Before I Was a Widow
I attended a wedding in Georgia this past weekend. I know this doesn’t sound significant, but it is. So let me explain.
I personally have only been in two weddings my entire life. My late husband, however, was asked to be in LOTS of weddings. Or at least we were invited to them, so yeah. I’ve been to A LOT of weddings over the years. I tried to count once and lost track, but it’s somewhere in the twenties for sure. Anniversary parties too.
Weddings were kind of our thing. It’s funny how a wedding can renew the love and appreciation you have for one another when you are part of a couple. We always loved to slow dance together. Then there was that game where all the married couples get on the dance floor and slowly sit down as the DJ calls out how long they’ve been married. That became our thing too, especially after we reached the 15-year mark.
Once, we were the second-to-last couple still standing on the dance floor. That was exciting. We laughed and talked about it for a long time afterward. So many great memories.
This time, there was no we. This was my first wedding as a widow.
Leading Up to the Wedding
When he left me in June 2020, I didn’t think I would ever be strong enough to attend another wedding. Same with funerals, but that’s another story. For a long time, I avoided weddings. Celebrations of almost any kind, really. Partly because of my GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and partly because I simply didn’t feel like celebrating.
A part of my reconnecting was a promise to myself that I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. Then I was invited to a wedding. Curiously, I said yes without any hesitation in my voice, although there was plenty of hesitation in my mind.
Maybe I broke my own rule. Or maybe something in me knew I was ready to test it. Either way, I knew I was going to have to walk into a room filled with all the things weddings represent—love, partnership, promises, futures—and somehow allow myself to be there without the person who had always stood beside me.
The anxiety leading up to it was real. First was wondering whether I could keep my composure just being there. Second was knowing that if the emotions came, I would have to let them come. That scared me. And finally, I wanted to be present. I didn’t want grief to take the entire experience away from me before I’d even had it.
My First Wedding as a Widow
I made it through, and more importantly, I’m happy I went.
There were moments when I felt like I was standing on the fringe of the celebration, observing something I used to belong to in a completely different way. There was a time when I walked into weddings as someone’s wife. We would sit together, laugh together and dance together. We would hear the vows and probably think about our own. We’d watch other couples and somehow come home appreciating what we had just a little bit more.
Now I was standing there alone. But I was standing there, and that mattered.
I didn’t need the day to prove anything to me about love. I already knew what great love felt like. I had lived it. I didn’t need someone else’s story to give me hope either. What I needed was to discover that I could walk into a place filled with memories and reminders of the life I lost and still be okay.
Maybe I wasn’t completely comfortable. Maybe I couldn’t do it without anxiety or without feeling the absence of the person who should have been beside me. But I was okay, and that was enough.
Another Healing Milestone
I’m still trying to digest and process the experience, but I know it was a personal accomplishment. Another baby step forward. Grief has forced me to measure progress differently. Sometimes progress isn’t moving on or leaving something behind. Sometimes it’s simply being able to stand somewhere you once thought would break you and realizing it didn’t.
A wedding once represented something Eric and I experienced together. This one became something different. It reminded me of slow dances. It reminded me of fifteen years. It reminded me of being almost the last couple standing on a dance floor and how ridiculously proud we were of ourselves. It reminded me of what I had, but it also showed me something about the person who remains.
I went, I stayed, and I felt what I needed to feel. Then I came home knowing I had crossed another threshold I once believed I couldn’t.
My heart was full—not because someone else’s love story had shown me what was possible, but because mine had already shown me what love could be. Somehow, I am still learning how to carry that love with me into places I once thought I could never enter alone.
For that, I am thankful.
Thank you for reading. I love you all –xxooC.
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