It’s been nine months since Nolan died. The time it takes to grow a human. The gestation period.

For some reason, this particular way of measuring time strikes me. The passing seasons, the holidays, the school year, birthdays and anniversaries each carry their own weight. But I resonate so strongly with the nine months of pregnancy. I deeply recognize that period from growing and carrying my children, Autumn and Hendrix, who are now full beings in the world. But before that, before they were independent breathing humans — the gestation. 

I wonder, in this block of time since my husband Nolan passed, what exactly has grown, what has gestated?

The peculiar resonances of pregnancy and grief stand out to me. There were aspects of the nine months of pregnancy that involved my direct effort and participation — my choices around what to ingest, exercise, visits with doctors and professionals for monitoring and care. Much needed rest. Asking dozens of questions of those who had been through it before, and forming new community with them. Then there was the part that progressed without my conscious will — the exponential growth of a new human.

Here, now, I have no new human to show for these nine months. But rather, me. A me oh-so changed from the gestating.

Through it all, the shock, the sadness, the anger, the stress, the woe of losing Nolan, I had tended to the gestating. I filled my body with nourishing food; I recall weeks of being unable to eat much but convincing myself to ingest bone broth and berries. I exercised when I had no will to, hoping the act itself showed care for my future self, she who would want to be strong and healthy to care for herself and her children. I kept my doctor and therapy appointments. I rested. I lay on the couch. A lot. I told myself not to feel guilty for the rest.

My entire sense of time and the world had collapsed in on itself. I forced myself to keep as normal a schedule as possible when the kids were home, but I was otherwise completely unable to envision time or the future. I watched all of Emily in Paris and Bridgerton. I messaged ChatGPT at all hours, something I surely would have done during pregnancy had it existed back then. 

My friendships expanded to include widows I’d never met before. I texted them, got lunch with them, asked every vulnerable question that came to my mind about losing a husband, and leaned on their experience and wisdom.

Without my intention or conscious will, through these months, I grew a new human, kicking the whole time. No cute newborn to show for it this time. Just me.

It happened so incrementally that I didn’t feel acutely different from the start. My body slowly adapted to carrying the growing weight, and widowhood, like motherhood, slowly etched into my way of being and seeing the world, utterly and permanently altered. This shift is lonelier than matrescence, though. And this one I don’t wish for anyone.

I recall the birth of my motherhood also bringing what felt like the death of my non-mother self. I would never again luxuriate in a soft hotel bed in deep sleep while also having my phone turned off. The tether of love and responsibility for my child would make complete self-indulgence impossible. That woman, capable of experiencing emotions and feelings one at a time, having fun without responsibility, had died.

To some degree, that sense has lessened as my children have grown older and become less dependent on me. I wonder if the stark change I experienced since Nolan died may too lessen as it ages. But the woman who could feel pure joy and lightness without it being joined by nostalgia and sorrow had died.

Grief for me is mourning not only Nolan and all that he was to me, our family and the world, but also who I had come to be in relationship to him — a person who only existed in the dynamic with him, and who interacted in the greater world in the way she did because he was also in it. 

That woman who died had shared goals. She cooked dinner and did dishes while her husband rough-housed with the kids. She had a particular aspect of her sense of humor that only activated with him. She felt safe when she was sick because she knew her partner could lean in to cover her, with work or with their children. 

She didn’t write a string of eight emergency contacts for her kids at school, because it was unnecessary. She didn’t contemplate the best person to list on her advance directive. She didn’t contemplate consciousness and time and dimensionality and linearity all that deeply — that’s what her husband did.

While I know I can never bring Nolan back, I think a part of me will always wonder if I can somehow resurrect the parts of myself that died with him.

Some aspects of Nolan, however, did not die with him. Rather, they’ve been integrating into me. At museums, I silently play games in my head with “Nolan” when I imagine the wildest racy jokes we would make with each piece of art. I speak confidently to large groups, sharing my knowledge and heart in a way that feels so Nolan. I play rough and tickle-fight the kids even when I’m tired because I know they’re craving the physicality. I give baths and sometimes deign to join in because they so adored when Nolan would luxuriate in it with them. Though my chest is not nearly big enough for Autumn to fall asleep on in warmth and safety. 

A few nights ago, I was walking while the kids scootered and biked towards the ocean, listening to Ditmas on repeat in the evening fog. I paused on the path after Hendrix scraped his knee and looked at him in a way that felt completely like being Nolan gazing at him. I wasn’t frantically wondering why I didn’t have a Band-Aid or why we’d gone so far from the house and how we’d get back if he wouldn’t get back on the scooter. I was just looking at him with this calm groundedness and earnest love. Everything else would get sorted. In that moment, I was just getting the opportunity to witness my son. 

Without Nolan beside me, he is within me. I have this voice in my soul that says to dream the biggest, and that everything is possible, despite how absolutely impossible it feels right now.

I think there are specifics of who I was with Nolan that I may never experience again. Being seen by the man who watched me labor and give birth to our children. The particular way my sexuality manifested in relationship to him. The way it felt to rest alongside the man who had created our entire trajectory together with me — our home, our children, our careers.

But maybe it’s simplistic to think that I no longer feel pure joy. I see beauty differently, more intensely. When I feel joy now, it carries with it a new appreciation. I know now how temporary all of this is, how life is unpredictable despite our convictions about the future. I’ll sing along with The Rock to a Moana song during Hendrix’s gymnastics class; I’ll hula hoop alongside Autumn and her friends when I pick her up from school; I’ll wear the cute outfit that takes a little more effort even if no one else will notice. She’s permanently changed, and there are a few new parts of her that she would not surrender, though she would never have chosen the path that led to them. 

Perhaps the greater surprise is that I don’t yet fully know the woman these nine months have brought into the world, just as I didn’t know Autumn or Hendrix the day they were each born. 

My gestation has ended. Now I get to meet her.