I have a confession to make. It’s really quite embarrassing and terrible. I’m a bad widow. My husband’s online obituary page on tributes.com didn’t even have a photo of him—until now. Nearly 10 years later, I finally added one. (A special thanks to Emily at tributes.com for helping me with that!) I’m ashamed of myself.
I know… It’s kinda too late now. Nobody is going to look at that anymore. So what’s the point?
Too Paralyzed by Grief
When my husband passed away in December 2011, I was devastated. Planning the funeral was so tough. I was absolutely and completely overwhelmed. Having to make all these decisions and preparations when you feel paralyzed by grief is just brutal. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without the help of my kids and friends. Everything had to be handled so fast and I did the best I could. But I didn’t or couldn’t find a picture of my husband to put in the obituary online. I should have, but I just couldn’t handle it.
He was retired military and the coordinator at the funeral home said she could simply use the US Army seal instead if I didn’t have a photo. And that was totally fine with me at the time. Like I said, I was so completely overwhelmed.
Regrets and Guilt
Over the years though, whenever I thought about it, I started wishing more and more that I had a photo on his online obituary page. I started feeling very bad and guilty about that. How could I be such a terrible widow? Did I not love him enough to put his picture in there? Almost all other obituaries have a photo, but his didn’t because I couldn’t make the effort back then? Yes, it was so long ago and I might be the only one looking it up once in a while. But the obituary is still there online and searchable, and I wanted to make it right.
So now there’s a photo when you look up his name on tributes.com. And I feel better about that. It’s perhaps a bit of closure in a weird way—not that there’s ever real closure in grief. If nothing else, it makes me feel a bit less like a bad widow.