At 62

As I’ve said, this new life without Mike is a learning experience. Last year, Mike stood in the middle of the remodel one day and shook his head, saying, “There’s an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about!”

I feel his pain.

Another Mike saying, “There’s a project everywhere I look.” Yep, there is. And I could stay busy every waking hour. And Mike Powell would. Jane Carrie Powell, however, finds that I go between over-the-top busy to frustration with everything I see to giving in to the exhaustion that I feel after the last year and Mike’s death. And somewhere in the middle, I get things done.

Mike was teaching me country girl skills. Things that so many of my friends just know automatically, I do not. But my city skills served me well for 42 years. They just don’t come in that handy at this very second! These things that I cannot yet do are simply learned skills. I’m determined that I’m going to figure them out and make my new life work.

Last week, I decided to clean up the spots in the yard that needed weed-eating. All was going well until the gizmo stopped cutting. I did some troubleshooting – no more string. Ok. That’s simple. Wally World, here I come. Nope. Don’t carry the spools for my little battery-powered wonder. Amazon Prime, save me. The new spool reels came today.

Why is nothing ever easy?! It’s such a simple procedure – and one that I had never done. After watching the string spiral off the roll, I rewound the errant string, put the spool on the machine every which way but right – until I finally figured it out. Fed it through the right hole, snapped that cover on and tried edging the sidewalk. Success!! I felt like I’d won the lottery.

It wasn’t any big deal to send the wasp in the dining room into the next world after that.

Mike worried how I would deal with the trash when he wasn’t here anymore. It’s about a quarter mile to the trash can out at the road. I asked him – what do you think I did that whole first summer you were in Alaska? But now, I have the four-wheeler. Yesterday, I dropped the bags off the deck, loaded them up, and raced Gus to the road in the rain. Didn’t even flinch at the huge spider that leapt out at me from the trash bin. Just muttered something about why they had to be so danged big??!!

I mowed the yard last week with my pistol in my pocket, sure I’d find a snake in the high grass. Thank heavens, I didn’t. Figured out how to ease through low-hanging branches without running into the trees this time. Scoped out how to renovate the chicken pen this fall. Eyeballed branches that need to be cut, and tried to figure out how I will eliminate them this fall. Avoided a whole bunch of weeds near Mike’s shop, remembering pieces of iron and chain that the lawn mower would really hate. The mower died, and I switched between gas tanks, adjusted the choke, jiggled the loose switch until I finally messed with it enough to get it back to the barn – and it’s now in the shop again!

Every single day, I come across something else Mike did that I have no idea how to do. I feel I’m not progressing nearly as fast as I should. The list of things that starts with “I need to fix that” keeps growing. I need to put up a center support for my closet clothes rod. I need to replace an outdoor light. The water line to the garden that runs up from the creek needs fixing – and that’s way above my pay grade. The upstairs bath light switch needs fixing/replacing. The deck needs a new support. The trim on the porch door needs fixing, as do lots of other little trim areas. The gutters need cleaning.

Most of it will be addressed in the fall. I can and will do some of it. Other things, I’m going to need help doing.

But one way or another, I’m going to keep on going. I don’t have Mike’s knowledge, and I don’t have Mike’s experience, but I have Google and I have family and friends and I will find tradespeople who do such things. And between all of us, I will just keep figuring it out…at 62.

Since my earliest memories, I have been pathologically afraid of the dark. Years ago, I could not drive where there were no city lights. When the power went out, so did I. I couldn’t take a walk at night. Couldn’t sit outside in the dark. Couldn’t sit inside in the dark, either.

I did not deal with the absence of light.

Jim worked with me. Al worked with me. Both of them helped to take the edge off, but the terror was still there. When Michael realized my fear, he didn’t make fun of me either. Mike simply explained that I would learn to be outside in the dark. With him, I was safe. And so I was. I trusted him enough to at least tamp down my fears.

We spent one dark, below-freezing night down at the chicken pen, crouched in the cab of the truck. We were wrapped in blankets, our guns out the windows. Not one dang chicken-killing raccoon showed its fuzzy face. We almost took out a feral cat, but realized our mistake in time. We whispered jokes to each other, giggling silently. I wasn’t afraid for a second. That night is one of my favorite memories.

In Alaska, I had to leave the cabin to walk to the washroom in the dark. I showered out there, alone. I was more nervous about our resident bear than the dark. Mike sometimes waited for me on the porch, but he would often get bored and just go back inside. I wasn’t happy alone, listening for that bear, but I knew Mike was only a yell away.

Mike and I sat in the dark, both inside and out, talking for hours. We walked, took drives, worked on projects down at the barn or around the house, rode the four-wheeler – all at night, in the dark. At first, I was never completely comfortable, but I functioned. Over time, I was getting to the point so that I didn’t really think about the dark. Mike was always present, my shield against the night.

And now, it’s just me. Or is it? I drive up our mountain alone now, in the dark. I walk around outside, in the dark. I sit in my car in the front yard, charging my cell phone, in the middle of a pitch-black power outage. I sit in Mike’s hot tub room in the dark. My porch rocker and I go for miles on the back deck in the dark.

Does it help that I have Gus, who will bark at/attack anything or anyone that shouldn’t be here? Does it help that I’m armed to the teeth, and I can hit anything I aim at? Of course it does. It takes the edge off and keeps me calm. But it’s more than that. Somehow, Mike’s comfort and ease of movement in the absence of light erased my terror.

Gus did go off one night. I was in bed, almost asleep. He rarely barks, so I knew it was the real deal. Like a flash, the gun was in my hand. Lights out, I slipped around and checked everything, then threw on the outside lights. All was fine. There was something there or Gus wouldn’t have sounded off, but we weren’t in danger from it. And I calmly went back to bed.

I laid there thinking about what I’d just done. I’d seen Mike do it, several times. I simply mimicked him, and reacted just as he’d taught me. I thought about so many things that I now do on simple muscle memory, things that aren’t familiar to me, things that Mike Powell drilled into my being.

Mike didn’t try to convince me there was nothing to be scared of in the dark. He knew there was – or could be. Mike taught me how to exist in the dark, how to protect myself and how to function. And once I knew those things, I could be easier in my skin.

It’s just one of the many gifts Michael Powell left me with…at 62.

There is an anger stage of grief, they say, and for the past couple of weeks, I have been solidly in it. I am burning with a white-hot, pure-blooded anger that I can feel all the way down to my core.

There was a part of me that honestly believed, as many times as Michael Powell had cheated death in his lifetime, that he would simply do it again. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised that he did not. Mike was a realist, though, and I think he knew the outcome long before I did.

Reality has landed, with a gigantic and horrible crash. Mike is well and truly gone. For the rest of my life, I am going to be by myself, without Mike. And the anger from that threatens to overtake and consume me.

There is a hole inside me. Being around other people doesn’t fill it. Work doesn’t fill it. Keeping busy and active doesn’t fill it. It’s the hole that exists when I look at Mike’s chair. When I wonder what I will fix us for dinner. When I want to sit on the deck and listen to us tell stories and laugh and make plans for hours. When I look down the hill at Mike’s workshop, shuttered tight.

I keep raging – why, why, WHY did Mike and I find each other again, only to lose that we-can-do-anything unit that became us? Why did Mike move me from Houston – why did I want to follow him – why am I here starting all over, once again, at 62? Why isn’t he here to see his grandchildren grow up, to give counsel and guidance to our adult children, to spend time with his friends he loved so much?

Whose name do I put on this sternly-worded memo I’d like to write, protesting the unjustness of it all?

Cancer? No. Cancer is a thing. It’s not an entity. It’s a disease that seems hell-bent in taking us off the planet long before our hoped-for expiration dates. I look at all these new esophageal cancer patients in the support group I follow. Half of me is cheering them on, half of me says why bother to fight? But cancer isn’t something to be mad at. It has no feelings, no soul.

God? Well, as a Christian, I’m supposed to believe that everything that happens is part of God’s plan. We just don’t yet understand that plan. And that may be so, but I have to comment that sometimes, from a human standpoint, these plans are really quite wretched!

Mike? Hell, no. If Mike had his druthers, we’d have just gotten showers on this rainy evening. We’d be laughing and talking, we’d be curled up on our pillows watching old Westerns and reading Facebook to each other. We’d be happy and relaxed and at peace, and he’d be sending me to the kitchen to forage for snacks. Mike had no plans to get cancer and die. He was too full of life and too full of dreams he wanted to accomplish.

And that’s the only thing right now that is keeping me going. I keep thinking of all those plans we had – both mine and Mike’s. I’m the only one left to make them happen. He’s depending on me. I’m depending on me. I can’t let either of us down.

I recognize the anger as unproductive, a waste of time. And I must shake it, and fast. None of this can be solved except through acceptance. But I’m not there yet. Right now, I’m raging at a loneliness that only Mike can fill. I’m raging at the injustice of our short time together. I’m raging at myself for not just picking myself up and getting on with it.

And I’m raging at time. In the grand scheme of a lifespan, there’s so little of it left, and I so very much wanted to spend it as Michael Powell’s wife – not his widow – at 62.

It’s fortunate I live alone at the moment. If I were around others, you’d deem me certifiably nuts. You see, all day long, silently and aloud, I talk to Mike. And the one question I ask him over and over, as I try to deal with this unfathomable new reality is – What would you have done if I was the one who died and left you alone? If you were here instead of me – what would Michael Farrell Powell do?

The answers come fast and furious, but just as though he were here – they change with the day, even with the sentence. Mike’s world was never set in stone. The critical answer centers on whether or not, in this mythical place, he had cancer. For most of my answers, I choose to believe he did not.

I rage against the injustice of losing him. Mike wouldn’t have wasted the time. Even through his grief, he would have gotten on with life and living, I think. When he got cancer, I was mad at the world. Furious with God. Michael chastised me and told me that was futile, pointless energy spent. It wasn’t God’s fault. It just was. We’d been dealt a lousy hand.

Mike had to live through the pain and the treatments, and he had to leave everyone and everything he loved when he died. I had to watch him go through that hell, lose the love of my life, and try to carry on without him. In reality, I got the better end of the deal. I’m still here. But half of me is gone. What would Mike do?

People tell me – but you’re not Mike. Do what JC would do. That’s the issue. When I was faced with this in 2011, when Al died, I headed for the corner of the couch. Nope. Not going back there again. It’s like the old line – I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor – and rich is better! That’s me. I’ve been over the moon with happiness and in the pits of hell with depression – and believe me, happy is ever so much better.

Michael always said if I passed first, he didn’t want my stuff around. I reminded him that most of our furniture and our household goods came from my side of the family! He agreed, and revised that to mean all my stuff in our various storage cubbies. That made sense.

While Mike, age and moving have loosened my grip on “stuff”, I’m still not touching his world to pack it away. Not yet. Quite a lot of it, not ever. I don’t want to erase our home. But one thing at a time, I’m donating, picking up, rearranging. I’m in no hurry there.

I know Mike would have called the house-sitters and headed for Coffman Cove just as fast as he could. And so am I. That’s home. That blue water and those people are healing. And that’s a world where he knew everything as simply as breathing, and I do not. But I will learn.

I also know Mike would have gotten himself on a schedule. He’d have been up early, watched the news, had coffee, and gotten about his day. Lunched. Worked hard at something all day long, showered, fixed dinner and relaxed for a couple of hours. He would have found friends to cook for and with, and he would have reached out and expanded our circle of friends. He would have joined a local church. All those things are on my list. I am a night owl by nature. He called me his vampire baby. But I learned to exist – and even enjoy – Mike’s schedule. And I’m working to recreate it.

Mike’s world revolved more around physical actions. Doing, fixing, building. Outdoors stuff. His hobbies were active ones – creating things in the shop, hunting, fishing. My world is more cerebral. I write, read, do needlework, make jewelry. My work is on the phone, on the computer. But I love the outdoors world that Mike pulled me into.

I have to morph into someone who embraces both our worlds in order to keep the life I love ticking along. As Mike always said – there’s a project everywhere I look! I have confidence it will happen – but it won’t happen if I give into grief and let it overtake me. I started out after his death going as fast as I could to stay busy. The last two weeks, in comparison, I’ve slowed way down. I’ve gotten a lot accomplished, but I’ve also rested. I’m finding that the last few months took much more out of me than I realized. But it’s time to speed up again.

I guess my biggest surprise is that I’m functioning. It’s been just over a month that he’s not been physically by my side. And I hate it. And I hate the empty road ahead without Mike. But that’s not productive, either. Mike always told me – You need to either get on with the business of living, or get on with the business of dying.

Now isn’t my time to go. Not today, at any rate. So I will get on with the business of living.

I’ll be asking what Mike would do for the rest of my life. All answers aren’t coming today…or next week, next month or even next year. But together we will continue to navigate life, even though only one of us is here to leave footprints behind…at 62.

To Catlin’s great dismay, I’ve never made any secret that I’m waiting for grandchildren. Bless her, I have a stuffed antique bear grandchild and a dearly loved departed grandcat. But her life cycle hasn’t yet rolled around to the mom stage, and that’s fine. I’m patient.

Mike blessed me with two adorable grandkids that I get to share. They are smart and funny, clever and well-mannered, and I love them to pieces. Their parents are doing a wonderful job raising them, and they brought so much light and sunshine into Mike’s life. He just adored them, as do I.

We loved the weekends they spent with us. Playing board games, playing games in the yard, watching them learn and grow. Mike was planning on hunting season, fishing – so many life skills he wanted to share. And now, it’s just me, carrying on for both of us. I’m not Poppy, and I’ve not been with them since birth. But I’m determined to let those little ones know how much they mean to him, to us. How much they are a part of our lives.

So here I sit, waiting for the dance recital to start. Our little star is dancing in three numbers – ballet, tap and jazz. She’s the tiniest one in the group, but by golly, she knows her steps! And her grin just flat lights up the stage.

I think about so many things, sitting here. All the dance recitals where Catlin performed – from age 2 until her senior year. How often I cried in sheer pride, just watching her dance. The year her dad and I divorced, and she danced through it with a huge grin, even with all the turmoil swirling around her. The senior recital, when she danced her farewell duet with a broken arm – and no cast. Both dancers’ moms were openly sobbing during that one – and the lyrics, “For Good”, didn’t help much.

Catlin’s dad produced and edited the studio’s video for the recitals, so he saw them through one eye – the one glued to the video camera. Her Nana was in the audience for many years, as was Al. Her newly blended family was pretty much her only cheering section. Neither Al nor Nana really cared about the rest of the program, but they lit up with pride when Catlin came on stage. She tells me that no matter her other performance gifts, Nana’s flowers are the ones she always remembered.

Our granddaughter has a great cheering section tonight. Both her grandmothers graciously let me share proud step-grandmother duty. Uncles, friends, and more family members populate a good portion of our row of bleacher seats. Catlin couldn’t make it, but she’s waiting to hear all about it. There are flowers and stuffies and lots of hugs waiting for this tiny dancer.

This blended family thing is new for us. Mike wanted this so badly – to have all of us together celebrating the grandkids at their life events. He talked about it more and more over the past year, and I know as time passed, he would have made it happen. If his health had held out, he’d be sitting right here beside me. I don’t think he would have made it through a 3.5 hour recital with no intermissions even on his best day before cancer(!), but he would have been there front and center for his pumpkin’s dances.

And I have a feeling he would have been shedding the same tears of pride and love right alongside me. Healing tears.

Because in the end, in all its forms, it’s all about family…at 62.

One crisp fall day, long before cancer entered our lives, Mike and I were curled up around the kitchen table, just chatting. We were talking about life and the future, and I asked him – How do you see our relationship playing out? What’s our hierarchy? I’ve always been a “lead, follow, or get out of my way” person, and a champion for women’s rights. Mike’s a more “traditional relationship” kind of guy. Both of us were alpha leaders. How would we set up our world so we could walk easily together?

Mike pulled a piece of blank paper out of the stack on the table. He folded it in half, like a card. Picked up a pen, and wrote my organizational chart for our lives.

At the top – God.

Next up – Faith.

Then – Mike

J.C.

Catlin

All my friends and Louisa May Alcat

And that was my side of our chart. My life laid out on paper.

It took me a minute to process that Mike held the line above mine. That I wasn’t side by side with him. That he was, literally, the head of our family. I started to protest, and then I simply hushed. After a minute, I told him he was going to have to help me with this one. I’d never, not once in my life, stepped back and let anyone else lead our lives.

When Mike got to heaven, I know that Jim and Al were waiting at the gate. They slapped him on the back and shook his hand. Wanted to know how in the heck he did it? How in the world did he get Jane Carrie to agree to that?

I wonder what he answered. Had he asked, I could have told him what to say. There’s only one word. Trust. It was so much bigger than love. Michael Powell was the only person I ever completely trusted more than I trusted myself. I had complete faith in him. If he told me it was safe, it was safe. His wise counsel helped me in countless ways, and I learned to rely on it.

All my life, I’d wanted to trust someone else enough to lean and know I wouldn’t fall, but it never happened. Even with so much love, there were always chinks in the armor, gaps where I felt so much stronger. But I never found those gaps in Mike. He was strength personified – mental, physical and emotional.

One night in Alaska, I told Mike that I felt like it didn’t matter how much work I did on the support team, I could never catch up to all that he did for us. He asked – why do you think you have to? He was genuinely puzzled. He never expected me to carry the larger load. That was his job.

I thought about that for a long time. In over 60 years, I’d never been in this place. Catlin thought I’d lost my mind. I’d raised her to be an alpha woman. With Mike, I discovered other options. By walking this path, I learned about partnership, and it didn’t always come easily to me. The give and take of relationships. Celebrating and complimenting each other’s strengths. And 95% of the time, I was right there beside Mike, and we did indeed make most decisions together, side by side. He did his part, and I did mine. Mike’s belief in me and my knowledge reinforced my own strength and confidence just as surely as my trust in him and his capabilities reinforced him.

When Mike got sick, our roles changed. I went into caregiver hyperdrive steamroller mode, and I coaxed, cajoled and bullied him into living the best life he could despite cancer. It caused us to go nose to nose more than once! But he never let me forget that HE was still there, inside the illness, and I couldn’t overrun him, as hard as I sometimes tried. He accepted and often even welcomed my fussing, researching and calorie-pushing, and he constantly credited me for helping to keep him alive through my efforts. But no matter how much I pushed – in the long run, every day, up to the very end, Mike ran his own show. And I learned so much from him as he did it.

In Mike, I found my leaning board. I found my partner, my teacher and my ablest adversary. I found my laughter and my sparkle.

And I found the creator of my life’s org chart…at 62.

No man ever let me play with anything fun until Mike came along. Let me rephrase that – actually, there’s not a good way to phrase that – just go with it! Al just hired everything done. Jim winced every time I picked up a knife. Mike bought me a pocket knife for my stocking one Christmas, then stopped carrying his own, because I always carried mine!

I never touched a lawn mower as an adult. It was deemed too dangerous. Mike put me on the zero-turn mower, showed me the controls, then took me off it. Said that was an advanced lesson in our rocky yard – and we never got back to it. I will learn it, eventually.

When I asked, Mike started teaching me how to run some of his shop tools. I helped cut out the jigsaw to repair our tractor mailbox. I need to learn to do that again, to fix the rest of it. He drew the line at the chainsaw, though. Wouldn’t let me near it.

I can’t crank his leaf blower. So, I bought me a battery-operated one. Works just fine – not as powerful as his, but it’s fine for me. I bought a battery-powered weed eater, too. I’ve never used that tool in my life. But it’s not rocket science, and our yard now sports edged sidewalks and no weeds along our house or garage foundations. I still have other things to cut, but their time will come. Batteries are on the charger!

Mike taught me by letting me figure it out. I wanted long lessons with lots of explanations. Mike believed in learning by doing. Michael put me on the four-wheeler for the first time in Alaska. He showed me the gears, the brake, the gas. Sent me on my way down the road. I got to the end of the road, and realized I was stuck. Didn’t think I had enough room to turn around without tumbling into the ditch. I’d forgotten how to reverse. So I sat there, furious at myself, and not a little irritated at Mike for letting me go off on my own.

I saw a SUV coming down the hill. I was elated – we lived on an island. Surely anyone over the age of five could operate one of these things! The rig stopped behind me. Mike got out. Didn’t say a word, just put one knee on the seat of the four-wheeler, turned it around, gestured for me to get back on, and slowly followed me home. I asked him – “How did you know I was stuck?” He answered, “Because I know how long it takes to get to the end of the road and back, and you weren’t.”

And that was our life in a nutshell. Mike knew exactly how to do everything in our world. I knew my half, even a few things he didn’t know, and I was learning his half as fast as I could. I learned how to build a fire in the woodstove. I learned how to hook up propane bottles. I learned how to start a BBQ pit. I learned how to ocean fish, how to drive our boat forward, how to tie up our boat and wash it down, how to hook crab pots back into the boat, how to fry deer steak and make gravy, how to pick Dungeness crab and shrimp for freezing, how to operate the food sealer, and how to do dozens and dozens of other things that had never cropped up in my 42 years of city living. But I had Mike over my shoulder for every single one of them – and now, I don’t.

I guess there’s a reason Mike taught me the way he did. He gave me the bare bones, then let me figure it out through trial and error. He was always there to bail me out, but one of the best lessons he taught me was how to bail myself out. Have the courage, have the daring, use my brain, and get it done.

Michael, we have a long way to go, baby. And I will never, ever be as skilled as you. But for now, please enjoy our newly-edged sidewalks, and please send Brandan a deer for mowing this huge lawn for us. You’re still teaching me country girl skills, darlin’…at 62.

Saturdays have long been my escape day. I get in the car and just drive. When we moved to Dover in 2017, Mike spent that first summer in Alaska while I was here alone, setting up our home. I noodled all alone through our new world and loved sharing my finds with Mike through phone calls and photos. 

When Mike came home, we started exploring together. Buffalo River. Found a great little diner for Sunday brunch. Swimming holes. Antique picking. Garage sale junkin. Just riding down back roads to see where they’d go. Finding pieces of our new world – the four wheeler. Hunting for a boat. Every adventure had its own story and its own memories. 

After Mike got sick, we cut back, but we still tried to do some things. We got hooked on auctions again, and were junkin with an eye to resale. Mike wanted to put some of our things up for auction, so we were scouting out the various houses for potential. We were planning out our new venture while sitting at an auction on the Saturday before his last fatal dose of Keytruda. 

Today, I decided it was time to get back out there. Made myself a sandwich (Mike Powell road economy tricks!!) and hit the road. Put on all the schmaltzy love songs that Mike sang to me. Grinned at old memories and chuckled at remembered conversations. Finally settled on a Texas-sized dose of Jerry Jeff Walker to counteract images of my lanky Arkansas boy. 

There’s a memory around every bend I traveled. The gas station where we refueled after driving 30 miles past our exit – we were so busy planning our future that we sailed right by our own turn! The old fallen-down houses that Mike dubbed “Po folks gone broke!” There are so many things I want to remember to tell Mike – uprooted trees and billboards from this week’s storms. The long lineup of Corvettes pulling into a rural gas station. The fields full of yellow flowers and the tall purple stalks alongside the road. 

I headed up to Coal Hill to an auction that sounded good. Took one look at the half mile of mud needed to climb the hill to get to it, and turned around. Not happening today. Found a cute antique store a little ways down the road and just wandered, with Mike whispering in my ear, “Don’t buy that!!”

Then I decided to drive back to “our” auction house and willed myself to shed no tears. We’ve been shopping for furniture to outfit the apartment so we can rent it. I wanted to see if there were any potential deals. 

Bought a hand jig saw, a hand sander and a DustBuster for $5 for the lot. Mike would have fought me for those. Waited for the furniture auction to start. Suddenly, my chest and jaw started killing me. I couldn’t draw breath. I grabbed my paddle, paid my $5, and got out of there fast. As soon as I hit the car, it was better. Every turn of the wheels eased my breathing. I was crying and shaking – and bless my friend who called just then! I was fine by the time I reached town. 

Add panic attack to the Saturday list. I have no words. It came from nowhere. That’s a surprise I don’t want to repeat. Maybe it’s too soon to revisit some memories. Maybe some wounds are yet too raw. Maybe I need to take it just a touch slower…which is not in my nature …at 62.

There is a cellular memory to the way I now feel. The grief when Al died almost broke me. But it was different. Al had been gone for 3.5 years. His body was just still here. Mike was here and present and so much Mike – until he suddenly wasn’t. We knew that he would die. We knew the cancer would take him – but we figured he had at least another good year, as well as he had been doing. We didn’t expect it to happen now – and we didn’t expect it to come with no warning.

There is so much undone. So many questions unanswered. So much time lost. So much not completed. So many late-night talks and rides in the country and pranks pulled and dreams realized that never happened. So much life yet to be lived.

I came home after the memorial service and just did not want to start again. I know this place. I know the soul-sucking silence of a home where two people laughed and loved and squabbled. I know the emptiness of a favorite chair. The silence when it’s only myself watching TV, figuring out what’s for dinner, needing desperately to discuss a million tiny bits of minutiae that only we know. I know this place of grief and I do not want to be here.

I am sick of tears. Someone once told me there are a certain number of tears for every loss. No. These tears are not numbered. This bucket is too vast and endless for numbers. I do not wish to see the bottom. I don’t want to cry them.

After Al died, I was a shell of myself. I functioned but I wasn’t whole. Mike gave me back not only my life, but a completeness. He was my cape, my wings, my coat against the cold. We had plans and dreams – our list grew by the day. And like Mike told me in 2016 – we would be together until we went to the dirt. We just expected that time to be 20 years or more from now.

I keep asking myself what Mike would do. How Mike would cope. He always told me he simply wouldn’t cope if I passed first. But I’m pretty sure he would have. And he would have started with the basics of life. He would also have sought, and accepted, help from others. And I’m lousy at that – and I never want to do it. I’m going to have to learn how.

I have been so busy since Mike passed. Busy in ways that aren’t normal for me. I’ve cleaned every surface I walk by. Done a hundred little things. Kept endless lists in my head. Don’t want to do anything that wastes time. I can’t stop moving once I get going. That was Mike. All day long, every single day. And that’s the energy I’m going to need to run our life on my own.

I don’t have any doubts about keeping our world here going. That’s just work, and I enjoy that. My doubt is in keeping ME going. I want Mike. And he isn’t coming home from a hunting trip. He hasn’t just gone to town. He isn’t puttering down in the barn. He is gone from my sight. I can feel him – but it’s not the same as holding him or joking with him.

When Mike came back into my life, I flat sparkled. Everyone who knew me was elated for me, for us. My friends who never met him said they loved him sight unseen. Anyone who could make me look like that, who could make me laugh like that, was golden in their eyes. And now, my sparkle is gone. And Mike would be so pissed. He would tell me to get on with it. And damn it, I’m trying.

Small steps are being made. I no longer wake up in tears. I don’t wake up frantically searching for Mike. I am sleeping in the whole bed, not just a tiny corner of it. I’m starting to at least reheat food at home, though I have yet to cook a meal. I’ve donated a lot of his medical supplies. I’m starting the paperwork, what I call “the business of death”, and it’s aggravating as hell.

So this one’s it. My one and only grief post. The sadness and the vast emptiness is my own journey to walk. Nothing and no one can help me with that, and it just feels like whining to share it. I just have to force myself to do what nothing in me wants to do – learn to keep my life going without Mike.

I know dozens of women who have lost their husbands. This is the journey we all walk. This emptiness when we thought there would always be togetherness. It’s not productive to ask why – that answer will never come. There’s only walking/crawling/creeping forward, one inch at a time.

So many people have asked me if I was moving back to Houston. No. My life there is done. I want a smaller world. I want this world of caring, and the grace that I can show in returning the kindnesses. I want the world that Mike and I were building – the home we were making. I want our joy.

And I guess now it’s up to me to find it for both of us – at 62.

I have been honored to be the wife of three decent, funny, kind, brilliant, creative men.

Jim was Catlin’s father. We were together for 13 years, then divorced when she was six. Jim and I remained best friends, talking every single day until I helped nurse him through hospice and handled his memorial service following his death from kidney cancer.

Al was the beloved stepfather of Catlin’s childhood and young adulthood. We were together for 20 years, and had not a medical error taken his life way too early, we would likely have made it for life.

Mike was my first grade crush. We grew up together, led full and separate lives, and came back into each other’s lives in 2016. With Mike, I came home to the love of my life. We were starting our fourth adventurous year together when he lost his battle with esophageal cancer.

Jim was 14 years older than I. Al was 9 years my elder. Mike and I were the same age. Each man died at the age of 62.

I was born on Easter Sunday. This year, for the first time since my birth year, my birthday fell on Easter Sunday. I turned 62. It’s time to make every day I have left on this earth count.

When Al died, my spirit went with him. I was “walking dead” until Mike blasted me out of my depression and gave me the courage to change my entire world, to stretch myself beyond all my self-created boundaries, and to embrace the adventurous, loving life I’d always dreamed about. And now, he’s no longer physically by my side.

At 62, I don’t have the time to go back to that place of depressed hell again. As much as I want to simply go with Mike, I don’t have that option. I choose life. A full life, working to complete the long list of dreams and goals that Mike and I were working on together.

That’s my journey to share. Rebuilding my business. Creating a life in a new place where I know few people. Reconnecting with friends. Learning new skills. Living our dream between Alaska and Arkansas – and building, growing and keeping alive the plans we had in each place.

It was once said to me, “Your husband will forever see the world through your eyes.” Maybe so. But I like to think he’s here beside me. The inexplicable feeling of peace that swept through me moments after he left this world, combined with the incredible energy he passed to me makes me think he’s much closer than I know. When I add the upstairs thermostat that’s suddenly set to “his” temperature and the bathroom toilet that simply fixed itself after three months of constant running – I’m pretty sure he’s not far away.

Mike, our adventure is still on. I’m counting on you to help guide me, to send good people into my life, and to remind me to laugh at myself. I know you’re only a prayer away.

And that’s more comforting than you know – At 62.