Widowed*
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So you give him all of those ultimatums, you lay it all out, and the response is basically, don't let the door hit you on the ass. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible Thanks for Asking. If you've done any online dating in the past, I don't know, 15 years or so, you know that it can be...

It can be unpleasant. It can just be difficult. I've dabbled a little bit in this arena, but really all dating is like walking around the world like that little bird from the children's book, Are You My Mother? But instead asking people, are you my person? In 2009, Erin found herself dipping her toes into the murky water that is the online dating pool.

At this point, Erin was a few years out from leaving an abusive marriage and was feeling hopeful about the future. And online dating was new to her, but she had heard good things. But the reality, the reality of online dating, it looked a little different. Oh boy, I got a lot of weird matches. A guy who had, he was a teacher and he had, I think, 23 cats.

And then I got a lot of cops. I'm sorry. We're going to pause right there. He had how many cats? I think he had 23 cats. And there was a picture of him sitting in a tree and all the cats were at the bottom of the tree. So he got, you know, a Passover. I should have asked my money back at that point, but I didn't. Erin did not ask for her money back. Erin persevered. And eventually she matched with a man named Ed.

We were like, I think like a 99% match, which is considered, you know, very high. And he sounded normal. So that was a big plus. And I just liked his smile. He had a picture on his profile, just the one picture. And he just had a kind smile. So back then, bios had to be very short. So you were just supposed to list like five things that you liked and like a couple of short quotes about

And he liked dogs, which I had two dogs at the time, and coffee, outdoor activity. And that he was widowed, which I thought, and this is going to sound so bad, but I thought that's nice. I won't have, you know, if we hit it off, I won't have any ex-wife to deal with. So not a bad thing.

I, too, am a widow, so I can honestly say that Erin has a very good point. She does. Ed's dead wife is not going to show up and interfere. She will not have any opinions on Ed and Erin's relationship. One thing that Erin and Ed have in common is children. Ed has two kids, an 18-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, and Erin's daughter is five years old at this time.

We didn't do anything with the kids until we were dating for about six months. He was very careful about who he would introduce his kids to, and I was as well. So when we finally did bring them together, the five of us had dinner, and I liked his kids right away. They just had this kind of like, this is like these vibes coming off these kids of like, I need a mother. They'd lost their mom when they were really young. I want to say like maybe 10 and 8. I mean, they were pretty young.

And I always wanted more kids, but kind of felt like I was a little bit over the hill at that point. So that was very much a plus for me. So we got married on Cocoa Beach in Florida, a sunrise ceremony. We were both early risers. I thought that would be, you know, just really pretty. And it was. It was just beautiful. My daughter did refuse to kind of give me away. The pastor said, Caroline, will you give your mom away? And she said, I'm not giving her away. Yeah.

The newly blended family of five spend Erin and Ed's honeymoon together at Disney World. Ed's kids have never been, and Erin's daughter is at the perfect age to enjoy all of it. During the trip, Erin clocks that Ed is drinking a lot. It's not something she's used to seeing, but it's their honeymoon, and they're on vacation, so it's not a big red flag. It's just something she notices and tucks away.

A honeymoon is one thing, but blending a family is another. And about six months into the marriage, Aaron's concerns turn into a real fear that this marriage is not going to work out.

Straight away, I kind of noticed that he sort of seemed to want to be married but also be single in that he did not want to sort of come together as a family. I took his name, which was a big thing for me. I did not do that on my prior marriage, and it was something I could never see myself doing. But I thought, I want to kind of reach across the aisle, so to speak, and show him that I really want this to be just a really blended up, blended family.

But he kept everything separate. We did not have a joint bank account. We did not go on date night. He did not introduce me to his friends.

There just wasn't that sense of a partnership that you expect in a marriage. And then the second thing was that there was kind of no co-parenting going on. He was in charge of his kids. I was in charge of mine. He was not super welcoming in terms of my suggestions or things that I kind of wanted around the house as far as behavior. I mean, his kids were very, very good. But my daughter was so much younger that certain teenage behaviors, I was kind of hoping we could shield her from a little longer. Yeah.

But he was not super welcoming in that arena. And then the third thing was the drinking. So what I had noticed on our honeymoon, where he had said, like, I only do this when I'm on vacation, really was not super true. Like he didn't drink on work nights, but the whole weekend he would drink. Erin is also growing increasingly concerned that Ed hasn't really done anything to process the loss of his dead wife.

His grief is still so, so raw, and it's evident everywhere that Aaron turns. So his first wife was sick with breast cancer for many years, I think about seven or eight years before she passed. And, you know, there was a lot of caretaking involved. Like, she was mostly at home unless she was having a surgery. So he kind of, like, put himself in that whole mode of, like, he had to do everything himself.

When she died, he just kept right on doing everything. You know, it was like there was no kind of transition to grief. It was just like, now I must, you know, soldier on. He was raised in Southie and Southie guys are really not cool with like therapy or anything like that. So there was none of that stuff happening. It was just I must move forward. I don't think there was a proper grieving at all.

So there was, I think it was a hundred gallon aquarium in the corner of the living room, which you couldn't really see because it was kind of behind a drape.

And it was stuffed with her mail that had come, you know, since she had passed away. I think it was about six or seven years earlier. And it just got tossed into the aquarium and it never, you know, was dealt with or that was all right there. All her things were still in the house. And I don't mind like if it was like pictures and, you know, family mementos and stuff, but it was like her clothes were still there. Things like you would do as part of the grieving process, you would kind of

you know, sort things out, give things to the kids, things like that. Yeah, there's something about when, you know, when a house or a person becomes a museum, that's, you know, it's unsettling. And it also just seems to, I don't know, it just seems like an indication that like, oh, this is not, this is not healing. This is like an open wound. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And by the same token, there were no pictures of her around. You know, I would ask the kids, you know, like, well, what did your mom like to cook for dinner? You know, trying to kind of like figure out what they'd want to eat. You know, they would say like, well, I don't remember. And then I'd ask him and he'd say, well, I don't remember either. Like, it was almost like they were just trying to like, you know, put the bandaid over the bullet wound and keep on going.

Erin is not bothered one bit by the presence of Ed's late wife in the house. She wants her to still be a part of the family. It's Erin who actually eventually brings out photos of the kid's mom, who starts going through her things to make sure that the kids have some of it. I don't know. I would have a hard time...

living in a house that feels so in between. It really did. And I did have a hard time with it. And I actually waited about three years before I said, okay, we have to clean out this closet because I have nowhere to put my things. I cleaned it out. He didn't really play any part in it. And I just saved some things for the kids that I thought they might want and carted off anything that might be useful for goodwill and stuff like that. But I had to do it. How did your conversations about

like the relationship, the house, the kids, and even the future go? They were almost all the same. And it was usually, I have to work a double shift, so I need to take a nap. Could we talk about this on the weekend? And I would say, okay. And then the weekend would come around and he would say, I'm tired from work. And I'm laughing, but like, this was it. I'm tired from work. Can we talk about this another day?

We did couples therapy and he would even say the same thing to the therapist. Erin is living a life that exists in the in-between. The house that she's living in doesn't feel like she belongs in it. She has a husband and she cares about him, but what they have isn't really a partnership or even really that much of a relationship. Erin's conversations with Ed never seem to go below the surface, not even during couples therapy. But she stays in the marriage because she loves Ed's kids.

I found an old journal of maybe about a year ago and it was about four to six months into the marriage. And I was writing in the journal that like, I realized this marriage is not going to work. He is the way he is and he isn't going to change. And in the journal I had written, but I love these kids. They've, you know, been, been abandoned by, you know, their mother's death. I want to be in their life by that point. I even four to six months in, I already loved these kids and,

And, you know, I moved my own daughter out of her school, sold my house. And I am definitely not going to be what some people refer to as a two time loser, which is twice divorced. So I'm here. I'm here and I'm staying. It's also got to be hard, too, because like the thing about blending a family is that there already were families, right? Like everybody in that household had something else, knows what it's like to lose it. And the stakes are

They feel so high. They really do. And there was just no way. I mean, it wasn't like I was miserable to the level of like we're having screaming fights. We hardly ever fought. You know, when he drank, he would just basically like get a little silly and pass out on the couch. So it wasn't like this screaming, you know, crazy environment. It was just unfulfilling and lonely. Being lonely when you're next to someone or with someone is...

is just a whole different kind of loneliness in my experience worse than being alone it is it's really lonely because you've got someone who's like a presumed partner but you're not really like a cohesive partnership and you're not also free to like find that fulfillment in someone else because you're married for a while erin tries to find her own kind of happiness elsewhere

Well, I figured out that the fulfillment wasn't going to come from the marriage. And I really did kind of figure out a couple years in, like, he just isn't going to change. I've got to find my own things to do.

So I joined a hiking club. I started stand-up paddleboarding, camping, just different meetup groups and different other groups and meeting a lot of people, a lot of good friends. Joined a new gym that was super friendly where the people got together outside of the gym. So all of this stuff was able to meet my need for bonded friendships and things like that. Nagging took a backseat. I stopped nagging and just lived my life. So I went to Al-Anon.

I did that for a long time. And that was helpful in terms of me just kind of pulling out my part of it. Like, you know, what can I do to just make sure we don't fight, that we can, you know, live peaceably and also helpful in letting me know that like, it's okay to stay in a relationship with, you know, someone who's a drinker. It's okay. You don't have to just immediately pick up your things and go. Cause like my whole feminist type attitude was like,

I would kind of come down on myself for like, why are you staying here? You're not happy. And so there was that constant inner tension. So Al-Anon was helpful for that. And I actually did go to some AA meetings. I'm not a drinker, but it was nice to see the other side of it. I don't know if nice is the word, but it was helpful to see the other side, like where the alcoholic is coming from. How did therapy or couples counseling work for you guys? Not at all. Yeah.

It felt like every session. I don't know if you ever watch Vikings, but where, you know, Lagertha comes out with like the pickaxe thingy and like starts just going on, you know, hitting people. It felt like that. Yeah.

It's the best description I can give. We'd go in and I'd come up with my grievance or whatever. He won't start a joint bank account with me. And the therapist would say, do you hear what she's saying? Do you want to address that? And his response would be something along the lines of a long pause. And then I'm really tired. Maybe we could put that one on the back burner for next session. So it didn't work.

What sticks out to me during my conversation with Erin is how much compassion she has for Ed. He's not a great husband or partner, but he's also not a bad person. Erin knows that Ed has been through a lot. She knows that the way Ed was raised and the community he grew up in hasn't left him with many resources when it comes to dealing with grief and trauma.

He's not a bad guy. He actually really was a good guy. Like I said, he was raised in Southie, and in Southie you can go a couple different ways. You can be a priest, you can be a cop, or you can be a criminal. And he chose to be a cop. He helped people. He was well-loved. He did a great job raising those kids, basically single-handedly, because his daughter was two years old when she got sick. So he was a good guy. He just really wasn't like...

What I needed was not what he could give. We weren't well matched that way. We'll be right back.

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Her marriage to Ed isn't abusive. It isn't destructive. It's just not what she needs. I said to myself, you have to do something because you are not happy at all.

So I went to my best friend. She's been my bestie for 35 years, and she always is a straight shooter. And she just looked at me and she said, get out of there. You have been lonely for years. Just do it. She jumped online, started looking at apartments, started emailing them. And within like 10 minutes, she had an apartment viewing appointment for me. And then she informed me she was going to hold my feet to the fire this time.

That night I went to a concert. It was pre-planned, something I already had tickets for, and I didn't want to not go. As I was driving home, I just thought, here I am, alone again, because he doesn't want to do anything with me. It was not the first concert that I'd gone to alone that I wished he had gone with me. The closer I got to the house, just the worse. I just felt like I don't even want to go in. I'm done, basically.

So, I went and saw the apartment. And if you know anything about Boston, the housing situation here is horrendous. It's like 50 people show up for a 200-square-foot studio apartment, and you have to distinguish yourself. This one was no different. Basically, you just have to have some kind of cosmic connection with the real estate lady or you're doomed.

But we seem to have that, my daughter and I. She came with me. And the real estate lady was like whispering to me, I have to show this place to other people, but I've already decided on you two. So can you meet me at the Dunkin' Donuts afterwards? And we did. It's very Boston. You're going to meet at Dunkin'. I love this. Okay.

When you had told your daughter and like, you know, you brought her to look at apartments, like how did she take that? So she's like this incredible little old soul. I don't know how I managed to get her. She had said to me, you know, this would have been about maybe five years earlier. She had said to me, Mom, I don't think you're happy here. And I just want to let you know that when I'm moving into middle school, if we're going to move, that's a good time to do it.

oh, okay. You know, and I, and I told her, I said, you know, I'm, I'm not super happy, but I love all you guys. And, you know, being here and being able to be a mom to them and to you and to have like just a cohesive kind of family unit as much as we can is important to me. So I'm not looking to go anywhere right now.

And then she said the same thing to me at the end of middle school, the same exact thing. It's a good time to move. Like I'm going into high school and, you know, people change friend groups when they go into high school. So if we're going to do it, can we do it now? She was okay with it. She really was. She said, mom, you know, it's no matter to me. She said, I know that I'll always have a relationship with them. So, you know, if you need to do this to be happy, it's okay. Despite all odds, in a bananas real estate market, Erin gets the apartment.

She starts packing slowly, little by little. Not enough for Ed to notice. And the day before she's set to move out, she tells her 20-something stepdaughter the news. So I sat her down and I said, you know, will you please keep this in confidence? And I just told her, I said, you know, I'm not going to get into the issues. It's just, it's lonely and your dad's a good guy, but like, we're not compatible. And I was crying, she was crying. And

She said something like, I always knew this was going to happen. I just didn't know when. So, I mean, she realized. I don't think our kind of mismatch was any big secret. The day of the move, Erin plans to move out her things while Ed is at work. She's not afraid of him or of his reaction, but her friends want her to operate out of an abundance of caution, given his history with heavy drinking. I didn't take hardly anything. I took no furniture, just my clothes, my daughter's clothes and personal items and such. And

We were almost done getting everything else, a couple of trips. When he came home, he'd forgotten his work badge. So, you know that saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Here we are. And my plan always was to get everything out and then come home and wait for him to get home from work and talk to him. It wasn't like I was just going to leave a note. I said, I need to talk to you. And he said, right now? I need to go get my badge and go back to work. And I said, yeah, right now. And I told him,

This is no secret that I'm lonely. I've said it before. He didn't seem super shocked. He just kind of glared at me. And then he accused me of having an affair, which I was not. And I said to him, let me know. Think about it and let me know if you'd be willing to work on this from afar. You know, I'll stay in my place and we'll work on things. But we would need to do counseling and AA. And he just glared at me, but he let me get the rest of my stuff out. And that was the last time I was in the house for a long time.

How do you sleep that first night? Like a baby. Best night's sleep I had had in, you know, probably 10 years. We'll be right back. It's been seven years since I had my last baby. Seven years, which doesn't feel possible because it feels like I just had him. It goes really fast, except when you're in it, every decision you make feels like a huge one because it is. This is a whole human being and you're responsible for keeping them safe and loved and growing and thriving.

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Hi, it's Nora with a little bit of an update. Terrible Things for Asking is on an indefinite hiatus, which means that for the foreseeable future, you won't see new episodes in the main feed. But if you want to support the work that we've done, get access to our entire back catalog with no ads, you

You can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash ttfa or on Apple Plus. We are still making two episodes a month.

for subscribers, which is a sustainable workload for us emotionally and financially. There are still plenty of episodes here for free on the main feed, so no pressure. But if you want to join a community of Terribles, come over to Patreon. And if you just want more Terrible, join on Apple+. Erin and Ed's divorce is really as amicable as it could possibly be.

Erin is an attorney, so she handles most of the paperwork so they can avoid expensive, drawn-out proceedings. I told him I didn't want anything. In fact, I even left the engagement ring he bought me. I left on the bureau. You know, I just felt like it's, you know, we're not together anymore. So, you know, he bought it. He takes it back. I didn't want any of the house or anything like that. It was his house, not mine to take anything of. So I

I didn't want anything. And so he was open to just filing an uncontested divorce. So I just drew it up for us and then dropped off the paperwork and he went and filed it pretty easy. We had a court date about...

Three months later, you know, where the judge kind of just goes over with you, like, you know, are you doing this of your free will? And, you know, asks you a few questions, quickly reviews the settlement agreement and, you know, says, OK, I'll enter a decree of divorce. So that was it was pretty easy. September 17th, 2019 is the final court date. And at the hearing, Ed seems out of sorts.

He was never late. And he was late that day, which worried me. He was kind of disheveled. He did not have his phone with him, which was, I couldn't believe. Him and I both have professions where you're allowed to take your phone into the courthouse. So it was really weird that he didn't have his phone with him. And in the elevator, he said to me, hey, there's a piece of this separation agreement that I am not sure about. It was something about...

If something happened to one of us, the other one would not be responsible for their uninsured medical expenses. And I'm thinking to myself, you bastard. He knew that I had had a surgery a couple months earlier, and I'm like, he just doesn't want to be stuck with my medical expense. Not that there were any. I had already paid them, but he didn't know that. And I said, no, I think it's okay, but we'll have the judge look at it. And it was okay. But that just kind of stuck in my mind as odd.

This interaction comes off as strange to Erin. She hadn't asked for anything in the divorce, so of course she's not going to saddle him with a medical bill for a surgery that she had months ago. But divorce itself is just strange, and in Massachusetts, it's a process that extends beyond just that court date.

You go into court like we did, and the judge will look everything over and ask you the little questions. And when he or she is satisfied, they will enter what's called a nai sai. And what that is is a preliminary decree of divorce, and it's held over before it will be entered as a final decree of divorce. So in the meantime, you are not divorced.

And we had that. And when I got home that day, I counted on my calendar all the days and I came up with January 14, 2020 would be my calendar.

day that the decree would be entered and then they'd send me a copy and I'd pull it out of the mailbox and I would read it over. And then I would kind of start grieving the divorce because you do grieve a divorce. Your dreams are kind of dashed and what you thought was going to happen isn't. And it is kind of a grief process. It is. You know what? I'm going to stop you there. It's a grief process. It's a grief process. People who are divorced are always asking if it counts. Yeah, it counts. It counts. It

It is the loss of a huge relationship. Of course it does. And I had that in my head that I would get my decree after the 120 days and then, you know, I would start to process it and move forward. It feels like you're waiting for these 120 days to like,

you know, take you out of this gray area and everything just feels like so in between. You just want some clarity. Yeah. And I know we all hate this word closure, but like in a way getting that in the mail would be sort of closure on the marriage and then kind of mental permission to kind of like process the divorce and the loss of the marriage and move forward.

But in the meantime, Erin waits. She picks up a lunchtime job walking some of the dogs in her neighborhood. And on top of her regular job, she's working about 70 hours a week, keeping busy, socializing with her friends, enjoying time with her daughter. It's January 7th, 2020, 113 days after that court date and seven days until the divorce is finalized.

I don't get on my phone when I'm walking a dog. The dog gets all my attention. And after I brought the dog back in the house and went to my car, I looked at my phone and there was a text from my stepdaughter. And I thought it said something like, hey, just wanted to let you know that dad passed away this morning, but we have it handled. So don't feel like you need to come by if you can't.

And I thought, no, no, no, I can't be reading that right. I need reading glasses and I did not have them on. So I fished them out and put them on. And that was actually what it said. And I was thinking, no, this got to be a joke. I called her and no, no, it wasn't a joke. She had found him in the morning on the floor and, you know, clearly like not going to be able to resuscitate him. And yeah, I was just shocked.

So my mind's just racing. You know, my mind is like, this is terrible. But my instant thought was, wait a minute, we've got seven days left on that nice eye period. So am I divorced or am I widowed? And then, you know, my next thoughts were like, oh my God, do I go to the Waken funeral? Like if I go, where do I stand? Where do I sit? Do I need to be in the receiving line? Or can I just be like, you know, a guest like anyone else? You

All these questions are popping into my head. Then I head home and my daughter is going to be home from school soon and I need to tell her. She came home and I told her. She was absolutely shocked. We immediately got into cooking mode and we made a couple of meals and headed over there. That was the first time I was in the house since I had left.

And it was like sort of unkempt looking because the clean freak was no longer living there. There were a lot of alcohol bottles around in various states of, you know, emptiness. It was just sad. They'll eventually learn that Ed had gotten up in the middle of the night and collapsed on his way from the bathroom to his bedroom. The medical examiner suspected it was a massive heart attack. Ed was dead before he hit the floor.

And this makes Erin think about the conversation they had the day they met before the judge, when Ed was being so weird about medical debt. When we were talking in the elevator, it dawned on me that he didn't want me to get stuck with a copay. He wasn't worried about my stuff. He didn't want me to get stuck with a copay. And then that just kind of destroyed me a little bit inside. Yeah. Here I was thinking the worst and, you know. And he just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be totally wrecked. Yeah. Yep.

There are categories of loss that make sense to us, that we have cards for and traditions for. When your husband dies, you sit in the front row at that funeral. You're a widow. But when your almost ex-husband dies, a person you have love for but who you are only very technically still legally married to, then what? What do you do? Where do you sit? What's your title? Because Ed died within that 120-day waiting period.

which means that the divorce decree that Erin's been waiting on... Now that was not going to come in the mail, you know, like waiting on that paper, and now it's not going to come. And how I know this? I know this because I called the courthouse and just gave them a brief rundown, and they said, nope, you're widowed. So not divorced, widowed. Legally, it's very clear. Erin and Ed were still technically married, so she's a widow. But emotionally, it doesn't feel that clean...

Our human feelings refuse to fit neatly into tax and legal statuses. Emotionally, Erin was done with this marriage. But even when you're not in love with a person anymore, even when you don't want to be married to them or share a bank account anymore, you can still have love for them. You can still grieve that a person you shared a significant part of your life with is no longer here, no longer exists anymore.

That they won't meet their grandbabies or walk their kids down the aisle or see their favorite sports team win whatever thing is important in that sport. Erin feels that. The enormity of what it means for Ed to die. And she feels the awkwardness of not knowing what to do with that sadness. That grief. Grief is messy and Erin doesn't know where her mess fits into this bigger mess.

I felt like really this is not my place to have any kind of say in anything. I just really felt like this was something that the kids needed to do. Like, I'm here if you need to lean on me or you have questions or you want me to go with you.

But I did not feel like I should take an active role and, you know, like, oh, okay, we'll have a collage and we'll, you know, pick this headstone. I really just didn't feel like that was my place at this point. So I just said to them, I'm happy to do whatever you want. If you want me at the funeral and wake, I am happy to go. If you do not want me, I will understand. If you would like some combination of the two options, that's fine. You know, whatever you need, whatever you want.

you do what is going to hurt less for you. And so they did. They said they would like me there. So I did go. I still didn't know the day of, I thought to myself like, oh, do I need to be in the receiving line or what do I need to do? And I didn't really want to ask them because on one level I thought like, well, maybe I should just know what to do. And I didn't, and I didn't want to bother them. So I said, I'll take my cues when I get there.

He had a lot of extended family that I had never met. They were scattered all over the country. And I was not even honestly sure if some or all of them even knew that we were just about done with a divorce because his social media pictures were still of us. He had never changed them. So I was like, the less I say, the better. I just didn't want to make the kids uncomfortable or feel like they had to explain anything.

So when I walked in, they had put up a collage of pictures right at the entrance point. And it was all pictures of them, their dad and their mom and none of me and my daughter. So I thought, okay, great. I don't need to be in the receiving line. And that's okay. It's fine. Whatever way you want to do it is good with me. I mean, I love their dad and I love them. And if I'm not in the pictures, that's okay with me too. Yeah.

So I ended up just being sort of a guest like anyone else or a mourner or whatever the word is. And I was perfectly braced for people to say like, you did this to him or this divorce did this to him. It killed him. And no one said anything. So I was very relieved about that. But on the flip side, no one said to me like, I'm sorry for your loss because I'm not sure that anyone viewed it.

as a loss for me, if that makes any sense. There's that contrast again between the neatness of legal language and the chaos of our human emotions.

My mom was widowed at the same age as me, 47. And, you know, I saw what she got, like letters from my dad's boss, you know, commendation letters. And people brought casseroles and there were sympathy cards flowing out of the mailbox and friends would call and check in on her. And, you know, I saw how well she was supported in that process and how much she needed it.

My process was something like a couple of texts from a few close friends who were like, I'm so sorry. Let me know if you need anything. One card from my mom. And that's about it. My best friend, she would listen to me. She kind of understood the grief and kind of gave some legitimacy to it and was like, of course you're sad. I mean, you were married to him and

you guys were together for eight years and, you know, didn't turn out to be what you thought it was. But, you know, I mean, you did love him. And so she did understand. But I feel like, you know, maybe the rest of society didn't get it. A couple people who had been through divorces themselves or were in one were like, oh, my God, like, you know, if this happened to me, it would be like any other Tuesday. And I would be, you know, sort of like having to quell the temptation to have a party. Yeah.

It's a joke, of course, but it makes Erin shrink back, question the validity of what she's feeling and rein in how she expresses those feelings. You know, I mean, I'm grieving and I'm deeply sad. I mean, deeply sad. And I also feel like my grief would be viewed as maybe, I don't know if this is even the right word, but like sort of illegitimate or melodramatic or phony even.

So I keep myself in check at the funeral and the wake. There's a little tear, but not much. And I felt very self-conscious about it all, maybe not free to just cry like I would have if no one was around.

And then the months kind of just went on. It was like, I said to myself, okay, you're going to have a vacation in Florida. And when you get back from vacation, you'll only be working 40 or 50 hours a week and you can let yourself grieve then. So I just kind of put everything in this little box and I put it in my compartmentalization closet, which is at this point getting pretty full because that was always my way of dealing with things. Just kind of put it in a box. We'll deal with it later. And when vacation ended, I

Not too long afterwards, a week or two, the pandemic hit. So all the things that I love to do kind of went away. My socializing, my gym, everything was closed. People were hiding in the house. So I think that shelf on the compartmentalization closet just broke. And yeah, it turned a little into a lunatic for a while. The guilt that I felt was

I think was probably one of my biggest things. Like I was just plagued by guilt, like guilt that I'd made a vow and I broke it. Like to me, if you make a promise or a vow, it's like you keep it. Now, I wasn't feeling so guilty before he passed, but afterwards I was feeling pretty damn guilty. Guilt that his drinking had escalated after I left.

And that maybe the drinking caused him to die sooner. He had even at one point kind of suggested to me that my leaving brought on his AFib, which my mom and I researched. No, it didn't. It was the drinking. Guilt about the way that I'd left, you know, like I loved him and he was a good person. And maybe I should have just told him before I moved my stuff out.

The pandemic gives Erin the space to feel all of the things that she was too self-conscious to feel before. To forget about the compartments and the categories, to just exist in the messy middle of it all, where it's painful and complicated.

I mean, I feel both divorced and widowed, like they coexist in the same space. I feel like it's disingenuous. Like when I'm asked, you know, are you married? Or one of those forms, married, widowed, this, that, like, I never know what to put. And I signed up for therapy and I had to fill out, you know, the intake form. And it was one of those divorced, widowed, single, whatever. And I did, I checked off widowed and then it's like box where it says, is there anything else you want to tell us? You know, I explained it that I'm

sort of widowed, was widowed while I was in the middle of a divorce. And that was like the whole reason to go to therapy because I just can't, you know, not just the label that you give it, but like also just all the feelings around it. Like, you know, are my feelings appropriate? Like, I don't know. I think I judged myself a lot for the grief and like, well, how can you be grieving if you left him? You know, it was kind of like constant tension in my mind. We can, though, create our own categories.

We are allowed to hold our own experiences up to the light and decide what to call it, to define it for ourselves and explain that meaning to the people around us. We do not have to limit ourselves to the language we've been given or the boxes we've been placed in or the exceptional emotional organizing we've done in our own compartmentalization closets. And Erin does that. She makes her very own category. Widowed with an asterisk.

It doesn't deny all of that judgment, all that tension. It highlights it. It gives Erin the space and the power to decide what this loss means to her. Again, it goes back to the like, well, you divorced him. So like, how can you be that broken up now that he's gone? And but yet I am.

So the asterisk part of it is almost divorced, but technically widowed. And don't you dare ask any more frigging questions is the definition at the footnote. A lot of us end up trying to figure out where our grief fits, how it can rank against other people affected by this loss, whether or not it counts or matters. And it cannot be said enough times or in enough ways. It matters. It counts. It matters.

To quote myself from a previous episode, if it's heavy for you, it's heavy. If it's big for you, it's big. If it burns you, it's hot. Aaron has a new boyfriend. And when she meets his brother's girlfriend, she also meets another widow with an asterisk.

So she was also with somebody who was an alcoholic for several years and broke up with him. And he quickly got sick and died of complications due to alcohol. And she thought she was all alone in the world, too, with, you know, all these weird feelings of like, why am I so upset when I broke up with him? And so we've had a lot of talks while the guys are out fishing. And I think it's been pretty therapeutic for both of us.

You don't owe anyone a footnote or an explanation. You don't need to catalog the reasons why your pain matters or justify your grief to the world. But if you can, if it's safe enough, if you have the mental and physical capacity to open up and talk about it, do that. Because somewhere out there is another person who thinks that they are all alone with their own complicated loss, wondering if it counts or if they're making it all up. It does count.

You're not making it up. Do you think you'll always be a widow with an asterisk? I do think I will, actually. If I were ever so bold as to consider being remarried again, I might drop that. But it probably would still play a role in, you know, when you meet new people and you're telling each other your stories, it probably would still be widowed with an asterisk. Yeah. Yep.

This has been Terrible. Thanks for asking. I am Nora McInerney. Our team is Marcel Malikibu, Jordan Turgeon, Jacob Maldonado-Medina, and often also Megan Palmer. Terrible Thanks for Asking is a production of APM Studios at American Public Media. Executive Producer and Editor, Beth Perlman. Executives in Charge, Lily Kim, Alex Schaefer, Joanne Griffith.

Our theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson. I actually recorded it in a different closet, so things are a-changin' around here. We are in a different closet. It's colder and it's actually worse. I downgraded. I downgraded my recording setup to be in a worse closet somehow. New year, same me. New year, possibly a worse me. Possibly a worse situation. We don't know. Too soon to tell. Okay, bye.

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