Grieving For Jonathan
Reader's Digest India| April 2018

Since my husband died, I have tried to do the impossible: reanimate the love of my life word by word, tweet by tweet, text by text.

Nancy Westaway
Grieving For Jonathan

FOR MONTHS, I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING through tweets, emails, Facebook posts and text messages for a missing person. He isn’t a stranger. He’s my husband and the father of my two children. And he’s not really missing. He’s dead.

Late at night, after I put our kids to bed, I begin my hunt for Jonathan. I reread emails about mundane dental appointments or brunch dates. “Whose job is more important today?” reads one, sent when a child needed to be collected early. I linger over quick asides, our children’s pet names and his simple sign-off, “love JJ”. Each time, I find another morsel, some note that makes me smile. I can almost hear him. But I know I am trying to do the impossible: to reanimate the love of my life word by word, tweet by tweet, text by text.

My husband was a writer. He made wry observations in a few crisp syllables. We met at journalism school in Winnipeg, Canada in the early 1990s. I am strangely attracted to a badly dressed man, I thought at first. He needed a haircut, and he wore runners and rugby shirts he got from playing the game. I hated sports. We used the same carpool, and our daily commute became a rolling, laughing ride through the streets. Jonathan’s biting wit earned him the sarcastic moniker “Sunshine”.

In school we learnt how to interview and tell stories accurately, all while meeting high-pressure deadlines. Soon after graduation, eager to begin our careers, Jon took a job as a newspaper reporter in Edmonton and I started working as a managing editor at a news and entertainment weekly in Winnipeg. We were still just friends, but I felt hollow when he moved away. One perk of my job was a computer with internet access. I quickly connected with Jon and two other members of our carpool.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 2018 من Reader's Digest India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 2018 من Reader's Digest India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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