I am fifty five years old, and I am learning how to say a sentence I never expected to speak this soon.

I don’t have a husband anymore

For most of my adult life, the word “husband” meant Greg. It meant a familiar voice in the next room, a steady presence in the passenger seat, a hand at the small of my back when we crossed a busy street. We were married for thirty six years, and our love was not flashy. It was not the kind that begs for attention or demands an audience. It was built from small routines and quiet loyalty, from shared errands and whispered check ins, from the way he always chose the chair closest to the aisle in restaurants as if he could shield me from the world simply by sitting in the right place.

That is why his passing felt impossible to accept.

One phone call on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, and everything I knew about my life changed. Suddenly I was in a funeral home, staring at samples of fabric for a casket lining, making choices that felt both practical and unreal. I remember thinking, in a strange detached way, that the human mind will cling to any detail it can manage when the larger truth is too heavy to hold.

By the morning of the funeral, I felt emptied out. I had cried until my eyes burned and my face looked unfamiliar. The kind of grief that comes in waves had stopped feeling like waves. It felt like the ocean had moved into my chest and decided to stay.