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Vona Stewart

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Black Hen Books
Rigby, ID 83442

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About Vona

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soverymom

💔 widow
📚 writer @vonastewart

When Eric and I had been married four years, we bo

When Eric and I had been married four years, we bought our first home and moved to Idaho. That same year, a man named Tom went on the Antiques Roadshow with a stoneware jug. Tom learned his jug was worth quite a lot and he and his wife Carol used the monies from its sale to fund the adoption of their son.

Four years later, Tom died at age 46.

I fell down a rabbithole the other night, trying to remember the man’s name. I found his obituary (Thomas D Ropella, 2008) and cried because he kind of looks like Eric. Or rather, Eric kind of looked like him. They had the same vibes, anyway: warm, safe, loved their wives, loved their families, were good with kids, read nerdy fantasy. Curly hair. Glasses.

And they were both 46 when they died.

I found his wife’s Facebook page (private, but some photos are public) and cried harder. Tom ended up missing so much and Carol just had to pick up the pieces and raise their kids by herself. From what little I can see, they’re doing fine. Just like we’re doing fine. If you define ‘fine’ as “mysteriously and confusingly surviving in spite of it all.”

I feel such a kinship with other grievers, even if we’ve never met. There’s a feeling only we know—a hollowing out of the soul, a quiet ache that becomes part of us. It’s not just the absence of the person we loved; it’s the loss of a shared world, the collapse of our collective ‘we.’

Grievers don’t forget. Even when we are ‘fine.’

We know what it’s like to wake up over and over in a world where they no longer exist. We don’t have to imagine it.

We don’t flinch at each other’s tears or try to fix what can’t be fixed. We don’t have to explain why certain days hurt more or why joy feels complicated.

We are members of a club no one wants to join, bound by an understanding that grief has reshaped and redefined us.

In each other, we find a safe harbor, a quiet nod that says, “You’re not alone in this.”

And though we often carry our heaviest grief in lonely, solitary moments, somehow knowing there are others out there helps.

My love goes out to grievers everywhere this complicated and thorny holiday season. I see you.

I waited for you at the top of the stairs. I wait

I waited for you at the top of the stairs.

I waited as the sun sunk beneath the horizon and the house where you lived and breathed and ate and laughed filled up with golden light.

I waited until the shadows emerged from the dusky purples and blazing oranges. Waited as they lengthened, reaching across the floorboards where you walked and rocked our babies and danced with me.

I waited as those shadows inched up the walls and swallowed our smiling faces hanging there.

I listened as the space between seconds stretched, then stopped completely.

I rested my elbows on my knees and cradled my head in my hands and could not rouse myself to replace the battery in the clock on the mantel.

And I could not eat or move or change my clothes.

I prayed for the stairs to collapse, for the house to cave in, for the holes in our chests to widen, combine, and explode.

For a supernova.

For a black hole to open up beneath us and swallow everything.

I did not want to be where you were not.

The neighbors would come and stand before the empty lot, the place where our house was, a steaming, fathomless pit.

They’d scratch their heads and ask, “Wasn’t there a house here? Wasn’t there a family and a life and a dog and a husband and a wife? Weren’t there children playing basketball in the driveway and riding bikes down the street?”

“Where did it all go?” they’d wonder before going home and loading the dishwasher and folding the laundry and watching their show on TV.

But nothing swallowed us. And worse, the shadows did not stay.

The sun rose and trees grew foolish, hopeful buds and flowers bloomed and great fat clouds rolled across the sky.

Days and months and years passed.
And sometimes I still sit there at the top of the stairs, waiting.

#widow #grief #partnerloss #griefislove #grievingprocess #livingwithgrief #loveandloss #normalizegrief #griefawareness #lossimpact #griefjourney #loss

Your mom called me last week. She was already cryi

Your mom called me last week. She was already crying. It’s time, she said, to get family photos done.

I started crying too.

She gets it. She says she nearly died when it was time to take family pictures after your sister died. And here we are again. A missing family member. Someone irreplaceable. Someone who left another gigantic hole.

A photographer has been hired; colors have been picked. I know it needs to happen; I’ve been meaning to… trying to… but it has just been too hard.

Our last family photos—just us—were taken in late 2019. We pulled clothes from our closets and did our best to coordinate; we drove to a nearby campsite and set up the tripod.

We were all freezing and laughing, rushing to get back into the warm embrace of the running car.

Ben, not quite 10 years old, took some blurry, but cherished pictures of you and me at the end; your arms around me, your smile wide.

The following year, around the same time, I was in the middle of putting together outfits for our family picture. You’d be on crutches, but I thought we could go to the same place—bring a chair for you. I was going to get them done on time for once.

And then you died.

Now we’re halfway through 2023 and Ben seems so far from almost-10 I can hardly process it. He’s filling out, looking more and more like a man and less like a little boy. You’ve missed so much.

We need new family pictures. I know it. But... it’s a knife through the heart.

We’ll bring a framed portrait of you. Pose awkwardly with it, I guess. A piece of Fujifilm paper where your beating heart should be.

We’re all going to wear our jewelry (necklaces + tie pins) engraved with your fingerprint. I’ll sew a handkerchief from one of your plaid shirts and tuck it into somebody’s pocket.

It’s never enough, but we try.

Anyway. It’s a bandaid that needs to be ripped off. I’ve been messing with the curling, blackened edges for far too long. What did you always say as the shutter clicked? “Everybody say fart sandwiches?” “Say boogers & cheese?” Something funny like that. It always made the kids laugh at the exact right moment.

I hate that you’re not here, my love. I hate that we have to do this without you.

I was determined to use audio from a new source, b

I was determined to use audio from a new source, but @the.wanderingpaddy just nails it every time. ❤️‍🩹

It’ll be two and a half years without Eric on Friday and we’re still learning to live with his love in different ways. 💔❤️‍🩹

#grief #widow #partnerloss #parentloss

Eric died two years, five months ago today, April

Eric died two years, five months ago today, April 26. #twentysucketh We’re almost halfway to three whole years and I’m officially older than he’ll ever be. 💔 I don’t know how we’ve managed; it feels just as impossible as it did when it happened.

It’s been a rough day after a long night of anxiety and insomnia, so I don’t feel very eloquent. I just want to wrap up in a quilt made of his shirts and cry. I’ve been reading the big binder of letters we wrote to each other before we ever met in person and I’ll be back when I’m a little less sleep deprived to share some of my favorite parts. 💌💌💌

#widow #partnerloss #grief

Grief waves come and go. Sometimes it’s a cras

Grief waves come and go.

Sometimes it’s a crash and smash. A flash flood shock. A violent, sink or swim fight to keep air in your lungs as you’re dashed, repeatedly, against cruel and jagged rocks.

Other times it’s simpler. There’s still the initial shock; the surprise sneak wave that drags you from the shore, but you know the drill. You know how to ride it out; let the grief wash over you and take you where it will.

I don’t want to jinx anything, but this is a fairly simple one. I am battered but not bruised. The shoreline is shrinking, but I am in the dead man’s float, arms and legs starfished; my body cradled by this thing that so often threatens to drag me under. I will eventually wash up somewhere, a little sunburned and waterlogged, but no more worse for wear.

While I drift, I will say his name and allow myself to miss him with all of me. I will lean in, admit out loud how lost and inadequate I feel without him. I will long for the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand on my cheek. I will cry the big, ugly, body-wracking sobs I don’t often have time for. I will grieve the loss of him, the loss of us, the loss our babies carry with them in their bones.

I will love. That’s all this is, after all. An ocean of love for him, and no where for it to go.

#grief #partnerloss #widow

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