My wife of 20 years died in '98, in fact she's now been gone just longer than I knew her. You are essentially numb for at least a year, friends and family mainly try to over compensate by calling, or arranging meal trips etc. The worse part is the loss of a confidante, partner, adviser and friend. The change in regime and coalescing with just being alone is the part I struggled with most of all Michael. I honestly miss her still every day and barely an hour passes without the mind reverting to recall and I conceive this will never change and I'm easy with that. You will never be alone.
Short term, which you are crossing now, their will be many cruel reminders of before this surreality struck you. I always remember her driving licence renewal and then an insurance company advising me that they'd been trying to trace me over a little pension plan she'd taken out when she was eighteen. I was unaware of it's existence and it pays out every November, another systematic reminder. This didn't happen until she was of pensionable age, fully sixteen years on from her passing. It hit me, but not with the sharp pain of the beginning of the afterwards, more a sadness and the memories it provoked of planning a retirement we'd never had.
The story line that 'time's a great healer' is a contradiction in reality I've found. What perhaps is being said is that with time we forget and I suppose to some extent that's true. I've found that embracing the memories and happiness helps and whenever a quandry throws up I still request opinion and rejoin with the conceptual response.
Above all I try to achieve the fulfilment she wanted me to attain, detailed in the letter I received posthumously, as a tribute of her contribution to my living years.
My sincere good wishes in your present circumstance ...