THE WIDOW/MOTHER DILEMMA

One of the ongoing challenges for a widow who is also a mother (or mother figure) to adult children who lost their father is how to support them in dealing with their loss while grieving their own loss. I was lucky I realized this early on. I saw that my kids loved and supported me and were dealing with their own issues. They were also really concerned for me and how things would be for me and our experience was not free of their expectations about how I should be dealing with things.

I am so very grateful that we have the kind of relationship that allows us to talk to each other about anything and to deal with things up front. Without that I can’t imagine that we would have traveled this path as smoothly as we have. And yet, there were moments. I hope that every widow and every child that reads this sees the importance of this piece of the puzzle. There was a time that I got my kids on the phone and told them to stop talking to each other about what I should be doing and to call me if they had questions of concerns. A lot changed that day and I think one of the things that changed is that they got that I was going to be okay. Perhaps when adult kids confront the loss of one parent they suddenly realize that the other one is vulnerable and mortal too. I have been down that road and it can be a bumpy one. I knew it was important to share with my kids and to let them know that I was going to be okay.

Right after Ned died, for example, one of my children was upset that I removed all the medical equipment so quickly from the house and that I gave away most of his good clothing to our nephews the day after he died. I think she was afraid that I was trying to get these things out of the house so that I would not have to deal with them and I also think she was concerned that I might regret my quick actions. After talking with her sister, she realized that I only let things go that had no real value to him or me. He was not that wheelchair or walker and he hated clothes – and yet if he had to wear them he bought good ones. I knew that he would love that his two nephews who were just graduating from college could use some “grown up” clothes to help them moving into the next part of their life. He would have wanted the new $600 suit and the $150 shoes he wore to be of use to someone who needed them. His favorite thing to wear was cut off sweatpants and a white t-shirt. As the kids and others will tell you, for him clothes were optional. That’s how I see him in my mind’s eye.

My children were concerned with two things in particular – how to deal with losing their father and how to support me. When I realized that was their concern I started to handle things a bit differently and to share things with them that I might have kept to myself otherwise. It became clear very quickly that letting them know what was happening with me was the best way to ease their concerns.

I also started to think ahead to how I wanted things to be going forward. For example, I do not consider the day he died a day to celebrate as an anniversary. That’s the day he left, not the day something was created. So I decided to mark that day a bit differently. The first year I had a Celebration of Life party on that day. I asked people to come to my house for dinner and to bring two things. First, I wanted them to share a story or memento about Ned that I could put in a notebook. I created a book for my young grandchildren to share with them the Pawpaw they never got to know. You see, Ned had his stroke just 2 months after two of the kids were born and two years before the youngest was born. The only Pawpaw these three knew was in a wheel chair and unable to do a lot of things with them. I wanted them to have the opportunity to know all of him so I asked others to share their stories, pictures, and things such as house plans he drew.

The second thing I asked was that everyone come to the party to share how they were living life full out. Ned was committed to people living life full out and even after his stroke, he was committed to that for himself. He would have enjoyed hearing everyone share how they were giving their all to live a life they loved.

The next year we planted trees in his honor. One for each of the kid’s families. They still grow and bloom at the house we loved and lived in for the last 25 years of his life. Since then we remember and grieve in our own ways. We take time to reach out to each other and remember what we have lost. Most of the time I just go to the cemetery and sit on the bench by his grave and tell him what’s happening in our lives. Sometimes I take a book and sit and read and once I took Boomer and introduced him to this big black hairy four legged creature that now shares my life.

The Anniversary I decided to celebrate was our wedding anniversary. For the next few years it worked for me and my kids to have dinner together that night and share our memories of life together as a family. We can’t always be together on that day but it is still the day I choose to celebrate. That is the day we created a family and that is what I prefer to celebrate.

Sometimes our kids want us to be part of their grief and that’s hard. A friend recently shared that on her husband’s birthday the adult kids wanted to get together by conference call and share about their dad. She just wanted to be alone with her memories and her grief. The kids got upset with her and said somethings designed to make her feel guilty about not honoring their wishes. She was torn and unsure what was the right thing to do.

The right thing for a widow with adult children is to do what she needs to do and tell her kids. Widows who have young children have entirely different demands on them but those of us with grown children need to let them know that we are there for them and we need them to respect our needs also. Birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries are hard times to navigate. Talk to each other. Work out the challenges. You are all grieving because of the loss of someone you love. Let that be the link that pulls you together not the wedge that pushes you apart.