My husband died Friday night.

[WinkyDink]

48. {{{ZANANA1}}} 2014. My husband died after a short illness (4 months), two days before our 41st

wedding anniversary. I am an only child, with no children and a mother who then died the following year.

I have often felt that no-one in my life understands the emptiness, the night-time loneliness, the everyday desire to spontaneously say something---a quip, an observation, a sudden memory---to someone that doesn't require a subsequent lengthy phone call, for one lives with a spouse; one doesn't usually live, at my age (then-65), with a friend, sibling, child, or parent.

DU is one of my supports, not overtly for my situation necessarily, but for the outlet to offer opinions that heretofore I might have simply turned my head and spoken to my husband Phil (a good Democrat!).

We loved to travel, so I still do, albeit on bus tours he'd have hated, because he preferred to drive!

This is something that gives me strength (I'm not sure of the source):

"….you know you have to go on living — and maybe you could perhaps start this next stage by reflecting that we who are alive do go on experiencing that life for the sake of our beloved dead.

Each time you open your eyes to the glory of sunlight on autumn leaves…or marvel at the way those first snowdrops slice up through frozen earth . . . each time you are looking for his sake as well as your own.

When you feel lost and panicky, slow down your breaths, close your eyes, and breathe the new deep breaths for your husband, too."