autism

I never remarried.

There is a sort of stigma behind being a widower that is unique in its terror and uncompromising in its destruction of the soul.

Maybe it's selfish, but I don't want to go through the experience of witnessing death just as an onlooker. I have no interest in facing mortality and going through the ego-crushing and mind-ruining 'stages of grief' yet again. Imagine that this is the one, the true love you cried and sweat and toiled and bled for, torn from your grasp by the hands of fate. Why subject yourself to that again?

And the aftermath: There is pity on those husbands that outlive their wives, but not as great as the subconscious revulsion, the thank-god-it-isn't-me halfhearted sympathy of the common man who could never understand the suffering — nor would he ever want to. It's not something to commiserate with because it's uncomfortable to think about on a primal level — failure as the man-god-protector figure. You were supposed to take care of the family, watch over her and the kids, be the knight in shining armor, and most certainly not stand idly and helplessly while everyone you've ever cared for is swept under the cloak of death. I think of commitment and my chest swells with the fear of becoming the last one left. Trying to internally frame and imagine the idea of outliving everyone, again, like the last several times I had this discussion with myself and made the wrong decision.

Here's to the next hundred years.