There is that old Native American legend about the grandson who asks his grandfather about the two wolves he has inside of him: one being good, the other being evil. He asks his grandfather which wolf will win, and the answer from the wise elder is, “the one that he feeds.” I always liked that legend and tried to feed the positive wolf.

My positivity may have come with a healthy dose of sarcasm and snark, but prior to Jan. 8, I felt like my positive wolf was pretty fat, and the negative wolf was a bag of skin and bones. In fact, I might have questioned if that wolf was still in existence.

Then things changed. One of the few things that I remember from the moments when the emergency personnel were talking to me is how my brain suddenly split into two parts. There was the part that was not comprehending what they were saying and that was falling to pieces, and at the same time, there was a part that was very precisely planning exactly what needed to be done next and how to handle things like telling the kids, Steve’s parents, deal with the dogs, and practically get through the next 24 hours.

My wolves changed that day, and now both of them are starving, and not shy about letting me know they want to eat. If I sound a little bit nutty right now, rest assured, I am getting professional help, and this is a pretty normal part of the grief cycle. I’m sharing it now because for one thing, writing things out helps me understand them better, but also because I’m trying to find my voice now and I’m struggling.

One of the tricks a mentor of mine taught me when faced with writer’s block is to go back and recycle your greatest hits with a new twist. So, I journeyed back into the archives to look for some inspiration. One of the things that struck me was that I’d always thought of this column as being about “mom life.” Maybe it was just the luck of the draw, or maybe it was some otherworldly hand guiding me, but the columns I pulled out were just as much about “wife life” as they were about anything else.

While they brought a lot of laughs, they just served as another reminder of what an incredible human being Steve was, mainly because he put up with me, and let me write about it.

It’s a weird thing to suddenly no longer be a wife, especially when it was such an integral part of who I was. While I certainly still think of myself as Steve’s wife, and am clinging tightly to Steve’s memory as my husband, the reality is that that part of my life is over. The point was driven home the other night when my recipe box got knocked off the counter. As E helped me pick up and reorganize almost 20 years of collected recipes, she noticed that I have a ton of cheesecake recipes.

“Why are there so many different cheesecake recipes,” she asked.

Of course, it was because cheesecake was Steve’s favorite dessert, and I was always on the lookout for a new one to make for him. Flipping through them, I could remember his reaction to just about all of them. A chocolate one had not gone so well after I overbaked the chocolate crumb crust but didn’t realize it because it was already so dark. A pumpkin one was good, but he thought it was more of a pumpkin pie than a cheesecake. An attempt at making a blueberry one had resulted in a cake that was delicious underneath, but looked like a massacre had taken place on top. And, of course, his favorite was there: a basic cheesecake with a tangy sour cream layer that had been given to me by a good college friend as part of my wedding shower collection of recipes. That card was dog-eared and covered in spatters of who-knows-what. I almost always made it for him on Easter to break his Lenten sacrifice of dessert.

Moments like that feed the wolf of despair. My quest to find and make the most amazing cheesecake for Steve is just one more thing that has come to an end. It’s not just losing the person that loved me, it’s losing the person that I loved and all the little things that I did for him. As much as I miss him kissing me goodbye before he left for work every morning, I miss not buying him a quart of blueberries to eat with his breakfast every week, because he was convinced it was helping regulate his blood pressure. Not having him here to love me is hard, but right now, not being able to love him back is harder.

Then there is the wolf of necessity. It’s not really an active choice to feed this wolf, it’s just nourished by the stuff that has to be done. I am so tired of hearing how strong I am and how I can do this. It’s not about being strong or having the willpower to get through it, it’s simply not having a choice.

Last weekend, I spent from Friday afternoon until dark on Sunday night doing jobs that Steve would have been doing to prepare the outside for spring and getting the lawn ready to be mowed. Of course, I had to run the kids to a few places in between, but as the sun went down on Sunday, I still had about another hour of work that I couldn’t do in the dark.

I was exhausted, disappointed that I hadn’t gotten it all done, and walked into the house to remember that I still had all the laundry, food prep, and cleaning to do. I was tired and aching, but it still had to be done.

Getting all of that done wasn’t any conscious show of strength or sign that I’m “moving in the right direction,” it was just what needed to be done. Too many times, people have seen that wolf and mistaken it for something positive or assume that it means I’m doing well. Then, when the other wolf gets hungrier and shows its teeth, they’re confused or worried. Believe me, I’m confused and worried, too. I struggle to understand how I can mow the entire lawn, iron a week’s worth of uniforms, get the kids to every event they have, and have dinner on the table one day, and can’t get out of bed the next day.

The wolves are the best way that I can describe how I feel, and I realize that right now, I’m not the one in charge of feeding them. They’re just taking what they want, and the hungrier one always wins.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.