Widows struggle to survive. The struggle may involve people or it may not. Mostly we search for a reason to keep going, especially after we’ve lost a partner of many years. When my husband died, the first question so many people asked was, “What will you do now?” I asked myself the same question. What I had done for several years, what my vocation had been for so long, was caretaker to a very ill man whom I loved dearly. Caring for him was what I did and I realized that I didn’t know how to do anything else. Oh, I worked prior to becoming a caretaker in positions from receptionist to Personnel Director. But the years dulled my abilities.
No one needed me to cook meals, change bandages, turn him on his side, remember to give the correct meds at the right time, clean after him in all situations, change his sheets daily – sometimes twice. With his final breath and the removal of his body by the funeral home; with the removal of the hospital bed by the rental company, my responsibility came to an abrupt end.
What would I do now? Hang around on the outsides of my children and neighbors lives in hopes someone would ask me to help or would tell me what to do? The days consisted of many empty hours; incredibly long hours I struggled to fill. When the only other person in the house, my daughter, spent most of her time in her own room, the house didn’t get dirty.
Though he couldn’t talk, Bru made an amazing amount of noise, noise I didn’t hear until it no longer filled the void. I yearned for conversation. Unfortunately at a time when I needed them, many turned away, busy with their own lives. Who could blame them? They had husbands, children, grandchildren, jobs. Their lives kept them busy and fulfilled. As is often the case, some did not know what to say at a time of loss.
I wanted to tell them if, as a friend, you don’t know what to say, say ‘hello’ and shut up. Let me, the widow, talk. Let me rid myself of the guilt the remaining spouse always feels. Let me take you along memory lane to cherish the sweetness of my marriage. Please hold me while I cry and listen to the sobbing story of anger at losing him. Without that generous gift of your time and listening, all of these things turn inward and crush my spirit. This applies to all women or men who have lost their spouses.
A widow works on food, trying to find something to treat the taste buds that disappeared when her husband died. She works on that clean house, searching for the tiniest mote of dust that demands she remove it. The ratty garden she’s forgotten all these months calls in the spring breezes. In desperation she rips the weeds and plants alike from the graying soil until only scattered greenery peeps through the dirt. She bends at the waist, her arms clasping her stomach, trying to staunch the pain of loss symbolized by the ravaged garden.
She attacks the Internet, determined to move back to an area of sweeter memories. She searches for a house, for a real estate agent in that far away state. She makes contact and she makes plans never realizing she’s running away from and not to a place.
A widow hates herself. Daily she goes over the years of her spouse’s illness and what she might have done to help him live longer. Every day she finds something she’s certain could have, no, would have made a difference. Every day she shreds her life a bit more until one day she awakens to what she’s doing. She is refusing to believe her darling, her life left her voluntarily because he was exhausted from unrelenting illness. At that moment, the tasks may not stop, but these particular ones aren’t so necessary to living.
At long last she’s able to untangle the web she’s woven around herself. She will falter occasionally. However, she has taken a mighty step toward giving up depending on those people and things around her to survive and that is a good thing.