I Do Not Owe You My Grief Forever

I was widowed in 2023.

There is no softer way to say that. No poetic rearranging of syllables that makes it gentler. One day I was a wife. The next, I was standing on the edge of an ice-cold ocean, and life pushed me in without asking if I knew how to swim.

The water was shock. It was silence. It was paperwork and funeral arrangements and children looking…