When I first met my husband, I didn’t know he was going to be my husband, but I felt that he could be the ONE. I had gone to a picnic one summer weekend and had stopped at a takeout place on my way home. When I got on the line to order, there was a gentleman standing in back of me, and he said, ”Hi.” I looked at him, but I really didn’t recognize him. So he gently reminded me, that he was the guy who had been looking for some chicken at an event I had hosted earlier in the summer. Then it all came back to me that he had come late to the event, and when he asked if there was any more fried chicken, I abruptly told him that there wasn’t, and,”…that’s what happens when you come late“. But standing there in that moment, I felt rather ashamed that I had treated him so badly. To make matters worse, he was so kind and sweet that I remember when I left the store, that I had this wonderful feeling about him, as I thought to myself that I’d like to get to know him better. However, I assumed that he was not available, but thoughts of him lingered nonetheless.

As fate would have it, a few weeks later, on Labor Day, I was due to go to a BBQ in New Jersey with a friend, but he was running so late, I decided that I would salvage the day, by going to another friend’s barbecue in Brooklyn,NY. I cancelled my date with my friend, and headed out to Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. Well, as fate would have it, who was at this BBQ but Chuck. I remember that he came over to me and we were chatting and he was telling me about some hair products that he was marketing and he felt the back of my hair. He commented on how soft my hair was, which sent a tingle up and down my spine. He then informed me that his parents also lived in Bedford Stuyvesant, as he asked for my number, adding that maybe we could catch a movie sometime.

During this time, back in the late eighties, I hosted and produced a show on cable TV called New York Highlights. As it happened I was doing a show on male/female relationships. Chuck happened to be recommended to me as a good candidate for the show. I remember that he called me and we talked for a long while with him telling me a lot about himself. He asked me about me, and I remember thinking that he was quite serious, smart, funny and had a genuine interest in learning about who I was. He was an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and a professor of finance. In the end, it ended up he could not do the show because he had a conflict, but he promised that we would go out on a date. When we went on the date to the movies one freezing cold winter night, I knew that he was the guy for me. However, he ended up informing me that, although he really enjoyed himself with me, he’d been involved with someone, they’d broken up, and that recently they decided to get back together again and give it another try. Of course I was really disappointed, but I said, well, that’s it, and I decided to chalk it up as an experience. However, at least I had honed in on the type of man that I wanted to meet going forward.

About a week or two later, Chuck called me up out of the blue and said he could not get me out of his mind and his heart, and that he’d like to give us a try. Thus, he broke up with the woman he was seeing, and just like that, we became an item. From then on, Chuck and I fell into our own routine. I would meet him in Central Park and go running with him after work in the early evenings. He was an avid runner and had run in 6 New York Marathons. On occasion, after teaching an evening class, he would surprise me and stop by. I was always so happy to see him. The excitement about seeing Chuck never left me even throughout our entire time together. He had so much to say and so much to offer to my life, and I was falling in love with him. Sometimes, he would join my son and me for dinner, or we’d just chat, getting to know each other better. Eventually I began to wish that he would stop by, and I guess we were on the same wavelength, because when I wished it, he would. I just loved the randomness, the unexpectedness, the excitement of being in this new relationship with this wonderful human that I had been so lucky to meet. Chuck and my son quickly bonded, and as luck would have it, Chuck had two nephews who were my son’s age, so the nephews and Chuck ended up doing a lot of fun activities together. During the holidays, that first year, Chuck and I took the three boys to see the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. Afterwards we went to have a bite to eat at a place across the street. As we sat at the table a woman came over and mentioned what a beautiful family we were. I felt so proud of our connection and “family”.

Sometimes, Chuck and I would rent movies and watch them on the now obsolete VCR. We’d cuddle and talk about our future. One of my sweetest memories of times spent with Chuck was meeting him at a supermarket on , 9th or 10th Ave. on Manhattan ‘s Upper Westside. We’d load up on all kinds of decadent snacks and head to his apt. in the West 70s where we’d sit and watch movies into the wee hours of the morning, falling asleep, and waking up to him making me wonderful breakfasts. He took very good care of me and would send me home with care packages fllled with leftover food.

After a while we decided to get married and just like that our new life living with each other began. At some point Chuck decided to give back by transitioning from business and finance to teaching kids.He became so well known that there was a waiting list into his fifth grade class.He was one of only a handful of African American male elementary school teachers on the Upper Westside of Manhattan.He was a wonderful role model and a dedicated educator.As the years wore on Chuck and I would experience the highs and lows that come with blending lives together. Chuck would lose his sweet dad, and I would lose mine, but we had each other for support. We dealt with health issues and other situations that can creep into a marriage, but the love we had for each other was the glue that bonded us throughout the years.

In 2007 Chuck turned 60 and I decided to throw him a huge surprise party. I began planning it the year before and it would take place on the rooftop of a brand new restaurant in Harlem. All of our friends and family were in on the elaborate ruse and I even planned to have a couple meet us downstairs ostensibly for an overdue dinner date. Then a girlfriend of mine walked in with a “date”, who was also a guest (that Chuck hadn’t met). The woman invited us to the roof bar, seemingly to “meet her friends”. What a shock when Chuck looked around and saw that it was his friends and family, all there to fete him. He was in a state of shock, but he had a beautiful time. We were all able to be there, even my son who had been in the Coast Guard and had just arrived back to New York in time to even help with the planning. I felt such love and gratitude from Chuck, and from that time on we became even closer.

That year was 2007, and we took a brief trip in late summer and I remember that on the way back we saw some presidential campaign paraphernalia at a little kiosk, selling Clinton and Obama banners and pins. I picked up the Obama items and he asked about Clinton, because, he said,” Oh, you love her so much.” This was true, but I answered that I was beginning to get excited about the possibility of the impossible happening with the election of the first known black president.

The time went on and in December of that same year, I noticed Chuck had lost a tremendous amount of weight out of the blue and was subsequently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I kept hoping that he would be able to see a historic election and he did, but that exciting, joyful evening was overshadowed by the events taking place in our lives. And just like that, our love story would be interrupted by a swift ,tragic turn of events, leading us into a long journey through a maze of illness, false hopes, prayers, tears, hospitalizations, hospice, and death. The week of the inauguration of Barack Obama was the week that my husband passed away.

And just like that, our life together was over.

I was watching an episode of HBO’s And Just Like That. Without being a spoiler, there was an episode where Carrie is out, soon after the death of her husband Big, on a first date with a widower. They both consumed a lot of drinks and when the night was over, they left the restaurant and both threw up simultaneously. Well, that episode brought back a memory of my own. In the midst of my losing Chuck, I was out with friends at a restaurant in Harlem seated next to a gentleman who was a well known L.A. entertainment attorney. I mentioned that I had recently lost my husband. As I slowly downed the two largest sangrias I’d ever seen before in my life, he became surprisingly interested in my story and proceeded to advise me that I must go on with my life and that this is what my husband would want me to do. He added that he had told his children that if anything should ever happen to him he wanted them to remember him, but he did not want his death to allow them to stop living their lives. That conversation would remain with me for months, even years.

When I left the restaurant I came home to my empty house and went to bed. I awoke in the middle of the night to violent stomach pains, spasms, and eventually I was vomiting like crazy. The pain was so dreadful, I vowed never to drink like that again. At some point I could hardly move, and I just laid on my bedroom rug in a fetal position, weeping and longing for my husband. The realization that he really was gone forever hit me then, and it aggravated the pain even more. But I realized, after watching this recent episode, that sometimes when you’re grieving the need to numb the pain is so great that one can drink to a point of a false exhilaration, only to be let down by stark reality. This was my case and I could relate to the two widowed people in that episode.

I awoke the next day,a bit tired but facing a new reality and just like that, I felt I had gone through a metamorphosis. This was my rite of passage, as my evolution continued from Mrs to widow. I remained grateful for the advice from that gentleman. But in late summer/early Fall of that year, it was announced on the news that he had died from an inoperable brain tumor. His advice to me was informed by his own close to death experience, which had given him no way out and a chance to take stock of his life and go deep to explore what really matters.

And just like that–I would continue on my grief journey, better for having met such a kind human at a time when I needed sympathetic advice, encouraging me to carry on and to keep the faith. It helped me accept the reality of my new status and to be open to possibilities for the future.

And now I know, after 13 years since he’s been gone, Chuck would approve of the direction that my life has taken, because now, just like that, because of the love we had together, the bond, our life together and the loss of him, I am the Blooming Widow.