We are quickly approaching a year since Patrick died. In many ways, this past month has been one of the hardest. With the marathon and the holidays behind me, I have felt unmoored, and as much as I’d like to keep drifting and linger in the open ocean, CR and my job keep me bumping against the shore of unrelenting responsibilities. In the final weeks of Patrick’s life, we had so much help — bodies bringing food, cleaning, helping nurse Patrick, and visitors — that I longed to just get my house and my own routine back. After the funeral, everyone left, and I had about two weeks of days alone at home, but that was consumed by all of the paperwork that accompanies death.

With just CR and me in the house in the intervening months, I’ve realized that I never got back into a “normal” routine. My ability to plan ahead in my personal life has been crippled, and I have spent much of my time at home reacting to things in front of me — piles of laundry, dirty dishes, meals, toys underfoot, dust, mail, bills, baths — in haphazard flurries followed by ignoring them completely. In the time Patrick’s been gone, I haven’t had a time to turn inward, to grieve alone, to drift and come to terms with an underlying depression that I feel just under the surface. I need a break from reality in a way that, as mother to a four-year-old, I will never get. So, I’m feeling stuck and tired and anxious. The constant torrent of troubling national news hasn’t helped much, either.

Earlier this month, I read an article about the “Widowhood Effect” by Canadian writer Christina Frangou, who was also widowed in her 30s. Perhaps some of what I’m experiencing is related to what she describes: “No one warned me about the cognitive impairment that comes with grief. Tears, heartache, depression – these are expected, but the sustained diminishment of my thinking skills astonishes me.” As I read, I compared my experience to her own. She and her husband were unable to have children, and while I agreed with much of what she wrote, I found myself bristling and wanting to shout at her, “This whole experience is so much harder when you have a young child who needs you to be okay and stable!”

For the most part, I HAVE been okay and stable. CR and I have a lot of fun together, and I am amazed by her joy and enthusiasm. She and I have been able to cry together, too. But her very existence has prevented me from a deep, dark sulk, which, in ways, I still feel I need.

A walk outside in the sunshine would probably help, too.