Hey, y’all. Wanted to let you know this is the last you’ll be hearing from me for about a month.
In my new, all-powerful role as the sole publisher of Lowcountry Weekly, I’ve made the Executive Decision to cancel our next issue. That’s right – the previously scheduled December 31st issue of Lowcountry Weekly will not be on the street. Or anywhere else.
I’m certain this will be less than a blip on anybody’s radar – especially while we’re all preoccupied with New Year’s goings on – but thanks to my Protestant Work Ethic, not to mention my Catholic Guilt (I have heaps of it for a Presbyterian), I feel it’s incumbent on me to announce the change of schedule anyway.
My late husband – who suffered no guilt about anything, ever – would probably tell me I don’t need to explain myself to anyone about any decision I make. I can literally hear him saying that as I type. But we were very different people in that respect, which is why I’m a columnist and he wasn’t.
So, here’s the reason behind this bold, earth-shattering decision I’ve made: I need a break. I haven’t had one since Jeff died in early September – unexpectedly, and rather traumatically – and the effort of holding our business together while wallowing in a murky pit of shock and grief has plum worn me out.
My daughter and I are planning to spend the week of Christmas at my mom’s in Alabama, with our extended family, as we’ve been doing since Amelia was a newborn. It will be a short week already, considering the full day of driving on either end. Jeff and I always brought our computers on this trip, and depending on our print schedule, we often produced an entire issue of Lowcountry Weekly while we were there. It was doable when there were two of us – though never optimal – but now that it’s just me, I worry that it won’t be.
And more to the point, I don’t even want to try.
I want to spend my week sitting in Mom’s kitchen, chatting with her and my sisters. I want to sing Christmas carols and show tunes like we do every year. I want to take my daughter shopping on Christmas Eve – it was her tradition with her dad, and I hope to keep it going for her – and I want to do a lot of crying and laughing, story-telling and remembering.
In short, I don’t want to hole myself up in the guest room, hunched over my laptop, while everybody else is wrapping presents and making orange rolls and drinking too much wine.
The holidays have been excruciating enough already. Jeff’s absence has been such a palpable presence. So impossible to ignore. And I don’t want to ignore it. I don’t. I just want to feel it, and mourn it, and share it with my family… without having to make another blankety-blank print deadline.
To call this third month of widowhood an emotional roller coaster would not only be cliché, but a gross understatement. Three months in, widowhood is like this: It’s like watching the Christmas parade downtown with friends, feeling genuinely festive and having a great time… then sobbing in your car all the way home. (True story.)
It’s like stringing twinkly lights in the bushes outside your house one afternoon – in a sudden fit of holiday cheer! – then being too sad to plug them in for the next three nights in a row.
The mood swings are dizzying and almost nauseating. But I think I prefer them to the perpetual numbing fog of the early days. Maybe?
Somebody told me last month that these columns I’ve been writing about widowhood remind her of the ones I wrote about motherhood, way back in the day. Since these columns bear little resemblance to those columns in tone, style, or subject matter, I assume she meant that I tend to become obsessed with something – some niche topic – and won’t shut up about it. And she’s right. I do. By way of explanation – sorry, Jeffy, but I’ve got always more ‘splainin’ to do! – I can only say that new motherhood and new widowhood are both such enormous, gobsmacking events, they absorb all one’s attention and energy for quite some time. But that’s no excuse for being a one-trick pony on this page.
So, I’m hoping this break will give me a chance to recalibrate, too. My goal in 2026 is to start writing about other topics again. I make no promises, but that is my goal. Much like the astounding entrance of my daughter into the world, I will never get over the heartrending departure of my husband from it. But I hope I will learn to live with that loss more easily – that it will loosen its grip on my thoughts and feelings – so I can turn my writer’s eye to other things.
For now, I’m just looking forward to some family time and daring to dream of a good night’s sleep or two. I wish you all a peaceful, joyful Christmas. Hold onto those you love, and don’t take a moment with them for granted. Trust me on this.
See you in 2026.
