I am so grateful I was able to visit Dollywood with Lynn and her family a few years before she passed. Dollywood is still one of my favorite places to visit, and I tell people it reminded me of going to Disneyland in the 1970’s / 80’s. It had an amazing feeling of being in a smaller, hometown amusement park, where EVERYONE was happy and relaxed. So much love there.
I have been thinking about Dolly’s passing, and how she died 1.5 years after Carl Dean, her husband of 59 years, died. “Overall, the researchers also found that in the year after losing a spouse, men were 70% more likely to die than similarly aged men who did not lose a spouse, while women were 27% more likely to die compared to women who did not become widowed.” (Time Magazine) One of the common “secrets” or feelings we widows share is that we “didn’t want to die, but we just didn’t care so much about living” after our partners passed. Some feel like this for about the first year, and some feel like this longer. Aaaaand, we are so careful to emphasize, “I did NOT want to die.” Part of this sentiment is often, “I just want to be with my partner again.” (If I were still early in my journey, I wonder if I would have felt a little jealous of Dolly getting to be with her husband!) In addition to this, because Lynn passed suddenly, I had a strong assumption that anyone (including myself), could and would pass away suddenly. Dolly expressed she had neglected taking care of her health while she was caregiving for her husband. I remember how hard it was to muster the motivation to take care of my health. A fellow widow shared with me her sentiment of, “The day my partner died, my partner’s partner died as well.” Phew! Agreed. We immediately lose who we were, as a person living in this world with our person. We are like a shell of who we were, and become an alien who still looks like our former self. Around Year 3 when I started to not feel worse and worse, and started to feel “the same,” and then a little “better,” I felt like I had made it through a critical level of this widow journey. I went into Year 4 with a “crisis averted by the skin of my teeth” type of feeling.
I came across a video this week where a woman says, “Shoutout to the non-parent widows.” It was a sentiment I had never heard before! And, as someone who has felt like society values parents over non-parents, I was very intrigued by what she meant. Her point was, widowed parents “had” to get out of bed and do the things to take care of their children. They had a built in motivation or responsibility. There is no right or wrong perspective, but I can only imagine how immensely MORE difficult it would be to have children when widowed as well! (I think we widows are just very good about being in awe of how brave and strong each other is, so we always highlight each other’s struggles, even when they are different from our own.) For me, I always said my dogs kept me alive, as they gave me a reason to get out of bed, at least a couple times a day, to feed them twice a day. Eventually, I was able to start walking them again as well.
I don’t know exactly what helped me get through Year One, and then Years Two and Three. The usual buzz words of resilience, community, something to live for, etc are accurate in that they helped, but they are only part of what helped me survive. I DO know that I am grateful for who this widow journey helped me become. I appreciate the lessons I learned, a deeper understanding of life, and so many other things that now make up who I am. And, I still catch myself saying to Lynn or my Mom, “I wish you were here to see my life!” And then remembering – much of who I am and the life I have now is BECAUSE I had to carve a path without them here. I am torn between “I wish you were here to see this”, and “I’m only experiencing this because you aren’t here…”
“I Will Always Love You”
