Widower cleans up!

I had a good day today! I hung all my hoodies up on a lamp! (Don't worry, it's not plugged in) No more floor storage for the hoodies! I cleaned! I threw out five big bags of nothing but trash I'd previously been hoarding out of laziness.

Grieving folks will know what I mean when I say I was "cry-cleaning." Because when you clean, you never know what you're gonna find. In fact, cry-cleaning is just one of a whole class of new, grief-related cry-activities! There's cry-showering, cry-driving, cry-jazzercise, etc. With cleaning, you can move a pile of legit garbage and underneath find an irreplaceable memento that sets you to sobbing. I probably picked up fewer tissues than I actually used while cleaning, and there were a LOT of tissues to pick up.

But cleaning made me feel good. I made more good decisions. I took a shower (which is a real accomplishment!). My last job was roofing and I had to shower every day because of that. But I'm freelancing now. Something about grief, I forget to shower regularly. It's one of those normal parts of life that's in disarray now. But I've showered 2 days in a row now! High fives all around!

After the cleaning, I went to a seminar about grief from national speaker Alan Wolfelt. It was good but annoying, because I'm cynical enough to see that he's a national speaker. He has his act down pat, every joke, every proverb, every little quirk of voice that makes it sound like he's saying a practiced phrase for the first time, every time. He's a type-A go-getter, I know the sort. But I liked what he had to say.

Afterward, I went up and talked to him. I didn't really have a reason, but I wanted to exchange a few words and tell him about my wife. I crave sharing my story (can you tell?). I told him about how I felt like almost nobody really 'gets' what I'm struggling with. I told him that even at the grief support groups I attend twice a week, sometimes people who are normally very empathetic let down their empathy in favor of pity. Because I'm young. I'm usually the youngest person at grief groups by a good 15 years. So when I share my story, people invariably respond "but you're so young!" I like to pretend I'm in a Maybelline commercial and bat my eyelashes. "Thanks, I know!"

But what Mr. Wolfelt told me is to try and find more people like me, or possibly seek one-on-one counselling. The problem is that, well, 27-year-old spouses aren't just dropping like flies. So...

Hello, Internet! There's a lot more people here than there are in my home town. I figure bigger sample size, bigger possibility of similar people to share with. So, I have to ask.

Do you have a unique grief situation? Do you come out here to the Internet often? Let's get weird. I like comments from folks in mourning. You can post comments anonymously if you like. The world kept spinning after my wife died. But I know that in grief, the only thing that seems to be spinning is your head. It's not funny. But we can laugh about it!