Love with nowhere to go

Today used to mean something. Now it’s complicated.

If life went as planned, today would have been my and Jamie’s 14th wedding anniversary. 

Life did not go as planned.¹

Instead, today is just another day. It’s a painful day, a confusing day, a private day. It’s a day that I used to celebrate with a fancy meal out with my favorite person. It’s a day that made me feel like I’d accomplished something—another year, another bit of proof of a successful marriage! It’s a day I once looked forward to.

Now, September 27 sits on my calendar like an elephant in the room. It’s a heavy reminder of what once was, but it’s a date that few, if any, other people acknowledge. Unlike Jamie’s death date or birthday, our wedding anniversary doesn’t hold the same significance for others who miss him greatly.

In an online group I’m part of, several young widows recently described their would-be wedding anniversaries as “parallel universe” days. For us, they’re stark reminders of what should have been. Somehow, though, we are all living different lives, in which the person we vowed to love until death is gone.

But death doesn’t mean you stop loving someone. As Jamie Anderson so eloquently put it, grief is an expression of love. “It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot,” she wrote. “All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

September 27 always meant champagne. (Getty Images)

A few months after Jamie died, I started to go on dates. This, too, was an expression of grief—and, therefore, love. I was desperate for connection, distraction, and some way to feel closer to the person I missed so much.

Unsurprisingly, the dates were not successful. I logged onto dating apps with the sole purpose of finding matches who reminded me of Jamie. I went on a few dates with someone who eerily looked like my dead husband; it didn’t work. I hooked up with a man who spelled his name “Jaime”; that also didn’t work. I met up with a few guys who weren’t interested in hearing me talk about grief; not a chance. I connected with a fellow grieving widower, a love-bomber, and a guy who adored his dog just as much as Jamie loved ours; nope, nope, nope.

Each failed attempt at dating left me feeling empty and hopeless. I wanted so badly to get away from my current pain and to fast-forward to future happiness.

It wasn’t until I met Billy that I realized the only way forward was to honor both the past and present.

Going out with Billy felt different. We met around the one-year anniversary of Jamie’s death, but didn’t go on our first date until several months later. From the start, we talked openly about grief and didn’t shy away from sharing how our respective losses had shaped our lives. 

The real kicker, though, came a couple of months after we started dating. 

We’d gone to a party together and returned back to my house, happy and giddy, basking in our beginning-of-a-relationship glow. But the mood shifted once I remembered what I had planned for the following day. My therapist and I had agreed that it was time for me to revisit the place where Jamie died. Suddenly, feeling giddy felt wildly inappropriate.

I told Billy that I needed to reconnect with Jamie. I wanted to watch some old videos of him, to witness proof of his vibrant life before visiting the site of his death. I gave Billy the option to leave or to stay and watch the videos with me, warning him that if he chose the latter, there would be plenty of tears.

Billy decided to stay. And we both cried. As we watched footage from Jamie’s 30th birthday, Billy began to sob. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked, handing him a tissue.

“I just realized that falling in love with you means falling in love with Jamie,” Billy replied.

I will never, ever forget those words.

It took me a while to figure out that I could fall in love with Billy without falling out of love with Jamie. Despite what my sweet dumb brain told me, my current relationship wasn’t at odds with my past marriage. 

Now, Billy and I own a home together in Atlanta, the city where Jamie and I met and became adults. We sleep in a bed with a headboard that my husband built. Our house holds various reminders of Jamie, including a painting of J and our dog, Henry, sitting on the stoop of our old home. That painting was a Christmas gift from Billy—a gesture that told me that he wanted to live with and honor my love for Jamie. Now it hangs in our living room, where our almost-two-year-old daughter loves to look at it.

I’m proud of the ways that Billy and I have forged our own relationship while honoring the past. But that’s not to say it’s easy. It’s really freaking hard.

Loving while grieving is difficult. And there are plenty of things that have made our relationship even more challenging: Getting pregnant at the same time that a global pandemic was declared. Moving to a new state. Facing financial stressors. Dealing with all the changes and exhaustion that come from being new parents.

Maybe the hardest thing, though, is fighting my own instincts to protect myself. I know how awful it can be for everything to fall apart. Which is why I often—unfortunately—sabotage our happiness. Whenever things are especially good between me and Billy, there’s usually a dumb fight right around the corner. I don’t realize it until after the fact, but I get scared when things go too smoothly between us. So I subconsciously figure out a way to mess things up. If I make us unhappy, then the universe can’t catch us off guard!²

It’s true: Grief is love with nowhere to go. I can’t transfer the love I had for Jamie directly to Billy. But that unspent love can manifest itself in other ways. As grief, yes, but also anger and resentment. 

In many ways, my relationship with Billy is so much harder than my relationship with Jamie ever was. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong or less-than. If anything, it means that I am making a conscious choice to be with Billy, despite our challenges. That choice means a lot.

Do you get anniversary champagne if there’s only one person left to drink it? (Getty Images)

I don’t have a tidy ending for today’s essay, which is perhaps appropriate. People want to believe that, once someone finds love again, all of their previous heartache and suffering magically disappear.

I hate to break it to you, but that’s not the case. I carry my love—my grief—for Jamie with me every day. At the same time, I have decided to make the absurdly brave choice to love Billy, despite knowing that one of us will be left with tremendous grief when the other dies.

These are the things that very few people talk about. Instead, we see the successes. Social media is full of anniversary posts, posed family photos, and other proof that our peers’ lives have more or less stayed along their expected trajectory. (And when life slips off that track? We might share a brief post or two, but then it’s back to blasting the highlights.)

I don’t fault people for sharing the happy moments, but I do wonder if they know how unintentionally hurtful and alienating seeing only those posts can be. I think about how blissfully unaware I was as a newlywed, shouting each new wedding anniversary from the rooftops. I’d often imagine how Jamie and I would celebrate—how we’d broadcast it to the world—when we hit year 10, 20, 50.

Never, in all of my daydreaming, did I imagine that Jamie would die nearly nine months shy of our ninth wedding anniversary. Never did I imagine that there would be another partner in my life, one whom I would also love deeply.

Today would have been my 14th wedding anniversary. It’s not. However, today does mark the fifth time that Billy has been by my side on September 27. There are no Hallmark cards, typical Facebook posts, or fancy dinner reservations to mark this kind of milestone. Still, it means something.

xoxo
KHG

1. Hello to the new people here! I hope you’re ready for a newsletter that’s sometimes about grief because I’ve got a lot to say about that topic. In 2017, my husband, Jamie, died while running a half marathon. He was 32. If you’re up for it, you can read more about that experience.

2. This isn’t an approach I recommend. I’m working on it.