Footsteps in the snow
I’ve been doing a lot of reading at the young widows bulletin board, and it has me doing a lot of thinking. More thinking than writing, which explains my absence from here, but I thought I’d try tonight to give some shape to what I’ve been mulling. You’ll forgive me as I meander, I hope.
I realize that while I am a widow from an emotional standpoint, a widow of the heart, the lot of an actual widow who was married to her beloved is very different from mine. For many of them, not only were their hearts broken and worlds turned upside-down, but the loss of a spouse brought huge burdens of settling estates, financial problems from the loss of an income earner, single parenting, and a whole host of issues related to the legalities of a death in the family that I did not have to deal with. In addition to those, some have had to deal with criminal investigations and lawsuits on top of everything else. One poor woman recently received a letter from the police station, addressed to her husband, to come pick up his “belongings.” The belongings in question were the gun and a single shell casing he’d used to kill himself. Horrible. I cannot imagine. And I tend to feel that those things made their grief worse, or perhaps more complicated and frequently deferred might be more accurate; I’m guessing. They did not have the luxury of focusing on their grief, even though it was the only thing they could think about.
I didn’t lose my house, nor was my home empty and echoing, even if my heart and hours were. I did not have to fight with insurance companies up to and after his death, though nobody in his family did, either. He left them a mess to sort out at his business, though. His sister said to me that if he’d known he was sick, surely he would’ve gotten the shop records organized. I said nothing, but snorted inwardly. Fat chance; he’d been planning to get organized since I’d met him. It was a running joke, although I admit, I may have been the only one laughing.
My situation had plenty of its own complications that legal spouses were less likely to have to deal with (though being cut out by the in-laws is such a common experience from what I’ve read that I certainly cannot over-generalize on this point). In any case, by no measure did I get off easy. There were some things that I should’ve been there to help with, and wanted to, but was not allowed to. But I did have room to grieve and mourn as I needed to, when I needed to, and I can see from reading others’ stories that that was a gift. Not a gift I wanted, but certainly one I needed; cosmic warm socks and underwear for Christmas.
I think the first time knew I was starting to heal was when I read others’ stories of their losses, either spouse or children, and realized that I was “lucky,” lucky in that my sweetheart wasn’t murdered, or ravaged by a long, painful disease, or a suicide. It’ll blow your mind, the day you think “Well, of all the ways he could’ve gone, there are certainly worse ways than slipping away peacefully and instantaneously.” I still think he’s a bastard for doing it, but I try to remind myself that he didn’t do it on purpose.
As I read the stories at the bulletin board, I realize that my situation is not special, other than to me. The uniquely individual path of grief is so universal: another dichotomy in a situation filled with them. While we don’t follow the same path in the same order or at the same speed, I find that there is very little said by those who have been widowed that I haven’t felt at least once.
Reading there also gives me some perspective about “losses” I had in addition to losing him. There was a whole thread the other day, started by a woman who felt so guilty that she could not hold her husband or ask for a blanket for him, even though she wanted to, when she went to identify him at the hospital. Post after post came in from folks who said they also could not touch their spouse after they were “gone,” and from those who did, and now can never be free of the awful feeling of seeing the light gone from the eyes of the one they loved, or feeling them, cold and unyielding in a last embrace that would not be reciprocated. Those are memories they would do without, if they had it to do over.
I had horrible guilt about not being there for him, and anger for not being able to touch and hold him one last time before his body was cremated. But maybe it was a blessing, from what these other widows said. All my memories of touching him are when he was alive and vibrant. It makes it hard to understand how it is that he died, of course. But there is nothing to say that the “hard” I have is not a kinder sort than the “hard” I could’ve had.
Also, reading there, I have the benefit of the experience widows who’ve been on this journey longer than I am, and many of them have created new lives they’re comfortable in and that make them proud. They are beacons in the night to so many of us, reminding us that it is possible to regain lost hope, to rekindle embers of joy that have been hiding under the suffocating ash of grief, that life after death is not available only to our beloveds who have passed. I need that message so much, because I have been in a dark and doubting place for a long time, and again lately. I need to believe that I will come out of this really and truly alive.