Don’t ask me how I am doing. I cannot honestly say that I am fine, or good, or doing well. Likely I will respond with a forced “okay,” because that is the best contribution I have to answer the thoughtless yet common greeting of “Hello, how are you doing?” But I am not okay. I am heartbroken and lost and miss my husband so much that it hurts. Yes, it has been nearly two and a half years since I lost him. In terms of love and grief, it may as well have been yesterday. For those of you who do not know what losing the love of your life is like, it will be hard for you to understand. For those of you who have loved with your mind, your heart, your entire being know that once you love so deeply, you never stop loving. When you lose your lover, your counterpart, your one and only, you continue to love deeply, but you also begin to grieve just as deeply. And though I may smile or laugh and possibly seem okay or even fine. I am not. My heart is broken. It will be broken either forever or until I meet my husband again. So, I will continue to say, “okay” when you ask me how I am. But please know that I say that only to keep you from pitying me, or thinking I am weird or stuck in the past, or very likely simply to keep myself from crying.
And this strange social dance, a dance around the truth, goes on. You can stay safely in your world and as soon as we part ways, fervently hope that nothing so terrible ever happens to you. And I will go about my day not really being okay, but putting one foot in front of the other. And when we meet again, we will repeat. And once in a while, you will look into my eyes and see the pain I carry. And once in a while, I will feel safe enough or maybe just sad enough to ask you for a hug. But for the most part, “Hello, how are you?” will be asked and answered a thousand times a day between strangers and friends alike without much thought put into either the question or the response.
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