That Listless Feeling

I have a new friend who is also a widow.  We talk on the phone, go to grief groups, and have met up for lunch.  My friend happens to be a man, which is just so cool because I know what it feels like to be a female widow, but to hear him express his grief and his feelings for his wife is so very interesting.
I enjoy our talks and he is never afraid to get weepy in front of me and the stuff he talks about makes me teary eyed also. But that's OK.
In many ways, his grief is more difficult for him than mine is for me. He is self employed and the foggy brain that grief gives you makes it very tough to perform his work with the attention and skill it requires.
He is also coping with the loss of his wife's income and of her running the house and doing the shopping.

Today at lunch, which we trade off paying for, I asked him, "Morris(not his real name),--what makes you get up in the morning now? What makes you keep going? What do you look forward to?"
I found it sad that he is still incapable of coming up with a person or an event or a trip or anything that sparks his enthusiasm for the future. His six months without his beloved wife comes up on May 1.

Morris is different than most men I've run across.  He is a thoughtful, expressive man who talks about his feelings.  If he was like that around his wife, she must have known what a rare person she had.
We talk a lot about our spouses, and we know each others' special person pretty well, I think. We listen, and also talk about everything else under the sun including UFO's spirits, death, religion, financial matters, disgusting people and drugs and health. BUT I have never offered him, and he has never offered me advice or suggestions.We both know now that one person can't 'fix' another's grieving.

As I listened to his answers to my questions, I came up with a suggestion that I did not give him:  A LIST.

That's what Morris needs.  He needs to focus on just one thing at a time.  He needs to have a daily list of things that a proficient person in his occupation would do to be a success. He needs to be able to cross off just one item that he completed so he knows he is still a guy who gets things done. He also needs to make another long term wish list.  A dream list, a bucket list- whatever you want to call it.

When I asked him the questions about what he looks forward to, I really wanted to hear his answers because I like to hear what other widows do with their lives after they become just one person instead of a couple. While Morris didn't have an answer for me, other than saying. "just getting through each day", I knew that he will start thinking about the questions, and the wheels in his head will start moving toward dreaming about how he wants his life to look like in the future.

The same questions I asked him are ones I'm asking myself.  I haven't written my own list either, but I have some things I definitely want to do in the very near future.  Long term lists remain too impossible at this point. I haven't seen a bereft person yet with so much focus on their future that they are certain of all the items on some 'Must Do' list.

And for those who read this and speculate that I think of Morris in a romantic way, I don't. Neither of us can.  Its a determined decision he made to wait at least a year before a move of any kind or a life changing event.  I like that.  Its what a friendship should be.  No motives, no games, just shared thoughts, ideas, memories and the retelling of stories from our lives with a new companion who is hearing them for the first time.