WHEN A HUSBAND DIES

“Staring at my ceiling,
counting dreams of you at midnight...”
Marilyn Houston, poet


I haven’t written in a while because it’s been a hard time. My good friend, Suzanne, lost her husband to the horrors in Haiti. He was a kind, warm, tall 60 year old Texan who had a calling to help those in need through the United Methodist Church Board of Global Ministries. Clint Rabb spent more than 55 hours buried in the rumble until they could release him by amputating parts of both legs. He lived long enough to be airlifted to a hospital in Miami where he died with his wife close by his side. It’s left me thinking about how I would respond to such a heart wrenching personal tragedy.

In Evenings at Five, author Gail Godwin wrote, “It was so quiet after he was gone; there was no music, and that voice wasn’t there.” As I read that passage I felt a stinging sadness. Although I deeply crave solitude and quiet, the absence of sound would be the hardest part of losing my husband.

Acceptance is difficult. My client, Andrea recalled the night after her husband’s funeral. “I couldn’t sleep, so I spent half the night cleaning the kitchen. I said the word “widow” out loud to myself, tasting it’s bitter sound in my mouth. Even though I’d been preparing to say this word for the two years since his leukemia was diagnosed, it was still a challenge to say it.” Brenda, a 61 year old client told me that for the first year and a half after her husband died she couldn’t concentrate enough to read a full paragraph at one sitting. “I couldn’t focus.” she explained. “When someone you love dies a part of you dies too. It’s almost three years now, and I feel as if I am just now beginning to think.”

Grieving is the hardest work you will ever do. Even though you may spend years caring for a chronically ill husband, you may not be emotionally unequipped for his death. When the final event happens, we are rarely, if ever ready. We hope for a miracle.

About 85% of wives outlive their husbands. Although loss of a spouse is one of the most stressful life events one can experience, in the longer term, most older women find that widowhood is accompanied by a positive shift into a new life phase. They want to take back control of their lives, test out skills they learned over a lifetime, exercise new feelings of strength and self-confidence that maturity can bring. Proust once said that “Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops strengths of mind.” There are literally millions of women who no longer have husbands, yet most of them eventually do quite well.

The death of your husband, as hard as it is to think about, can ultimately present an opportunity for great learning---to do things one never did before. Barbara told me, “My husband’s death was, and continues to be, the most defining moment in my life. I’m the same person I was before but now I know who I am.”

Many women begin to enjoy their single life as soon as the sharp edges of grief have worn off. 72 year old Liz related her story. “My husband died of a heart attack. We were married for 41 years and he was my first love. I’m still lonely at times, but I’ve made some new single friends which is nice. I’m starting to enjoy life again.”

There is real danger in adopting grief as a way of life. If you do, you’re still making your husband responsible for your well-being. Another danger lies in putting your deceased husband on a pedestal which makes it easy to remember only the good so that going forward, no one else can measure up. You may be using this view as an excuse to prevent yourself from renewing your life and loving another person. Not everyone who is bereaved will experience the same things. The key task is to accept the reality of the death, experience the pain of grief, adjust to life without the deceased, and memorialize the loved one in order to move on.

When Suzanne is ready to hear it, I might read her this paragraph from one of my favorite authors, Natalie Goldberg. In her book, Long Quiet Highway she wrote:

“Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in each other’s presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that other person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps...This is how we survive long after we are dead.”

The word “widow” comes from the Sanskrit meaning “empty” and there is no doubt that Suzanne, Clint’s wife, will feel empty for some time. I can only cry with her, walk with her, and comfort her the best I know how. And when she’s ready to smile, I will smile with her and encourage her to fill up on what life has yet to offer.

What are your thoughts and feelings about this?