Widowhood and the Art of Oops
Chapter One: Pudding Brain
I've been working through a series for my paid newsletter and thought the free newsletter might like one of its own.
Chapter One: Pudding Brain
If you think you will be the same person after your best friend and lover dies, I am very sorry to tell you that you absolutely will not. I don't think this is talked about enough; in fact, I'm not sure if it's talked about at all.
In books and movies, the recently widowed father is just wounded enough to make a sympathetic character. He's still represented as a whole entire human capable of not only showering regularly and packing lunches, but also running his quaint little bookshop or picturesque pumpkin farm.
After a meet cute and the kind of misunderstanding a single conversation could solve, he's ready to trot back to the altar with the big city girl who has fallen in love with Small Town, USA and, rather conveniently, his two adorable children who don't seem to miss their mother one bit.
In reality, handsomely rugged widowed man with just the right amount of beard and a wardrobe of flannel shirts, would feel like he has been cleaved in two and will break down crying on the kitchen floor wearing the same filthy bathrobe and underpants he's been in for the past six weeks. He isn't sleeping well because he keeps having panic attacks and nightmares and his two grieving children are still crawling into bed with him every night crying for their mother.
He's going to lose his quaint bookshop or picturesque pumpkin farm not because of a loosely defined need for marketing (that only big city girl can fill), but because his brain is addled with Hunt's best Vanilla (no refrigeration required!). With grief pudding gumming up the gears, he no longer understands time and is continually confused by the "past due" statements that keep arriving in his mailbox. Didn't he just pay that bill yesterday? Wait, how is it already October? He would have bet his mildewed shower curtain it was still March.
I could keep going (I just deleted sixteen paragraphs wherein I brought this poor man to life in extremely depressing detail), but you get the idea. Very few real conversations happen around the ugly realities of loss.
There are (sadly) no glossy brochures in doctor's offices warning you of the dangers of pudding brain. If there were, it would have a photo of a smiling couple eating ice cream on a park bench while a shrouded Grim Reaper lurks just out of focus behind them. They have no idea what's coming, the pathetically happy suckers! Inside would be the definition of pudding brain:
pud·ding brain
po͝odiNG brān
noun, informal
a temporary or extended mental lapse or failure to reason correctly due to catastrophic loss.
"My husband died and I have pudding brain; I have forgotten how to get out of bed."
A tidy bullet list of things you can do to prepare would follow:
Get dressed in the dark: practice wearing mismatched socks, inside-out shirts, and stained cut-offs. Make sure you wear your slippers to important business meetings and parent teacher conferences.
Stock up on sticky notes: use them to write reminders for everyday tasks like "Turn off the oven" or "Pants go on legs."
Attach AirTags to your keys, phone, wallet, and yourself: you'll be able to find your stuff when you've left it in the refrigerator and your family and friends will be able to find you when you've gone off to a parking lot to sob into the steering wheel.
Wrap yards of cotton gauze around your head covering your eyes, ears, nose, and mouth: thusly outfitted, walk out to the mail box, drive the car, and call the electric company to pay a bill.
Once you've mastered moving through life with your senses cut off, stuff the cotton with ice (and add more to your underwear) to create an unpleasantly moist, yet painful numbing sensation that makes you want to die: then, go to an important meeting. Make sure to run into someone who asks if you have any fun plans for the weekend!
Fling all your furniture, household goods, clothing, tools, and vehicle into the bottom of an Olympic sized pool: Practice diving into the water and behaving as though everything is normal. Try making the bed! Setting up a Christmas tree! Cooking a meal! Changing a car battery! Enjoy how impossible it all is before you pass out from lack of oxygen.
In the early days, pudding brain was obvious. I couldn't shower, brush my teeth, or sleep. I stared into the fridge unable to see the contents. I cried a lot. I sobbed in my car, curled up on the floor of my shower, in a home improvement store, and in the closet with my nose stuffed into the armpit of Eric's shirts. The kids and I were shell shocked, angry, confused, and upset. We clung to one another like shipwreck survivors clinging to bits of floating wood in the middle of the Atlantic while sharks circled.
A little bit of time passed and pudding brain became obnoxious. I missed my freeway exits, forgot to pick up kids, made doctor appointments and promptly forgot them, paid bills twice then became confused when refund checks came in the mail. I repeated myself a lot and talked to myself a concerning amount. I could shower, even blow dry my hair, but I'd still look down after driving into town and discover I was wearing two different shoes. I couldn't write, couldn't work. I got taken advantage of by various service providers because I was an easy mark who sometimes acted like I'd had a stroke.
After the first year, the world seemed to expect that I'd figure out how to evict the glutinous substance clogging up my brain synapses and start functioning again.
But I continued to struggle. I tried so hard, but made decisions that now seem super dumb. I mean, I didn't waste money on anything frivolous. I didn't buy us all tickets to the Fiji islands or use our house as collateral on a shady business deal. And for a while, finishing Eric's to-do lists helped me get out of bed in the morning.
Finishing the yard, having a fence installed, paving the driveway, and finishing the downstairs bathroom felt productive and important, even if a lot of things went sideways during the respective processes. The kids felt more grounded with a normal-looking house & yard and our dog could roam the yard freely. We weren't looking at Eric's unfinished attempts at a back deck anymore nor were we tracking in mud. And hey, we had some new trees to look at while we cried on the patio. But is that what I should have done with the life insurance money when I didn't know what I was going to do for an income?
Probably not.
In 2022, a few months after Eric's first year time, I spent a short but ultimately miserable few months reentering the dating pool because I felt a strange outside pressure to 'move on' or 'heal.' But I definitely wasn't ready and I wasted pennies eating out, driving to & fro, and freaking out about my wardrobe.
Worse, my insecurities went through the roof as I panicked about whether or not anyone who didn't marry me when I was 24 would be able to see past cellulite, stretch marks, gray hair, and wrinkles.
It was so depressing going from the comfortable, well-worn grooves of a 20+ year relationship with a soulmate to awkward conversations over sushi with a stranger I met on a dating app. Even if someone seemed really nice, it highlighted all that I had lost. I just wanted my husband back.
Breaking up with and/or ghosting everyone was one of the better decisions I made with my bogged down brain.
I do not miss dating one bit, though I am sorry I hurt & confused some nice lads.
It was June-ish, I think. I was was chatting with a nice guy who was very tall and sent me animated "good morning" gifs with yawning cats or smiling frogs sitting under a rainbow. I am still not sure how to feel about getting pinged with blinkies at 7am, but I appreciated the thought, I guess. Nothing was obviously wrong; there were no red flags. He was planning on traveling to Idaho in a few weeks so we could meet. He was going to take me to the Teton Valley Balloon Rally; a lovely event I have never been to despite living nearby.
I don't really know what happened. I went to bed after we confirmed our plans and proceeded to have one of the worst anxiety attacks of my life. I would call it a panic attack, but those are generally relatively short. This one went on for hours. I felt like I was dying; couldn't get enough oxygen and couldn't stop crying.
He sent a cheerful unicorn gif the next morning, but I hadn't slept and wanted to punch it in its pixelated face. I texted something awful like, "I'm so sorry, I don't think I can do this. It's not you, it's me."
He blocked me immediately. Which? Fair.
I texted a longer explanation after I'd gotten some sleep and felt like I could inflate my lungs properly again, though my message was likely lost in the blocked and banned void. The following month, he sent me a photo of him in front of hundreds of hot air balloons, but I didn't reply or try to meet up with him.
Instead, I turned off my phone and stuffed it in my nightstand drawer for six days.
I couldn't understand why I'd even given it all a go in the first place. Dates were awkward enough with the widow thing and the awful "What's your favorite color?" conversations. Add in, "What do you do for a living?" answered with, "I am a professional griever; it doesn't pay well," and you've got a super weird situation.
I blame this widow oops, along with so many other oopses, on pudding brain.
Coming soonish: Chapter Two: When the Handyman Takes a Widow for a Ride, and Not in a Fun Way
p.s. I have signed up for Nanowrimo for the first time since 2018. It is a bit of a cheat as I won't be writing a novel from scratch, but will instead be once again attempting to edit the long overdue third book in my series: The Lost Diamond of Skywallow. Previous attempts to finish this book have been waylaid by the sight of Eric's handwritten notes all over my manuscript. 💔 In November, I am going to be focusing on an older digital draft without his comments, then circle back after I (hopefully) make it all the way through. Sacrifice some pencil stubs and ink splotches to the writing gods for me, will you?