text: Thank you for writing this. Reading this article was similar to reading my own reality. My husband also died an "off -time"death from cancer, and robbed me of my partner, and our children of the opportunities to celebrate their life's achievements with their dad.   The emotions and changes that the author put to words describes everything I have been feeling from being "a fragment of us", to the diminishment of my thinking skills, to the incongruity of consolation in isolation and loneliness.  I also want to thank you for highlighting the lack of traditions that forces us to put on a public face in the absence of any visible signs of our private mourning.  David died six months ago and public opinion is that the trajectory of grief should be waning now. as you say, "some days are wobbly; others less so".  I