When Everything Falls Apart, What Happens Next?

Reflections on the First Three Years of Widowhood

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Because my husband died very close to the beginning of January, since 2022 I’ve measured time by Years of Widowhood, rather than calendar years.¹ Around the New Year period, my reflections on the past twelve months now tend to be reflections on each foregoing stage of loss, rather than on the broader personal and social milestones of the previous year. This is a largely I-oriented post in which I’m trying to capture the often nebulous ways in which my experiences of widowhood and grief have changed over time. These notes are partly for myself, but I hope that these reflections might be helpful to other bereaved people - especially those in the early stages - and to those supporting them.

Year 1

Soon after Pete died in January 2022, I joined a community called Widowed and Young (WAY), and posted on its online chat forum, ‘how long does this pain last’? With an ultra-runner’s mindset, I wanted to pace myself; to ready myself for X months of agony - so long as there was the assurance of some rest and recuperation at the end of it. Unsurprisingly, no-one was able to give me a schedule for grief. But elsewhere, I read about other women who had been widowed through suicide, and how they described that the first year was largely characterised by shock, and that the actual work of mourning didn’t really begin until year two. In retrospect, I would largely agree with this.