{"id":36440,"date":"2022-09-17T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-17T07:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=36440"},"modified":"2026-06-06T09:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:05:11","slug":"widowed-i-dont-like-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/widowed-i-dont-like-my-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: I Don’t Like My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"widowed
This Alstromeria went ahead and blossomed outside my writing room door while I was two time zones away, stranded in an Airbnb and facing down the mighty covid virus. Apparently, it likes its life. I’m not so sure about mine. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Widowed: I Don’t Like My Life<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I don’t like my life. It is flat. It is uninviting. It has lost its zip and its meaning. And I don’t want to lead it.<\/p>\n

Not to worry, I am not suicidal. It’s not life <\/em>that I am objecting to. It’s the future, my future, the one that befell me when my husband died a year and a half ago.<\/p>\n

On paper, what I have here is a pretty good deal. Some bodily aches and failings have emerged lately. But I’ve got friends, neighbors, family, and a writing career that has persevered into my 80s. Also, a nice house with a patch of alstromerias that push out blossoms whether I bother to go outside to look at them or not.<\/p>\n

And so, everything is in order in the architecture of my life. Except for that one thing: Jon isn’t here anymore. And his departure has taken the life out of my life.<\/p>\n

Covid Isolation<\/strong><\/h5>\n

This flatness confronted me anew this week when I returned home from eighteen days of covid isolation, which I spent in a quiet rented bungalow in a city not my own.<\/p>\n

I had flown east weeks earlier, across two time zones, to the hospitable Midwestern town where my son Peter lives with his wife and their two small children. We had some nice days together, the grandchildren and I, swimming and romping at a woodsy resort on a lake up north.<\/p>\n

Then, six days in, I felt the tell-tale symptoms: sore throat, headache, body aches, chills. A home test came up positive for covid, and it fell to Peter to find an urgent care center for me — fast.<\/p>\n

Paxlovid Prescribed<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Paxlovid was prescribed, and Peter, the windows of his car wide open, drove me the two hours from the resort up north to the Airbnb I had booked near Peter’s house back in town.<\/p>\n

\"widowed<\/a>
I spent most of my covid days in this sunny corner of the Airbnb I’d rented.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finally, this past Monday, I was well enough to make the three-hour flight home. I put on the mask required by CDC guidelines<\/a> and rolled my suitcases around two airports, no problem.<\/p>\n

I was fine.<\/p>\n

I was fine, that is, until I got home — to a house filled with Jon and Jon’s dear things: his shoes, his laptop, his dresser still filled with his socks and T-shirts, the miniature ceramic cat he kept on his dresser, and the dish where he dropped the coins he took from the pockets of his khakis at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

A Pleasant Airbnb Stay, on My Own<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In truth, the mandated covid isolation had not been all that bad. I wasn’t particularly sick. The rented house was sunny and pleasant and, empty as it was of any trace of Jon, it allowed me to look away from him for a time.<\/p>\n

\"postive-covid-home-tests\"<\/a>
Managing my stand-off with the covid virus — with cough medicine and a series of home covid tests — kept my mind off grief during my weeks of isolation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But now, back home in the presence of all this evidence of my missing husband, there was no averting my eyes from my dispiriting future.<\/p>\n

I have written about this before. I can go for hours, days even, without feeling the heaviness of grief. On a hike at Chimney Rock<\/a> with friends, the grief evaporates for hours. With a college roommate as a houseguest, I’m good for days. When daughter Christina shows up in town for a bachelorette party and works remotely from Jon’s office, I’m my old self again. When I drive across the Bay for lunch with my brother, it seems my life is rich and interesting after all.<\/p>\n

In other words, I can be distracted from my grief. I can put it aside. Grief has been known to retreat for a time.<\/p>\n

Widowed: I Don’t Like My Life<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Hikes and lunch dates are helpful distractions. So were the cough suppressants and covid tests that preoccupied me while isolated in that Airbnb, 2,000 miles from the place where Jon no longer was.<\/p>\n

But the distractions never last. Soon, inevitably, my future is right there in front of me again, in my face.<\/p>\n

I don’t like my life. I don’t want it. I really, really don’t want it.<\/p>\n

More widow stories at “Widowed: Or, How to Wrestle a Christmas Tree Into Its Stand.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “Breaking News: The Afterlife is ‘Fantastic.'”<\/a>\u00a0 And “Talk to My Deceased Husband? I Can’t Do It.”<\/a>\u00a0 And don’t miss “My Husband Passed Away and Took the Encyclopedia With Him.”<\/a><\/em>
\n\"widowed<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m widowed and I don’t like my life. Stranded 2,000 miles from home with covid proved easier than facing the life that awaited me back home.\u00a0\u00a0Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1764,2628,2623,34,29,2629,56,2630],"class_list":["post-36440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-airbnb","tag-alstromeria","tag-covid","tag-dont-miss","tag-jon","tag-paxlovid","tag-peter","tag-the-great-midwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49306,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36440\/revisions\/49306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}