Widowish: A Memoir by Melissa Gould
Author:Melissa Gould [Gould, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542018784
Publisher: Little A
Published: 2021-01-31T22:00:00+00:00
TWELVE
Iâm a Widow
Sissy?â I said into the phone, unable to catch my breath. âI miss Joel!â
âOh, sissy,â Holly said patiently. âI know you do.â
It was our wedding anniversary, my first without him. We would have been married seventeen years. I was sobbing uncontrollably in my hotel room and had been for hours. I was in Chicago visiting my friend Jennie. Sophie was on a school field trip to San Francisco that weekend, so the timing worked out for me to get out of town. I did not want to be home without Joel on our anniversary. I thought being away with one of my best friends, in one of my favorite cities, at a fancy hotel I decided to treat myself to, would help. But grief doesnât care about any of those things. Just like MS, it travels with you no matter where you go, no matter how far, no matter for how long.
Jennie and her husband had planned to take me to dinner. They were downstairs in the hotel bar waiting for me.
âIâm not sure if I can make it,â I had cried into the phone an hour earlier to Jennie. âIâm a mess. I canât stop crying.â
âOK, I totally get it. Weâll wait in the bar, and if you feel like you can pull it together, great. If not, no pressure. Just keep me posted.â
I thought I would spend my anniversary walking down Michigan Avenue, stopping at a cute café for lunch, buying something nice for myself, and reflecting on my seventeen years with Joelâmore if I counted our time together before we got married. Instead, I had left the hotel without an umbrella, got stuck in the rain, got lost trying to find a nice day spa where I could get a massage, and ended up back at the hotel early, soaking wet and sobbing.
âOf course youâre feeling sad,â Holly said. âJoelâs not there to celebrate with. Itâs terrible. Itâs hard to believe.â
âI miss him!â I wailed. âI donât know if Iâll ever stop crying!â
My sister stayed on the phone with me. I was afraid to hang up. I thought my tears would envelop me, that I might drown.
I kept twisting my wedding ring around my finger, hoping that my memories of Joelâyounger, healthy, aliveâwould come back to me. I tried so hard to remember my wedding. Our life together. The way he smelled. But five months later, I could still only remember Joel in the hospital. Barely alive, waiting for me to give the OK so he could die. The only smells I could conjure were the hospital smells. The only memory of us being close was holding Joelâs limp hand in mine, trying to avoid the tubes in his veins. I could not get out of the hospital, as hard as I tried. I could talk about Joel and recall certain events spent with him, but they were dulled. I kept waiting for my memories to become vibrant and real again.
Holly and I eventually hung up.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire by J.K. Rowling(2984)
Unfinished: A Memoir by Priyanka Chopra Jonas(2902)
Never by Ken Follett(2841)
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman(2273)
Machine Learning at Scale with H2O by Gregory Keys | David Whiting(2185)
Fairy Tale by Stephen King(2035)
Will by Will Smith(1989)
Rationality by Steven Pinker(1747)
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl(1636)
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly(1550)
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow(1538)
The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom(1513)
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr(1414)
The Becoming by Nora Roberts(1306)
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson(1302)
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner(1295)
A Short History of War by Jeremy Black(1287)
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry(1287)
New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional by Paul David Tripp(1249)