young widowhood

Searching for the Real Susan G. Komen


Hypnotically Pink for the Cure (1488505615)

Image via Wikipedia

Last week’s uproar over the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s anti-choice antics led me to want to know more about the young woman for whom the breast cancer awareness behemoth is named. But after  a couple of days of Googling, it became clear that after 32 years, poor Suzy Komen is little more than a name on corporate letterhead. Her story is forever lost, filtered through her sister, Nancy Brinker’s, perceptions of the events and how she has decided that the story of the real Susan Komen should be presented.

If you google Susan G. Komen, you will be rewarded with links that speak only of the foundation. Aside from Brinker’s memoir, which is really more about her than her sister, precious little information on Suzy Komen exists.

The poor thing doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia entry. Her namesake fundraising corportion, however, does and so, unsurprisingly, does her sister, Nancy.

One thing I did find, and it’s also not a shock because the Internet is stuffed with all manner of griefy culture things, was a picture of Suzy’s grave. And it immediately occurred to me after reading the inscription that Suzy isn’t the only one left out in cold as far as her story goes. So was her husband.

She is listed as daughter, mother and sister. Presumably the children had a father so at some point, she was a wife. Why isn’t that mentioned? A quick peek at the “official” Komen Foundation historical record on her mentions a husband, Stan, her high school sweetheart, but then it drones on with barely a mention of him or their two children again. Judging from the Foundation’s biography of Suzy, the only people who truly counted in her life were her parents and, of course, her sister.

Knowing what I do about the widow world and the odd notions that extended family and the non-widowed have about the whole “til do you part” and the general scorn there is for widowed who move on at an “unseemly” pace, I came to three possible conclusions.

Stan Komen, Suzy’s husband:

  1. bailed on her while she was ill and therefore earned his exile.
  2. remarried too soon for her family’s liking
  3. doesn’t care much for the happy, happy, joy, joy Disney Princess pink face that Komen’s spin has slathered all over the disease that killed his wife and so he declines to be a part of it.

Stan Komen owned a wine and spirits store in Peoria, Illinois. He still does. You can google him and it. I even found a few news articles that refer to him as a successful business owner and a person who offers advice to others in his industry. There is no mention of a second marriage, but I would guess he has moved on. He was a young man with young children, and it’s doubtful that he remained single (though I wouldn’t rule it out).

But no explanation of his, or his children’s, absence from the Pink juggernaut’s publicity machine. Cuz, let’s be real, run, walk , jump and knit bras for the cure owes its existence to bereaved spouses, children and extended family and friends.  Widowed who involve themselves in the cause to eliminate what killed their spouses is cliché.

So, did he piss his in-law’s off while his wife lay dying?

“A lot of guys bugger off when their wives fall ill,” Rob reminded me.

And that is true. Breast cancer victims especially find themselves alone quite often although I bet the reverse isn’t true with men who find themselves physically altered by prostate cancer.

However, I managed to find a preview of Nancy Brinker’s book about … herself mostly … and the origins of the foundation via Google books. According to Nancy, her brother-in-law was pretty much a Hollywood stereotype of devotion and sacrifice during his wife’s illness. He loved her very much and was devastated by her death.

Colour me confused then by his absence from his wife’s final legacy on the place where she rests. Even if he did remarry that doesn’t make her less of a wife to him. That was part of who she was and should be included regardless of what he moved on to.

I found the whole thing rather sad. Suzy asked her sister to “find a cure” for the disease that killed her. Komen donates very little really to research. The bulk of what they collect from the husbands, children, family and friends of women dead or dying is funneled to pay salaries of Komen employees (Nancy herself makes over $400 thousand a year as CEO) or is used to lobby Congress on behalf of insurance pharmaceutical companies or promote Pink ribbon products that often contain chemicals that are thought/known to cause breast cancer and to promote events to promote breast cancer “awareness”.

The last is funny because women in North America are so aware of breast cancer that they don’t know that they are actually more likely to die of cardiovascular disease. Fear-mongering has paid off so well for Komen that the latest research on the  risks of overscreening via mammograms are ignored or treated like junk science.

Suzy would be proud, I am sure, of the fact that 32 years after her sister promised to find a cure for breast cancer, a woman with stage four of the disease has nearly an identical survival rate as she would have had 50 years ago.

I am still left wondering who Suzy and Stan Komen were. Her silence on last week’s events and her sister’s efforts over the last three decades is understandable given that she is dead and all, but his? Telling? Maybe.

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Dating While Widowed: That Picture Thing and Other Kobayishi Maru’s


Anillos de Matrimonio, Aros de Matrimonio

Image via Wikipedia

When my late husband went into the nursing home, I cleaned his things out of our closet, the dresser and off the bathroom vanity. I didn’t throw anything away, nor did I give anything away at that point, but he was dying – albeit slowly – and there was no point in pretending he was coming home again. Leaving his things as they were served me no purpose from a practical or emotional point of view.

Over the course of the next 15 months, I gradually chipped away at his physical presence in the house. Pictures, books, cd’s and such were reminders that served only to keep me from the rather tedious and unpleasant task of putting our life together into perspective so I could move on. By the time he died, you might not have known – aside from the wedding ring – that I was married at all, judging from my surroundings and the things I put on display, and the day after his wake, I took off the ring and put that away too.

Widowed people are not usually counseled to clean house physically or figuratively in the early weeks and months. In fact, society can judge those who do rather harshly. After all, it’s not in keeping with the romantic idea of the tragic young widowed. We are supposed to keep that eternal flame lit, and it’s seen as proof of our love or lack of it.

Of course that is all nonsense. Tangible memories are anchors to the past that easily pull us backward to a life that isn’t rather when what we need to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and walking forward.

If you are of the mind to date and even remarry, you can’t build a new life with someone else on top of the foundation of your previous marriage to your late spouse. For one thing, it’s a conflict of interest and for another, it’s not fair to your possible new love.  If you love someone, you can’t ask them to be second choice or second best or to run a no win footrace for your heart with a dead person.

So the wedding picture and couple of photos in your living room (or the framed photo of your late spouse that sits on your night stand) tells anyone new that you are not available and though it won’t keep some people from trying to muster endless patience to wait you out, it’s not something a kind, caring person does to someone who seeks their love.

“But, I loved my late spouse,” you will protest. “Nothing can change that and if someone loves me, they will understand that I need his/her toothbrush on the vanity or dozens of pictures of him up and only a selfish, insecure person would question that.”

Did you just hear what you said? Who is really the selfish person in this scenario? You cause your new companion to doubt and feel less than and then you punish them for it by making demands that nobody can hold up under for long.

There were few pictures up when Dee and I moved in with Rob. Mick and Edie’s graduation photos and maybe one of Shelley on some holiday or other they took. But Rob’s laptop screen saver rotated an endless display of photos and though they included me too, we hadn’t been together long enough to make up for the sheer volume of those pictures that included Shelley.

Perhaps it was being widowed myself or maybe it was, at 43, being just too old that kept me from feeling second best or in some kind of competition. Whatever it was, I am not the norm to look to. Most people who date the widowed feel the weight of comparison and the more memorabilia lying around – coupled with a fierce resistance to put it away – the more slighted and second choice they feel.

I wasn’t completely immune to comparing myself to Shelley. She epitomized physically the beauty standard that I grew up with and never met and the stories I heard from Rob, Edie and Mick sometimes made me feel as though I was a much less likable person. It was nonsense but it’s proof of the power of a late spouse’s legacy to do harm to anyone who ventures into a widowed person’s emotional sphere.

I have mentioned it before but it bears repeating. If you bring a new person into your life with the intention of one day having a serious relationship and even marrying, you must be prepared to put away the physical aspects of your late spouse and your life together. It’s selfish of you to expect a new love to be anything less than “the love”. You cannot actively love the late spouse and do justice to a new partner and it’s unfair to ask of anyone that he/she sign up to be “just the second husband/wife”.

  • Put away phrases like “true love” or “soul mate” when talking about your late spouse. They are fairy tale words in any case and will hurt your new partner even if he/she is too kind to tell you so.
  • Don’t allow children, extended family or friends to use words, objects or memories to make your new partner feel like a runner-up. Your love is not a beauty contest.
  • Strive to love someone new as deeply and without reservation as you did your late spouse.

“But,” you doth protest too much again, “my new partner assures me that they don’t mind the pictures, my bratty adult children and insensitive friends and the closet so full of late spouse’s clothing that they are living out of a suitcase and boxes.”

He/she is lying because he/she loves you that much and buys into the idiotic notion that being patient, understanding and loving you far more than you deserve at this point will one day open your eyes to how wonderful he/she is and you will let him/her fully into your affections …. and make space in the closet.

“But,” make your last stand,  Gen. Custer, “my children need these things in order to remember.”

Bullshit.

You need these things to avoid moving on. Moving on sucks because change we don’t initiate ourselves is unwelcome and we are no better than children about it with our kicking and screaming.

Your kids don’t need a wall collage or an urn on the mantle piece. They would probably be grateful if you moved the fuck on, so they could too. I am stunned by the number of widowed who use their kids as a way to cling to their grief even while they abdicate active parenting and justify their behavior by hiding behind grief.

If you are not ready to move on, you aren’t. If you are not ready to date, don’t. If you only want to date, be honest about that with those who approach you.

But, if you are seriously involved, live in the present. Honor and love that person the same way you did the one who came before him/her. That’s what a person of integrity does. That’s what a person who is ready to move on does.

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Today is Five Years


rob and i the night before our wedding

Five years ago today I was home from work with yet another sinus infection, checking my work email and taking care of a bit of business virtually when I received an email from Rob proposing that we take our friendship in another direction, a romantic one.

He confessed that the thing uppermost on his mind anymore was me, and though it took him by surprise, and couldn’t have been less timely, he saw no reason to let a good opportunity pass him by. Oh, and by the way, did I feel the same? He kind of thought I did, but if I didn’t, please don’t be creeped out.

In typical Virgo fashion, he went on to outline a plan for us to virtually date and eventually meet up over my Spring Break to take a trip together to the West Coast. What did I think?

I was stunned. I had to call my BFF, who simply said, “I told you so.”

She had been convinced weeks earlier that Rob saw me as more than a friend. In fact, she’d spent a good deal of our lunch date the day before extolling his virtues and trying to convince me to overcome my hesitancy and simply pursue him, which was something I wouldn’t do because Rob was quite vocal about wanting to wait until after the first anniversary of Shelley’s death before dating again. He also frowned vigorously at the behind (and not so behind) the scenes meat market on Ye Olde Widda board. Some of his disgust was just the hypocrisy. Dating was routinely trashed and daters harshly hung up for public flaming, but the reality is that it was more common than the board matrons cared to acknowledge. And partly, it was due to the fact that he’d been a victim of widda stalking and he shied away from being seen in that light himself.

His closing line included a bit about not been able to breathe properly until he’d received my reply, so I wrote “breathe” and “yes”.

And that’s not quite all there was to that but it was the beginning of what is now.

Hollywood marriages are measured in dog years, so at five together ourselves, Rob and I are particularly old married folk. Sometimes it seems as though I have known Rob forever and in a spiritual sense, I think that is true, but it catches me by surprise a bit remembering that I have not known him always.

He’s had his desktop screen saver off for some time but switched it on again this past weekend, and all these old photos popped up. Pictures of Mick and Edie when they were small. Family pictures of long ago. One picture of Shelley came up from their time in San Diego. It was an impromptu goofy shot with her in her pajamas and Rob blushed to his toes, looked sheepish and said, “I didn’t know that was on there.”

All roads lead to where you are standing right now, don’t they? A good thing to remember.

Happier anniversaries are a better place to put one’s energy. Today is certainly in my top five and probably the most fortunate day of this life of mine.

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