My husband Harold Walkup, Hal to everybody, died on Saturday, October 3, 1998. We had been married thirty-eight years. I'm Bernadette, I'm 61, and I live in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the same house we bought in 1966.

Our grandson set up this computer for me in the spring because he said I needed something to do in the evenings besides stare at Hal's chair. He was right, though I didn't thank him for it at the time. I started writing a little each month about how it's going. A few ladies from my grief group read it, and then people I've never met started writing to me from all over, so I've kept going. The first anniversary is a couple of weeks away. I don't know yet if I'll keep this up after that. We'll see.

If you've just lost your husband or wife, I am so sorry. I made a page of things that helped me, and a few that didn't. Maybe some of it will help you.

October
Hal raked the whole front yard that Saturday, came in, sat down in his recliner to watch the ball game and his heart just stopped. I was in the kitchen making cabbage rolls. The paramedics came fast and tried hard. The doctor told me afterward it was very quick. I have held on to that. The rest of that month I don't remember well. People brought food. I signed things.

November
Thanksgiving at our daughter Christine's. She set a place for everybody and then, without saying anything, didn't put a chair where Hal always sat. I was grateful. I couldn't have looked at an empty one.

December
I didn't put up a tree. On the Saturday before Christmas my son Michael and his two boys showed up with a little one from the lot behind the fire hall and the ornament box from the basement, and they decorated it while I sat on the couch and let them. The boys hung Hal's old bowling league ornament right in front.

January
The quietest month of my life. The lake-effect snow came and kept coming. Hal always shoveled. The boy next door started doing our walk before school without anybody asking him. I leave cookies on the porch for him every Friday.

February
Hal paid every bill for thirty-eight years. I didn't know which bank the car loan was with. I sat at the kitchen table with a shoebox of envelopes and learned. I was angry at him for the first time that month, for leaving me the shoebox. Then I felt terrible for being angry. My grief group leader says that's all normal, the angry part and the terrible part.

March
I started going to a grief group on Tuesday nights. Eight widows, two widowers and a box of tissues. I didn't talk for three weeks. Now I bring the coffee cake.

April
I finally went through Hal's closet. I kept his flannel work shirts and his good Sunday tie. Everything else went to the St. Vincent de Paul store, and his winter coats went to the men's shelter. I found a grocery list in his jacket pocket in his handwriting. It said "milk, bread, cough drops for B." I have it in my Bible.

May
Hal grew tomatoes every summer for forty years. Big Boys, Better Boys and a row of little cherry ones for the grandkids. I never touched them, that was his. This year I bought the plants at the same garden center, dug the same bed and put them in. I talked to him the whole time. The neighbors must think I've gone soft in the head.

June
June 18 would have been thirty-nine years. The kids took me to dinner at the place where we had our twenty-fifth. I made it through dessert before I cried, which I count as a win.

July
The first ripe tomato. I ate it standing up in the garden with salt from my apron pocket, just the way he did. Best tomato I ever had.

August
A bus trip to Niagara Falls with a widowed persons group from church. Forty-one of us on a bus, and I laughed so hard at lunch I got the hiccups. It was the first time I laughed like that without feeling guilty afterward.

September
I've canned twenty-two quarts of tomatoes and given away more than I can count. The anniversary is coming on October 3. My daughter asked what I want to do that day. I think I'll go to the 8 o'clock Mass, then rake the front yard. He would like that.

If you'd like to write to me, I would be glad to hear from you. I answer every letter, usually with my morning coffee.
[email protected]

kind people have visited since Easter.
Last updated Tuesday, September 21, 1999
© 1999 Bernadette Walkup