It came back to me -- how awful I felt a few weeks after my late husband died. How alone and rudderless my life felt. I still felt like an OK person -- I had been a decent wife and mother as I saw it and other people seemed to, too. A little rudderless and clueless as far as jobs and career went. But how to be a "good" wife and mother, I kind of knew that from images and expectations, etc.

So I still felt like an OK person on that day. . .but then over time I fell apart, didn't get anything else put together.

I was also still OK with my family -- didn't really "know" or feel how all that was done by expectations, image, and pollyanna-ism "everything is wonderful". Nevertheless, since that was the fantasy I was living in, I was still "in" it and didn't know better. Until the parents declined and there were no established expectations that everybody followed -- just different people's expectations and unbridgeable conflicts.

So despite the previous appearances and veneer, in the end we were all alone, always had been alone, since nobody knew how to really know and accept the other people.

I think this is hell. Or very close to it. Knowing it may be a start, but a start toward what?