I know…I can hear your collective eye roll, virtual world. Just hear me out. I don’t mean clapping your hands over your ears and pretending none of this is happening. I also don’t mean spouting religious platitudes to you about how this is all for a reason. No, no…I mean, find your way around what’s happening, to allow yourself some sanity.

The pro: I fit easily into small spaces. My knees rarely bump the seat in front of me on airplanes, Broadway shows, baseball games; or in one instance, behind the passenger seat of my late husband’s Acura TSX, when we moved into our first apartment, and bought too much stuff at Ikea. This is how he first coined the phrase, “Ikea is Swedish for divorce.”

Then I had to ask myself why? Someone who’s divorced three years doesn’t have to worry about it…heck, people who are not even divorced yet aren’t judged for jumping right out into the dating pool. So
why, as someone who, by all accounts, was a loving, loyal spouse to a terminally ill husband, do I sense some people shift in their seats upon the idea that I am out to dinner with someone that isn’t my late husband?