My Journey After Her

My wife and I were both Stephen King fans.

Katy was already neck‑deep in King’s world when we met. I was more of a casual reader. Caught up on the essentials, dipping into some deep cuts and the non‑horror titles. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about catching up to what she’d read. It became something we shared. We built our own little King universe: books stacked on nightstands, adaptations queued up. If his name was on it, it felt like it belonged to us.

Watching the adaptations became a ritual. When a new film was announced, we’d reread the book first, sometimes out loud to each other, to build anticipation. It was our version of foreplay. We did it with The Hobbit and anything by Dennis Lehane too.

Just nerdy, literary foreplay.

I’ve been avoiding this one.

Partly because we never loved the original short story. And the ’80s adaptation was one of those classic “meh” King efforts. Not terrible. Not great. Just… there.

But mostly because it’s on the list of things we missed. Katy will never get to see this version. We had chances. Life got loud. Appointments. Fatigue. Timing. And now there’s that tiny whisper of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve that attaches itself to the dumbest things.

The other night, I was bored, lightly stoned, and saw it streaming. I try to support horror when I can, so I rented it and pressed play.

Don’t worry, hon. You didn’t miss anything.

Let me explain.

1. The PowerPoint in the Corn

Instead of a troubled couple stumbling into a creepy farming town, no adults, blood‑stained walls, a suffocating sense of dread, we get a tree‑hugging teen who wants to escape her town and take down Big GMO. The political messaging wasn’t subtle. It was laminated and stapled to every scene.

Now, I’m not anti‑politics in horror. Some of the best horror stories are political at their core. But there’s a difference between subtext and a PowerPoint presentation. The opening beat already told us everything. We didn’t need it re‑announced every twelve minutes.

And the wardrobe choices for that poor young actress? Those weren’t shorts. Those were evidence exhibits. I kept expecting Chris Hansen to walk in, pull up a chair, and calmly ask me, “Care to explain what you thought was happening here?”

2. Spirit Halloween Presents: Evil

Why. Do. They. Keep. Showing. The. Corn.

As I mentioned, Children of the Corn isn’t one of King’s stories I return to. But even I can admit the original power of the story was the unseen entity. The thing in the fields. The suggestion.

Let it breathe in the imagination.

Instead, we get what looks like Groot on meth. If Groot were assembled from rejected cornstalk props at Spirit Halloween. When horror explains itself too clearly, it becomes a little less scary.

Now, I’ll be fair: the scene where the corn monster tears that woman apart? That was GNARLY!!!. Credit where it’s due.

3. Violet Beauregarde Starts a Religion

They leaned hard into Lord of the Flies energy, but without the psychological weight to support it. The lead cult kid was clearly talented; the actor did the job. I just hated the character choices.

Instead of quiet, eerie, neighbor’s‑cat‑definitely‑didn’t‑die‑naturally creepy, we get full‑volume Violet Beauregarde with a megaphone. She wasn’t unsettling. She was obnoxious.

I didn’t fear her. I wanted someone to punch her.

Would Katy have liked it?

Nope. I can even pin-point the exact thing that would’ve made her cringe. The main protagonist, the young Captain Planet fan‑club president. That weird Disney Channel child‑actor cadence. Everything bigger than it needed to be. Katy hated that.

So no, I’m not recommending this one. It’s an hour and thirty‑three minutes of your life you won’t get back. If you’re craving cornfield horror, watch the original. It’s campy, sure, but it’s the good kind of camp. The kind that smells faintly like basement carpet and microwave popcorn.

And if someone finally punches Violent Beauregarde? Let me know. I’d pay the full $70 movie‑theater experience just to see that.

Katy loved Braveheart. I mean, she deeply loved this film.

Like a lot of Gen Xers, my wife Katy worked two jobs in her twenties. One of them was as a video rental clerk. She saw Braveheart in theaters three times, and when it landed on the in store rotation, she was the only employee who did not groan.

She owned it on VHS. Then DVD. Then Blu ray. Then 4K. Then streaming.

This was prime comfort movie territory for her.

She watched it on infusion days. One afternoon, when I went back to pick her up, I walked into the treatment room and found two nurses crowded around her phone, watching the movie with her.

She also loved a sappy underdog story.

Sorry to the die hard Braveheart fans, but when you strip away the gore and the epically framed kilts, that is exactly what it is. An underdog story, with a sweeping romance layered in, very much in line with how Hollywood packaged these films in the 1990s.

Katy would never quite admit this, even when I gently pointed out her suspiciously consistent enjoyment of heist movies.

Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
The Italian Job (2003)
The Usual Suspects (1995)

We can argue about whether those qualify as underdog stories, but the pattern is hard to miss.

I honestly cannot tell you the last time I watched Braveheart when Katy was still here. It had become such a constant in our lives that it did not feel like something you watched. It was just there. What I do know is that it has hovered at the edges of my days ever since she died. Her love of that film tugged at me every time it popped up on a menu, every time I caught a piece of James Horner’s score. Even a dumb parody was enough to wake something I usually keep dormant.

When she died, it went straight onto the no watch list. We will talk more about that list another time.

Grief has a way of making ordinary things heavier than you expect.

Even after I quieted the inner resistance enough to decide to watch it, I still had to follow through. That took a few more days before I was ready.

From the opening camera sweep across the Scottish landscape, paired with Horner’s score, I felt myself slipping into the nostalgia blanket. Warm. Familiar. Comfortable.

The first thing I noticed was that I kept turning away from the violence.

This was not entirely new. A few nights earlier, watching Dr. No with my father, I found myself looking away from the karate chops and the bright red paint pools Bond leaves behind as he shoots his way through Spectre agents.

That surprised me. I would not have flinched at this once. I have watched all three Human Centipede movies. By any reasonable metric, Braveheart should register as a Garry Marshall rom com at this point.

But after walking through Katy’s cancer, even stylized, fake violence has started to unsettle me. Not because it feels real, just because something in me has shifted.

I did not finish the movie. I stopped when they caught Wallace. I could feel that continuing was not going to add anything. I will come back to this another time. There is clearly a different post waiting to be written about my sudden lack of patience for Hollywood brutality.

Watching Braveheart again also meant memories. Lots of them.

It was often playing while Katy did crosswords, puzzles, or napped. During one of those half watching, half sleeping chemo days, I was sitting next to her when she suddenly said,

“Do you think villages had horseshoe baths?”

“What?”

“Horseshoe baths. Every village needs a horseshoe bath.”

Then it clicked. Braveheart was her nap movie that day, and we were at the early revenge scene, the one where the camera lingers on a horse’s hooves trudging through village muck.

“Horseshoe baths” was an inside joke from a much earlier viewing. In her version of time travel, she planned to go back and install them in every village.

She came up with this before the chemo friends.

Even then, half asleep from exhaustion and dulled by treatment, she heard the movie clearly enough to spark a conversation. That is how deeply this film lived in her.

Did I enjoy it?

I suppose that is the natural question.

I will say this. I do not think I will be watching it again.

It is a very 1990s movie. It keeps returning to the same emotional notes, assuming that if you stay there long enough, the feeling will land. That does not mean I did not enjoy it. It is just not an experience I feel compelled to repeat.

It is not about loyalty or betrayal. Watching it now does not feel like I am breaking some unspoken promise to her.

It did not reduce me to tears the way I expected.

I just do not feel the pull anymore.

Without Katy, the reason has changed. What once mattered because she loved it now lands as just an okay movie.

That is what changes on the rewatch.

I’m not a therapist—just someone navigating grief and a job search out loud. If you’re in need of help, please use professional support channels designed for that care.
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 (24/7).

Heads up, friends—this is a long one.

Grief talks to you.
It has a voice.

If left to its own devices, that voice will guide you down the wrong path. It disguises itself as safety. It creates a false sense of comfort as you sink deeper into the couch.

My grief is most aggressive when I’m faced with new decisions.

This morning, I opened an interview invite for Monday. For some, that email would bring excitement. Instead, I stared at the Zoom link as grief began slipping self-doubt into my thoughts:

Am I actually right for this job?
Did I misrepresent my experience?
What happens when they realize I’m not who they think I am?
Is it kinder to bow out now than to disappoint later?

These questions don’t arrive as panic.
They arrive dressed as reality.

Grief has a way of turning curiosity into interrogation. It reframes opportunity as a potential mistake. It takes a normal moment of self-assessment—something every job hunter experiences—and stretches it into a judgment of your worth.

Instead of asking what I bring, grief pushes me to inventory everything I lack.
Instead of wondering how I could grow, it asks why I haven’t already arrived.
It convinces me that readiness must mean certainty—and since certainty is impossible, the safest answer is to step back.

This is one of the quiet struggles of job hunting while grieving: your inner dialogue stops being a coach and becomes a cross-examiner.

But the truth is this—being unsure doesn’t mean you’re unqualified. It doesn’t mean you don’t belong. Often, it means you care deeply about doing the work well.

I accepted the interview.

Not because the questions stopped, but because I’ve learned to recognize when grief is asking them on my behalf. I can pause, acknowledge the doubt, and return the question to where it belongs:

Am I willing to show up and try?

If you’re navigating grief while job hunting and asking yourself these same questions, you’re not failing. You’re carrying something heavy—and still moving forward. And that says more about your readiness than certainty ever could.

Sometimes progress isn’t confidence.
It’s choosing not to let grief answer for you.

Today, my therapist told me that I “looked brighter.” As I sat down in my usual spot, I kept thinking about that—about what it meant, and how it made me feel. In perfect Dr. Melfi fashion, she asked me:

How do you feel about looking brighter?

It felt like a kind of confirmation. Maybe I’m doing this right. Or at least, right for me.

Over the past year, I’ve been stumbling through everything. Without therapy, a week in the mental hospital, and my father being in the house… well, I’ll just say it got dark for me.

So when my therapist opened the door and said, “You look brighter,” it literally brightened my day. It told me I was moving in the right direction.

Losing Katy hurt in a way that still feels like a shadow. That pain will always be with me.

Every new day still scares the hell out of me. But I’m visiting the garden less and less. I haven’t woken up at 3 a.m. crying in a while. And according to my therapist, I look brighter.

Baby steps.

Today I would like to share a journal entry from last week. I revisited this entry today after I accepted a new contract position. I GOT A JOB!!!

Therapist: Who are you?

Me: A 52-year-old, unemployed, depressed widower.

It scared me how fast the answer came. No thought, the answer just rolled out like marbles from a jar. Was that me? Is that truly how I see myself?

Yep.

I’ve had some trouble with that. Perception. The outside perception to more specific. I am obsessed with what the world thinks of me. It eats away at my confidence. I can feel the doubt trying to plant roots.

Katy was my support, the hand on my back kept me steady. She is gone now. I must learn to support me.

So yeah. Here I am. Matthew Jordan, a 52-year-old, unemployed, depressed widower. I watched my mother and wife wither away. And, if I may mention, I also had to put down BOTH family dogs due to sickness within that time frame.

You are dam straight I am depressed.

The unemployment aspect only makes everything feel bigger, but you are making progress. Quitting my previous job may have been a rash decision, but I would not have been happy there for much longer. Go easy on yourself. I will find a job.

So, as I call upon the strength of Stuart Smalley, I say to myself.

I am depressed. But I am trying to get better
I am unemployed. But I am looking for work, and it will come.
I am a widower. I was married for 20 love drenched years with my best friend. Not everyone can say that.

I am 52, well…nothing I can do about that aside from remaining youthful in my heart.

So, stop gaslighting yourself Matthew. This is your world now, start accepting it or it’s gonna be a long hard road to feeling safe again.

Losing my wife has plagued me throughout the past year; Sadness, anger, confusion and fear have clouded my every move. Every decision feels bigger and more intimidating. I question everything I do. If that wasn’t enough, each of these emotions affects the part of my psyche that I’ve struggled with my entire life.

Self-confidence.

Before I met Katy, I was a mess. With no self-esteem and no direction, I bounced from job to job, torching bridges along the way. When Katy came along, she accepted me for who I was, neurotic quirks and all. The more at ease I was with her, the more self-assured I became. It didn’t matter whether her boosting my confidence was intentional or not. It worked.

During therapy, they asked me to share the last time I felt confident. I sat pondering and realized it was when I found out she had cancer. My wife needed me. I had no choice but to be confident. So for the next four years, I shoved all the shit that would get in my way deep into a closet and pushed forward. This was not just something I was trying to fake on the surface. I felt that I was ready for this. And when I look back on that time, I am proud of what I was able to do for her.

That was it — That was the last time I was 100% sure I could handle something.

I have not felt comfortable in this world since she left. And a big part of that is because, at this time, I do not believe I can do this without her. I spent nearly 20 years of my life in a very comfortable and secure relationship. Katy always knew what to say and when to pick me up.

After completing a huge presentation for work, she gives me a hug and says, “I knew you would crush it!”

Before I leave the house to audition for a play, she says, “No worries, you’re awesome!”

She even took the time to learn and understand the Spiderman lore so she could throw in a “go get em tiger” now and then.

All the sudden my cheering section was gone.

So how do I replace what I lost when Katy died? Is that even possible?

Maybe not. However, when I look at my current situation, I see my dad. He lives with me. He and my mother moved in so Katy and I could help take care of Mom, who had dementia. And then Cancer. Having Dad here has been nice, especially in those dark days just after she died. So, I need to continue to ensure Dad is okay and has a roof over his head.

Okay, I can do this…?

And what about Gandalph and Mirren? I essentially have free in-home pet therapy. Katy loved them and fought hard to adopt them when I said the timing was’nt right. During her chemo days, they would both cuddle close to her as she slept on the couch. When she moved to the hospital bed, neither of them would go into the room. I don’t know why; maybe something about the bed freaked them out. Mirren would often sit in the hallway just outside the room and meow, and Katy would talk back, trying to assure her she could enter. Mirren still does that sometimes. Gandalph would always show up when I was crying myself to sleep, a slight nudge on my back to ensure me I am not alone. He misses her as well.

So let’s make sure we can take care of them. Food, Vet, shelter, all the important stuff that keeps Sarah McLachlan from pestering me for $18 every month.

Deep breath..you got this.

My therapist would say that the most important thing to remember in this is to be kind to myself. During my decision-making process and after. Bullying myself into believing i’m a fuck-up will not help. I am human, I will make mistakes. If I am careful when approaching the decision, and ask for help if I need it (that one eludes me), it will be fine.

I am not alone in this.

Katy did not give me confidence. She saw it in me and helped me to see. She created a connection for me, whether intentional or not; it worked.

It’s up to me to reestablish the connection.