You say I seem to be doing well. I really hope you’re right

How are you, Mark?

I’m getting used to being alone.

But you’ve been alone for months and months now.

Yes, it’s been a little over 18 months since Evelyn moved to the memory care center. I have been alone in the house without her all that time. And in many ways, I was alone in the house with her for years before that.

June 2023

This is different. She’s been gone just 23 days, and I’m getting used to living without my wife.

But you just said . . .

Yes, for a while I’ve lived in a separate residence and slept in a different bed. I gave up my minute-by-minute responsibility for her. But I still had her.

You mean you still thought about her.

And visited her and planned my days and sometimes whole weeks around those visits.

October 2024

I didn’t physically provide most of her care, but I was always ultimately responsible for it. Answering questions from her nurses or doctors and making decisions. Inquiring about her eating and sleep and making requests. Responding to concerns from our private-pay aides.

I read to her and looked at pictures with her and played music for her and sang with her or to her. I combed her hair if I didn’t like the way they’d left it. I constantly gave her water because we were concerned she was becoming dehydrated. I sat with her on the roomy, roofed porch outside her wing, and sometimes I pushed her in her wheelchair around the landscaped yards.

And lately, because she was usually asleep when I’d been visiting her in the afternoons, I started coming instead at lunchtime. And I fed her. I enjoyed feeding her. It was a way to interact with her now that she was hardly talking and only occasionally smiling or giving some small reaction to what we were saying.

But aren’t you glad to be free of all that?

Sometimes. But between the hours of relief come the moments of grief.

December 2024. Below: April and September 2025.

I no longer have a wife.

I gave so much energy and devoted so much emotion to her care and her condition. I spent, no matter the cost, for making her life as comfortable and healthy as possible.

Now I’m not doing any of that. She doesn’t need me. I don’t have her. I’m alone in a new way, in a way I haven’t experienced for many decades.

I’m slowly adjusting to this new alone, slowly acknowledging it, learning to be at peace with it. The peace will come slowly, I know.

But you seemed pretty chipper the last time I saw you.

It’s not an act. I’m not miserable. I’m able to talk with you about Evelyn without breaking down. Usually. I enjoy laughing with the people around me. I thank God every day for the ways he has blessed me.

So much is so good.

And will all that ever be enough?

Yes. I hope so. It will have to be. God will show me what to do with all the mind space I gave to Evelyn, not to mention the time and effort. There are people to serve, projects to tackle, and good deeds to be planned and executed.

It sounds to me like you’re doing pretty well.

Just keep telling me that. I want to believe that. I do believe it—most of the time.