One piece of advice I read right after my husband died was something along the lines of “Get used to the idea that your life is not going to be the way you thought it would be.”  As the years go by, I am realizing more and more how difficult that advice is to carry out.  I think I’ve got it– I think I’ve accepted it–and then I find myself adjusting again, letting go of more, and thankfully, opening up to what “not the way I thought it would be” might look like.

When Anson died, I foolishly thought the next chapter of my life might be better than the previous chapter.  Anson had struggled with stress, anxiety, and alcohol dependency, and we had struggled financially for 10 out of the 21 years we were married.  I envisioned myself meeting a man who was financially and emotionally stable, who would make a good role model for my children and create a new, adventurous life with me filled with travel and cool adult children and grandchildren.  We would get married and create a big, beautiful Brady Bunch family and take a picture every summer at our beach house on the Cape with all of us wearing blue.  I wanted a new family that I could insert myself and my kids into so we could just keep cruising forward through life.  After dating for a few years and having some six-month or longer relationships with a couple of men, I realized that this dream was not likely to happen.  I don’t move in the same circles as men who own beach houses on the Cape.  The men I do feel comfortable with come with their own challenges and problems.  I had to accept the fact that my new chapter will be better in some ways, but there will always be trade-offs.  As my sister once said, “it won’t be better, just different.”

It’s been six years now that I’ve been processing grief and dating.  There have been years of feeling lonely, hurt, and sad, and longing for a positive, healthy, nurturing relationship to balance out the loss and pain.  I’ve tried five or six online dating sites, and wow, there are some “interesting” people out there.  I see my friends and relatives navigating their own relationship terrain and I realize how hard the struggles can be.  “Not better, just different” has slowly morphed into “actually, it could be a lot worse.”  There are men out there who have harder problems than Anson had.  And there is no doubt that  being single is far healthier than being in a bad relationship.  My daughter works so much that it is very hard to see her, and my son has told me flat out that he doesn’t want to meet the men I date unless I’m sure it’s really serious.  Maybe I won’t find a man who will  create a new family with me– maybe I’ll find a man who never had kids of his own or who doesn’t earn as much money as I do and can’t afford to travel with me.  Maybe I’ll travel by myself or with my sister.  Maybe my future partners will be polite to my children, but that’s all.  It’s not going to be the way I thought it would be.

Now my son has moved out, and it’s just me and the cat living in this four bedroom home.  I so badly want to sell this house and get out of the burden of lawn mowing and shoveling.  Every day, I am more tempted to just rent for a year to see what my next move will be.  I have been on one coffee date in the past six months.  But I have an amazing group of friends through my dance community.  They are all younger than I am.  Most of them are immigrants.  They talk about traveling and living in other places– two years here, three years there.  Maybe I’ll do that– rent an apartment, take a year off from teaching to go abroad and teach English, be a nomad for a while.  Maybe I’ll have lovers and friends  who are 15 years younger than me and my kids won’t even know about it.  Maybe I’ll be a cool middle aged woman who’s traveled the world and been on all kinds of adventures. Maybe, if my son and daughter ever decide to have kids, I’ll be that quirky grandma who visits for a few weeks in the summer before heading off to another country to explore.  Maybe someday I’ll settle back down with a head full of interesting stories to tell.

Who knows?  It’s not going to be the way I thought it would be.