Page 113 of Someone to Watch Over Me

That makes me laugh out loud, imagining the White House deputy chief of staff responding to such a thing from work.

Wynter:I LOVE that laid-off Lexi is getting laid!

Derek:That’s it. I’m out.

Naomi:I’m laughing my ass off.

“What’s so funny?” Tom mumbles.

“You’d have to hear the whole thing.”

“Read it to me.”

So I do.

“I can’t believe you told them what we’re doing,” he says with a laugh.

“The widows tell each othereverything.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Nah, I’ll never go too far, don’t worry.”

“So ‘laid-off Lexi getting laid’ isn’t too far?”

“Oh God, that’s nothing compared to what we’re capable of.”

“I’d like to join Derek in unsubscribing.”

Laughing, I tell him, “He’s saying that from his office in the West Wing of the White House!”

“That’s funny. You know what I never would’ve expected until I got to know you and your Wild Widows?”

“What’s that?”

“How much you guys laugh.”

“Oh jeez, if we didn’t laugh, we’d never stop crying. Irreverence is our middle name.”

“I like that for you, for all of you. That there’s still joy and comedy to be found after what you’ve lost. Although, if I lost you, I’d never laugh again.”

“Yes, you would.”

“I don’t think I would.”

“Trust me… It’s physically impossible to stay forever in the throes of early devastation. It’s just not sustainable for a lifetime. Joy creeps in. It finds you even when you think it never will. It can be something simple, like a flower or a sunset or an exquisite butterfly hovering outside the window. Life is beautiful in so many ways. After the fog clears and you start to notice those things again, it becomes clear that you’ll survive the seemingly unsurvivable, and you may even, one day, down the road, be happy again.”

“That’s beautifully said, Lex.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy, because it isn’t. Jim’s illness and death was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, but I have gotten through it. I’ll always love him, and he’ll always be part of me, but his death didn’t ruin my life as much as I thought it had for a while there.”

“Because you didn’t let it. You sought out support and found a way through it. That takes enormous courage.”

“We have a saying in widow circles, when people tell us how they admire our strength, that you never know how strong you are until you have no choice but to be strong.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“When I was taking care of Jim, so many people told me they wouldn’t have been able to do it, and that used to make me so mad because theycoulddo it if they had to. They just didn’t want to have to imagine a world where that would be needed of them, which is understandable. Who would want to picture themselves in a nightmare like that?”

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