The story of grief, a widow for 11 years

“For me, you’ll always be a love story.” I see my dead husband’s fabulous scribble in the front of my favourite writer’s book the night I silently lift a glass of red to Hubby’s birthday. He would’ve been 72. I’m pleased he died at 61. My memories are rich forever. But I weirdly opened John Irving’s A Widow for One Year tonight because I wanted to tell Irving: add another 1 to your title. A Widow for 11 Years. Eleven years later I, unlike your Ruth, Mr Irving, am still just a widow. Oh how I hate that box (but…

“For me, you’ll always be a love story.”

I see my dead husband’s fabulous scribble in the front of my favourite writer’s book the night I silently lift a glass of red to Hubby’s birthday.

He would’ve been 72. I’m pleased he died at 61. My memories are rich forever. But I weirdly opened John Irving’s A Widow for One Year tonight because I wanted to tell Irving: add another 1 to your title. A Widow for 11 Years. Eleven years later I, unlike your Ruth, Mr Irving, am still just a widow.

Oh how I hate that box (but I only have to tick it when I apply for much-needed credit). And oh how I would’ve loved to fill that gaping hole in my existence with a man. Not just any man. A man. Not that A Widow is a particularly good book of Irving’s.

His The World According to Garp was life-changing; even Hotel New Hampshire – not nearly the 547 pages of A Widow – was horrifyingly, exhilarating honest.

But all I wanted to tell Irving tonight was: I heard your interview a year before A Widow became real in print.

ALSO READ: Zoleka Mandela on dealing with grief 11 years after her daughter’s death

Only, she never was real, I know now. You told me it was going to be about “a woman who lost her husband and how she faced life a year after grief”.

I loved the idea, because what did I know about grief? But now I know about grief. You, Irving, don’t.

You, I’ve always known, cheated with your Ruth and her three generations of hardship. We all have those. Have you met Voortrekkers; impis; our Drakensberg; the Tinder swindlers; the taxman? That’s not grief. Just life. And life is not grief.

Grief is unseen tears that never stop. A son that hugs you at midnight because he hurts how many years later with a brusque “Hell, hey”.

The emptiness of your full room with one cupboard – still – bare. Your big bed that stays forever cold because no body quite fits.

A bar of a song that makes you quietly howl at the moon because it was yours; the two of you.

And those real tears you spill in your red wine on your stoep 11 years later when you open a book and see Beloved’s beloved scribble. Maybe he knew then. I didn’t.