One thing I’ve found just from reading everyone else’s posts here as well as bumping into other widows in person, is that there are things we can all relate to, but each of us is on our own unique journey.
A couple weekends ago I decided to check out a small art show that was happening just down the street from me at closed winery. A lady I know who makes copper jewelry had a booth there. It was a bit slow at the time so we ended up chatting. She asked me if I was going to the rock and gem show at the fairgrounds and I had forgotten about it and asked when it was. Turns out it’s May 3rd and 4th. Without even stopping to think, I said, “Oh May 3rd was Mario’s birthday. I always like to do something fun on that day in his honor.” The emotion about that hit me after I said it and she picked up on it right away.
She’s one of the folks I have the “big W” in common with. She lost her husband about 2 years ago due to illness. She’s in her 80s now, but still active. We started chatting about the missing spouses in our lives. She said she still hasn’t gotten used to him not being there. “It’s those basic, everyday life things, you know?” I do know. She said that her routine is still about the same, but at the same time, vastly different. She explained how even the simple act of making coffee in the morning was throwing her for a loop because for decades she got out a second mug and started a tea kettle. And she had to keep telling herself, no, you don’t have to do that now.
Every time I visit with my mom she recounts similar things. And similar to my own experiences, she will say something like, “It’s taken me a long time to get over coming into the kitchen and not seeing him sitting at the table, reading a book and drinking his tea.” And for the time being, she’s still completely closed off the master bedroom. It’s truly a “dead room” in the house. It’s rather symbolic of just being unable to face the fact he is gone and not coming back. But we all seem to do something along those lines. For me, I went the opposite direction and “distracted” myself with cleaning out Mario’s side of the closet and totally re-doing the spare bedroom we called “the music room”. For me, I couldn’t face looking at all the his stuff and knowing he’s not there and he’s never coming back. Besides that, he’s made it pretty clear that he didn’t want a “dead room” in our house (and I agreed with him on that).
Mario and I were together for 27 years. But I can still only imagine what it’s like when you’re married for 50+ and then you lose your spouse. Yes, you got more time with them, but the vast majority of your life was intertwined with theirs. All the little things and the nuances of daily life are so ingrained. Decades of memories.
For me, one of the toughest things was just the quiet. Mario loved watching t.v. and movies. Especially in his last few years it seemed like the t.v. was constantly on. He’d even started falling asleep at night on the couch with the t.v. blaring away. So the t.v. NOT being on after he was gone really drove home the fact that everything had suddenly changed.
When your spouse suffers a long term illness (which was also the case with my jewelry-making friend), the progression of that is the “new normal” for however long it lasts. Anyone who became a widowed person through a long-term illness, I can sympathize with in a way that others who lost spouses suddenly, for example, may not. But like everything else, each journey into terminal illness is different as well. Hearing other’s perspectives and what they went through traveling on that journey with their spouse to the very end can be heart wrenching, eye-opening, relatable, and a whole spectrum of other feelings.
I’ve written little bits here and there about those last 6 months, but to be honest, it went back much further than that and I have a lot more to unpack. It took me a good 2 years to just feel physically well myself after going through what led to Mario’s grand exit. It’s a well known fact that losing a spouse is way up there in hardcore life effects that take a toll on you. The term “widowhood effect” was coined to explain the phenomenon where the surviving spouse has a higher risk of death within the first year or so after their other half passes.
To me, telling these stories is part therapy, part connection and part solidarity. In telling these stories, I’m not going through this alone. In reading these stories, you’re not going through this alone. We may relate to many things together, or be on totally different paths, but the important part of the larger widowed community is the fact that while we all have that in common, we all arrived with different backstories and different perspectives.
