3AM Support

June, 2024 – 3:46am

Why didn’t I say thank you? I roll over and look at my phone. The room is dark and silent, and I’ve got one leg hooked over a pile of clean laundry that’s needed folding for at least a week. I woke up remembering this random day in 2016 when my husband, Jay, was alive, or maybe I was dreaming the memory — I’m not sure which. Why didn’t I say thank you? Why didn’t I tell him? 

August, 2016 – Sunday Afternoon

I’m up to my elbows in dishwater, deep cleaning a refrigerator shelf because I found it inch-deep with maple syrup. We’re all running laundry and doing Sunday chores. The two youngest are in high school, a sophomore and junior. My oldest is in college and works at Donatello’s Pizza & Arcade. We find little gold game tokens in the places she’s emptied her pockets – on the bathroom counter, in the laundry room, in her car’s center console.

“Hey, Babe!?” Jay screams from the second-floor bathroom.

I stop scrubbing and yell back at him. “What?”

We’re still unpacking and situating after purchasing an old hunting cabin that was renovated in the 90s. The house is perched two stories above the Little North Santiam River in Oregon, a set of zig-zagging stairs leading to the water’s edge, a deck overlooking the river. When the realtor showed us the house, Jay and our dog, Toby, had a moment on the deck, taking in the view, and I knew we were going to buy it. It is the epitome of good bones with vaulted ceilings and fogged Aspen windows, carpeted bathrooms and brass fixtures abound. The jetted tub broke on day one.

“I found a dead rat under the tub,” he hollers.

“How dead?” I yell, suds dripping off my hands.

“Beef jerky dead,” he laughs.

I chuckle and continue scrubbing the shelf. I’d whined earlier that week about all the house projects and suggested we were in over our heads. He’d given me a “chin up” talk and spent the weekend fixing things. He upgraded all three toilet flush valves, replaced the hideous, 90s glass plate chandelier in our dining room with one I had liked from Home Depot. He installed a new thermostat, replaced a kitchen outlet that had died after I plugged in my blender, and he fixed the tick, tick, ticking noise coming from our bedroom ceiling fan. He was attempting to fix the bathtub jets when he found the rat. “Hey, Mr. Maintenance Man!” I yell. “Dinner’s ready.”

I remember making my famous garlic potatoes that night, Jay’s favorite, with roasted chicken legs and corn on the cob. We ate dinner on the back deck and watched the sun sink behind the mountains, gave the cobs to the chickens and picked blueberries from the garden for dessert.

I remember leaning on each other in the dining room like high school lovers, admiring the updated lighting. “How does a chandelier change an entire room?” I asked, and he kissed the top of my head.

We watched a few episodes of “House of Cards” with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright that night, my legs draped over his as we lounged on the couch. We said goodnight to the kids. In our bedroom, I pretended to faint from amazement when he demoed the ceiling fan above our bed.

“Ehhh? No click, click, clicking!” He smiled. We made the bed together, turned the lights off, scrolled Facebook side by side.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

June, 2024 – 3:50am

I call my mom. There’s a three-hour time difference, so I’m hoping she’s still up. It’s almost 1am where she’s at. The phone rings once, and she picks up.

“Hey, Daughter,” she says.

“Hey, Mama.”

“You okay?”

“I hate that I didn’t say thank you enough.” She listens while I recount the memory and hushes me when I cry.

Her voice is soft and loving. “I heard a lot of thank yous in that story, Hun.” Mom reassures me and reminds me how unhealthy it is to think this way.

And she’s right. It doesn’t do any good to crucify myself over all my should haves. It’s also a very natural part of the grieving process to find yourself asking such questions: Why didn’t I say thank you more, check-in more, say I love you more, listen better? They’re normal questions, but dwelling on them only makes things worse.

What we can do is reach out. I call my mom when I get stuck. She redirects things. She yanks me from my grief-spiraling and helps me embrace the 3am memories, helps me recognize what loving and thanking look like between a husband and wife – a weekend of tackling home repairs, cleaning the kitchen and preparing a meal, sharing dinner on the deck at sunset, a walk in the garden, admiring his handiwork, draped legs on the couch. Thank you, thank you.

I don’t know how to stop the questions that wake me in the night, but I’m grateful I know who to call.

Thanks, Mama.

About Sonney Wolfe

Sonney Wolfe is a writer, educator, mother, nona (grandma), and widow. She holds a Master of Arts in English, teaches academic and professional writing for the University of Maryland, and writes features, press releases, blog posts, and personal essays for various news and social media.

Widowed in December of 2019, she soon joined the masses in COVID lockdowns, which deepened her understanding of grief as she witnessed widespread loss, especially among students. Now, she integrates grief support in her college classrooms by addressing pandemic disruptions, community loss, and mental health challenges. Her autobiographical teaching philosophy, born from her own grief journey, provides a platform to share her experiences and support students who have also lost loved ones.

In her professional writing, she sheds light on the human experience of loss and grief, particularly for widows. She explores the complex societal shift they face, transitioning from wives to widows and often single parents. This sudden change forces widows to navigate not only grief, but also a landslide of challenges: income loss, economic strain, relocation, career shifts, altered healthcare needs, and declining mental health.

Her Blog WIM Dispatches (Woman in Motion), https://sonneywolfe.com, chronicles her personal grief journey and advocates for the needs of widows, along with her IG: @WIM_Dispatches – and Facebook page: WIM Dispatches Life After Jay.