I was a widow once. When I say once, I mean that’s how many times it’s happened.

I was the girl and then young woman who grew up always wanting to find her husband. Her tried and true. Her one and only. He would be the one thing in my life that never changed, that would hold me and promise to never leave. It’s quite possible this desire was born when I was only three years old after my parents split up, planting the seed of relationship insecurity.

I got pregnant just after I turned twenty by a man who threatened to leave any time the whim struck him or when he wanted to be mean because he knew how much the thought scared me. After he and I split, I found a few who weren’t into promises of the string tying sort, leaving me wondering if I’d ever find the man of my dreams, the one who came home every night before dinner.

Then at 28, I met a nice guy with a real job at a radio station. He was funny and brash with clear, sparkly eyes, feathered hair and he liked to see live music like I did. He shared early memories of being raised in a church where people spoke in tongues and then deeper things, like the guilt he carried for not ever being able to twist his tongue like they did. His humor and candor became more passionate in time, growing into outbursts that came out of nowhere. And then one day after a really big fight, he showed up on my doorstep, dropped on one knee while shoving a ring on my finger.

Will you marry me?, is such an unfair thing to ask under those kinds of conditions. It seemed saying No was awfully mean and I wasn’t that kind of person. So, I said Yes under duress and wore the ring on my left hand, just like I was supposed to. I started shopping at the Dollar Store in the neighboring town purchasing small round fishbowls by the dozens. I thought they’d look pretty with tea lights in them when we got married on our shoestring budget.

Finally, I thought, I’ll marry a man and have a dad for my son, just like I’ve always wanted.

But then, new stories came that were more unsettling than speaking in tongues like trying to convince me that my seven year old son was possessed by the devil. I took the ring off and brought it back to the store that he still owed money to. Never again did I answer the phone when the caller id showed his name. 

At about the same time, I reconnected with an old friend who was doing time in the state of Oregon. I thought for sure that they had the wrong guy because the one I once knew would never cause harm to another. We wrote letters for the better part of a year up until just a month before his release. At that time, he told me that he was going to come visit as long as he didn’t get deported. I pictured this man, whose name I had never spoken in my home, showing up on my doorstep, forcing me to turn to my young child and tell him why he was there for a visit. I recoiled at the thought and sent a letter back with both questions and a strong warning. I didn’t receive a reply which I thought was most likely a good thing.

A year or so later, I almost landed one more. I even moved to the Bay Area and we lived together, but he was a musician who is now very famous and didn’t want to be tied down while out on the road. So, I settled down as a single mom, figuring that I was way past my prime at the ripe old age of thirty.

I then spent my thirties working very, very hard and when I wasn’t, I lived the life of Riley.

Because, I mean, I deserve it right? To chase a dream I’m capable of realizing?

Finally, at thirty-seven, I heard from my old friend, the one who got deported. In the time since we last spoke, I had acquired plenty of guilt for writing a letter that seemed pretty harsh in hindsight. The truth was I had a crush on him since I was nineteen and I was quite sure that the Universe had only been testing us.

He told me, I love you. I’ve always loved you and I want to love you for the rest of my life.

His words were music to my tired ears as the life I was living was trying to kill me. We were engaged in under five months and then got married later that year on his birthday.

What are you doing? my closest friends asked.

Trust me, I told them. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. Just wait! You’ll see… he really is amazing.

Okay, make us a deal, they responded. If this thing falls apart, come back because we’ll miss you.

I laughed in return, but agreed to their silly request thinking I was done with California forever.

So, I packed up my things and headed north to make a new life with a man in a neighboring country. They spoke English like us, but to them I was still a foreigner. I landed there with the highest hopes and a deep, longing heart. We got married at the tail end of summer in our backyard on the banks of the Kootenay River. One of my new husband’s friends told me on our wedding day, It will never last.

His words made me angry. I disagreed with him right there on the spot despite all the signs that suggested otherwise.

I homeschooled my stepsons, made my own sourdough and bought raw cow’s milk from the farmer up the road. I planted a garden, started raising chickens and refined the art of homemaking. I did everything I could think of to be a good wife, a good woman even with my own lingering problems.

But there were issues that couldn’t be ignored, ones that frightened me like swearing there were evil spirits trying to get into our home with the one and only objective of trying to harm me. I believed what he said, or at least that he thought he was right. I could see the evil spirits he fought when he eyed my chefs knives clinging to the magnetic strip on the wall very late on New Year’s Eve. I spent the remainder of that dark winter night sitting in my car in the driveway while he stood outside my driver’s side window with non-blinking eyes, mouth agape but saying nothing. It reminded me of the movie, The Shining.

There were also the threats to call immigration and have me deported, the deep laughter that seemed to rise from a sinister place when he reminded me that I wasn’t from there. The final time I experienced one of his psychotic breaks, I took a beating I thought would end my life, but I was too scared to call the Mounted Police as I pictured them saying, Go home! As in back to California, only despite the promise I made to my friends, I didn’t have anything left there. Not a home or job or many of the things I sold off in one final gamble.

So, I bided my time for twelve more days, waiting to leave on a trip that had been planned for two months, knowing that driving away then wouldn’t be cause for alarm, making him erupt even further. For twelve days he screamed from our bedroom upstairs, I want my wife!, while I shook curled up next to my dog in the spare bedroom downstairs beneath him.

I drove away one morning with a tall cup of coffee, a small suitcase, my dog and a Coleman stove with no intention of ever returning. I was thirty-nine years old, afraid for my life as well as incredibly humiliated. I turned on my heel that day and never shed a tear over losing him or our marriage.

I should have listened to my friends, I thought. Apparently, I didn’t know what I was doing.

For the next year I begged him to grant me a divorce, but he kept saying no, enjoying the control that it still held over me. One day, I placed a stressed out call to the IRS wondering if I could file my taxes as Single rather than Married. They told me words that gave me the only version of a divorce I would ever experience, To us, you are single as we don’t recognize your Canadian marriage.

It was the final shutting of that door for me, even if Canada still saw me as married. I then quit asking and pleading. Instead, I spent all of my time rebuilding my life, trying to find the part of myself that could hold my heart while promising to never abandon me. I found her standing in the shadows, the same one who could make her own sourdough bread, raise chickens and be a good mother. She was buried beneath years of shame that whispered to her, You aren’t enough. When in fact, she very much was.

Five years passed after I drove away and still no tears over him or the marriage were shed except for ones tied to regret and the loss of financial security. And then one day, just after Christmas in 2017, I woke to a message that the man I once married, a father of three, a son to his parents and friend to many, crossed over the center line for unknown reasons in his car, dying instantly. He was three hours from home in the early morning light and looked nothing like the man I knew. The years that seemed hard when I was with him looked as if they had gotten even harder.

After he was killed by a head on collision, an unexpected thing finally happened. The floodgates of repressed grief suddenly opened and through them came the tears and the wailing. I cried for him, for myself, for the love we once shared, the dreams we dreamt, for the small boys and the sourdough too. I found that I wasn’t a cold bitch like I thought, just a woman faced with the very hard choice of saving herself from the abuse of another.

Finally, in the wake of the death of my son, I met the man for whom I’ve always searched for. He’s kind and gentle with the patience of a saint and encouragement like I’ve never found in another. The craziest thing is that he’s been in this story since near the beginning. He and I were born just ten days apart back in 1973. However until June of 2021, we never met, at least not formally. As it turned out, he used to be a postman. In fact, he was the one who delivered my mail back when the guy from the radio station dropped to his knee and he was also the one who handled the letters I once mailed to the man who became my husband.

I’m no longer that young woman I once was. I’m her and every version that’s come after. I’ve grown and matured and let go of regret, replacing it with gratitude for a life fully lived while looking forward to our future together.

I’m fifty now and technically, I’m still a widow.