The First Time I Laughed After He Died, I Felt Like a Traitor

The first time I laughed after he died, I felt like a traitor.

It wasn’t a polite chuckle or a weak smile. It was real—genuine and loud. The kind of laugh that escapes your chest before your brain can catch it. The kind of laugh that feels like life itself.

And the moment it ended, guilt crashed over me like a wave.

How could I laugh?
How could I feel anything but broken?

It had been 47 days since my husband, Aaron, died. A heart attack in the middle of a Thursday. No warning. No goodbye. One minute we were texting about groceries, and the next, I was standing in an emergency room under flickering fluorescent lights, listening to a doctor say words that made no sense.

They said "passed away.”
But it felt more like disappeared.

I moved through the following weeks in a blur. Friends dropped off casseroles. My mother stayed for a while. Our dog, Remy, stopped sleeping in his usual spot at the foot of the bed. Everything in our home felt too still, like even the walls were holding their breath.

Then came the day I laughed.

It was a Sunday afternoon. My best friend, Elise, had finally convinced me to leave the house and take a walk in the park. “You don’t have to talk,” she said, “Just breathe.”

We were sitting on a bench near the duck pond, watching two toddlers feed bread to a group of aggressive geese. One of the geese lunged for the bag of bread, and the toddler screamed and fell backward—completely unhurt but dramatically offended. The way his face contorted in betrayal, the theatrical way he looked to his mom, made something inside me crack.

And I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried.

Then I stopped, mid-breath, as if I had been caught doing something shameful.

Elise noticed the change. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re allowed.”

But I wasn’t so sure.

That night, I stood in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror. I looked tired. Thinner. Older. And in the middle of my grief-ravaged face, I could still feel the ghost of that laughter lingering on my lips. I wanted to scrub it off, like it was a stain.

Because part of me believed that if I let joy in—even for a second—I was letting go of him.

And letting go felt like betrayal.

Aaron and I had been together twelve years. We met at a bookstore, fell in love over coffee and cheap wine, built a life from mismatched furniture and inside jokes. We didn’t have children—just dreams we were slowly working toward. A road trip up the Pacific Coast. A fixer-upper house we’d turn into a home. A future that was taken away in an instant.

For weeks after his death, I wore my grief like armor. It protected me. Defined me. Made me feel closer to him, in some strange way. I thought: if I hurt enough, maybe he’d know I hadn’t forgotten. If I smiled too soon, maybe he’d think I had.

But grief doesn’t work like that.

Love doesn’t disappear when laughter returns.

It took time—months—for me to understand that. That laughter didn’t mean I was moving on. It meant I was still here. Still living. That the love we had wasn’t buried with him; it was planted in me. Growing roots in everything I did. In the way I still sang off-key in the car. In the way I talked to his photo every morning. In the way I eventually learned how to smile without shame.

Some days I still feel the ache. In the grocery aisle where I find his favorite brand of cereal. In a movie line he would have quoted. In the space beside me at night that no one else can fill. But grief, I’ve learned, is not a straight line. It's a spiral. You return to the pain again and again—but each time with more strength, more softness, more room to let the light in.

The first time I laughed after he died, I felt like a traitor.

But now, I know better.

Now, I understand that laughter is not a betrayal—it’s a rebellion. A small, defiant way to say: I’m still here. I still carry you. I still feel joy. Because of you. In spite of you. With you.

And somewhere, somehow, I believe he's smiling too.