Day 0 — Welcome

Subject: A patient companion, for whenever this is

Send: immediately on signup (welcome email).

Thank you for writing your name in. I'm Margaret.

These emails are short. There will be seven of them — one a day for the next week — and then they'll stop. No firehose, no upsells, no "you might also like." I wrote them for the early year after losing someone you loved, but they don't expire. If you came across this page and don't know yet whether you're ready to read them, that's also okay. They'll wait.

I should tell you who I am before I write to you any further.

I'm not a counselor. I'm not a widow. I'm the daughter of one. When my mother was widowed, I didn't know how to be useful to her. I bought her books — the wrong shape of books, mostly, the ones written by people who'd never sat with her on a Tuesday afternoon when the house got too quiet. I called her. I sat. I learned, slowly, that being useful was not the same as having anything to say.

I write the journals I wished I'd had to offer her.

That's the posture of these letters too. Not advice. Not stages. Not the script about getting through this. Just a steady voice from off to the side, naming what's true.

You can write back to me. The reply address is real. I read every one. I won't always have anything useful to say — some of what you'll write doesn't have an answer — but you'll have a witness, which is sometimes the part that was missing.

Tomorrow I'll write about the first month. It's the part nobody warns you about, because the people who could warn you are tired in a way you don't know how to ask about yet.

I'm glad you wrote in.

— Margaret

If you'd like to: what's your name? I'd like to know who I'm writing to, even if you never write back.