They say it gets better. They lie.

When you get the call he died you go into shock. You've lost half of yourself. You've lost your future. Your life. He's gone and you think you know that fact. It feels like you know it when you pick out a coffin, write the obituary, greet people at his funeral. You don't know he's gone yet.

On the day you're mad with grief, crying the ugly cry - you'll reach out to those few who will stick around in your life now that he's gone. Those few people who will be there in the coming months will all be busy at the same time. Not able to answer their phone, not able to talk you down. You and he had a secret code: if you called two times in a row it was an emergency. He knew to step out of the meeting and take that call. You don't have that set-up with anyone else. And really, are they willing to put their job on the line for your crying jag? You aren't their wife. You'll think you know you're alone when that happens. You still don't know that he's gone yet.

The evening you go to a social gathering by yourself for the first time will be stressful. You think you can handle it - your plan is not to say much. It will be two hours after you snap your fingers in the face of a VP from your husband's company meaning to be funny that you'll realize you were rude. You didn't have him there to give the special look to say "I'm handing this over to you" when you felt yourself getting overwhelmed. That night in the hotel you will try and wash the embarrassment of that moment from your memory. It won't work. You don't know you're alone yet.

Everyone keeps saying how well you've been doing lately. You've been able to joke on the phone and managed to get through the holidays relatively unscathed. They've written you off as better and so don't notice you haven't picked your life back up from before the holidays. You try and tell them but you can't seem to say that you're drowning. You used to be so good with words. So you have to find the inner strength to pony up, get up, and pick that burden of this unknown life back up. But you wish, for just a moment, someone would hug you and say "I've got this; take this one off your list." It's that wish that's really hurting you. Because that wish just shows that no one is vested enough in you to notice these things anymore. You only think you know you're alone.

There are a million different ways to know he's gone and you're alone. Each one hits you in a different way and on a different level. It doesn't get better. It only gets different.