Fifty nine years old and I have never told anybody this before

My wife died four years ago and we were married for thirty one years and I never told her any of this. Not because she would have been unkind. Because I could not find the words at twenty six and after that it seemed too late every single year, until it was.

Fifty nine, Queens, in the same apartment. I am not writing this from a bad place. The grief has settled into something I can carry and my children are grown and busy and well. This is a different thing entirely and I would rather it were not read as one.

I have no experience whatsoever. I have never done any of this. What I know I know from a year of reading, which taught me what the words mean and nothing about what to do at seven on a Thursday.

What I want is somebody willing to start from nothing with a man who is not going to be quick about it. Instruction, patience, and a certain amount of tolerance for the fact that I will be embarrassed for the first several months and will need to be got past that rather than reassured.

I would also like, eventually, to be told I have done something correctly, which I recognise is an odd thing to advertise for. What I do not want is to be found charming for my age, to be treated as fragile, or to be asked about my marriage in any detail. It was a good one. That is all.