified that Phil is dying all over again. Then I look over at John and the noise in my head seems to stop. He invites me to lay down next to him and I let him hold me for the first time. 

A warm and peaceful feeling washes over me when he touches me for the first time and within moments, I am fast asleep and beside John, I sleep through the night for the first time since my husband died.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

The Widowhood │ Daisy

John and I begin to message back and forth quickly. We start talking a lot of small talk about what we like and things that we do. It isn’t forced and it is not all the time, some days we do not message at all, but there is consistency in our exchanges. I find myself beginning to look forward to them, however small that they are.

          Then one day John mentions something about being at the beach and watching the sunrise. Something I used to do in another life when I was free to roam around and was not raising children. He offers to upload a picture of it to e-harmony so that I can see it, only e-harmony will not approve pictures for your account unless they are of you. In the end, he sends me his number and when I respond in a text message, he sends me a picture of the sunrise at the shore. It’s a beautiful sunrise and it’s framed nicely too, suggesting that beneath his machismo there is a creative streak and maybe even a little bit of an old soul in how he sees the world. This becomes my second favorite picture that he has sent me.

          After that the texting between us seems to grow and I find myself sharing funny stories about my arch nemesis: David the Squirrel who is the obnoxiously fat squirrel that is always doing something that ends with me and the dogs chasing it around the yard with a broom. I sometimes wonder if David is the same squirrel or if I am calling five different squirrels David. John seems to appreciate my squirrel stories.

          “Are you still talking to the guy from the internet,” my mother inquires.

          “Yeah, we’ve been texting a lot more. I have been enjoying getting to know him” I say with a little too much excitement that is enough for my mom to pick up.

          “Is it just texting, or have you guys actually spoken?”

           “So far we have just been texting pretty consistently and talking about small things, nothing major yet.” I immediately want to change the subject. My mother has a way of being very critical of my feelings and of the men that I choose to date. She will find problems where there are none and thus, begin to cause problems where there are none. And this time, I am feeling very protective of John, the internet person who I really enjoy texting and looking forward to his little messages about his life and his days.

          “Would you be as into this man as you are now even if he sounds like Donald Duck?”

          I chuckle. “I really do not think he sounds like Donald Duck.”

          “But…you don’t know that.”

          My mother has now placed the Donald Duck brain worm inside of my head because what if he does sound like Donald Duck? I am already running through a plethora of scenarios inside of my head from him being some kind of weird child predator that wants to get close to me to hurt my kids to what if he is the love of my life to what if I get so wrapped up into him and then one day he looks at me and tells me that he is done because my kids are too much? The mental Olympics that I am putting myself through daily has become exhausting and then the idea of me going through all of this and he sounds like Donald Duck in the end? I think I would be devastated. Then the next side of my overthinking pops in and I begin to question myself as to why I would be devastated if an internet person who I have only been texting sounds like Donald Duck. And then I realize: because I like him.

          In our texting exchanges of that week, we begin to discuss talking on the phone for the first time and I use it as an opportunity to make a couple jokes about what if I sounded like Daisy Duck? Would he still be interested in me? This transpires into an ongoing joke that I don’t think he ever fully understood. We plan on talking that night after I put the kids to sleep. I become eerily calm about the entire thing, and I begin to wonder what his voice really does sound like because my gut feeling is that he does not in fact have a Donald Duck voice.

A little after 8PM that night, I shoot John a text that the kids are asleep and that I was ready to talk when he was. Then, I nervously sit down in my recliner and wait either for him to respond or to call me. He shoots back a text about getting some privacy and that he would call me shortly. I exhale. It’s either Donald Duck or bust!

The quiet of my living room is broken up sometime later with the ringing of my phone. I sit staring at it for several moments before I answer it. I hold my breath and wait to hear his voice for the first time. I think I had even closed my eyes.

I do not remember how he started the conversation that night because we ultimately would become like two teenagers again, staying up for hours on the phone for weeks and being exhausted when our alarms would go off in the morning for work. I loved that innocent time of our relationship though where it was new and exciting, but also comforting.

What I do remember is how it felt to hear his voice for the first time. It was low and calming, strong and soft, but also reassuring. It was a mix of someone that I knew grew up in New Jersey and someone who has spent much of his life moving around the country, with hints and pieces of all the places that he has been. And the first time that I heard it, I was a puddle in my recliner trying to keep my own voice steady and not give a hint of the swarm of little butterflies that had suddenly found their way to my stomach.

We talked for hours that night, Violet had even woken up at one point during it and John had made a sweet comment about hearing her falling back to sleep in my lap. I have fleeting thoughts about maybe this does work out and he won’t be scared off by the idea of a widow with three small children.

Towards the end of our conversation, I even make the joke, “So, are you sure you want to keep talking to a widow with three small kids?”

He laughed. “Well, you being a widow is something that drew me to your profile and now that I know how old Logan is, I assume you were with Phil for a while?”

“Yes, we were married for almost six years and together for almost 10.”

“And he married you which means he could stand you.”

I laughed. “I guess that is a different perspective of marriage and widowhood.”

“It’s late and I am sure you would like to get Violet back to bed.”

“I would, but I have really enjoyed talking to you.”

“Me too, I am twitterpated. Goodnight, Daisy.”

I am thankful he can not see the goofy smile I am sure is plastered across my face. “Goodnight, Donald.”

I click off the call and the room is silent again. I remain sitting in my recliner with my daughter, enjoying the silence. It has somehow changed all together. The room feels different, like the heavy weight that had permeated the house lifted and a new and welcome change is coming through. I am still smiling like an idiot when I ever so gently go back upstairs with Violet and lay down.

I too am twitterpated.

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THE WIDOWHOOD │ A MIXED MARRIAGE

The things I loved about Phil were the opposite of the things that I hated about Phil. I loved that he was creative and smart. I loved that he was a romantic and would do things like buying me a gold rose for special things and anniversaries so that in the end I would always have a dozen roses in the house. In the end, he didn’t make it to a full 12 before he died, but he got close.

When we were dating, he would call me instead of texting me. He would write me cards and letters when he felt moved to share feelings. He told me he loved me often and never made me second guess him, which in many ways played into the total breakdown of my romantic love for him when I found out about the cheating after he died. I had never felt romantic love for someone die so quickly and I was shocked at how fast it happened considering that he had been my husband and that we had children together. It began after the call from Scott, but I don’t think it was fully truly dead until I called his mistress several months later and asked what had gone on.

“I knew he was married,” she said. “But, it was what it was and eventually I did cut things off. It began around late 2017.”

We had been married in November of that year and I was already pregnant with our eldest by that point. He was his father in the end. I was floored.

She went on about other things, about the last time they saw each other a couple of nights before he died and swore that all that had happened was actual moving and she may have touched his arm. Was that supposed to make me feel better? She had the audacity to ask about my boys and if they were talking. I would come to find out later that this is something that Phil would openly put down our children about which I found amusing considering that their speech stuff was inherited from his side of the family. His mother’s sister told me in one moment of clarity that her children all had speech issues.

After our eldest got a diagnosis, I began to read and research all that I could about what he had going on and what I could do to help him. Would he ever talk? Would we all need to learn sign language? I was relieved when it was clear that he would talk, that he would most likely overcome this with regular support and therapy. My research also led me to the reality of how my life choices in choosing Phil as their father played a role in the speech issues.

Phil came from a family where alcoholism, addiction and womanizing where things that you talked badly about, but for the most part was largely accepted because everyone either was one or all three. They would run their mouths about it when the person was being an addict, an alcoholic or a womanizer, but it was always accepted in some regard because it was what it was. However, if someone in the family showed something like a learning disability, it was immediately shunned, swept into a dark corner and blame assigned wherever they could but never something that came from them, because their bloodline was so perfect. It was a very weird juxtaposition and one that I never understood. It led Joanne and Kaitlyn to calling our son retarded among many other hurtful things to the point where I told my husband before he died that I was absolutely done with all of them. In many ways, I was thankful when they chose to stay away over us protecting our children instead of enabling a chaotic addict.

However, it was this inability within his family to love and support someone who was developmentally different that I believe led to the kind of life that my husband led. Our eldest carries a diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech which means that he can think of the words he wants to say but there is a disconnect between his brain and his mouth that deals with motor planning so he can’t always say what he wants to. Apraxia can present often with autism, but our son was tested, and we were told he was one of the super small segments of the population that is not autistic, but is apraxic and that with the proper love, support, and speech therapies that he would most likely over come it and be a fully articulate adult. The good news is, that after years of supporting him, he is now intelligible and people outside of my family can understand him. He will navigate school on his own next year for the first time and at the end of last year even earned student of the month for his grade level because of how far he has come and how much he has recovered academically. I am very excited as his mom to see how he blossoms in the new school year, because I truly feel that this is the year where he levels out and he hits his grade level all around.

It was in my research of childhood apraxia of speech that I discovered some studies that were hinting at a link between having a parent with ADHD and the child developing with apraxia. In the 10 years that I spent with my husband and in the 15 years of experience I have in special education, I could tell you without even taking that man to be screened, that he was the epitome of an undiagnosed adult with ADHD that never had the therapies or supports needed to become a fully functioning adult. A conversation with Joanne in earlier years, confirmed my thoughts when she had mentioned that they had had my husband tested but they found that he only had a touch of ADHD. I knew when she said it how full of it, she truly was, because even in the 1970’s to 1980’s no doctor or child study member was going to tell you that your child had a touch of anything—your child either has a diagnosis or they don’t. And I am sure that my husband did have one and it was ignored for much of his life because that is just something that could not possibly exist in their family.

As creative as he was, he was also a mess. He was scattered in his thoughts, he always had little piles and little things scattered around the house, often stepping over his things instead of acknowledging them. He always had to be moving or entertained by something, or he couldn’t control himself. His lack of focus on pretty much everything in life was sometimes all together mind blowing. In hindsight, I wish I could have seen his struggles earlier, but the adult problems I faced when we were married and having to be someone’s full on support took over being able to have clarity in all situations.

However, it was this chaotic mess that I think also made Phil very funny. His mind would race faster than the words that he could get out of his mouth most times. When he became impassioned by something, he would go on what we would call a Phil Rant. They would be epically long rants, full of strung together thoughts about whatever made him angry in the moment. They would be about anything from friend gossip to political opinions to one of his timeless rants about Rory in the Gilmore Girls. Sometimes he would become so enthralled in them that you would be laughing so hard that it would hurt to breath. That was Phil though, a larger-than-life persona who knew how to make people laugh, make people feel comfortable like you knew him your entire life and command a room. Those were the good parts of him and the parts that I hold on to when his children ask me about their dad. Sure, they will ask me about the other stuff too especially now that I have chosen to publicly write about it, but the one lesson I got from my marriage and loving Phil, was something that my dad said to me in the kitchen after my husband died and I told him about the cheating and how I just couldn’t understand why he just didn’t take care of himself while I did everything else.

“Katherine,” he said, “Sometimes, love is just not enough.”

  A simple, very truthful statement coming from my very German, often overly stoic father that I have held onto since. In the weeks and months since I found out about the actual state of my marriage, I have found myself in the selfish thoughts about how could he have done this to me and our family, but then I stop myself because I realize that he had done all of this not because of a lack of love for me or even for our kids, but a lack of love for himself that supersedes my appearance in his life. He was born out of another’s man’s chaotic life of jumping from woman to woman, family to family and in turn never got what he needed to become a fully functional adult capable of making a real commitment to me or let alone to himself. He lacked stability in his most formative years and that played out well into his adult life. However, his charisma and his charm always seemed to get himself out of hot water and on a snowy January evening, caught the eye of a young teacher who thought that his nerdy hobbies were cute and at least that meant he wasn’t a bar scene kind of a guy.

One of the last heart to heart conversations that Phil and I had with one another before he died happened in our living room. He had come in from somewhere, walked over to me and gave me a kiss.

I probably said something like, “What was that for?”

He smiled at me, the tender smile that he would give me when he felt total love for me in a moment. “Thank you. I was never about the house, and the dogs and the kid stuff, but having done this with you, it just feels…really nice. I never knew how nice it could all be.”

I gave him a heartfelt smile, because even when it was hard between us, there was still those moments where it was…really nice.

“Sometimes I have wondered if you love because you’re not big on expressing your feelings, but then I think about times like when I came home from the hospital this last time and you had the entire house set up for me to recover in, including a refrigerator filled with kale and it’s the stuff like that, that when I think about it, I know how much you really do love me.”

I gently reached over and touched his hand. “I love you, Phil.”

“I love you too, Pigeon. Thank you for being my wife.”

And we hugged for a bit, both teary eyed before Phil sat back and made a joke about how crying wasn’t manly and that someone must have turned the heat up because he is sweating and needs to go wash his face. I returned to whatever it was I had been doing before he came in. It was these moments that made me hold onto the idea that Phil and I would always find a way back to each other even in the chaos of kids and the house and the dogs and whatever else life was going to throw at us because I always did believe that love was enough.

It took me falling out of love with Phil to realize that my dad was right. Love is not enough, it also takes a shared vision, loyalty, and unwavering commitment to one another for love to last a lifetime. Things that Phil was just not capable of offering me though I have no doubt he loved me and our kids in the best and only ways he knew how to. I think that the reason God brought Phil and I together was so that I could have three kids and learn what it meant to be a wife in the hard times. I think the reason God gave me to Phil was so that Phil could know what it was like to be loved loyally and honestly until his last breath because that is not something that he had not had in his lifetime before me. My dad is right in that love is not enough sometimes, but I think sometimes love is meant to teach us and to lead us home. For Phil, that was to the end of his life and back to God. For me, I think that story is still being written.  

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The Widowhood │The First Christmas

By the time the first Christmas is coming, my entire life has become upheaved from the summertime. I went back to work at a new job, I was a single mother and not much of my life made sense anymore. I knew though that if I just kept going that my kids would be okay and that in time life would feel okay again.  

My mother has started her prodding of me. “Well, you know, Melanie, my hairdresser told me that when you’re ready you should go onto eharmony because people on that site tend to be looking for real relationships and not just hookups.” 

“Mom, it’s only been three months. I can’t even think about that right now. Maybe I am just meant to be alone for the rest of my life now?” 

“Oh Kath, please. You’re meant to find someone who is going to be a good husband to you and a father to those kids. I get it though, you’re not ready, but when you are…Melanie tells me it’s eharmony.” 

I roll my eyes. “Don’t you remember Todd?” 

She laughs. “Cloth napkin Todd!” 

“Yes, big Valentines Day dinner cloth napkin Todd who came off of eharmony and then dumped me because I wasn’t sleeping with him fast enough.” 

“Well, he was named…Todd. But maybe you’ll meet another widower with kids and you will be like a modern-day Brady Bunch.” 

“I have no desire.” I start to pace around my living room, stepping over kid’s toys.  

“For what meeting someone or brady bunching?” 

“Both, but if I met someone, I don’t want someone who was married, I don’t want someone with kids and I surely do not want another widower so we can both sit there and cry over our dead spouses. I want someone who likes what I like and wants to do things and likes my kids.” 

“So, I am hearing that you have thought about this.” 

I put my fist to my forehead and squint my eyes. “I guess somewhat, yes, I have thought about what kind of man I want to be with if there ever is another man.” 

“Well, how far did you get? What kind of man is he then?” 

I sigh, I should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t. “He’s a man like grandpa. He’s moral and believes is Jesus. He’s conservative and he works with his hands, likes the outdoors and taking hikes. He’s creative in his own way, it doesn’t have to be painting and writing like me, but something that he’s into maybe photography. He likes old houses and thrifting and gardening. He’s manly, but nerdy and likes watching old movies with me. He comes from a big family, loves his mother, but isn’t obsessed with her.” I clear my throat to stop from crying. “And he wants to be a husband. He just doesn’t want me to be a wife.” 

“This is very detailed for something you haven’t thought about. And very you, you always did want a big family.” 

“My thoughts are all I have once the kids go to bed.” I start to pick up the toy field that is my living room floor. I really should have stopped talking.  

“I get it though, you’re note ready. When you are though, there’s eharmony!” 

“Yes, I know, Melanie approved eharmony. Got it. Mom, I must go one of Phil’s friends is calling me.” 

“Okay, bye. I love you, Kath. You’re doing good.” 

I am not ready for a mom call and a Phil’s friend call all in the same hour, but it is what it is. I see Scott’s name coming across the screen and switch calls.  

“Hey Scott, what’s up?” I continue picking up the toy field. 

“Oh hey Katherine, not much just figured I would give you a call and check in and see how Christmas and stuff went with the kids.” 

“That’s nice of you. It went well, just kind of trying to get the house in order. I started to go through Phil’s things. I was able to get into his phone.” I paused as I remembered what I wanted to ask Scott. “I got into his Discord. I saw some messages between him, and I think it’s your ex-girlfriend.” 

There’s a weighted silence. “Oh well uh yeah, I guess if you’re ready to talk about that. We can.” 

This was not a response I was expecting. Talk about what? “Yeah, there was some stuff that I thought was weird, like not fully inappropriate, but not things you should be saying to someone if you’re in a relationship let alone if you’re married.” 

Scott clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say, but knowing all to well there was no backing away now. “Katherine…it was before we dated. I mean she is whacked out of her mind, we all know that, but you know how Phil always had a way with people.” 

I feel the air catching in my lungs. The room is becoming unbearable. I drop all of the toys that I was holding.  

“Look, she told me about it before we made it official. I knew about it before, I told Phil he needed to stop and if he didn’t that, I was going to go straight to you just like he did when I cheated on my ex-wife.” 

There is no air in the room. It is like a vacuum chamber.  

“I know she was the last one of us from the friend group to see him, I don’t know if they did anything that night he was at her apartment.” 

“At her apartment,” I choke out. The last thing Phil did two nights before he died was help his friend Mike move, what would he have been doing at her apartment.  

“Yeah, when he helped her move in. I just know it was a lot of online stuff for years.” 

A heavy silence falls in between us. My mind racing back to when we were first married and I was pregnant with our eldest. His last girlfriend that he had had before we met had come back around and to me, he had said that she wanted closure. I later found out she had been trying to rekindle things and now I had wondered if they had? Then I thought back to Kaitlyn’s wedding and how he had disappeared with one of her friends and Kaitlyn took great pleasure in telling me that he cheated on me with her, though Phil and the family that he had been with swore up and down that Kaitlyn was exaggerating a drunk walk Phil took with her back to her hotel room to make sure she got into it okay.  

“Katherine? Are you there?” 

I’m suddenly sucked back into the airless room. “Yeah, Scott, I have to go the kids are getting into something. We’ll have to talk about this later.” 

I hang up and walk upstairs to where my kids were playing in the boys’ room. I help them clean up their toys, give them their lavender baths and lay down with them until they are asleep. I get up after they are asleep and take one of the anxiety pills that my doctor told me to start taking to help with the panic attacks, I keep waking up into thinking that someone is dying again. It is just a high dose of Benadryl but it usually allows me to sleep, only it is not doing a thing to me that night. 

I find myself on my computer googling eharmony. I start doing the much too long personality test that they make you do. I get about halfway through it when I see the $600 price tag. I close my computer and sit in the darkness of my bedroom.  

“You truly are unbelievable, Phil, wherever you are.”  

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The Widowhood │When the After Isn’t Forever Either

I follow a lot of young widows on social media. In the early days, it was how I got through the hard stuff. I would watch them and think that God has a plan for me and the kids and that in the end, we were going to be happy again.

I did not have an easy marriage. In order to make my relationship and eventual marriage work, I had to move to Phil. I had to take on over an hour-long commute despite constantly applying for more local jobs that never happened. I had to live 6 minutes away from his abusive family. And then when our eldest was only a year old his health stuff began, and I went from wife and new mother to his constant care giver. I did everything. I was the provider, I was the caretaker of the house and when I was not working, I was with our kids. He appreciated none of it and as I look back now, I realize how much of a narcissist he truly was. Everything was ALWAYS about him unless it came to his friends that he would bend over backward for because he liked how it made him look and if I didn’t do the one thing he wanted at that moment, it was always flipped into “I wonder if you love me?” Really? And even after he died, I stayed the very true widow and made sure he was buried the way he would have wanted. I did the duty that I felt I owed from my wedding vows. Imagine the gut punch feeling I got when I later discovered his mistress and six months after he died sat on the phone with her finding out how this had all begun in what I would have described as the happy years of our marriage. In the end, he was just like his womanizing father– something he said he always never wanted to be like.

That is another story all together, but it made me begin to pray a lot. I prayed that God would send me a life partner, someone who loved me and my kids. Who wanted to be a husband, someone who was just not looking for a wife. Someone who would want to have a baby with me and give me the chance to really be a mom, not the exhausted one my kids have been used to. Someone who wanted me to be their wife, because I really want to get to be a wife since that too is something I feel like I was cheated out of the first time.

And I believed what other widows told me, that I would meet someone and it would happen quickly because God has a way of watching out for widows. So, I began online dating and after talking to several people, I thought I had met someone that seemed to want what I wanted: honesty and connection. I have never in my life been as vulnerable or as honest as I was from the moment I entered that relationship. If asked, I shared it no matter how hard it was. Only as time had gone on I felt as though I had opened up my entire life to him, but he never did the same to me. Sure, he did very loving things, spent most of his time with me and my kids, but never seemed to want to take it further, never wanted me in his life. After a year and some months, I finally ask about living together and it was just met with a total stone wall. At first it was avoiding me altogether and letting me sit in very hurt feelings for weeks and then it was coming over to talk, but I knew if he came with a truck he had already made his decision. He was already packing up what he had here, and we hadn’t even talked about us yet. And then suddenly I am told how he doesn’t want to be a stepdad and it’s not like my kids can even talk (they can, but one is overcoming CAS and their siblings are overcoming growing up with an older sibling with CAS as well as the trauma of having their dad die in front of them). And then suddenly I am standing in my driveway, alone and crying at 2 o’clock in the morning with my heart doubly broken as first, a woman and then as a mother.

I don’t know why God directed me to him in this life. I spent too much time grieving an unfaithful husband and then I opened up my whole self, my whole heart to someone that despite the ridiculous marriage I had…that I trusted and in turn, looked at me like what I had said I wanted was the craziest thing, even though we had talked about all of this on probably or second or third time together. So, I have spent a lot of this summer crying and also cleaning out my life and facing the things I couldn’t before like the dogs I had to handle. And also, the toxic things that lingered in my life that I should have addressed when I was married but always let it go. I can see that is where I was not a good wife nor girlfriend and I should have handled that differently than I had.

I am starting a new job in the fall and that has kept me anchored in that I will once again be lecturing college and teaching high school seniors. Between that and the kids, it has kept me going even on the days where I wish I could just crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep for days. And at night I still say a prayer to God that out there somewhere is a man who is going to love me and my kids and want to be a stepdad to my kids and want to be my husband. And who wants to complete my family…our family with me. Sometimes your faith and hope are all you have because sometimes a widow doesn’t get her happy ending, but rather another heart break that she has to recover from.

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The Widowhood │ Six Months In…

Life comes at you pretty quickly. I thought that I had mine figured out for the moment…I had the house I wanted to grow old in with the husband I wanted to grow old with and three amazing kids. I was getting up for a wine festival…my first thing to do kid free in years and I came downstairs to find my husband in full blown cardiac arrest on our deck.

And in that instance, I would never be the same again. We would never be the same again.

It’s been over six months since I lost the love of my life. And for the most part, life has found it’s calm again. My main focus has always been our home and our children. In that respect, I have existed almost in a bubble of their life and needs. It has only been recently that I have wanted to de-bubble somewhat.

Eating when you’re grieving I think it the strangest thing. I know that I have to because of my kids and because I am still breastfeeding our youngest, but since he died nothing tastes the same anymore. Nothing is the same. On the nights that it gets really bad I often will make just a side. I call it grief sides and it’s manageable to eat a bowl of stuffing or Texas toast on the super hard nights though even then not enjoyable as you would think.

Doing anything beyond what I had to do has been hard. I don’t read books or paint unless it’s related to getting the house in order. I find myself zoning out to energy healers on YouTube after my kids go to sleep until I finally fall asleep.

Because the anxiety of being a widow is something else. I worry about being the sole provider for my family. I worry about my kids now growing up in a single parent household. I worry about what is happening to my husband’s body. And then very recently, I started to think about what my life is going to start looking like moving forward.

Will I be alone for the rest of my life? Will I find love again? Will I get to have more children? Why did this happen to us? Why did this happen to me?

I was never lucky in the love department. I had two big loves in my life–one I left because I was so in love with him and it was clear he was just going to play games and then the other, died randomly on a bright fall morning taking our dogs outside. For years, I thought I went through all that came before my husband so that I could meet my husband…the night that I met him I came home, called my mom and told her I had met the man I was going to marry. That’s how *right* it all felt with him from the moment I met him.

And I guess the point was that we would come together, have a really good marriage and have three amazing kids…but I just thought we would also get to see our kids grow up together as we grew old, watching our bodies fall apart and laughing and dancing our way through it all.

I guess I just wonder what is next…will I raise my kids and travel the world looking at cool art and cultures by myself? Will I meet someone again?

I just don’t know, but I do know, I am having such an urge to find myself in all of this. I lost myself to marriage and motherhood for a long time and now I guess I have time to reflect on it all and am realizing that there is more out of life that I want and somehow I just have to find the courage and the energy to move passed the exhaustion of grief and being a single mom to find those pieces of myself again and nourish them.

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Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment