"My wife" & pronoun confusion

The first few weeks and months after Robin died I found I continued to say "we" and "ours". The words seemed so familiar at the time, referring to things like "our silver car", or "our home". It was kind of upsetting because I knew I was using the pronouns incorrectly, after she died the words were supposed to change to "my" or "mine". After twenty years some language patterns really get burned into your brain.

I still run into conversational issues. I didn't realize how much we share with people through stories about our history. If I'm with friends and I speak about things that "Robin and I" did, they understand the story within the context of my life.

As I meet new people things can get a little disjointed. For example, if the conversation turns to travel I might say "yes, my wife and I once traveled to England". I might have an entire conversation with someone and the fact that my wife passed away never comes up. It's not like I'm going to say "yes, my wife and I once traveled to England, but we don't travel anymore because she died last winter…". Huh?

Obviously the cancer story isn't one I tend to just bring up out of the blue. Sometimes the conversation just naturally takes care of itself - like when someone asks if we have children. Well, then the story just kind of comes out naturally. And luckily it doesn’t have to be told as a long story, people will quite readily accept a brief description of what happened.

Sometimes now I find myself editing my own conversation in my head. So now a story might start more like "yes, I have traveled to England". I guess maybe it's just another symptom of pronoun confusion…