People have asked me why I am still using "JayKolb" as my primary email id. I have acquired many of my new friends in just the last few years, and, having never met Jay, they don't associate that name with me, especially since I had always retained my premarital last name.
When I was settling Jay's estate, the lawyer told me that I would have to change all the utility, credit card, and subscription accounts - everything that wanted money - from his name to mine. She said it was illegal to leave things that depended on creditworthiness in his name. Apparently, companies don't like to find out they're trying to collect past-due accounts from someone who isn't available to sue.
So, one day I called the telephone company to have the billing changed to my name. I wanted to leave Jay's name on the numbers in the phone book, though. So many friends had left the area, and I wanted them to be able to find me if they returned to visit, so I didn't want the numbers unlisted, but I didn't want my name in the phone book, either, especially not now that we have actual house numbers. The phone lady said they couldn't do that. The listing would now be in my name or it would be unlisted, but they couldn't use another name. I tried "Oops - here he is - my mistake - he's ok - change it back to his name", but she wasn't buying it. So Jay's name was removed from the telephone book.
I had an unexpectedly bad reaction. I felt like I was erasing all traces of him. I went into a three-month depression, and I didn't take his name off anything else. So bills and renewals still arrive addressed to him, and I pay them, same as since the day we were married, and unless something happens that the bills don't get paid, no one will know any different.
Odd. It was two years ago that I removed him from the phone book, and I still choke up thinking about it.
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What got me onto this topic was thinking about a friend whose husband died a few months ago. She's about my age, he was quite a bit older, he'd been one of her college professors, and they'd married shortly after her graduation. She'd never been alone. They had no children, and she is estranged from most of what's left of her siblings. Within days of his death, she started throwing things out, giving things to charity, and getting appraisals on everything else, not just things personal to him, but her things too, even things like (her) family heirlooms. She is more than comfortable financially, there's no need to sell anything.
We, her friends, watched this and worried. We asked if she was thinking of moving, and all she said was "this house is too big...", but she didn't seem to have anything else in mind. We know she loves that house - she designed it. We suggested that maybe she should get a dog, or a cat (she had loved a cat that had died several years before), but she won't consider it. She doesn't seem deeply depressed, she has us over for lunch occasionally, and she still enjoys cooking (Thursday we got homemade pizza as opposed to sandwiches, for example), but we are worried. It's almost like she's not planning to be around much longer.
She firmly believes that when you die, you are gone, done, finished, so it's not like she's planning to join him or anything. NJKC and I are determined to get her to go to dinner at the Red Onion with us next Thursday. It's always been hard to get her out of the house - she and he were both pretty much stay-at-home - but we feel like we have to show her that there is still a world out there.
I'm worried that at some point she's going to come out of whatever funk she's in and realize what she has thrown out, and go into a tail spin, sort of like I did when I felt that I was erasing Jay. I kept his down jacket when I donated all his suits and coats, because the down jacket was so much a part of him, and I loved to see him in it. His favorite beat-up sneakers are under the bed, his old jeans will become a quilt, and I had some links taken out of his watch and I wear it occasionally. I don't think she has kept much of anything.
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