Being a Widower

What becomes more and more obvious to me with each passing day is that being a widow or widower is a unique experience, a unique pain and psychological condition. That is why is has a name, a name that once attained can never be shaken. Not like "divorcee" which can be erased with a new marriage. Or "single" or even "married" which can be adjusted relatively easily. Widower is a title that never leaves, only it could be hidden. 

Not all people marry, so that is the initial right of passage. And not all stay married. To choose to marry, and to choose to stay married, is a choice, maybe one made daily, or weekly, or yearly. It is a choice to remain in an embrace of an eternal wrestling match for truth. For no two people are completely compatible without the constant discussion of the compatability. So to be married is to engage in this discussion with someone who you accept is also engaged in the same discussion, and with reaffirmations and push and pull throughout. 

So when this constant embrace is broken, one side of the conversation stops, but the other side does not stop. I cannot just instantly stop thinking about whether my decisions and choices reflect that of the ideal, because I know they do not.  All of a sudden I only have my own point of view to combat with. It is earily familiar, of being young, of the desire to feel that my own experience is all that should be needed to guide me. But on the contrary to my thoughts when I was young, I learned through time that my distinct point of view was slanted, incomplete, distrorted even. And that realization came not from my own analysis of my life and situation, but from the realization that there was someone whose opinion I valued as much if not more than my own, And the frightening realization that her opinion conflicted, sometimes often, with my own ideas and preferences. This contradiction, a congnitive dissonance in a way, attracted me to this other, and the leap of faith that marriage required was to realize that neither of us could fully change or retain the other, that we were both metamorphisizing throughout the marriage, maybe coming closer to the exact realization of reality we were looking for. 

So a widow/er, or at least myself as a widower, is to accept that the other's voice is stuck in my memory now, and that of others, and sadly with each passing day gets slightly more abstract, more vague in target. We are ones who did try to fly close to the sun, who realized that being with another person and searching for truth was maybe a way to actually get there. Maybe it actually was the path to happiness, and peace. Bobby. Being alive. Like you could fly not on your own, but only through the give and take, the constant acceptance of the back and forth, up and down, moving the air, causing the rising through the air, not peacefully rising but aggresively moving the air, together. And then it is gone.

So you are left to see the world, with those who have tried and failed, those who won't try, those who are succeeding, and you feel like you are out of the game. Like you already won. And you know the game will not go on forever for anyone. Not one person will be able to play the game forever. Not two people. It will end for each and every person, alone, together, apart, just like your game has ended. So it feels a bit like an afterlife. Like I won the game, but now I need to sit around while others continue to play, get the chance to keep playing, maybe getting closer to the sun than we did. And I can sit in pleasure thinking of my daughter, how she may get the chance to learn what I cannot teach her from someone else. And I hope she gets to play for as long as possible as well.

If this is depressing, I am sorry, comes with the territory I am afraid. But I am not depressed. I am thankful, and sad. I can cry at the drop of a feather, but also smile with the same speed. And maybe through time I will be open to learning again. But for now, I want nothing to dare take up any space that she took up, I want no chance that any learning will push out something I learned from her, I want to stretch each synapse as long and as far as they will go and nothing will make me take the chance to replace one that was growing. Because they are still growing, through everything I read and think about and learn they are reacting with what exists, and I can still hear her thoughts and reflect them on everything I hear, read, and think about. It is only the contradictions will cause the growth to stop. Embracing anything that we wouldn't have embraced. So my goal is to continue to embrace what we would have, as long as I know how. I can make this last, maybe a lot longer than I think. And it is not the same, in no way is it anywhere close to the same, but it is as close as I can get right now, as close as I can get. It is because I believe it was true, I believe it was real, and I believe it made me better, she made me better. But I will never know what I don't know, what would have come next. But I can always imagine, and maybe my imagination is the best able to imagine for her than anyone's anywhere, almost making her continue to exist. Almost. It is better than nothing, so much better than nothing.