A widower groping his way

I am listening to Frank Sinatra's Christmas carol. It is an afternoon of one day in December. I am still alive. It is more than 4 years now since my wife died. I still come to work everyday. My life is on a standstill. It does not get better, nor getting worse. Or maybe it is getting worse because I am getting older and weaker every single day. Or it is getting better because the day I will meet my wife again is getting closer. I rarely meet people. I still long for a touch of a woman. A woman who loves me and whom I love. A woman I can touch. My typical life style tells me that a chance to meet a woman like that is zero. Or what I have is just skin hunger. Anyway, I am easily tired and lose the will to try something different. I stay more and more time alone at home. Compared to a couple of years ago, I got better at living alone. But this chornically drepressed feelings do not go away. There is still a flickering desire for having a normal life in which I can come home after a

Once a month, I go to my wife's cemetery. It was today that I went there for November. My physical checkup results are horrible. While driving to the place listening to Mozart Piano sonata no. 8, I thought that maybe next year this time I could be dead and will be not making this regular visit. The plastic flower wreath surrounding her urn containing wall got dirty. I inserted an entry "change the wreath"  into my scheduler. I still have responsibilities to live for my two sons. I also have parents to support with my meagre income. There is no joy in my life. I crack stupid jokes to people and but inside I am still the same sad person that I was during my wife's disease and right after her death. I should not lie to myself. My life sucks. The only exit or solution I have about my pathetic life is to accept that I am miserable and unhappy. Who knows? Maybe I could feel a little better and even find something similar to happiness when I accept my reality. I wil

It is no other human beings or any kind of creed that keeps me going through this meaningless life. It is Mozart's music that keeps me stand this life. When I was taking care of my wife during the three year battle against cancer, nobody was able to comfort me. It was Mozart's music that I played in my car everyday during my commute hours that gave me the consolation and the strength to get by another day. Even now, when my wife has been dead for four years and I am living a lonely widower's life, the only and faithful companion I have is Mozart. I listen to his piano concertos, violin sonatas, Requiem everyday. I may skip washing my face or having breakfast, but not a day goes by without me listening to his music in my car or alone at home lying on my single bed. It was Mozart who showed me there can be an order and a clarity that transcends this ugly world when I was a teenager with no bearing in my life. It was Mozart who taught me to regain the strength and courag

Every month, I go to my wife's cemetery. Once a month. I have been there one hour ago. I stand in front of the wall behind which lies the urn containing my wife's ashes. I always take a photo of my hand over the wall for a record. Every time I drive to the place, I think about many things. The life we had, her body I touched, her kiss, her painful last days, my stupid mistakes. Today, I remembered the touch of her body. While driving in the past, when she was sitting beside me, I used to caress her thighs and even her breasts playfully, and she would say no but with a smile. The reality that I cannot touch her anymore is one of the most miserable parts of my life as a widower. It definitely includes sex but more often than not, I simply miss the experience of touching her that used to soothe my restlessness. I found a blog written by a 30 something widower who lost his wife to cancer just like me but two years before I lost my wife. He wrote a post about his "

 

Thoughts come to me and I see them coming. I live a day and another day and I realize four years have passed since my wife died. I cut connections to people one by one. Now I have only one person that I meet regularly. A divorced friend. I live a life of quiet despair. I behave like a normal person at work. I am not normal, however, in my heart. I keep this hatred about my life, my existence itself all the time. I just have nobody to show that hatred because it would reveal my problem of not being a good fit for a normal society. I just play along with the world to make a living but inside I am just like a wolf in the wild just like the hero of the novel by Herman Hesse.

I have had this preconception, a fixed idea that I am a lonely widower and as such I need a woman who loves me. Because of this idea, I have attempted to meet women through various channels including dating apps and other places. It was all in vain. Maybe the fact that I have been a widower for the last four years has affected my mind while I did not realize it. Maybe I am already used to living alone. I just try to deny it and still have this thought that I need a woman. Maybe I really don't need one. Maybe I can live alone and feel better when I am totally alone. The reason why I failed to make a girl friend was, maybe, I just don't want one although I tell myself desperately that my loneliness cannot be dispelled unless I find a woman. Maybe it is about time that I should accept my reality in which I should and can live better and attain a peace of mind by staying alone. I already cut most of my ties to human beings. I cut connection to my old friends. There is only on

남은 것은 나 하나. 아내는 먼저 갔다. 이렇게 있다가 언젠가는 아내를 보러 갈 수 있다. 문제는 도대체 얼마나 여기에, 이 칙칙한 세상에 묶여 있어야 하는가다. 죽음보다 더 두려운 것은 죽음을 기다려야 하는 비루한 인생이다. 희망이 없는 인생. 환멸 밖에 남지 않은 인생. 무의미.

My life is like a movie that I watched too many times. It got boring. I wish I could erase my existence. I wish I could wipe away my existence like a dirt on a window glass. Of course, I can't do it. I have no joy in my life. I have nothing to expect except my death. If everything is already decided, there is no point in trying things. All I can do is to shut up and watch the boring movie again and again till my eyes pop out because of boredom.  I have been to Heesun's cemetery during the lunch time. I took a photo of my hand on the stone that covers her urn.  Taking things too seriously always make things really serious. That is what happened when I panicked about my wife's cancer. If I had taken a different view of things happening at that time, maybe I could have had a chance of saving her, although that was also very unlikely.  It is still valid for the rest of my life. If I took my life too seriously, it will become an unpleasant mess. If I took it just as a game

Heesun died on 2nd of May, 2012. Four years have passed. Nothing changed. I am still living in confusion and disillusionment. I still have not made peace with the world. I will not do it until I die and see her again, I guess.  I cannot shake away the feeling that I was left alone in this empty world. It would be better if I could leave this world right now, which I cannot do because of my sons.  What is there for me to do until I die? What needs to be done? Nothing really. Nothing at all.  When it is almost sunset, I can go up to a hill, sit on a chair and wait for the sun to set slowly and the night to come. Just like that, I can sit here in the office, lie down in the bed at home and wait for the sunset of my own life. And when that finally happens, I won't have to think about my boring and pathetic and unpleasant life after Heesun's death anymore. Just like I turn on a timer and see the time flows, I can wait and see until the time flows from my fingers like grains of

I smoke. I neglect my health. I say things stupid to people sometimes. My life is boring or maybe I am a boring person. Not much difference in that. I am sitting in the office. It is Friday. If I were still in the past, this would be a nice spring day. I would come home, hug my wife, have dinner with kids and wife, and I will make love to my wife. There is none of that in my life anymore. This evening, I will meet a woman of my age, a woman who is lonely and separated from her messy husband. We will have dinner and will go our separate ways.  This life is getting more and more like a boring movie that I watched too many times. Even my pattern of deteriorating life style is getting similar to such movie. I almost died of smoking too much and now I am doing it again.  Where am I headed living like this? What is going to happen?