Last week I got new checks in the mail. It had been years since I needed any; like most people I find myself writing fewer and fewer checks these days. Cutting open the package, I was struck by the fact that where I used to receive a whole box of checks, I now got a slim envelope with only two books — one more paper item that used to be solid and institutional was now, like so much else, swiftly passing into irrelevance. I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of loss.

When I saw the new checks I was suddenly flooded with a regret I didn’t anticipate at all. I had forgotten this new batch would have my name on it — only my name. My husband’s name, which had also been on our checks for nearly 20 years, was gone. He died in 2015. In the four years since, I gave or stored away virtually all of his stuff, but his name on the joint bank account stayed. I thought of it as a lingering bit of post-mortem paperwork that was no big deal, something I could do anytime I had five minutes to go into the bank. That I never went spoke to how much I am still connected to Alan, especially in matters of money. For all kinds of reasons, many to do with Alan himself, I never wanted to face money alone.

In the past I’d pretended there was nothing to face. Finances for me had never been a big deal, not unimportant but only one fact of life among many. When I was single and a modestly salaried journalist, I pretty much spent what I made — I reasoned that’s what money was for. As long as I could pay rent and essentials and not incur too much debt, I was content, successful even. When I got married in 2000, the idea of joining my money with my husband’s was exciting and endearing. What might we buy together? What would we save up for? The possibilities alone of expanded wealth, monetary and spiritual, made me feel rich.

Alan was much less romantic about money. I discovered he was very anxious about it, as anxious as I was determinedly indifferent. Throughout our nearly 15 years of marriage, he always wanted to call money into account, to make budgets and forecasts, to plan. I wanted to buy things in the moment and not think too much about the future. I was partly trying to counterbalance Alan’s tendency to imagine a dark fiscal future in which we were always broke and overextended, even when the facts and figures of our joint assets said otherwise.