The Widowhood │ The Magic of New Beginnings

 Logan’s last year of pre-school was a difficult one. Everyday at the end of the day if I wasn’t there to pick him up, he would sob. It didn’t matter that Phil was still alive at this time and would be the one getting him, no, Logan needed his mom. Sometimes I would be able to get him if my schedule allowed and if I drove like a crazy person to get back to town from the capital city. It was a hard year for us both and ultimately made me come to conclusion that I was needed at home more than I was needed at a job an hour away.

          This was when my resentment for Phil truly began to build. He was healthy enough to work and cleared to do so by his doctor, but he never really tried to get the kind of job that could make me dial back on the 16 hours days that I had been doing for years. It had been a deal that we had made early on, that once I got us into our forever house, I would be able to dial back on the crazy work hours and focus more on the kids. Only, it never happened and then the summer before he died, he lost the okay-ish job that he had found over a stupid fight about a cup. I remember when the call came in that he was fired as we stood in the driveway, having just gotten back from the lake with the kids. Phil was very good at name calling and put downs when he was mad, but I believe if you love someone you don’t talk to them like that even when they hurt you or are mad at them. Words can do more damage than you think.

          After he got off the phone with his old job, I looked at him full of rage and disappointment as this was the first summer I had taken off and had completely trusted him with the house. “What is wrong with you? You have absolutely fucked us, I hope that you know that.”

          He looked at me like I had said the worst thing known to man and he walked away to call his friends to complain about how I spoke to him and how he was so hurt. I wanted to hit him. I didn’t, but that was one of the times in our marriage where I thought about the satisfaction of punching him in the face would feel like. By the next morning, I was delivering groceries and trying to scrape together any money that I could get my hands on to get us through until I was paid in September.

          By August, I was thankful for the job offer that came in which meant that I was going to be able to pick Logan up from school. I felt like I could breathe again until my old job said that even though I was resigning in August that I was going to be held for 60 days as per my teaching contract. At first, I was rage-filled about it, but looking back I can see the hand of God in that. I was able to go back to work and pack up my things, I got my first full paycheck and then the next morning, I woke up to my husband collapsing and dying at my feet, but because I had been held to 60 days, I now was able to use all of my personal time and be written out for the rest of my holding period. I never went back to the classroom that I had managed for over 10 years.

          And then I arrived shell-shocked and traumatized to my new job. I remember the briskness of the day that I arrived and having to sit in front of my new supervisor and tell her what had happened, asking what paperwork I had to redo since I was no longer married. I was in front of new people, new work and out in the world for the first time in three weeks since our tragedy had found us. I remember how the fuzziness of the world around me seemed to dwindle and for the first time since that Saturday morning, I was looking forward to life again.

          It is almost poetic in a sense that I am now leaving that job for something new and have had a summer of grief and turmoil leading up to it. During my time here, I started to date, I fell in love, I thought I had a future with someone, got my heart broken, had to give away my dogs, had multiple surprises with cars and my house and somehow, made it through it. And next week, I will be sitting at New Teacher Orientation learning about what the next chapter of my life is going to be. Maybe it’s the hand of God again, maybe it’s the end of a cycle—either way I am hopeful today as I am trusting in the magic of new beginnings.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

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 │ Sure, What’s My Dating Handle Going to Be?

One of the things that I like about my job is that one of my co-workers is in her middle-20’s, without kids and is actively dating and trying to meet someone. She keeps it real with me and I appreciate it because while I am not actively dating, she keeps me thinking about it and working over one day trying again and seeing if there is someone out there for me to build a life with.

          The other day she comes in and sits with me by my desk, scrolling through her dating app and becoming increasingly more frustrated with it. Has modern society really made it this hard to find someone? Probably.

          “Did you ever sign back up to e-harmony,” she asks me, flicking down her phone and over whatever app she was on.

          I sigh. “I started to do the personality test and then I just started to cry so I figured that I was probably not in the best mindset to be doing this and I was not ready to try again.”

          “That’s fair. My best guy friend told me last night that my profile was horrifying and that’s why I wasn’t getting anyone interested in me.”

          I paused what I am doing. “Well, do you think he was right?”

          She begins reading to me her profile. I last a couple of seconds before I put my hands up. “Yeah, he is absolutely right. That sounds crazy and demanding and not at all what you should have in a dating profile.”

          “Well! I AM JUST SO TIRED OF IT! I am so tired of something starting and it just falling apart. I am so tired of putting myself out there and it being nothing in the end. How do you start yours when you’re doing it?”

          I chuckle. “I keep it light and honest. I think when I met John mine had said that I was a widow with three kids and that I was looking for something meaningful.”

          “What is light about being a widow with three kids?”

          “Not a whole lot, but it’s honest and I didn’t want someone to be surprised by that because—” She cuts me off.

          “Because you didn’t want someone who was going to leave over the kids and hurt you and the kids,” she says, having listened to me cry many times over the summer about the state of my life.

          I’m teary eyed again. “Yeah, pretty much and then that happened anyway so here we are. I guess I don’t know a whole lot about dating either.”

          “Have you thought about using a free app? Might just get you a couple of dates and gets you out of the house a couple nights? Gives you a break?”

          I snort. “You mean one of those sites that you need to even create a handle for? What would mine even be? Something like widowedmomofthreewithfreshexboyfriendbaggage,” I say flippantly.

          She looks at me and busts out laughing and then suddenly I am laughing with her, a real laugh. One I haven’t had in many weeks and then we’re both laughing so hard that we are in tears, and it hurts to breathe.

          “What,” I manage to choke out, “Is that too crazy and pressure filled?”

          “Yes,” she laughs. “But it is also so perfect all in one.”

          “Do I need a handle for whatever app that you’re using,” I ask, regaining my composure.

          “No, but this one has you answer questions like what is your favorite cry to song.”

          “What is yours,” I ask, tucking my feet up underneath me on my chair.

          “Well, my best guy friend told me I need to set it to ‘Back That Ass Up’ and that would make men message me because it’s funny.” She starts humming the lyrics.

          “And did you?”

          “Oh yeah, I did, and you know what? He was right, men are messaging me asking me why that song.”

          “Maybe we should just have him write our profiles and see where it goes,” I laugh. “I don’t think my issues are the profiles though. I think mine will always be the dead husband, the kids and my John created trust issues over my insecurities about the kids and the dead husband.”

          “The right guy is going to love those kids though and the dead husband is kind of a blessing really, they don’t have to deal with an ex-husband.”

          “You’re not wrong. I just don’t think I’m ready.”

          “You’re not. You’re just out of your first long relationship after being widowed and it’s pretty clear you still love John.”

          I nod, teary eyes returning.

          “But when you are ready, please use that handle and let’s see how it goes,” she says laughing.

          “Maybe we can just do a social experiment.”

          “Don’t tempt me.”

          Ultimately, we decide against doing a social experiment and we sit scrolling through her free dating app and looking at the messages that she got from turning her cry-to song to “Back That Ass Up,” while she sings it loudly.  

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

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 │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 │Clarity

I think one of the things that no one understands until they themselves live through a totally traumatic experience is that there is a fog that settles over you. It’s almost like when you are small and jump into a pool and open your eyes. All of your senses are present, but everything else is dull and muffled. It’s all very real, but it’s also very filtered…foggy.

That is what the aftermath of trauma feels like. I think it is even worse when you continue to live in the same place where that trauma happened. Everything around you has stayed the same, but there is a big hole where the hand of God came into your life and ripped something big away. Well-meaning people come in and want to tell you all that you have to do, but that’s the worst thing you can do to someone who is traumatized. People need to learn that their opinions aren’t fact and what is more helpful is to just shut up for a long time because what comes after the initial trauma is the heaviest grief. The old metaphor of grief being like an ocean is so very real. Only that ocean of grief then sucks you into a tunnel. It’s a dark tunnel that you feel like you’re looking up from. You’re at the bottom, things are less muffled you’re feeling more again, but it’s still not the same as before so you keep squinting and looking up at the light of hope and remember that while your husband’s life ended, your journey has not and there is more to come.

You start to begin your life again. You start dating again. You start building new friendships. You start thinking about what life is going to look like without your husband who in end turned out to not be the life partner you thought you had. I still can’t tell you what the bigger betrayal is when I look back on my life– that one relationship you thought was going to be something when you were young and dumb or your husband choosing not to take care of himself and die at 43 years old totally abandoning you in a life that sets you up for one of the loneliest lives as a single mom of three kids. Anger begins to bubble.

Your anger turns into making your space your own again. Maybe it’s small little things like painting and clearing spaces. You get rid of their stuff, saving things for your children that in 20 years from now they too will probably throw into the garbage but at that point it will be their choice to have done it. You think life is moving forward again. Things are good.

Only then your little raft begins to crumble because these were merely bridges in the end. And you plunge back into grief again, but it’s a new grief. The grief of things not working out which in turn brings a clarity with it that you needed. The clarity over people and situations that for your entire life you tolerated their behavior, never speaking up because there would never be any talking, there would just be how you were the problem. Only with clarity you see that you never were, but that keeping your mouth shut to keep the peace was in fact a trauma response in and of itself. Then suddenly your voice erupts quite loudly and to your surprise people begin to shut up.

And you begin to face wrapping up the last of your life from before. This has been an entire series of events in my recent life, but the big one was finally addressing the dogs that I had with Phil. After another blow out fight with my dad about it, I realized that I had been holding onto the dogs because the kids got them with their dad and it was Phil who named them, one of the last things he did with us. And then on the morning that he died, he had died taking the dogs out that morning. It was all so wrapped up in that Saturday and the months before he died, but it took me this long to realize it. To everyone else it’s so easy oh, just start over, but starting over even with the dogs is a journey. A very personal one and the answer isn’t always just to do it to make your life easier. Sometimes, what you need is to hold onto something until you’re ready to let it go.

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The Widowhood │ Nighttime Reflections

I was 27 years old when I met my husband.

I was 37 years old when I was burying him.

Three kids, two houses, all of Europe, most of the East coast and a whirlwind of life later, I was alone again.

I had met him on a blind date. A coworker of mine had insisted that I meet him.

We went out to dinner, got coffee and grabbed a movie. And that was it, we were together from that point forward.

I had spent the six years previous to meeting him getting my career together and graduate school completed and dating emotionally unavailable men because I was really still in love with my ex-boyfriend. Though, at the time I would never have admitted that. And then I met my husband, and I thought THIS WAS WHY it all had to play out like it did and wasn’t I glad that it did, because it meant I had found my other half.

I had only ever wanted to get married once and I wanted it to be with the right person. He was the right person for me.

Only God had other plans and now I am sitting up late when I should be asleep, going over my life in my head and wondering what do I do with my life next?

The first six months were almost easy in that I knew it meant that I had to get the house and my life together to maintain my kids’ lives. And I did that. However, now I think about me. What does life have in store for me?

Had you asked me that last summer I would have bubbled over about my book deal and having my last baby.

I am turning 38 this summer and I put the book deal on hold to focus on kids and unless I meet someone with the next couple of years, my daughter will be my last baby. I am okay with that I guess…I just wish I got to have that moment most women have where they choose that they are done and are an active part of letting go of that part of their life. For me, it was chosen for me unless I meet someone who wants kids relatively soon. Just like it was chosen for me that my marriage has ended and I am a widow after only having been married for five almost six years.

Maybe this is me finding my anger in my grief?

I should just crawl back into bed and cry to the Kacey Musgraves version of I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You…if you need a good cry yourself, turn that puppy on. Gets my glasses foggy every time.

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Into the Widowhood │ Keeping with the Bittersweet

By next week it will already be a month since my husband died. It still feels raw and gutting. There is also some relief knowing that he is free from all that he was going through. It is also traumatizing to me when I think of that morning and everything I went through. He didn’t die in his sleep, but I woke up to the chaos of what was unfolding. I think that is why the nights are so full of anxiety for me after I put the kids to sleep– it’s the anxiety of what was to come that morning that I had no idea about.

Phil had made us dinner the night before and he got us coke slurpees because my stomach hurt. I yelled at him about the baby because she was teething and driving me insane with breast feeding. And then the morning came, and our entire lives just unraveled in moments that felt like days.

Since then, everything has changed. Our home. Our lives. Even my job…today was actually my first day at my new job and it felt wonderful to be able to be at work again. It broke up my day and brought me around people. I felt the magic of a new beginning and that felt wonderful.

I am also taking in all the bittersweet moments with our kids, like every time I hear how wonderful our boys are doing in school or when I was watching them dance together in the dining room. Logan would whip Rory around like no one’s business, but when Violet asked for a turn, he became the sweet gentle protector he has always been.

I think this is how you survive grief and the longing for your partner. And also visiting them and talking to them. My mom asked me the other day how many times I have been back to the grave.

I told her we were up to four times, each time a little bit longer than the last. I also made sure that the cemetery corrected his misspelled name. They had it fixed in a day. I am supposed to buy a headstone next…how strange this all is.

And then I thought maybe I would be Black Widow for Halloween. Grief is weird.

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The Hart Home│I Am a Widow Now

I am 37 years old.

And I am a widow.

If you had asked me a month ago what I thought this year would look like I would have told you about the several college classes I was teaching, my book deal, the trip to Disney World that my husband had pushed to book for Christmas, my new job and maybe even the idea of the fourth and final baby we were going to try to have.

Life is altogether different now. My husband is gone. My book deal is on hold. I am on leave from college teaching, and I have no idea when I will be taking the kids to Disney World again. I am looking forward to my new job. I also am both sad and angry that Phil and I will not have any more children together and I too am most likely done having kids as I do not see myself remarrying or being with someone again.

I had a really good marriage to someone who I truly loved and who truly loved me. I just wish we had more time together. This winter we would have been together for 10 years, and our sixth wedding anniversary would have been next month. And I am thankful that if we had to end this way that we at least got to have a family and find our house before because if I had been left totally alone, I don’t know how I would even be getting up every morning. It still freaks me out that I had to buy myself a grave to make sure that when it is my time, I can be buried next to him. How is this even my life?

One moment you think you have your life totally figured out and the next, everything changes in the blink of a Saturday morning. And then several days later you’re balling your eyes out writing and rewriting your husband’s obituary.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment