….One of the most difficult aspects of widowhood to adapt to was getting my head around the fact that I was alone, again. Totally alone. Not living with parents or child, but completely alone in a very quiet house. It’s odd how twenty years of being part of a couple could make me forget the “separateness” of my existence in the single state of my twenties and thirties. I was a mom by then, but as an adult, I was a single, independent, individual, and always had been. My new state of singleness is very different in some ways: I have been loved, appreciated, and joined with someone whom I loved equally, and that changed me from the never-married single mindset to a person who had successfully joined with a partner. I also know I’m capable of being married, of being a good wife, and in my pre-marriage single years, I feared I’d be a failure at the experience. Marriage takes compromise, sacrifice, understanding, and lots of work to keep things on an even keel, and unmarried, opinionated, independent me wasn’t sure I could hack it. But I did. We did. So here I am, a pro at marriage, the product of a good marriage, but suddenly, sadly, single…
About the author
Katherine Billings Palmer is a technical writer, poet, and essayist from Garden City, Michigan. She’s won several academic writing awards, including first place in the University of Michigan Dearborn Critical Essay Contest for her work about poet John Donne: “‘The Sun Rising’: A Lover’s Boast.”In 2017, Katherine’s husband, Rick, died of complications from small cell lung cancer. She wrote a series of poems and essays about her struggles to cope with her grief. I Wanted to Grow Old With You is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.
Her latest book, A Widow’s Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry – The First Year was published in January 2019 and is also available on Amazon.com.
Katherine is a guest blogger for the Hope for Widows Foundation and writes about her grief journey at www.TheWritingWidow.com.
