My First Night Home as a Widow

By Julie Cornewell

Part One
I didn't want to come home. My mother-in-law told me that my children and I were welcome to stay as long as we wanted, but in my heart and soul I knew it was time to go. All the out-of-town relatives had returned to their hometowns. Scott's funeral was over and everyone else went back to their normal lives. As I packed my four children in the one van that we had left, I thought about how it wasn't fair that everyone else got to return to normal. My life would never be normal again.

As I pulled into the driveway of our family home, my mind went back to the day when Scott and I first looked at the house. It had just been posted in the online ads that morning. Scott found it accidently when he went to check the address of a house we had an appointment to look at. That had been less than four months before his auto accident. Through my windshield I could see the basketball hoop and two-car garage. When it came to buying our home that was two requirements that he had. My dream of watching him shoot hoops with our children was gone. So was the dream of having his and hers cars parked in the garage.

I unlocked the front door with my key not knowing what I would feel. When I opened our front door I felt both comfort and despair rush over me. Scott was gone but it was still home. Before settling I walked through the house to see if there were any immediate painful reminders. On the coffee table was the case to the movie we had watched the night before he died. He had some dirty clothes in the laundry. His notebooks where he had been working on a new song laid on the nightstand. His guitars were in the corner of the bedroom. He had a small section of clothes in the closet and a few drawers. I marveled at how little belongings my husband had actually had.

I then sat down on our bed. Correction. It was no longer our bed but my bed. I stood up immediately. The one thing I knew I could not do on that first night was sleep in the bed. It would be a week before I slept in the bed and over a year before I stopped sleeping on the right side.

I walked back into the kitchen and stood there. What next? Do I go in the living room and watch my favorite television show? Do I sit down and finish reading the novel I had started the week before? I needed to go on with my life but I didn't know how to start. It was then that my daughter yelled to me that she couldn't find a clean pair of jeans. I told her I would wash her some and started the laundry.

My life as a widow had begun.

Part Two
Today would have been Scott's thirty-third birthday and I still sometimes feel as clueless about going on with my life as I did almost two years ago. I considered selling the house for some time, but felt that living in it was a memorial to Scott. The house provides me with shelter and comfort. It was Scott who made it possible for us to buy the house, so I view it as an extension of him. He can no longer take care of me but the house he had bought for us will continue to do so. Thinking this way has made it easier to continue living here.

It's still hard for me to believe that he lived less than four months in this house. It's even harder to believe he's gone when he still receives mail or gets a phone call from a telemarketer. I still have all the utilities in his name. I feel that if I put them in mine, I will be erasing him.

I have changed many parts of the rooms in the house, making them mine. He would have never approved the pink girlish bedding that I have on the bed. He didn't want to have a dog and I have a wonderful little terrier mix. I can do whatever I want with my house. He gazes down at me from pictures, but the house is no longer ours. It is mine. It was his gift to me. Read more here: