never better: a memoir

His wife died before their second son turned one. How can he keep her memory alive when there’s so much he wants to forget?

There was a time before his wife got sick when Gonzalo could think about other things. They had full lives where death didn’t factor. Where humour was more than a coping mechanism. Life wasn’t all about treatments and recovery, or the emptiness he felt when she died.

They had kids together. Young kids. Less than a year after their youngest was born and suddenly he was strapping them both into their car seats to drive to their mother’s funeral.

He used to think he was the glue holding the household together. It didn’t take long for him to realize how wrong he’d been. A grieving husband is in no condition to raise kids alone. There were times when he wanted to toss himself into a raging river that would suck him under and bash his skull on the rocks. That’s always an option for another day. For now, he’ll just squash those feelings and drive the kids to daycare.

Does it get easier? Of course. But not right away. They say that hope only comes at the end of a long dark journey, but that isn’t entirely true because the journey never really ends. But that means there’s good news: hope is everywhere you look.

Gonzalo Riedel is a writer and editor. He’s the author of Behaving This Way is All I Have Left. He lives in Winnipeg, with his two kids, and with ghosts.