Welcome and a little background

Introduction: the love story

In July 2015, at the age of 50, after two failed marriages and the certainty that'd I'd live the rest of my days happily uncoupled, I met Doug. He was 62, with three failed marriages under his belt. We bonded over the fact that neither of us was ever going to marry again.

As it turns out, the reason it didn't work out with anyone else is because we were dealing with our baggage and getting prepared for each other. I never believed in soulmates (truthfully, the word used to make me queasy in its schmoopiness); but then I met him.

After three years (and one day) together, Doug proposed and I said yes.

Four years and one day after our first not-a-date, we were married on the garden island of Kauai October 17 2019.

The end of our Happily Ever After

Exactly four months after our wedding, Doug underwent bifemoral aortic bypass surgery. The surgery went well, but complications developed that evening. Over the next three days, many dedicated and skilled healthcare professionals did their best to save his life, but on Thursday February 20 2020, my beloved husband died - and with him, so did our future. Really, so did I.

Becoming a widow so soon after becoming a wife is a horrifyingly surreal experience. And, in this society - where death is largely shoved under the rug and grief is kept hidden - it's damn near impossible to cope.

I've been posting on Facebook since the day of Doug's surgery, so my first order of business here is to bring in those posts to catch you up. Once that's done, you'll get my daily (ok, several times daily, TBH) posts chronicling my experiences with grief.

Why are you posting such personal shit?

Oh, man... what I said above about our society and how we treat death and grieving? THAT'S why: people hide their grief in public; they put on a happy face and say that they're doing okay. I can tell you that's probably not the truth. We hide our grief because it makes people uncomfortable, and that's to our own detriment. No, I don't relish the idea of having a mental and emotional breakdown for public consumption, but here's the thing: if other people were willing to do that, maybe I wouldn't feel so isolated. Maybe I would have been at least a tiny bit prepared for how fucking godawful this is. So if I can publicly share my experience, maybe some other woman or man will find this and see themselves in my experience - and maybe they won't feel so along.

I'd also like to be something of a resource for those people who are trying to support someone in grief. Spoiler alert: a lot of things you're doing and saying? Probably aren't as helpful as you'd like.

Why "Woman of Glass"?

At some point in my first few days after Doug died, I posted something about feeling as though I was walking through quicksand. But I realized the next day that was wrong: it wasn't that moving was difficult; it was more that I had to move slowly and gingerly through space, because I felt as though I were made of plate glass with millions of tiny, spiderlike cracks. One sudden move, and I was likely to shatter into a million pieces. It's now Day 20, and I still feel exactly the same as I did then.