Widow's Voice

Widow Friends Expect Less

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Recently, I was able to take a quick trip to Las Vegas and catch up with a few of my widow friends. With only 4 of us, we had a small group for this trip. But it always fills my heart to be with them.

We came into the weekend with zero plans since in our everyday lives we run everything. No one had the capacity to plan activities and dining in advance. But it’s Vegas and we knew we could just wing it. The only thing we knew we wanted to do was hang at the pools all day.

What I didn’t anticipate was literally winging it from 30,000 feet. As I was flying in, so were the texts. Our early arriver checked in and headed straight for the pool at our hotel, only to be told the pools would be closed ALL weekend. The hotel was willing to give us a refund. I was able to book us a new hotel room mid-flight. So, it worked out we didn’t have any reservations going into the weekend.

We went to pool clubs, dinners, and a few bars over the weekend. But none of that stuff was the headliner. The highlight is always the people.

Sharing a meal and catching up on the kids and parents. Toasting to weekend and checking in each other’s mental load. Lounging by the pool and learning about potential relationships or lack thereof. Late nights sharing life experiences that have shaped us besides widowhood.

We all came together because we have one shared widowed experience. But we are still learning about all the other ways in which we became who we are today. I can’t ever know these friends in their ‘before’ but our before still shapes who we are today.

That is one of my favorite things about these widowed friends. They do not come into our relationship with a preconceived notion of who I should be. To them, this is who I have always been. I wasn’t more or less fun, open, available, humorous, or any other adjective before his death. That version of me doesn’t exist for them.

I don’t think most of our friends and family don’t mean to put those restraints on us. And maybe we put them on ourselves because we miss that version too. But hanging with my widow crew removes that pressure. That’s probably why we found ourselves sitting up in the lobby car bar until almost 3am just talking. Well, that and the utter lack of plans. 

About Emily Vielhauer

My name is Emily Vielhauer, I am 45 years old and have 3 knuckleheaded sons who are between the ages of 11 and 15. My husband, Tony, and I were married for 14 years and despite how things ended we built something great together.

April 19th, 2021 was the last day of my ‘before’ story. The day before I became a widow, before I was a solo parent to 3 boys, before I knew my love was suffering in silence, before suicide rocked my world, before I had to break the hearts of my children and all our friends and family, before I planned a funeral and delivered a eulogy, before I knew the true depths of my love for Tony and the way that love would be expressed through grief, so many befores.

My hope for this blog is to take you along with me as I navigate my life in the ‘after’ and that my words help someone else out there, whether they empower you or just let you know that you’re not alone out there.