young widowhood

Photographic Memories


Last night I went through the totes with pictures. When we moved up here I had just tossed them all, most in the original packaging from the photo shop, into two pink totes and I haven’t looked at them since. Not that I looked at them much before anyway. I haven’t been one to document my life on film. Most of the time the camera was put away unless it was a holiday or a special occasion of some sort. I vowed to changed that after Katy was born. I didn’t want her to be one of those people who had scant evidence that she was ever a child. But despite my best efforts the pictures never made it to a scrapbook or photo album and now that I have a digital camera and computer – I am even worse about getting pictures out and on display.

I made rather quick work of the totes. I was surprised that I could identify and date the pictures by lot as easily as I could as I still have a difficult time with time frames. One thing that was striking was the fact that as time went on Will’s presence in the photos diminished and then disappeared completely even though he was still alive. But maybe that is why. He was just alive in the physical sense and no more than that. I do remember that I deliberately stopped taking pictures of him when he went into the nursing home. I think there is just one photograph of him there that was taken at a holiday dinner they had for the residents and family in very early December. He would have been there about two months at the time and the social worker there took the picture and gave me a copy later. My memories of that time and place are awful enough without photos and Katy, thankfully, can’t remember him there at all. It probably wasn’t the worst that nursing homes had to offer but it was typical of what most of those places are. Understaffed and full of demented seniors who are in various types of restraints and drugged more insensible than they would have been anyway. Will, unfortunately, had to be quite quite medicated as he was aggressive and combative due to the areas of his brain that were under attack from his immune system. It wasn’t until the last six months or so when he had lost completely the ability to move that it was safe to take him off some of those medications. It’s odd that I should be thinking of this kind of thing right now because Rob and I are putting the finishing touches on our wills and personal directives and we have this list of “what ifs” to plow through and decide upon. I am pretty sure I would not want to live the way Will did those last two years even if I was suffering from dementia as severely as he was and didn’t know what was going on – or at least couldn’t remember it from one moment to the next. Sometimes life is not worth living and I think a lot of what passes for respect for the sanctity of life is just the cowardice of family to do the right thing or the selfishness in wanting to preserve someone in a horrible existence to put off their own grief.

But not everything in the photo totes was about Will. Believe it or not I had a longer life without him than with him. There were pictures of students and events that took place at the various schools I have taught at. There were tons of photos of my oldest nephew who I borrowed quite a bit during my single days. I found all the family history stuff that my cousin, Anne, and I had worked on. I have a fairly intricate family tree map that I used for my own writing and it reminded me of the stories that I wanted to write up at some point.

And I found cards. Why did I save all these cards? What is the purpose? Rob says not to be too hard on myself in that respect as everyone does this. He has nearly every important card ever given to him. I suppose he is right but I am not overly sentimental in this respect and whenever I pull out this stuffed shoe-box, I am more annoyed than pleased that it exists. Perhaps though I would be upset if it didn’t turn up from time to time and maybe I will be glad of these cards someday. And then there were the bereavement cards. I did nothing with this aside from take money out of them which sounds awful but I needed that money to pay for the lot and the burial. My aunt paid for the wake. I was so broke and still had about six months to go on my masters – with the accompanying bills and nearly a year before I would see the corresponding pay raise that I so desperately needed already. I verbally thanked everyone at the time of the wake but I know this doesn’t clear me with Miss Manners. At the time I wasn’t up to sending out written acknowledgment and as time went on I came to resent more and more the idea that this was expected. A death isn’t like a wedding or baby shower. It’s not a party and the cards are not gifts. And I found no comfort from them and still don’t. By and large they are from people who abandoned us for over two years and I didn’t, still don’t, see any good reason to thank them for throwing me a bone and showing up after Will was gone especially since I never heard or saw all but a handful of these people again. And these were people that had stuck with us anyway and I still tell them how much that meant to me.

Today all these photos are labeled and packed into two much small, and easier to pack for moving, photo boxes – ready for scanning onto my computer at some later date. The most immediate plan I have for them is to gather up pictures for Katy to create a book telling her story. I have read, and the hospice grief program confirmed, that it’s good for young children to have a photo book that tells the story of their lost parent. It helps them remember and facilitates their grieving process by giving them something concrete to thumb through and read and remember. Aside from that I am content to have them in some sort of order at last.

Now it’s on to the last two boxes of papers to be sorted and then filed or shredded. A widow at the hospice group asked me if it was okay to have not gone through her husband’s things. She is barely a year out and I told her that it was fine. For me though, at almost two years, it is not okay anymore. I can’t string this out over the remaining decade and I don’t see the sense in that anyway. The photos, papers and miscellaneous items left will not lose their power over me through my delay and may indeed gain grief momentum if I set it up as something arduous rather than something that is necessary and, in my experience, spiritually cleansing. I can’t protect myself from memories by hiding or ignoring things.

The Pilgrim’s Hospice


There are no free-standing hospices in the Edmonton area. I was a bit surprised by this because there are three and a fourth under construction back in Des Moines. Hospice care is in home here. Rob’s late wife, Shelley, received hospice in the house where we live. The Pilgrim’s Hospice trains volunteers, offers limited day time respite and runs a variety of bereavement programs. One the programs they offer is a creative arts group for children between 3 and 18 years of age. They have the children split into three different age groups and they meet to discuss their losses and feelings through song and art projects. The program even offers day camps over the summer months when Canadians typically don’t have any type of programs for kids at all because they are quite serious about their vacationing and family time. This last November, Katy was having some difficulties again and Rob and I decided to look into options for her and came up with this program. We realize this is going to be an on-going process for her because her perception of her dad and his death will change as she grows and her ability to understand and process matures. It’s ironic. One of the things that adults envy about children in the grief process is their seeming ability to grieve in short bursts rather than carry it around morning, noon and night, but the downside is that they will be burdened with reprocessing their parent’s death at every milestone along the way to adulthood and beyond.

While the children gather for their program, the adults meet in another room to do roughly the same thing the kids are doing minus the singing and paints. I think I might like to discuss my grief journey over a coloring book though or while making cookies or learning to dance. Somehow that doesn’t seem as daunting. The group is mixed. We were not all widowed though about half were. Others had lost small children or their own parents or grandparents. As I listened to one person describe losing a parent and grandparent with such visible distress I thought back to the numerous posts on the widow board where other widows would rant rabidly about the fact that this kind of loss is not equal to the loss of a spouse. Even Rob mentioned later that he couldn’t work up too much empathy for the person, and truthfully I couldn’t either, but I did feel sad for this person who obviously needed this lost parent so much that it was debilitating for them. A person expects their parents to die before them but our level of dependence on them varies so much from one of us to the next that I can easily see how someone whose adult life was integrally wrapped up in a parent’s could be as bereft as someone who losses a spouse. It’s very sad in another kind of way. The parents who lost children are the only grief victims that widows seem to be accepting of and often allow to trump their own grief cards. Rightly so, in my opinion. I was reading a blog entry the other day by a young woman who tragically lost her little girl over the summer and I just sat and bawled as I did so. The thought of losing Katy seizes me from time to time and it freezes my soul. I have an old friend in Iowa who is observing the sixth anniversary of the loss of her three year old later this month. He was murdered by her now ex-husband. I marvel still at how she carried on and put her life back together. Whenever I felt sorry for myself while Will was sick or after he died, I thought about her and kicked myself in the butt to do better.

The widows in the group last night were not as far out as Rob or I. Not even a year. Sudden deaths and they were grappling with the acceptance. There is a huge difference – a gulf maybe – between sudden widows and those of us who knew or had an inkling that it was coming. We don’t tend to wrestle with disbelief as much as mourn for the lost time. Time lost to the illness. Time in the future that won’t be. It is hard to listen to fresh grief. To see it. There is that look in the eyes. A tenseness to their frames, almost a full body clench. One widow talked about still not being able to sleep. I didn’t realize myself just how much I needed sleep until I was able to sleep again like a normal person does. During the three years leading up to Will’s death, I lived and breathed sleep debt, getting by on as little as three or four hours a night at times. One or two late nights now and I am near collapse. My body simply refuses to let me run a debt of any kind now. Smart body. The anger too is palpable in the freshly minted. I recoil even more from it now than I did during my time on the widow board though I had my anger then too. Anger is exhausting. After the meeting I felt compelled to speak to one widow whose first year is up just a few days after the coming second anniversary for Will. She asked if it gets better. And the answer is not that simple. It gets better only in that it begins to change. I could tell she was disappointed by that. I didn’t tell her that it never goes away and that she will carry it in some form or another always. I think she assumed because I was there with Rob that I was all better now. Everyone thinks that. I am certainly happy again. I am building a life with Rob that I love and I am so wonderfully blessed by his love and by the new family he has brought Katy and I into, but it doesn’t change the past in anyway. It transforms our now and our future.

The woman who lead our group got into grief counseling after losing her tow youngest children at birth. She felt better by giving back and eventually back a counselor. It was an interesting thing that I can relate to. I always felt good being able to share with newer widowed people on the YWBB. I was sad and a little angry when I had to leave there, but I knew I had to give that up – at least in that setting – because of the personal attacks I had experienced at fingertips of a few widowed who did not see me as a good example or as being someone who had anything of import to say about grief and the journey we were all on. Granted, I could be pointed – though I saved that for those of my own or greater vintage, but last night I thought perhaps I had found a new outlet for my still abiding need to share my experience and journey. Something I am going to give much thought to in the coming months. I knew after Will died that I someday would give back in the hospice. I am not quite ready to volunteer in that setting though. I am still a bit too raw. Maybe this type of group setting is more my answer.

Will’s Mother


Will’s mother was widowed at thirty-three. She chose a much different path to her now than I have chosen to mine. Nevertheless, she has had an impact on the way I view widowhood and grief and it could be said that I have gone the way I have because of her in some small way.

She has never been allowed much of a role in Katy’s life. Despite what she thinks, and tells people, Will and I made this decision together before Katy was even born. Had things turned out differently, she would be just as marginalized today as she in fact is. I remind myself of this when I things like today’s Christmas card arrive that Will knew her very well and though he loved her, he didn’t much approve of her choices past and present.

About eight months after Will died, his mother decided to resume contact with Katy – not me – Katy, who was four. She would send holiday cards and drop the occasional gift off at the door when we were not home. The cards were addressed to Katy and written to me. They were full of venom even though she had professed to have forgiven me for all I did to her during Will’s illness. It’s funny to me that for some people finding Jesus is often at the loss of civility, but that’s another post for another day perhaps.

I ignored her attempts. Katy refused to acknowledge having a second grandmother at that point (though she knew she did) as a result of things that happened during the hospice months, and I wasn’t going to push it. My mother-in-law knew what she had to do in order to gain entry into our lives and wasn’t about to. At this point I think I should point out that when she found out she was going to be a grandmother at last (we’d been trying for two and a half years and she blamed me for our lack of success), her first response was that now she could finally wear a t-shirt that said “grandma” just like all the other women her age that she knew. Katy, like Will before her, was to be an accessory.

Since no one in Will’s family ever called or stopped by or checked up on us in any way past the first two or so months after he died, I didn’t feel obligated to keep them up to date on our life, or my personal life. So, they didn’t know about Rob. When he appeared or when we got serious or the engagement or our plans to move Katy and I to Canada or our marriage. In fact it was mid-August or maybe even September already when I sent out letters informing them of our marriage and our location. Will’s oldest uncle and his aunt on his dad’s side were quite nice. Will’s mother? She didn’t take it very well. At least that is what I heard.

Today her Christmas card arrived. I had asked her not to send cards to Katy with messages intended for me anymore. Her card was just the message printed inside and her signature, and then out dropped a letter for me. It was as cruel as she could make it without directly violating her new-found faith in the Lord. The lord, as we all know, is big on form and light on intent. Her opening line was:

“I could bash you for what you have done to me and Will but I forgave you for all of that and I am at peace.”

Rob told me to just forget about it. Don’t let it have power. What she thinks I did to her is of little import to me. I know what kind of person she is and this is typical of that type of person, but that she implied that I did things to Will that hurt him is a bit harder to put aside. I know she is angry. She feels that life has cheated her time and again and never gives a thought to her part in the misery that defines her life now, but still. I feel often that I failed Will even when I know I didn’t and I hate that she can push this button. I will put this card and the letter away with the others. Katy can have them when she is old enough to read and understand them.