My Season of Grief

Four seasons, one widow, no tidy ending. By Rene Huey-Lipton

I remember saying to myself, “Note to self: if you go through this again, don’t be around when they put him in a body bag in your den and roll him through your kitchen, living room and front porch out to the van.”

Noted. Filed. Useless.

Useless because you can’t un-know the route. Den, kitchen, living room, porch, van. My whole house turned into a map with one line drawn on it, and the line went out the front door.

Then the seasons started, whether I was ready or not.

Spring

Spring was kinetic. Build, build, build.

I don’t think I sat down in spring. I turned his music room into my office—after donating close to 70 instruments to the local school district. I painted, I moved, I decorated. I turned the dining room into my mosaic studio. I started outlining The Women’s Economy, writing its manifesto. And there was more. I tried to turn my ½ acre of land into a mushroom farm (WTF?). I applied to, and got into, writing programs. I wrote, and wrote and wrote. Made lists of ideas at 2 a.m., then started half of them. Every morning something new was pushing up out of the ground, and I made sure everyone saw it. Look, a launch. Look, an essay. Look at her. She’s doing so well.

Notice the new plants. Don’t look at the rotted leaves underneath.

I know that’s a trick because I’ve sold it for a living. Twenty-five years in advertising teaches you exactly where to point the camera. Point it at the green. Never at the mulch. The mulch is where the actual work is happening, and nobody has ever put mulch in a campaign.

I was my own best client that spring. I ran the whole campaign on me. And I bought it.

Summer

Summer went soft.

Lazy, warm, slow. That’s when the bed got me. There’s a term the kids use now: bed rotting. You get into bed on purpose, you stay there on purpose, and you give it a cute name so nobody has to use the other one.

The internet version has a linen duvet the color of oat milk and a matcha. Mine had a heating pad with a frayed cord I was fairly sure would kill me, which, honestly, fine. Crackers going stale in real time. My phone at 4%. Always 4%. I never once got up for the charger. That’s how you know it’s the real thing.

The grief books want you to walk. Hydrate. Journal. Get some sunlight—as if he’d died of a vitamin D deficiency I could fix with a brisk loop around the block. A grown woman, a founder, a person who literally wrote a book on authenticity, eating saltines in the dark at two in the afternoon. I judged her. For about a week, she was the person I judged most. Then I stopped, because the bed was the only thing in the house that didn’t want anything from me.

And here’s what nobody tells you about summer rot: the memories live there. On our first date, Lowell played me Sun Ra and then John Cage’s 4′33″—four and a half minutes of a man at a piano not playing it—while I sat there trying to work out whether this was a test. It was. A month later we were engaged.

In summer, I let myself love him on purpose, in the past tense. That’s a grammar nobody should have to learn. The first time I saw him, the first time I heard his full laugh. Our first fight. Him telling me he “discovered” this thing called YouTube.

Fall

I’m writing this from fall. Fall is when everything comes due.

The house is sold, or will be. It wasn’t permitted right, and was ‘grandfathered’ onto a conservation zone. The three lawyers I spoke with, all experts in my type of case, said some version of “…you have a strong case, but in Washington, the buyers (the me of six years ago) never win and it takes time and money…” No bank will lend on it, which meant a cash offer was the only kind on the table, and only one came close to what it’s worth. Close. Not equal. To close the deal, I have to come up with eight thousand dollars by October 28.

Read that again. I have to pay to leave. I walk away with zero.

In a few weeks, strangers will walk the route. Den, kitchen, living room, porch. They’ll measure for curtains where they wheeled him out.

Meanwhile, the laundry. It’s on the chair. It’s on the couch. It has achieved a kind of geography. And the kitchen—bah. Don’t get me started.

Car payment. Health insurance. Phone. Where do I live? What can I afford? I don’t know, because I don’t know what I’ll have, and right now the honest answer is probably nothing. I’m procrastinating on everything except work. I have two new potential clients. The strategist still shows up on time. It’s the woman who can’t find the laundry basket who’s missing.

And then there’s Higgs.

Higgs was Lowell’s dog. My life would be easier without him. I know that the way you know a fact you’re never going to use. What I can’t answer is whether keeping him is right for him, or just right for me.

And people tell me I’m so strong.

Strong. I have spent years writing about words that do exclusion’s paperwork in advance—mompreneur, passion project, necessity entrepreneur. The modifier does the work. I did not expect to find one in a sympathy text. But here it is. Strong women don’t need a casserole. Strong women don’t need someone to come over and fold the laundry. Strong is the compliment that lets everyone go home.

There are two things keeping me going:  Max and Clay. God, we did good with these kids. I see the patience of Lowell and my fire in both. I hear the way he taught them to ask questions. I hear my humor. I see my resilience and their dad’s emotion The three of us have no delusions about where we are in the grief. We don’t hide anything from each other. I have their back and they have mine. We give each other the space to vent and cry and laugh and plan. We ask of each other. We give to each other. And still, they are worried for me and that kills me. But I believe them when they say, it’s okay, Mom.

Winter

Winter is coming. I can feel it in the mornings.

I don’t know where Higgs and I will be sleeping on October 29th.

I wrote a manifesto that tells women to stop waiting for someone to save them. My own writing compass ends with four words: Pack your own bag.

I’ve packed it. Most of it is for sale.

I’m lost. I want someone to save me.

And yet,

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Rene Huey-Lipton is the creator of WE: The Women’s Economy Blueprint, the SheScan app, and the DAME Leadership Model (Daring Authenticity. Meaningful Existence.). Check out her Substack, I Was Thinking The Other Day. Her piece, Stop Fixing the System, appeared previously in Certain Age.

Images:

Leaf circle by Alekon Pictures

Leaf close up from Getty Images