I’m widowed and I’m fine until it’s time to go home.

Last month, it was yet another exquisite day on the trail at Chimney Rock. It had all the makings of the perfect outing: A good friend was keeping me company. So were the fields and fields of meadow grass and wildflowers (too many to count, let alone name). Also a friendly local bug and an insouciant gopher venturing from its hidey hole.

But now, this exquisite day was drawing to a close, and my hiking friend had turned around on the path. She was leading us back to the parking lot. The day was coming to an end, and I felt a heaviness coming over me.

Something bad was waiting for me at the end of this day. Something ominous. But what was it?

It was Jon, of course — the not-Jon of the past sixteen months. Jon wasn’t there any more. That’s what was waiting for me at the end of this day. It was a fact, and it was  insupportable.

Widowed — I’m Fine Until It’s Time to Go Home

I’m OK most of the time. I’ve hiked at Chimney Rock. I’ve danced at a wedding. I’ve ordered gourmet take-out for my daughter, up from the Southland to visit for a week.

But I notice that when the hike comes to an end, the wedding is over, or the daughter gets in her car to head back to her own very interesting life, I get that sinking feeling again. The feeling that something is terribly wrong, and there’s no fixing it.

It’s those transitions — the hike’s end, the last dance, the departing daughter — that send me back into the shock of it all.

Jon is gone. How can that be? This is an impossible thing, death. How can something, someone, who took up so much space on the planet and so much space in my particular corner of the planet, someone who could laugh and make you laugh — how can that person not be there anymore?

The drive home from Chimney Rock took some time. Commute traffic slowed things down, and by the time I arrived home, I was back in that familiar place, the place I’ve gotten used to, that doesn’t shock me as much as it once did, the one where Jon is no more.

I have a life. I do. I have visiting children. I have weddings to go to. I have Chimney Rock. Those things are not gone. I have company.

What’s Keeping Me Company Now

I have that bench at Chimney Rock, where I sat with my friend and ate my peanut butter sandwich, which was pretty good. There’s the bug that landed on my hand and stuck around long enough for me to make out that it was, indeed, a bug.

The gophers and elephant seals aren’t going anywhere. Neither are the thistles and the lupine.

But neither is that heaviness. It will be back, I know. And I’ll be looking into the empty place again, the one where Jon used to be.

More animal stories at, “I Can’t Believe I Got in the Water With That 1400-Pound Whale.”  Also, “Confessions of a Carnivore: Why Eating Meat Is OK  — Sorta.”

A gopher, undeterred by the chatter of passing hikers, ventured from its hole in the trail at Chimney Rock. Video by Barbara Newhall