I’m not the woman my husband knew
Emma Grey
It’s been ten years since my husband and I said goodnight for the last time and his death turned my world on its axis in a manner that almost destroyed me.
Sometimes I imagine him turning up on the doorstep of this house—a home that only my children and I know, filled with furniture and decor that is to my taste, not his.
I imagine us, eye to eye for the first time in a decade, suddenly deeply conscious of the distance those years have carved. Would that moment show me, at last, what his death really did to me? Would it spotlight all the ways that, forced to live without him, I am no longer the woman he knew?
Because I am stronger now, and more brittle. Losing him flung me, floundering, into a life I didn’t want. It dared me to survive, and that’s all I thought I could hope for. Survival. It had felt like the end.
Approaching the tenth anniversary of his loss, if I were to create a highlight reel of the intervening years, I would see a woman doing more than that. Someone who was barely able to breathe for the agony of her grief, gradually scrambling to her feet and now, at 52, tearing into a future that feels bright.
Jeff would ask me who took the photographs on my walls. I’d tell him it was me. That I’m a photographer now, even though, last he knew, I was snapping blurry photos on an iPhone 7. I’d tell him I finally captured the aurora australis that I’d been hunting for, fruitlessly, for years, and that one of my photos won first prize at the Canberra Show.
I’d play him songs from the musical that composer Sally Whitwell wrote, based on the teen novel that, when Jeff died, had been rejected by seventeen publishers.
He would remind me that he’d always said it was ‘a matter of when, not if…’ So I’d hand him the six books I’ve had published since, including several international bestsellers, particularly the ones inspired by him. And by this.
He’d see me here, in the career I thought was beyond my grasp, which he always believed was ahead of me. I’d show him the places I’ve been without him—tell him I saw his beloved New York and I’m finally making it to Prince Edward Island on my book tour.
I would introduce him to the countless friends I’ve met, not ‘since’ he died, but because he did. People who stepped into the void his absence created. People who caught us when we fell.
I’d show him my pastel-pink vintage van, even though he hated camping and pink and caravans and musicals… and he would love all of this for me.
He would meet our new dog, Frank, and he would look for Knightley, who wouldn’t be here…
He would ask about my mum, and I would break it to him that we lost her, too.
My eldest would swan in, now a 27-year-old who he last knew at seventeen, arguing over loud music and washing up. She’d tell him she’s now an academic, just like him, on the brink of the doctorate that proves it. Her younger sister would flash her engagement ring and he’d ask if she’s marrying Harry Styles, so we’d introduce Tom and Nathan, and explain they’re some of the male role models our youngest son has needed.
And that’s the hardest part. The bedroom door would open and out would walk not the Minecraft-loving five-year-old Jeff left, but a six-foot-three fifteen-year-old gamer with a deep voice and braces. I’d explain how I bumbled through teaching him how to shave, and Jeff would watch us together—mother and son.
Mother and ‘stranger’ .
That is why I’m stronger. It’s also why I’m more fragile. Because, if Jeff walked in now, he would look at all of this and see the evidence of every moment he has missed and all the ways that we have grown and changed as we pushed ourselves through an inconceivable life without him.
Against all odds, he’d realise we’ve fallen in love with our world again, over a slow burn that scorched us on the way through, as it forced us to start again, where he left us.
At the end.
What a poignant reflection on grief and reinvention. Emma Grey’s journey mirrors the raw, relentless descent in *Idols of Ash*—where every step downward demands courage, and survival becomes an act of defiance. Both confront the weight of the past while carving forward into the unknown. Link: https://www.idols-of-ash.io/
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