young widowhood

A Widow’s New Address Book


There is a saying over at the YWBB that widowhood rewrites your address book. It’s based on the very real fact that many of the family and friends you thought you could count on to be there for you when tragedy strikes will not be.  Or at least they will not be there in the ways you want, expect or need, and very often these people who meant so much to you disappear from your life completely.  Sometimes this happens gradually, and other times it seems to transpire overnight, but they go and usually never come back.

Widows love to indulge in the outrage of this.  It’s wonderfully cathartic to spew venom at those people we loved and needed whom abandoned us in our most wretched hour.  What we don’t do, nor do we want to hear, is acknowledge that often we play a role in our own abandonment.  What’s that howling?  It’s the shrieking of outraged widowed people undoubtedly.  However, I just can’t buy into the idea that we are entirely innocent victims anymore, and the reason is that I know better.  The tendency to push people away by not asking for help, by not answering the phone or letters or email, by not returning calls, or by not accepting invitations, all in the name of grieving is a pretty strong one that is not helped by the idea that is propagated among the grieving that anything done in the name of mourning is okay.  While conversing anything someone else does while caught in the same grief or simply in the ripples of our grief is heinous.  I am being over-simplistic but, in hindsight, I realize now that being widowed was not a pass for me.  I still had a level of responsibility in my relationships, great and small, that my hurting state didn’t excuse.  And I know grieving has to be done.  It just wasn’t meant to be a part-time profession or even a hobby.  We are the masters of our lives, actions and reactions, and if we emerge from the black crepe days friendless – we should take a closer look at the fingers pointing back at us rather than exhausting too much energy calling attention to those at the end of the one finger pointing out.

This last Christmas Rob and I sent out one of those obnoxious holiday chain letters.  The “hey, this is my wonderful year and family” kind of missive that makes most people wish they’d been sent fruitcake instead.  I tried to be as low-key Sgt. Friday (“just the facts, ma’am”) as possible and then decided that I would send it to just about everyone in my address book, including those people I hadn’t heard from since before Will died – and even further back than that in a couple of instances.  Why?  Because some of the reason I had this address book chock full of phantom numbers, addresses and emails was due to my own lack of initiative.  I simply let some of these people slip away through lack of attention.  I didn’t call or write or email, so what did I think would happen?  Why did I expect them to carry the relationship?  One of the worst things I ever learned as a widow was that anything I had to do to survive was okay.  It was an effort to call or write for a lot of reasons, so I didn’t.

One friend called regularly in the early months of Will’s illness.  She really was in over her depth and I think a bit frightened because when a close friend’s husband is really dying, it brings too many scary thoughts about your own world and – what if – into play.  I have to admit it was hard to just talk about nothing in those days and anything that was immediate to Will and what the hell I was going to do now (aside from teaching) was immaterial to me.  She tried to carry on our phone conversations as though nothing had changed.  Eventually, I screened her calls and stopped returning them.  What I should have done was been honest and said, “I appreciate what you are trying to do but I need to talk about me and Will and our options because talking through them helps me think and focus.  I don’t need forever to do this, but I do need right now.  Can you just listen to me?”  I was afraid I would hurt her feelings, so I ducked her.  She got the hint and took to calling every couple of months and as time stretched it become every six months.  I resented the calls.  I felt they were burdens.  What was really going on was that I knew I was being rotten and resented her reminding me of it.

She was hardly the only one.  I pulled away from many people.  And then I wondered why no one helped.  Of course, the reality was that I needed far too much help and people were as frightened by this as I was.  I blamed them and I shouldn’t have.  My reality was that I was too far from my own family and stuck with in-laws whose family dynamics left them poor substitutes.  I could have remedied some of this had I taken control and focused my efforts out but being raised to care-take and be “the strong one” my instincts took over and I did much of everything myself.  I was fortunate that a few of my friends and family pushed and insisted on helping, but I could have done a better job.

This friend was one of the recipients of the Obnoxious Christmas Letter back in December.  I got an email from her today thanking me for the pictures of Katy, reminding me that she had tried to stay in touch and could we not let so much time go by again?  I wrote her back and agreed.

When we are in crisis we expect so much and never stop to think that the people we are expecting things from are being tested too and that often they will not be capable of meeting the demands.  We will encounter worthless souls who slink off or implode or explode all over us and then leave, but it’s our reaction only that we have control over.  Most people in our lives are good people who are just as lost as we are in a tragedy.  We should be more accepting. Our address books are ours to write and no one else’s.

Condolences


The subject of memories came up at the hospice group when last we met. A gentleman who lost his wife to cancer not long ago was expressing his frustration with his in-laws whom he asked to write down memories of his wife for their young boys. He wanted them to get to know her through the stories or bits of information that he was not privy to. So far he has met little success and wanted to know if any others in the group could give him some insight into this phenomena of silence that sometimes springs up in families when loved ones die. 

Most of the others in the group had similar tales to tell of relatives and friends who seem to be of the mind that their pain is so much greater than ours that they can’t possibly fulfill simply requests such as writing down memories to share with our children or even keeping in touch with us. I remember being told by friends of my late husband that his illness and then his death were “just too hard” for them to deal with and they needed to distance themselves from first him and then later from my daughter and myself. I can shrug now and wonder at the weakness of people but at the time I was outraged. 

Another thing that gets to me still is the unfairness of who gets supported when their loved one is felled by serious illness or dies and who does not. It doesn’t seem to me to have anything to do with how nice a person the lost one was or whether or not the survivors reached out. It’s more like a luck thing. That point was brought home again to me by an essay in Newsweek by Katie Couric on the tenth anniversary of her husband’s death.

Ms. Couric was widowed after just nine years of marriage and left with two daughters then two and six. At her husband’s funeral, she asked those gathered to please write something down about her husband for her to share with their girls when they were older. This way giving them a chance to know the man they would really never know firsthand. She was overwhelmed with the responses. Cards and letters filled with memories which after ten years she felt her daughters were now old enough to read.

I have a sack of condolence cards. I have read probably one or two of them. Mostly the cards contain nothing but some sickening platitude that really bears no reality to the reality and then a signature or two. I ravaged them for the cash and checks so I could pay for Will’s burial because there was no money otherwise and then I put the cards in a gift bag  and put them in a closet in the spare bedroom. When we moved, I put them in a box. I think I have seen the sack one time since then. So in going on three years now, I have done little but move those cards from one place to another. I don’t know why I keep them at all. There is nothing in them that my daughter can read to learn about her father but I supposed that knowing people cared enough to send a card might make her feel a bit better. The only problem with that theory is that if any of those people had truly cared, they wouldn’t have chosen the trite cards that they did and might have written more than just their names.

Picking a sympathy card is one of the hardest things to do. I try to keep it very simple. I stay away from anything that hints at God’s will or my knowing how the person feels. I don’t believe God wills things on us and I only know how I feel. If I don’t know the person very well, I merely sign it. If I knew the deceased or the person, I try to write something, athought or memory that lets the recipient know that I do remember. That’s really all I wanted. To know that Will’s friends remembered him, who he was and what he meant.

Katie Couric falls in the lucky widow group. Someone who got support and true sympathy.

Grief Groups and the Four Seasons


We had hospice last week. Katy loves to go and see the other kids and do the activities. She has improved a lot since she started going to the children’s grief group. For Rob and I though the parents’ version hasn’t had the same effect. Rob finds that it simply digs up things that he has put to rest (no pun intended and naturally he knows that you can never truly put grief behind you yet it does become something that isn’t constantly in your face all the time too), and I find that I am a bit annoyed with the way the group functions. There is a trained grief counselor there but lately she has been working with training sessions for volunteers and so we are left with a hospice volunteer to lead the group. She is an older woman who reads prompts to us from handouts and speaks in platitudes. 

So this last week, she had a video for us to watch. As a former teacher the moment I am told I have to watch a video, I immediately suspect the worst and I am seldom disappointed. This particular one was circa 1989 and was little better than a slide show. It was a narrator talking us through the four seasons with lovely flora photos and inspirational sayings from famous people who have lost loved ones. The four seasons thing was enough to set my teeth on grind because I heard more than I cared to about the importance of living through widowhood for four seasons before one could do anything from sell the house to go out for coffee with someone of the opposite sex, and frankly, I find the idea to be some of the worst nonsense ever, but I am digressing. The video was supposed to set up talking points and to that end our facilitator planned to pause the tape after each season.

The first season was fall. After viewing it, we were asked to comment. I had already decided to not comment. I know, from years and years of faculty meetings and inservices, that the fastest way to kill a crappy exercise is to sit and say nothing. A good teacher (or facilitator) can deal with this but there aren’t that many people who are good at either of the aforementioned and usually they cave fairly quickly. My dearest husband though works for a large multi-national corporation and his training says “When something is bullshit – speak up.” And so he did. He said he felt that the video would have been useful to him in the first month or so but that now it merely dredged up things that didn’t need to be reviewed. We watched the rest of the video without stopping and then we moved on to other topics. 

I love my husband.