Counting widowhood by years

Today is Sunday, 26 April, and I find myself reflecting on my first Sunday, 26 April. It was 17 years ago, and it marked the start of my life as a widow. It’s funny now, after all these years, that it feels significant to have the anniversary fall on a Sunday once again, more so because the significance is insignificant in so many ways.

When Paul first died, 887 Sundays ago, his death and my life as a widow were measured in days and weeks. Every Sunday felt like another knife plunged into my chest as I marked yet another week without the love of my life. Every Sunday, I was aware of the Sunday routines that went undone: Church, grocery shopping, preparing lunches for the coming week, EastEnders… none of those things felt important for so many Sundays after that first Sunday.

I’m not sure when I stopped counting days and weeks and began counting months, then years (and soon, decades). And I don’t really know when Sundays stopped being “death day”. It just happened without action or intention. Sunday is just Sunday now. Sometimes church, often food or meal prep, maybe a nice long walk or run, and once upon a time, there were weekly Skype calls, too. But rarely, very rarely, is Sunday now a day that I contemplate as a mark of time since Paul’s untimely death.

Yet here I am, more aware than normal that Paul died on a Sunday, 887 weeks ago. Of course, I only know how many weeks because I googled it, having lost count of the weeks so very many years ago.

Years ago… not weeks, not months, but years. Paul has been gone for 17 years. That’s 204 months. That’s 887 weeks. That’s 6,209 days. Or more than 149,000 hours, and if you want to drill down to the minutia (and I know the hour of the day, which is forever recalled when I happen to wake up in the middle of the night), well, I can probably do that maths, too.

These measures of time have flown by, despite time standing still. It’s funny, this grief thing: It’s like yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all happening in parallel; a storm of grief raging, despite the peace that has settled in my soul. This parallel timeline is felt even more on days when I feel frozen in time and place, and I’m watching everyone else whizz circles around me with their relationship and family milestones. It makes the amputation hurt so much more. It makes the loneliness that much lonelier.

887 Sundays ago, Paul’s heart stopped beating, and my heart shattered. How I survived this long without him, I will never know. But I have survived, and I will continue to survive these in-between years. After all, there is growth in grief. And where there is growth, there is life.

Paul, I miss you every day. And I thank my god for every remembrance of you. I luv ya, luv.