Sadmin

Admin after losing a spouse

Sadmin is all the tasks you must do after your spouse dies. I call it that because you, the one left behind, are grieving. It's the day-to-day life of running your home, caring for children, and remembering when you last ate or showered—that answer is always just out of reach — while keeping it together so that you can start the long, arduous task of settling your partner’s estate.

It has been two years, and I still have some sizeable overhanging fruit to deal with. Some of it is because it takes time, and others because I was devastated and could barely get out of bed — for a year.

Photo by Alexa Williams on Unsplash

When your spouse dies, and you start the sadmin, it feels like you are erasing that person from your life. Literally. Names are removed from joint financial accounts, utilities, automobiles, and insurance policies. If you had streaming services with different profiles, you can’t bear to remove them, and every time you log in, there is a reminder that this person lived, and to erase means to remove them from the living algorithm they created.

Bills arrive without fail. Even though you met your deductible on January 3 and everything should be covered 100%, they still try to tell you that you owe money, so you drink a vat of coffee on an empty stomach and aren’t sure if the acid churning in your gut is from having to deal with the nonsense or the coffee.

Credit cards have to be canceled. Social Security has to be called. Taxes have to be paid. Tax returns have to be filed.

Friends ask, “Have you eaten today?” and you ask yourself, “Have I?”

Commercial mail is delivered, even two years in, advertising to your spouse. No matter what you do, you can’t get their names removed from the lists and each piece is a razor blade to your soul.

Your boss tells you, “You can’t be so methodical; it’s not healthy — you are going to break down.” You promise to take her words under advisement, but she has no idea you’re already there.

You play hundreds of hours of games on your phone and read hundreds of books according to the data on your e-reader. You do not remember any of it.

The porch needs caulking, the car needs to be serviced, FASFA is due so your kid can stay in school for another year, and your yard hasn’t been mulched in two years because you keep forgetting to do it.

Your monthly pedicure has happened exactly twice in two years. It doesn’t seem important anymore, even though you miss your pretty toes. Nothing in your closet works because you aren’t the same, and your skinsuit feels itchy and too tight, suffocating you. Maybe it is still their clothes hanging in the closet beside yours, and that is the reason you don’t like to look in the closet and live off of the pile on the foot of your bed.

The guilt is extraordinary. The guilt that you lived and this beautiful human is gone, while you are forced to erase what they built from this world. Who will remember the beautiful light in all the windows of their soul if you systematically go through and turn each one off?

And so you seal the sadmin envelopes with your tears, while the custom Christmas cards you have bought the last two years still sit in their boxes, knowing you still have phone calls to make, paperwork to file, and even more to shred.

Sadmin is testmant to love. It is a cruel reminder of what was and part of the path forward. It is the invisible labor of grief, the paperwork of heartbreak. Navigating this landscape of bureaucracy and sorrow is a testament to love and remembrance. Their legacy lives on in memories and the care you take to honor their lives, even in these often mundane tasks.

The tasks of sadmin will lessen over time, but the love it represents never will. And perhaps, one day, you will find that by carrying out these tasks, you have been carrying your loved one with you by ensuring that their impact on the world and you remain inedible.