Today was one of those days where everything felt extra stressful. Just dealing with life made me want to run away and hide under a bed for a few hours… or at least to run away and dive into a carton of ice cream, or a pile of Cheetos. Anything with a lot of calories would have been good.

I was considering my husband’s Facebook page today. I have access to it so I’ve left the account active, but I think it’s time to submit the form for it to be memorialized. I don’t want to leave it the way it is, and I don’t want to delete it. Letting it be ‘memorialized’ will lock it in place, frozen in time but still available to his friends so they can see the things he shared, and leave a thought if they like. I probably should have done this a month or so ago, but I avoided it. Today I realized why: if his account is memorialized then my relationship status is going to change. I’ll no longer be married to Jeff. It might continue to read “married” or it might change, I’m not actually sure. I may change it myself. In the greater scheme of things one’s relationship status on Facebook is pretty insignificant, but for me it will be a reflection of the changes in my life. I have yet to embrace the term “widow” and own it for myself. I think there’s a part of me that feels if I claim that title then it makes things even more real. Maybe it’s time to do that.

I spent time this afternoon looking back through his timeline and feeling very, very lost again. He didn’t post a lot, so each little update had extra significance to me. Each was an insight into what he was doing, what he was thinking, into which technologies he’d stumbled across and found so cool he wanted to share with everyone. I could feel his enthusiasm in each update. I could feel his optimism and his hope for the future. It made my grief feel very fresh again, and that was hard to take for a while.

And so I did run to the grocery, but I also talked myself out of the worst of it all and left with only a few small treats. At the time I felt good about that choice, but at this point I’ve moved back to thinking that the ice cream really would have been a good idea. It’s a constant tug of war.

In the end I am going to try to find better ways to seek comfort, ways that don’t involve massive amounts of calories and a high fat content.  Music, art and SL, alone or in any combination, are much better choices. Sitting in a deck chair and gazing out at a calm sea sounds wonderful to me. As I’m a bit landlocked, and it’s quite cold here at the moment, I’ll have to visit the beaches in SL for my solitude. Otium is a pretty, peaceful place to explore. There were lots of little spaces to gather with friends and chat, or just to sit quietly on your own, as I did.

And when I tire of sitting by the virtual ocean I can always return to my tunes and escape. Sometimes it’s the words that help, sometimes it’s just the comforting sound of a favorite artist that can lift you back up and set you on your feet again. There is more power in music to heal me than in anything else.

But the ice cream would be good too.

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