Widowoman - A Journey Into Widowhood

Many aspects of life as a widow have been and are challenging, surprising, and somewhat disconcerting. However, one of the most startling aspects of being in this new cultural phenomenon is dealing with the questions that people feel comfortable and that they have complete permission to ask that they would NEVER consider appropriate if I were not a widow.  In fact they would NEVER even ask the same questions of a widower. Somehow when people know for find out you are a widow they think they have license to pry into your personal life and your personal business about matters that do not concern them at all. Their questions are sometimes impertinent and almost always based on some misplaced, yet unexplained, professed concern for you and your well being.  These questions, which are about personally sensitive matters, are asked as if the questioner has a right to ask and you have a responsibility to answer. They somehow think that asking you questions like this convey their gen...

We hear people say it all the time. “Grief is personal.” The problem is that saying that is one thing and how we expect people to act is something entirely different – especially widows. As I muddle through this new territory I continuously encounter the remnants of a time in our society – not really so long ago – when women were considered property and if they were married, they could not own property in their own name, have their own bank account, or operate independent of their husbands. Those that were not married were just considered “sad” and their marital status was pitied. After all, what woman could really take care of herself? Men and many women were convinced that women were the “weaker” sex and needed a man to look after her to make it through this life. It always puzzled me how that attitude could prevail if anyone actually looked at the lives of women and compared what they did to what the men they were married to actually took care of. For the most part, men earned...

One of the experiences that is surprising, and in my experience never gets easier, is filling out paperwork that includes personal information after the death of a husband. Checking the box “Married” just seemed the normal thing to do for forty-five years. I was married and I was proud of the love and life we shared and I wore beautiful diamond rings to broadcast that to everyone I met. It did not seem odd in most cases to check that box. Now, one of the things I did not do was use the title “Mrs.” most of the time so that box on most forms was something I just left empty or marked "Ms." Although I am sure that was confusing to some and maybe they changed it in house to satisfy their own needs, it always seemed to me that using Mrs. as part of my name was more about him than me and as I said in an earlier article he was woven into the fabric of my life but it was also important to both of us to maintain independence. It was never a big deal for us. It is just the way we ch...

The first time I was really present to this new cultural world I had entered was when I went to an event at my Church the week after Ned’s funeral. I had been attending events by myself for some time as my husband’s physical issues after his stroke substantially limited his activities. Couple that with the fact that at heart he was somewhat of a hermit and he used the stroke as a justification for staying home from public events the last few years he was alive. As a result I was a solo attendee for lots of things in the years after his stroke. However, something was very different now. When I walked into the Parish Hall that night I was immediately met by our wonderful, thoughtful priest and escorted to a table where several other women were already seated. He introduced me to the other women with these words, “You probably know Sharon but you may not know that she is a widow now. Her husband was buried last Friday.” It seems that all the women at that table were widows. I was now o...

A few days after the funeral I started to notice some things happening in my body that were a bit frightening. I knew there would be an emotional impact of losing him and that would last  a long time but this was different. This did not have anything to do with losing Ned or my grief. This was physical. The first thing I noticed was in the shower. When I closed my eyes to shampoo my hair I lost my balance and fell against the wall. What was that about? I had no problems with my balance since I got my knees replaced a couple of years earlier. At first I thought it was just a fluke. You know, a one time occurrence probably brought on by not drinking enough water or eating enough. After all, eating was not high on my priorities that week. The thing is that the situation did not improve. Every time I took a shower or closed my eyes for any reason, I started to lose my balance. It was so prevalent that I started to take extra care to keep from falling in the same way I had before k...

On March 23rd, 2011, my husband of almost 45 years died suddenly in the early morning hours when a pulmonary embolism took his life in an instant. In one moment I went from "until death do us part" to being parted from the man I had lived with and loved for two-thirds of my life for the rest of my life. What I did not know at that time was that I had also just entered an alternate universe - one that I had no idea was there and no idea how to navigate. The next few days were filled with family, arrangements, tears, laughter, decisions about things like embalming and how many police escorts and limos were needed. The story of those days brings tears, smiles, pain, and comfort all at once. In some ways the busyness of the time between Ned's death and the funeral postponed the realization of just how much my life had changed. And then, on Saturday afternoon, just three days after Ned's sudden death, everyone went home and I found myself in a new reality.  For the fir...