When We Were Widows

by Annette Chavez Macias

And could I grieve for Jason when I still hated him? I thought of my dad. I did miss him. And even the most incompetent therapist in the world could tell I still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that my mom had prevented me from saying goodbye.

So after Benny decided he didn’t really care anymore what I did with my time,

“That must get tiring, trying to be in control of everything all the time.

We don’t voluntarily talk about our feelings. Instead we hold it inside and carry grudges until we die.”

“At some point we realize that the satisfaction we feel from destroying things is fleeting. In order to get rid of the anger altogether, we have to stop running from it and deal with it head on.”

“Some people believe—like me—that we’re connected to certain people because they’re meant to be in our lives, meaning you’re destined to have some sort of experience with them,” Evie explained. “Sometimes we meet these people before we’re supposed to. Kind of like a ‘wrong time, wrong place’ sort of thing. So we drift apart, only to be pulled back together again by an invisible string when the universe decides you’re both ready to be in each other’s lives again.”

‘If you stand for nothing, you fall for everything.’”

“No matter how old we get, we all need our mothers to take care of us again at some point. I would give anything to have my mama still with me.

Sometimes we have to do things we’ve never done in order to grow. Because when you stop growing, you die.”

“Our parents aren’t supposed to be perfect,” he finally said. “We just think they are because

when we’re little, we need them to be. It doesn’t change your memories of your dad or that he loved you.”

“My entire life I have questioned and criticized everything my mom ever said or did. Meanwhile, I thought my dad could do no wrong. And if he did, then I somehow blamed it on her. Even now, I’m angry at her for keeping his secret, even though he’s the one I should be furious with!”

The more I felt her pulling away from me, the more I tried to hold on tighter to her.

And for the first time in days, I decided to stop thinking about what was going to happen with Yesica. Whatever happened now was up to her and out of my control. All I could do was be there when—and if—she wanted to talk. It wasn’t what I was used to doing. And maybe that meant it was exactly what I needed to do.

first daughters taking on the weight of everyone’s world.

“So after I talked about it, it was almost as if I had faced a fear. I think that fear had been holding me back. After that meeting, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And every day since then has been a little easier.”

It was true what they said about how much lighter you felt after unloading a burden.

“The past is the past, Ana. The only thing you have the power to change is the present.

holding back feelings didn’t do anyone any good.

Grief, I’d learned, didn’t have a finish line. It was an endless journey. Some days the path was easy, and other days you’d be running perfectly fine and then, out of nowhere, you’d stumble, and the pain would come roaring back as if your loss had just happened.