After eight months, I know just one thing for certain. If their marriages were anything like mine, recent widows and widowers would benefit from having a global positioning system (GPS) in their vehicle.

It's not that we need direction. But it is important, in the process of grieving, to accommodate the uncomfortable memories and regrets.

John and I fought rarely but passionately. Everyday sniping was not our style. Our all-out nuclear meltdowns were most likely to occur when we were driving, confused and lost in a strange city. I suspect it's a malady common to many marriages.

In every marriage, each has a role to play: driver or navigator. For us, the roles were interchangeable. Consequently, neither was blameless as we wandered along unfamiliar streets like two mice in a maze.

I'll always remember one of John's iconic statements as we hurtled through Chicago amidst a labyrinth of freeway exits. Clueless as to location or direction, he complained: "How the (bleep) are you supposed to know where the (bleep) you are in this (bleeping) city when there are no (bleeping) mountains!"

Born and raised in the West, he always knew he could count on the mountains to get his bearings. It's a different take on the Psalm, "I shall lift my eyes unto the hills - from whence cometh my help," finishing with an exclamation point instead of the psalmist's original question mark.

Now instead of JEA, I have GPS to pick fights with.

To see if I could work the thing, I started out asking for a route to the post office and back. GPS provided a direct route, but anyone who lives here knows better.

Once you get to the post office, you can't simply turn left onto Main Street and go home. You'll wait endlessly for a break in traffic.

So you turn right, right again and again, and after a couple blocks another right, and THEN, at the stoplight, you get a safe and serene left turn.

GPS doesn't understand this. It repeatedly instructs, "Turn left . . . turn left . . . TURN LEFT!"

I rode once with a friend whose GPS device, when ignored, would declare: "Off route. Recalculating." That, I thought, was a wonderful metaphor for life.

My GPS - being a cheaper model - sulks silently until we can agree on a route.

GPS prefers to get me back on course without losing forward momentum. But if I continue to ignore the instructions long enough, I discovered (with some kind of perverse satisfaction) that it will eventually give up and beg, "Turn around at the next opportunity!"

Last week I used GPS for real, driving for the first time to a friend's new home on the Olympic Peninsula.

We (GPS and I) drove in harmony until, at last, it declared: "You have reached your destination."

I had not. After several minutes of aimless wandering and already late for lunch, I finally did what any man would do: I stopped and asked for directions.

Mary Koch is a freelance writer based in Omak. She can be contacted at www.marykoch.com.