Time for grief matters so much. I’ve learned this again going through cancer surgery and removal of a kidney. I can’t tell people I’m grieving a body part. But I am.
Your husband has a treasure in a wife who gets it.

As someone aged 73 who has sold his business and now is struggling to find the meaning and purpose in my life that work once provided, I find this essay very interesting.

Peggy, your post on grieving raises for me the question whether I am somehow averse to grieving, or the question whether my way of grieving is somehow quieter, more peaceful than the kind of grieving I pick up on in your post (or in the comments preceding mine). One thing I’ve noticed about myself over the years (many years) is that I seem to “grieve in advance,” as preparation for an anticipated loss. I did this as my father’s death loomed as inevitable. I even wept over it one evening in the company of my wife (with whom I must have been talking about his condition). And, even though I might well precede my wife in death, I find myself often trying to confront her loss: I try to think I can keep myself together (so to speak) and somehow go on living and managing my life. But I find that very hard to imagine, so I usually console myself by hoping that I’ll be the one to go first.
Bob’s grieving over the loss of his psychology work is another matter. I’m sorry that it seems to have really stunned him. You speak of his sadness, his pessimism—his depression? While it might be relieving to “let him grieve,” I find myself being pulled to try to help. Clearly (from what you say) voracious reading is NOT taking the place of Bob’s loss of professional work. What about writing about it, writing about it as for an audience of readers (his virtual patients) whom he hopes to help deal with their own losses? I see that as very much a win-win. It would give Bob a quasi-professional task to do in place of his meeting and helping patients in person, and its result (a published book) would be tangible advice for others going through the loss that comes with retirement.
As a sort of aside, I want to relate something about my daily loss through the physical and mental decline of aging. I have to do a lot of self-talk (positive thinking and talking to myself) to arise each morning with gumption and gusto. And I would like to share an inspirational example I read about yesterday. The Yale Alumni Magazine carried the story of Ali Truwit, a young Yale swimmer who lost a foot (and a flipper) to a shark while she was swimming with a friend in an ocean. What did Ali Truwit do? She went on, in very short order (apparently with little grieving), to become a Paralympic swimmer. https://yalealumnimagazine.org/articles/5939-pain-and-courage-reorienting-a-life. As I commented online: “Ali, as an 81-year-old (Yale College Class of 1964), I relate to the final quote of your ‘Learning that you can take those days, and have the days on the couch, and cry, and then get back up the next day and be grateful for what you do have, and who you do have, and move forward, has been such a huge thing’ as a person experiencing the loss that comes from aging. I have days when I (almost) cry, and your heroic example will now inspire me more to get back up the next day with even more gusto and gratitude to move forward. Beginning today. THANK YOU!”

I believe it’s a natural response to try and ease a close partner from grieving. We all seem frightened by it especially as we age when there is so much passing by and being lost . Thanks for these words you have written. Yes, it is important to let it be.

Thank you Nicholas, Indeed. And thanks too, Peggy, for your grabbing it from an aging memory bank. I Think I need to hear that. I sit on a similar limb trying to support a husband, who, because of rampant diabetes suffers repeated deep brain strokes, a heart attack, a recent seizure, which, with every insult a little piece of that beautiful brain is wiped away. Too, I find myself doing the song and dance to suggest a side exit out of the darkening hours: “play your keyboard,” “let’s sit in the sun,” “You wanna go to your lunch group?” I think you’ve shined a light on the issue: perhaps he wants some time to recognize the losses. Time to grieve.