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Starting Your Day
WSN: Widow-Man with Dr. Nyle Kardatzke “Oh! How I hate to get up in the morning!” Irving Berlin I’m finding now, ten years after my wife’s passing, that I’m having a more challenging time starting my day productively than in my earlier years of widowhood. It’s a lot harder than when I worked full time…
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The First Year
WSN: Widow-Man with Dr. Nyle Kardatzke The first year after your wife’s death is unlike any before or after. You are in a world of unreality. Each day may seem like a new event, even though your surroundings haven’t changed. You may be in something like a state of shock, just carefully going through the…
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Returning to Your World
WSN; Widow-Man with Nyle Kardatzke, PhD. Your wife’s death, her funeral, visitors, and necessary follow-up activities probably kept you away from many of your former, usual activities for a while. Your life had to go on, but it seemed strange, very strange, at first. You probably wondered more than once when or if your life…
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Her Clothing, Her Things
WSN: Widow-Man with Dr. Nyle Kardatzke If you have recently lost your wife, you may be asking yourself, “What should I do with my wife’s clothing, jewelry, books, and other possessions?” I believe our wives are now clothed in splendor as Solomon could not have imagined, but we still have their earthly clothing here, and…
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Till Death us do Part
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22:1 and Matthew 27:46 All marriages end in death or divorce. My wife and I talked about our deaths a few times, back when we were both healthy. We sometimes joked about being each other’s “first husband” or “first wife,” never imagining that there might…
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Permission to Change
My wife and I slept in a king-size bed in the final years of her life. After her death, I continued to sleep in that massive bed, but always on my side, not hers. It was a comfortable bed, but I found I was swimming all over it at night, and it was hard to…
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Memory and Memories
Our memories, in many ways, are a storehouse of who we are. Remembering past events tells you something about who you are. We widow-men face practical issues of memory: our ability to remember names, appointments, and where we have left things. There are also memories that we want to keep: mental pictures of scenes we…
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Cooking
During my married life, there were periods of several years when I did more cooking than my wife, though she was a good cook. Her professional life kept her away from home for many evenings, so I cooked. I enjoyed cooking, and I was reasonably good at it. We enjoyed our quiet meals together at…
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Laundry
With the holidays behind us, we widow-men may feel relieved to return to the mundane duties of normal life. If you had house guests, you may still have a backlog of laundry. “Marriage is about the most expensive way for the average man to get laundry done.” Burt Reynolds A lady friend told me about…
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Christmas
Holidays are an especially hard time for those who are grieving, and Christmas may be the hardest for those who especially love it. My wife died on October 25, 2010, so Christmas came two months after her death. My three adult children were coming for the holiday with the four young grandchildren we had then,…
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