Community and Perspective

My husband died in the early morning and by the afternoon, word was out (bad news travels faster than good news I can assure you!) Later that day I received a message from someone I knew that went something like this: “Hi Allison, so sorry to hear about Peter. My husband Fred was diagnosed with cancer, too and only has a short time to live. I guess we’ll be widow friends this fall.”  

Knowing now the context in which it was written, I feel nothing but compassion toward the writer, but needless to say, I remember having two clear thoughts. One was “I just can’t respond to that right now” and the other I felt more deeply and it was this: 

“I don’t want to join your ‘Widows Club!’”

Widow. The word. The connotations. The literature. The cliches. The widow-maker heart attack. The ‘black widow’ with the long list of suspiciously deceased husbands. The spider!  The ‘Merry Widow’ of operatic fame, inundated with insincere gold-digging suitors (Would they come for me?) The merry widow corset!  (Really? What’s that all about?) 

Most of all, widow was not a word that I identified with in any way, shape or form. We had been together for nearly 20 years and I still felt like Peter’s wife. I felt too young, too loved, too full of life to be a widow. For a long time, when his name came up, I just introduced myself as his wife and stumbled over the word ‘widow’ when it arose. “I don’t want to join your widows club.” But of course, I had joined that club. And that person was right – we did become ‘widow friends’ that fall and for the next several years, finding comfort and understanding in each other’s company that was often hard to find elsewhere. I found the same with a number of friends, both older and younger, in all sorts of circumstances, who had faced a similar loss. It’s not that my married, divorced or happily single friends are unsympathetic, they are wonderfully supportive. But they don’t really know how I feel.  

Every human experience is at one and the same time both unique and universal. Whatever you go through – moments of deep personal tragedy, unique experiences that make their mark on your heart, deeply personal circumstances of birth, chance or choice – give you access to a private world inhabited only by those who have been through what you have been through, who have experienced something very similar to what you have experienced.   

In the wedding ceremony, we pledge to love one another “until death us do part.” Not long after Peter died, I had the morbid sensation of walking down the street and thinking that every person I passed would one day be a widow or widower (or bereaved in some way) – a  coming tsunami of as yet unrealized future loss! Like ‘Oprah’s favourite things’ giveaways, when I saw happy couples holding hands, I would think to myself but “You’ll be a widow” and “You’ll be a widow” and “You’ll be a widow!” Thank goodness they couldn’t read my mind! But this way of thinking wasn’t actually that new for me. Ever since I went into the ministry, I’ve had a thought occur to me with incredible regularity right in the middle of weddings I was conducting – and it’s this (something my mom used to say to my brother and I when we were fighting as kids) “Someone’s going to end up crying!” 

Someone’s going to end up crying! Unless you go together in a barrel over Niagara Falls, either you’ll be standing at his funeral, or he’ll be standing at yours. Or, as my mom said to me and my sisters when we were teenagers “You have to learn to live on your own, girls. Men either leave you or die first.” Statistically, she’s not wrong – take a look around the nearest retirement home and you’ll see what I mean.  

Even if you had the world’s happiest marriage, the chances of you ending up a widow are well, very high. And at some point in our lives, we will all have to face loss and learn to live on our own. Parents, siblings, friends, pets, spouses, even (God forbid) children – each and every one of them is mortal. There’s no getting through life without loss, unless you never love another living creature at all, which is different kind of death.

It took me a while to realize that what the tsunami of now-partnered, but one day-widowed people represent is a whole community of fellow travelers. Each of us is on that journey already, whether we realize it or not. Those who have already lost, we whose grief is fresh  and those whose losses are ahead of them. As the acceptance of my situation slowly dawned on me, I remember saying to another widowed friend “Well, even though I didn’t want to join this club, since I’m here, I figure I might as well talk to the woman next to me.” 

Accepting what has happened opens to the door to a vast community you didn’t even know you needed. And seeing people at different stages of facing, recovering and healing from loss grants you the perspectiveto see both where you’ve been and where you might yet go. 

After a while, even though I didn’t want to belong to that club, I began to appreciate the  wisdom and kindness of those ‘ahead’ of me. Running into a work colleague of my husband who had been widowed seven years earlier I was asked “How long has it been for you? (My answer: “A year and a half.”) “Oh, Early Days, yet, Early Days. You’ll get there.” (These kind comments gave birth to the name of the first section of this website.) She knew, from her perspective of seven years, that I was really just beginning the journey. 

Looking at her, I saw a healed and healing woman, vibrant, successful in her work and even with a new love on her arm (which might not be for everyone, but it is for some!) and I saw that it was possible to get there. I knew I wasn’t anywhere near there yet, but I also began to believe that I might some day be. A widowed friend who’d been a single mom of teenage children that turned out just great said to me simply “For sure you can raise those girls on your own” at a moment when I couldn’t imagine that to be true. Another older widowed friend with shining eyes simply said “The love is worth the loss.”

And as I began to gain strength and understanding, I also realized I, too could be of some help to the recently bereaved, those who were grappling with thoughts and feelings I had experienced not so very long ago. Reaching your hand across the gulf of isolation that grief can carve into your existence is a gift to all no matter where you are on the journey. Reaching a hand forward connects you to those who can help you, reaching one backward connects you to those you can help.  

Support groups are not for everyone, I know. At the beginning, the loss of the love of your life feels so intimate, so private, because you are alone inhabiting a world that the two of you once shared. But acknowledging that what has happened to you is universal can help you feel less alone. Finding others at different places along the journey gives you the perspective to know that you will not stay in one place. And being a source of comfort and strength to others is a way to redeem your loss by realizing that something good can come out of it. 

It turns out the ‘Widows Club’ is full of kind, wise and helpful people who know an awful lot about love! I think I’ll renew my membership after all.