Finding Myself Again at Sea: My First Cruise After Loss

The night before my cruise, I almost cancelled. For the hundredth time that week, I stared at the Royal Caribbean confirmation email on my phone, my thumb hovering over the cancellation link. My best friend Sarah had practically dragged me to book this seven-day eastern Caribbean itinerary three months ago, back when I was still operating on autopilot, when "getting out" seemed like something other people did, not something I could actually accomplish. My husband Michael had died fourteen months earlier. Heart attack. No warning. No time to say goodbye properly or do any of the things people say you should do when you know the end is coming. One moment he was complaining about the coffee at our favorite breakfast spot, and the next moment he was gone. The cruise line had a "widow's special" promotion that Sarah found, though honestly, I hated that word. Widow. It made me sound like I was in a Dickens novel instead of just a forty-eight-year-old woman navigating the absolute worst thing that had ever happened to her. But I didn't cancel. Something—maybe stubbornness, maybe desperation, maybe Michael's voice in my head reminding me that he'd always wanted us to take a real cruise—ma…