It’s an odd sort of word. Widow. I keep trying it on for size – widow’s weeds … widow’s walk … widow-woman – but can’t say I’m especially enamoured. Rather vainly, I don’t consider myself sufficiently wizened. On the other hand, widowhood – that period of indefinable length which I have apparently now entered – sounds rather inviting. It conjures up a black cape or cloak, with a good-sized hood on it. Like Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Actually, I think I’d look pretty good, wending my way across the windswept marshes. Although, all that billowing material would be bound to slow you down.
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One of the major downsides to cohabitation is the fact that you can enjoy the most wonderful day and be pretty much skipping around the place, only for your partner to arrive home after the most appalling of days and within a minute all that joie de vivre has been squashed underfoot.
It’s just a law of physics, or possibly chemistry, that if you introduce one element to another, and one of those elements has had an insufferably crappy day, then the crappiness always comes out on top.
It used to drive me mad. In fact, I would sometimes insist that John had an hour or so to himself when he got in from work, just to calm down or acclimatise to the domestic environment. Or I would simply disappear into another part of the house where he couldn’t find me and hope that by the time we next met up he wouldn’t be quite so pissed off with the world.
Of course, since John’s death my thoughts on the matter have had to be amended slightly. If I wake up in a funk now, or manage to develop a certain crotchetiness during the day, my only option is to wait for it to pass, like bad weather. Either that or try to analyse it into oblivion, which is often too tedious to contemplate. There is no one around now, or due home, to whom I can kvetch and moan in an attempt to alleviate my grumpy load. Not unless I’ve previously arranged to meet someone at some point during the day (or hastily done so with that sole intent). But even moaning to a friend is not the same as moaning to your husband. One doesn’t feel any sort of guilt making one’s husband a little bit miserable. That’s what they’re there for. In fact, in all sorts of ways once you’ve been together for a couple of years you begin to treat your partner with the same level of contempt previously reserved for yourself.