{"id":40460,"date":"2024-01-13T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T08:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=40460"},"modified":"2026-06-05T12:52:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T12:52:06","slug":"am-i-grieving-or-am-i-just-lonely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/am-i-grieving-or-am-i-just-lonely\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: Am I Grieving? Or Am I Just Lonely?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Am<\/a>
Am I grieving, or am I just lonely? Jon’s office was right across the hall from the door to the garage. So he — his back — was often one of the first things I’d see when I returned home. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day was dark and cold. Gloomy. My house, when I arrived home that day, was also dark. And empty.<\/p>\n

No one was waiting for me as I stepped indoors from the garage. No Jon, in his office, sitting at a laptop, his back to me, slogging away at his thriller novel.<\/p>\n

Nobody.<\/p>\n

Jon has been gone nearly three years now. And on this dark and rainy day, he was still gone, his office chair empty.<\/p>\n

When I spotted that chair. I was overtaken, once again, by — what? Grief? Sorrow? Anguish at the loss of Jon?<\/p>\n

Or just plain loneliness?<\/p>\n

Am I Grieving — Or Am I Just Lonely?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I was entitled to be in a good mood that day. I’d finished up a batch of pressing errands. I was home now. The evening hours were mine to enjoy. By all rights, my house should have felt like a clean, well-lighted place. Warm, dry, safe. But on this day, home felt like none of those things. It was too full of emptiness.<\/p>\n

My memoir writing friend, also a widow, described a similar coming home to nothing. She’d been on a writing retreat and was now back at her house. “I walked in the door,” she said. “And he still wasn’t there.”<\/p>\n

\"Am<\/a>
Jon’s empty office chair greets me now when I return home. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three long years have passed since our husbands left the planet, but for my writer friend and me, the moment of departure is still palpable.<\/p>\n

At times like this, I ask myself — am I grieving? Or am I just lonely?<\/p>\n

The Many Parts of Grief<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There are many parts to grief, I’ve noticed these past months — sadness, remorse, helplessness, the proximity of death, pity for the one whose life was so brutally wrested from them, and simple loneliness.<\/p>\n

Loneliness. We are alone now. No one is here to see us or listen to us report on our quotidian doings. “Whew. I finally got those Christmas cards in the mail.” Or, “Dang. The drugstore ran out of covid tests.”<\/p>\n

Home, once the place we felt most seen, is now the place we go to be invisible.<\/p>\n

If Jon was not at his desk when I came home, he’d often be in the kitchen making dinner. Read about that at “Confessions of a So-So Wife: The Night I Forgot to Make Dinner.<\/a>”\u00a0 Revisit the days of shopping for groceries during the pandemic at “We’re Pushing Eighty. Do We Stay Out of Supermarkets?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"empty-home-office\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Am I grieving, or am I just lonely? When I spotted my husband’s empty office chair, I was overcome by — what? Sorrow? Or simple loneliness?\u00a0\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[103,34,191,1572,29,2274,2255,2686],"class_list":["post-40460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-aging","tag-dont-miss","tag-grief","tag-home-office","tag-jon","tag-loneliness","tag-lonely","tag-widowed-and-lonely"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40460","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=40460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48863,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40460\/revisions\/48863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}