Status: Widowed

I was surprised by the sudden isolation I felt after Sandy's death. She was the person I shared every thought, experience, exasperation with. And even as she lay dying, she was still there, beside me. As she put it in a letter she wrote me a few years ago:

When you are sad, or stressed, I want to be there for you; when I am happy, you are who I want to share my triumph with.

That was true throughout our relationship, but several factors made it more exclusive recently. I've been self-employed, working out of our house, for more than a decade. I don't have a workplace with a gang of co-workers to go to every day. And this past year, Sandy was home on disability, with me every day.  I had only to walk a few feet to see the person I most wanted to be with. I was spoiled, and had no need to look elsewhere for company.

Our world grew smaller because of Sandy's cancer treatment and her exhaustion. But she took a woodworking class, saw friends regularly, and pursued other interests. Me? I encouraged her to do all that, believing (as I still believe) that it was important for her health. But I rarely saw friends or did things with people other than Sandy. Instead, I read all I could about breast cancer research and dedicated my non-work time to finding options for improving her current welfare and for finding a clinical trial for something that might get us closer to a cure. I, too, was exhausted - from caregiving itself, from putting myself second most of the time, and from fear of losing her.

As Sandy was dying, we were surrounded by her family and her closest friends. They provided a wonderful sense of community, and it was important to me that she spend as much time as possible with the people who knew her and loved her best.

And then she died. And I looked around. What happened to all my friends? I used to have many close friends, and many more casual friends. But I'd lost contact with all but the few who are closest to me -- and I still had them only because they were good about making the effort while I focused on Sandy.

I lost my core, the person who knew the context of everything in my life - the one who would know instantly why some comment was relevant or what might comfort me. At the same time, the extent of the loss I'd brought upon myself over the past few years really hit me.

When I most needed to feel known, I realized how unknown I'd become, how I'd let so many really amazing people wander away. It didn't help that, though I knew that socializing was important for my sanity, such as it was, all I wanted to do was to crawl into bed and talk to Sandy's spirit, read compulsively on her kindle, and do sudoku.

So I've given in and started a Facebook page, hoping to stay in touch with people more easily - if only casually. I didn't expect it to be yet another heartbreaking experience, but when I got to the profile page that includes relationships, I chose Widow. And screamed.