As a thingman that likes doing the writing, I often think wordishly. In grief, there's trouble with tenses. These days, if I'm talking about my wife, sometimes the past tense applies (which pisses me right off in general), but sometimes, the present tense still works. Kind of makes talking to someone who doesn't know my wife, or that she's dead, a personal minefield.
"Oh, my wife loved that song."
"She doesn't love it anymore?"
Somebody's about to learn some somber shit! Awkward silence in T-minus 5 and counting. Or I could've said 'My wife loves that song' which implies she's still alive, which is bullshit, because if she was still alive, I wouldn't be having this conversation right now, I'd be having a conversation with her, thank-you-kindly.
But I will always say "I love her" in the present tense. Her death did not interrupt that continuity. And don't even get me started on the conditional unreal tense with things she "would've done if she were here." Or the future progressive tense with "She'll be watching over me." It's more than I want to deal with: just too tense.
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