A Widow's Grief

"Have you thought about moving? A fresh start?"

"I can help you go through things and pack them for safe-keeping."

"He would want you to be happy."

"I think you should talk to someone."

"I'm worried about you."

Caroline had heard all of it in the last year. Actually, more specifically, the last 12 months and 13 days since Sean's funeral. Since the day she watched her bright, loving, sexy, kind, brilliant husband of 3 too-short years lowered into the ground in a box and buried.

The numbness descended on her that day too. Her tears-- plentiful in the last days sitting next to his bed in the ICU, amongst beeping and whirring; abundant as she signed the paperwork to donate his organs; unrelenting as she said the final goodbye to his living body and listened to the beeping subside-- all those tears, ceased flowing as she watched dirt get tossed over his casket.

She could remember thinking, the part of her that feels must be in that casket too. And then thinking "good, leave it there."

Over the next year, Caroline leaned into the numbness, never letting herself venture close enough to emotion to cry. Her smiles were forced, half-heartedly--grimaces more accurately.

Her family and friends, at first gave her grace, then soft concern, then more vocal worry. A thinking-of-you text. A call-me-soon voicemail. A just-on-my-way-home pop by. Then she shut them out. So she could exist with her silence.

And that's what she did.

That 3 bed 2 bath bungalow she and Sean had bought a year before his accident sat oppressively quiet. If someone had stood on the sidewalk in front if the house on that last Wednesday evening they would have hear the routine sounds of life. The twanging guitars of classic blues; the clatter of wine and dinner; the giggles and grunts of a game of grab-ass pinned against the kitchen sink; the growling crescendo of moans and "fuck me harder" and "yes, that's a good girl, come for me."

By Thursday evening, the house had taken a breath and held it. Stifled, strangled sound slipped through its windows, for about a week or so. Shuffling tense noises of people who meant well, but didn't belong. Who weren't Sean. Later, quiet sobs from Caroline.

And then, three days after the funeral, as the house emptied of everyone who got to return to their life as they knew it-- asking Caroline to come with, "maybe just for a bit," but ultimately without her--the house exhaled a final time, and didn't inhale again.

Caroline moved through the house daily shuffling automatedly through only the most mundane patterns of her old life. Wordless for days at a time. Padding along the same routes day after day--guest bedroom to bathroom to kitchen to living room--over and over.

Caroline hadn't slept in the master bedroom since the night before Sean's accident. In the ICU, she succumbed to a rare few moments while in the uncomfortable chair. When she got home and family had filled her house, she would pass out on the sofa despite the urging of her mom and sister to take the guest room. On the day she left, she asked her brother to move her dresser into the guest room, and her sister to move her toiletries into the guest bath. They did.

And then twice a month since that time, her house cleaner April, would open the door to the master bedroom to dust and vacuum. Besides that, the room remained vacant and unperturbed.

Several times, Caroline had stood outside the door, willing herself to open it but never found herself able to turn the knob. To break the seal on the room where she spent the last grief-free moments with Sean. At the time, just a Wednesday night spent passionately that giving way to a Thursday morning afterglow.

He had left for work that morning like he did many mornings, a little bleary-eyed from forgoing a few hours of sleep in the name of driving his wife and himself to several orgasms. They would often laugh--sometimes with his cock buried inside of her or one of them with their face between the others' legs--when Sean would tell her how his buddies would warn him that the "honeymoon phase" was going to end.

During their three years of marriage and preceding 3 years of dating, Caroline's sex drive only grew each day. Maybe Sean's friends could only envision the reserved, inexperienced version of Caroline that she had been when Sean had met her. A recent graduate of a Christian College, virginal, naïve. She knew that more than one of his friends had questioned why he was dating her in the beginning.

But from the very start, Sean had seen the underlying drive for pleasure within her, and nurtured it as Caroline willingly and happily let him. Sean was not the first man to touch her most intimate parts, but he was the first and only man to manipulate them with deference and skill. He was the first man who presented his desire for her as a gift she had given him instead of an obligation she was beholden to meet.

It was after their third date, when he kissed her goodnight outside of her 3-flat apartment building, his strong hands cupping her face, that she first felt the bulge of his cock swelling through his pants. "You are beautiful and amazing, and there is not a part of me," he glanced down in acknowledgement, "that is able to forget that. I want to keep seeing you if you'll have me."

Caroline nodded, her cheeks still in his palms and every inch of her skin buzzing. "I'd like that very much." The wetness between her legs blooming as she replied.

"That makes me so happy," he smiled at her, kissing her forehead, and then bringing his lips back to her mouth for a last goodnight kiss before breaking away to open the door to her building for her. "I will call you tomorrow."

Before that night, Caroline had never masturbated. Not truly. A few times she had played with her vulva, exploring her clitoris but never penetrating herself. Never with any forward progression toward climax and always with a deep sense of guilt after. The night of their third date Caroline orgasmed for the first time in her life, alone in her bed, replaying every detail of Sean in her mind. An act she repeated nightly until their next date a week later, when she experienced the electric pleasure of being driven to orgasm by Sean's skillful tongue sweeping over her pussy.

When she had asked what he wanted in return, she was prepared for him to ask for her virginity, or at least a blowjob. She was nervous, but willing. So, when he grazed his fingers over her body and whispered, "Nothing, Caroline, you owe me nothing. I just want to make you feel good in ways that you like. Only things you're ready for. No big decisions while you're worked up." Caroline was stunned.

But he meant it. Despite the obvious rigidity of his cock straining against the confines of his pants, Sean made no moves for his own pleasure that night. Nor any of the many other nights that month he spent worshipping Caroline's body to orgasm at the end of a date, before kissing her head and leaving her tucked cozily in bed. It was another month before Sean would even consider letting her give him her virginity.

Years later, after they were engaged, but before they were married, Caroline had asked him how he had restrained himself during those first weeks and Sean replied, "You weren't ready. You deserved to feel good," and then smirked, "and I definitely came in my pants on the drive home more than once."

The aching tingle in Caroline's clit--one that had been absent since his death-- pulled her attention back to the present. Emerging from the memories of Sean's devotion to her pleasure, as she found herself once again, standing outside the master bedroom door. Confronted by her dampening pussy with the reality that the man who loved her so deeply and so intensely was gone. That the man who awoke and cultivated an unbounded, unashamed sense of sexual gratification within her would never again tend to her needs that he had unleashed.

And all at once, the numbness that had prevented her from pushing through the door crumbled. Caroline's body no longer able to stave off the ache it felt in Sean's absence, a choking cry burst from her and she pushed open the door. Caroline climbed on to their bed, muffling her gasping sobs into Sean's pillow. And when she inhaled realized she could still smell him on the fabric, it just further provoked her body's response. She could feel her nipples hardening underneath the thin tank top she was wearing, her labia and clit engorging in response the the scent so inextricably tied to pleasure.

She grabbed Sean's pillow and moved to his closet. Burying her face in his clothing, searching for more of him, she pulled shirt after shirt of the hanger. Her body exhilarated and her heart broken. Jolting, heaving sobs emanating from her lips she crumpled to her knees, clutching his shirts along with his pillow, pressing her face into them and wrapping her limbs around them. Her hips beginning to grind into the pillow between her legs. The force of her sobs punctuating her movements with bucking, frantic force.

Wailing his name over and over as the primal urge to feel something, to feel good--to feel Sean again--drove her to further into an animalistic frenzy. Humping her long-neglected clit and cunt into the only things left of the love of her life, keening and writhing as the intensity of her pleasure and her grief fused, propelling her relentlessly toward orgasm.

A desperate "Sean...Sean...fuck...." choking from her lips just before her pleasure and her grief erupted from her body in a convulsive orgasm. Tears and spit and pussy juice pouring from her onto the pile of Sean's shirts pillow as Caroline's body was wracked with jolt after orgasmic jolt. It felt to her like minutes, and as she slowly descended from the peak of grief and ecstasy she found herself grateful for that disorienting post-orgasmic haze. Closing her eyes and collapsing as she exhaled, soaking in the incomplete solace of this fleeting connection to Sean.