The First Holidays After a Spouse Dies — Thanksgiving, Christmas, my 70th birthday, and the first anniversary of my husband’s death all come within the next two months. I visualize this as a bunch of ski moguls I need to maneuver around. I used to enjoy that — downhill leaning and dodging, gathering speed — until I had…

Grief as Two Layers of Scars — After the nurse removed stitches from my cheek, she said, “The most important thing you can do to minimize scarring is to massage the area, like this.” Her gloved pinky finger made tiny circles over the area. It didn’t hurt, but my face felt lumpy. “What’s going on?” I asked…

Eating Alone — “I have to learn how to be single again,” I tell myself. One of the hardest places to do this is at the table at mealtimes (I live alone). My bereavement group didn’t deal with the subject of eating alone, probably because there’s no clear answer to it. One friend…

One Is the Loneliest Cooking Number — For a widowed foodie like me, one is definitely the loneliest number. Eating alone is tolerable, but cooking for one takes adjustment. “My cooking is keeping him alive,” I said to myself often in the years before Bernie’s death. His legendary appetite had dwindled. He no longer made the contented…

Thoughts on scattering ashes — I was lucky that my late husband clearly requested cremation in his will. He didn’t specify what to do with his ashes, but to me cremation implies scattering, and so I scatter. Some mourners prefer to save all the ashes, usually in a beautiful urn. Either way, it’s a great…

When in Doubt, Say “I’m So Sorry” — I was grief-illiterate once. Since being widowed, I’ve felt that an unadorned “I’m so sorry” is maybe the best thing to say to a mourner. My grief composure went to hell when I was teased in a Zoom breakout room — by a psychologist, no less. Patty (not her real…

Another Word for Lonely — I no longer feel special to someone. Is there a word for that? Lonely, bereft, adrift, forsaken, forlorn, empty, unattached, loveless — none of these quite cover it. Maybe “mateless” does, but it sounds like a word used in animal husbandry. My life is not the life of a lonely…

Let’s Talk About Crying — Do you feel better after crying? I wish I did. A crying hangover is what I feel: headache, stuffed nose, puffy face, and that lump in the throat that signaled the tears of grief and can’t be swallowed away. I feel like a frustrated child who doesn’t understand the world…

Ghosting Equals Cowardice — When friends or family disappear after your loved one dies, what do you do? Is the ghoster on your bucket list or chuck-it list? (There’s a saltier term for chuck-it, of course. Kudos to Washington Post contributor Valerie Tiberius for the concept; her excellent essay is available behind the Post’s…