My husband died almost three years ago. He was really much too young to die and I was much too young to become a widow but there is usually not too much you can do about these things. My mother-in-law has been a widow for a long time and has many widow-friends and she says that in her experience, three years is kind of a magic number for adjusting to your Changed Life after losing your partner. She is quite an expert on this sort of thing and I trust her judgment. Am I expecting some sort of magical smoothness to appear in my life at this point?

Well... not really, no. You don't lose your husband, your partner, your best friend for 32 years without feeling a terrible sense of loss. I can tell you: it feels like an amputation & in a sense it is; you lose a significant part of who you have become. Adjusting to widowhood is a bit like a second adolescence, re-discovering who you are as an individual after all that time as a couple.

The grieving part is OK, actually. It feels healthy and normal. I don't mind crying bittersweet tears when I remember my husband; I want to remember him & I expect to miss him. But my recovery is complicated by experiencing his long stay in hospital & the trauma of watching him die there. People understand the sadness of widowhood; the whole culture understands it & provides support. But they do not understand the darker, more complicated recovery from that terrible illness. I have an approach-avoidance need to do something about that pain.

So I will try writing it.