I’m still navigating what it means to be a widow.
I’m still coming to grips with that word and what it entails for me, at 47 and as a mother of two teen-aged daughters. I don’t feel old, but that word makes me want to be old. It wants to pigeonhole me into something I’m decidedly not – a homebody and a spinster.
Okay. So full disclosure: I knit, and I adore reading. Is there anything better than a good book and hours of time to read? I like quiet and hot tea.
But I also love going out with my friends and traveling and trying new things, especially new foods and off-the-beaten-trail places. I like belly laughs and live music.
Clearly, I’m in an in-between. I’m not one or the other.
Going through the death of my husband in my 40s has meant learning to be open to new things that I’d rather not know exist, that, had I been given the opportunity to choose, I wouldn’t have agreed to try. One of those things is an online support group, specifically for young widowers and widows. People like me. A friend of mine who became a widower about six weeks after I became a widow told me about this group. I’ve discovered it’s a place for people to go to feel heard and understood and validated in their feelings, to feel less alone.
They need to know that their anger toward their former in-laws is okay; they want to understand why they feel judged for having a girls’ weekend with friends; they post photos of Fridays spent alone at a backyard fire pit. Because, as I can tell you, there are some days that are, in fact, lonelier than others. Friday evenings chief among them.
When I read some of their posts, I realize how alone I am in this. How unique my life is to those I have around me. Our culture doesn’t do a good job of portraying widows or widowers as much other than in an in-between of one loving relationship and another. We’ve all seen the movies and read the books. One love passes and then another love comes along. It’s all so simple and neat and easy. But reality is a far different story. If Hollywood were to show widowhood for what it really is – raw and tumultuous and terrifying – would anyone pay to see it? Probably not. Way, way too scary for the average filmgoer.
In the parlance of the online support group, this other love is known as a Chapter Two – as in that second chance at finding love, real love like the one that has been lost. In the time I have been a member of this group, I’ve seen these second chapters go terribly awry.
Children and families and friends weigh in with their thoughts on other relationships, timing, and questions of honesty and depth of the love. It’s often difficult to read these very personal vignettes because I’m not at a place in my grief journey that opens itself to another chapter about love. In fact, I’m not interested in that at all.
Instead, I consider this place I am in as my Chapter Three.
Chapter One was my life before Jeff. It’s the time when I was growing up and getting my education, learning how to be me and dating before there was such a thing as Bumble or Tinder or OK Cupid. I was just being me and enjoying my life. I was becoming myself, really.
Jeff came along, and the page turned and quickly became Chapter Two. We fell in love simply, easily, and neatly. Don’t allow me to romanticize it. Our 22 years together were what a lot of marriages are – work, hard work to stay together and create a life. We had two daughters and built our careers. We went through all of the things that long-term couples do, and, somehow, through perseverance and sheer stubbornness, we made our married life work.
And then that chapter closed, closed so quickly I was left with a deep trauma and, yes, maybe a little whiplash. Whoa. That life. Gone. Just gone. So it’s taken me some time do decide that there is a Chapter Three and that’s what I am living now.
This is what has come after, a small gift of widowhood (if you’re willing to see it as such), and I am still writing it, of course, only I am aware that I’m writing it. With each day that I get up and live, that I come to work and do my job, that I make decisions for me and our daughters, this chapter is being written.
Do I love this Chapter? It’s too soon to tell, of course, but am I learning to love it? Am I learning how to be alone and how to navigate life? Yes. I can say that I am doing that. I can say that I am trying, and that, as expected, some days are much better than others. It’s Chapter Three of what I hope, what I believe, will be multiple chapters in my life. This is the one I am in now.
Charles Bukowski, German-American poet and novelist, wrote: “And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
If I am answering that question today, if I am being honest, I’d say it is freedom.
It’s freedom to make choices and to learn and grow and be reminded of the person I was in the first chapter of my life, to remember that my life with Jeff was a gift to be treasured. But like any good book, it’s time to turn the page and see what’s ahead.