(indistinct chatter) - [Jenny] I always like to ask a couple questions when we get started in this workshop.

How many people here are maybe having a hard time making it through the day without crying?

How many people are having trouble sleeping?

And how many people feel completely alone?

(soft music) (soft music) - Good morning, everyone.

When I was first widowed, I wished that widowed people could walk around with a "W" on their heads so that I could find them because I felt so alone in what I was experiencing.

You woke up the day after your person died and they weren't there.

And until you've lived that, you can't know exactly what that feels like.

But this weekend, there is a room full of people here, who do.

(indistinct chatter) - What's your name?

- Angel, I'm Corey.

It's been since May for me.

May will be one year.

And it's been a road.

It's been a road.

Yeah.

- Oh, okay.

Yeah.

My wife, she had a heart condition that went undetected.

Went to sleep on Wednesday and didn't wake up on Thursday.

There was no way of knowing and so I even struggle with knowing she was next to me.

-Yeah.

- I'm Juanita from Texas.

My husband was killed in a head-on car accident caused by a drunk driver.

On his way to work.

They managed to get on the wrong side of the freeway.

So it was pretty instant and a... life just kind of changed instantly from there on.

The lady who caused that accident is still alive and in jail.

But I still have to wait for a trial down the road sometime.

So I'm not looking forward to that.

Right now, I'm just focusing on surviving.

- Same.

- Yeah.

I just am really struggling to get past being angry at him.

It's probably funny, but at one point, I had his ashes in a drawer and every time I got mad at him, I'd open it up and I'd yell at them and I'd slam it shut.

(laughs) - [Speaker] All our hopes and dreams died with it.

Yeah.

- Yes!

And all your plans and the future that you thought you were gonna have just was robbed from you.

So in a way.

So I think it's okay to feel angry.

It's okay to let that out.

(soft orchestral music) (soft orchestral music continues) (indistinct chatter) - One month ago.

Two months.

Anybody at one month?

It's like an auction, "Do I hear one month?

Do I hear three months?"

(group laughs) My husband did die of a sudden heart attack.

Have any of you ever heard of the widow maker?

Any others, widow maker heart attack?

Great, great.

There's a lot of you.

Great.

(group laughs) Widowed by cancer.

Let's give it up for cancer!

Cancer in the house!

Great.

(group laughs) The things we all have to do after a person dies.

One of those, in my case, was changing our cell phone plan.

So I get on the phone and I say, "You know, my husband died a few days ago and I just need to change our cell phone plan."

"We do understand, ma'am, and I am so sorry for your loss.

However, we cannot authorize that change until we speak with the person whose name is on the account."

Raise your hand if you've been through this.

You know I'm not lying, right?

I'm not exaggerating.

- Way too many times!

- So I started calling him and I'm like, "Don, Don, can you come to the phone?

AT&Ts on!

(group laughs) They wanna talk to you!"

And then I come back to the phone, "Nope.

Still dead."

(group laughs) Thank you.

(soft music) (indistinct chatter) (soft music continues) I say my husband died of COVID, the first question is always, "Did he have any underlying conditions?"

- Yeah!

- It's not even, "I'm sorry," first.

- No.

- It's almost like they feel happy.

"Oh, well he had some condition and that's why he died and I'm safe."

- I always like to tell people that, like, he was a great man with a terrible disease.

And I think oftentimes that, like, people see it like the opposite, where they were just terrible people.

I can't grieve and educate people, like, I don't have energy for that.

So many people will say that this was God's plan or you know, God's will or you know, he only brings you what you can get through.

And I just don't understand how it's God's will to put us through something like this.

And I don't know what would be better for them to say.

I don't know what I'm doing.

- I don't either.

- We're all in this together.

- I don't know what I'm doing.

(indistinct chatter) - When my wife passed, I felt like she was taking my soul.

Like I literally didn't feel, like, I was gonna make it.

Like, when they say, you know, older people that have been together for a long time and one spouse goes, the other one goes quickly.

Like, I literally felt that pull.

- It's a choice to stay, it's a choice to keep living.

And that's what it is.

That's what we all have.

(soft music) (seagulls cawing) (soft music continues) (indistinct chatter) - Well, hello everybody, and welcome to, dun, dun, dun, Sex, Dating, and New Relationships, the hottest topic of the weekend!

(group laughs) And we're gonna talk about what ready is and what not ready is because it's all on a spectrum, just like grief and it changes day to day, moment to moment.

And I see a lot of like, "Yeah, of course," because one day you're like, "Yes, I'm gonna date!

(group laughs) I'm gonna do it!"

And the next day you're like, "Uh uh."

How many are back into the dating scene right now?

So a few of you.

How many of you are wanting to get back in?

You're kind of like tiptoeing around and, okay.

- I'm Carl Barrett.

In 2013, my partner, Chad Hendrix, died on September 9th by suicide.

It's almost nine years and it still seems unreal.

Well, almost five years to the death date of Chad Hendrix, Chad Boardman (group laughs) and I go on our first date.

- Yep.

(Carl laughs) You heard right.

(group laughs) (indistinct chatter) Haven't gone on a date.

No intimacy.

I'm nervous about opening up the vulnerability of sex, of intimacy.

Scared to death of it.

My husband died of cancer and we tried to have sex like probably three months before he went into hospice and he couldn't.

- Yes.

- And sex was one of our languages.

- Yes.

- So that's it for me.

- That's real.

- And I think just finding someone that I can feel safe with.

- Yes.

- Express that.

Like, "Look, I might get emotional during this and I hope that, you know, you can create the space for that."

- [Jim] Yes.

(indistinct chatter) - Yeah.

- Yeah... - That's right.

And that's embracing the pain.

Right?

(soft music) - [Michelle] One of the things we do here is say people's names.

The people whose love has made such a difference in our life.

- [Attendee] Anthony is being remembered for making people laugh.

- [Attendee] Chris is being remembered as a loving dad.

- [Attendee] Steven John Perez, MD is being remembered as a healer.

(soft music) (both laugh) - In the initial deep, dark grief, you sometimes find yourself smiling or a laugh escapes your lips.

Those are the bright splashes of color on the gray palette of grief.

And then over time, the image starts to reverse itself, until eventually the times of sad become the gray splotches on the bright palette of life.

(soft bright music) (soft bright music continues) (soft bright music continues) (soft bright music continues) (soft bright music continues) (audio fades to silence)