In checking some of the advice being given to widows on the Web, I've found that many writers urge widows to move on quickly and forget the past. I agree that, after the loss of a spouse–or any other significant person in your life-- it’s essential to move on and make plans for the future simply because your whole life has now changed. But forget the past? Not me! If you've already lived most of your life as I have, and it has been a happy life, then it can only give you pleasure to remember all those happy days as you get on with life.

I've always related strongly to Herb Caen’s remark, "I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there." To me, happy memories are as comforting as a warm blanket on a winter’s night, and I wouldn’t trade a single happy memory of all the loved ones I’ve lost through the years for all the money in the world. As I move forward in life, I know these very memories will continue to sustain and comfort me. I think the secret here is to find a healthy balance between our past and our future so that we don’t have to give up one in order to have the other.

One way to do this is to keep a journal. I’ve always encouraged business owners to keep a journal of their daily business activities, ideas, plans, and accomplishments because rereading it from time to time is not only personally satisfying, but revealing. Often, in rereading my journal notes from years past, I see things that weren’t obvious to me at the time I originally wrote them.

Because I’m a writer by trade, it was only natural that I would want to share my husband’s life and accomplishments on my Web site, and go on to write this series of articles. But I’ve also been writing letters to Harry since last March, and it has been very therapeutic for me to dump all my secret thoughts and feelings in my "Dear Harry" file and tell him things I never could have said in person. This writing has not only helped me to better understand some of the difficult times we had in our years together, but also why both Harry and I did, or didn’t do, certain things along the way.

Most people go through life trying to understand themselves as well as the people they love, and I think many feel that, at the end of any relationship, there is a need to somehow "balance the books" before closure can be made. By journaling or writing letters to someone you’ve loved and lost, you can speak with abandon and dump all those feelings and emotions you don’t want others to know about. In the process you’re also apt to discover, as I have, not only closure, but a new path and a new plan for the rest of your life.

I will keep writing to Harry because I still feel his presence in my life, and it’s a very comforting feeling. I see him everywhere, in everything he owned or touched in the house, but I also keep remembering the poem one of Harry’s friends sent me, a poem someone had sent him when his wife died. Basically it said, ‘Miss me . . . but let me go.’ This is very hard to do, but I’m trying very hard to do it because I know it’s the healthy thing to do. But "letting go" of Harry doesn’t mean I have to forget him or ever stop loving him. It’s just a different kind of relationship now.