This is a weird thing to do and it makes me feel like I’ve got two husbands.

I don’t want to use real names in this blog, but this whole section is about my husband’s death and its aftermath—I have to call him something. Saying “my husband” in every sentence gets clunky. I’ve read blogs where the writer’s family members are referred to by their initials alone, and I find that distracting. The cutesy abbreviation “DH” is useful in certain venues, but I’ve never liked it and I’m not about to start using it now. I also don’t want to plaster him with a fake nickname.

So I think I’ll call him Ed, after two men who were important to him, one of them a good friend who died of cancer long ago.

Choosing a pseudonym is a kind of falsification. But in another way it feels truthful and appropriate: my husband, the real man with his own thoughts and opinions, is gone. Now what’s left is my memories and ideas about him, and as we can’t ever know another person completely, it makes some sense to put a new name on this construction—I suppose.

I still feel like a bigamist!