It’s January, so I shouldn’t be surprised that I find myself feeling blue. January has always been a difficult month. December is often gray and cold, longer nights and shorter days. But there is the anticipation of the holidays; of friends and family gathered. There is no such fun in January—it is yet too cold and gray to anticipate the possible rebirth and warmth of spring; weeks on the other side of December’s cheer. It’s a tough time. Kevin used to steer clear of me in January, knowing that I struggled. He would surreptitiously put seed catalogs where I would find them hoping it would bring me from my gloom.

I had made the conscious decision at the end of last year to spend January in a sort of hibernation. Last fall brought working, traveling, teaching, sending my daughter off to college, and moving to a new home in a new city. It was a time of great change and exhaustion; a time of readjustment, excitement, and fear. Mostly, it was a time when I was too busy to think. So I made the decision that I would spend January being fairly quiet. I would occasionally visit nearby museums or see a film, but mostly I would concentrate on writing, reading, resting, and my job. Though I wouldn’t turn down an invitation, I wouldn’t actively seek out things to do with others. I knew it would be difficult, but I also felt it was necessary. Part of the difficulty is that slow, quiet alone-time often brings opportunities for grief to settle in with me under the covers.

It became even harder than I anticipated with the loss of people and places early into the month. The news of David Bowie’s passing caught me (and the rest of the world) unprepared and deeply saddened. His music fills a fairly large part of my collection. Early on in my musical life I became enamored of glam rock and he was its godfather. His creativity and artistic abilities were so deep and wide. What an impact he had on the worlds of music, art, and fashion. As always happens when someone famous passes, there were comments from other widowed friends. People say that they don’t understand their friends being so sad about this person that they’ve never even met. How can people even begin to equate the loss of this person with the grief they are feeling over the loss of their partner and soulmate, they ask.

I understand their feelings, but I also want to explain that I perfectly understand the outpouring of sadness and how these strangers can feel such a loss in their lives. No, they didn’t know David Bowie personally, but they knew a great deal about him because of his music, because he shared so much of himself with the world. We didn’t know him intimately, but we grieve his loss because he knew us, or

I’ve also learned this month that my favorite coffee shop, Foggy Bottom, is closing. It is also a loss. It is where I sequestered myself to write, feeling for the first time like a real writer as I sat down with my laptop and a well-made mocha. Most of my Master’s degree was accomplished there—hundreds of pages of thesis and multiple critical essays. I became friends with the owner, Doug, and we often chatted about books. I recently confessed that it was difficult to go into the shop when Kevin was sick, because seeing people there going about their normal lives felt like a slap in the face. It is difficult to explain how much one cannot understand how everyone else’s life can go on when theirs is so upside down. Many nights I drove past on my way home from the hospital and wished that the coffee shop was open so I could stop in and pretend that everything was the way it was before, even for just ten minutes.  I couldn’t bear to go in after Kevin died because it was also a place where I enjoyed being by myself, a place that I appreciated as an escape. How could I have ever

I also had the opportunity to walk through the first apartment that Kevin and I lived in after we married. I had a small apartment on my own and we lived in it for about a month after we married. But then we moved to our first place together, Third Street—an apartment so full of character and charm that it came to be known as simply that “Third Street.” We had a tiny place in an old house that had been divided up and turned into four apartments. We made life-long friends, cooked in a closet-turned-kitchen, and learned to live with each other in that apartment. The house has been sold and the new owners are doing extensive renovations to both the house and the barn behind the house. Some of the character remains, but much has been replaced by shiny new countertops and stark, white cabinetry. It is more efficient and modern and will make a profit for the new owners after they’ve put many hours of labor into it. As I walked up the oak staircase into what was our apartment, many memories came flooding back: cooking in that kitchen, studying at the desk in the bedroom, walking to the ice cream shop. It was harder than I thought to stand in that space, but I’m glad I did.

So in addition to telling my fellow widows that we can grieve for people we didn’t know, I would also tell them that we grieve for more than just people. I suppose when we grieve for a person it’s for more than just the flesh and blood of that person. But we also grieve for places and things, and events, and times, and ways of being. I want to tell them that grief really knows no bounds or limits. I remember when we were expecting our second child. We sat our son down and explained to him that our love was like the flame of a candle—I’m sure I read this in a parenting book and hoped it would work for us. The idea, though, is that the flame of one candle can light many others and never diminish itself. Love is like that, but so is grief. The grief I feel at the loss of David Bowie doesn’t diminish any of the grief I have felt at any other loss, especially Kevin’s. If anything, it makes it richer and more powerful. The grief I feel at losing my favorite coffee shop, or of now living in a different place, they all just signal for me that I’ve been fortunate enough to have many attachments. They may not each hold the same importance, but losing them means losing a piece of the rich and varied tapestry that is my life. I’m thankful to have had them, to know that my life is better in some way because I’ve connected at more than a superficial level with the man I married, and the music I listen to, and the people who lived in the downstairs flat, and the guy that served me coffee. 

I’ll get through January with more tears shed than I anticipated. But they are tears well-earned, and I am grateful for them.