How to Talk to a Widow

[Zorro]

People are kind; some are wonderful. For a time. Then they move on to the next widow.

That’s how it should be. But I realized I wasn’t prepared for this after the following email exchange. A friend wrote, “How are you?” I wrote back, “I’m better.” The friend replied, “Oh! I didn’t know you were sick.” Given that I had become a widow more than a year earlier, she had assumed that I had moved on and that I was feeling “better” after, perhaps, a cold, or the latest Covid. But I meant that I was feeling better about my widowhood. I guess I was supposed to have recovered from that. Apparently the correct amount of time is a year or so. Apparently I wasn’t doing the recovery thing right.

Given all the widows in society today — 11.4 million compared with about 3.4 million widowers — it’s surprising to me that people often struggle with how to talk to us, how to be with us. America has never been a more sensitive — or hypersensitive — place: There has never been as much discussion about mental health needs, especially of younger Americans. Although many of us are OK compared with other groups, we need people to be aware of us, and to be mindful that we’re not all alike and not all experiencing loss and grief in the same way. And I have a word to my fellow widows, too: Interacting with people takes effort and creativity on our part, as well.

First, a little more about us. Most of the women who are widowed each year are over 65 and they frequently outlive their husbands by many years. Widows are far more likely than married women to be poor. Widowed men are far more likely to remarry than widowed women (and often remarry younger women). Black Americans, male and female, become widowed at younger ages than whites. By ages 65 to 74, about 24 percent of Black Americans are widowed, compared to about 15 percent of whites.

https://tinyurl.com/57j9tsfr

[Scrivener7]

1. I agree that people are often insensitive to those who have lost loved ones.

But the woman is 86. I would probably have responded the same way in that email exchange. I would have assumed I might have missed hearing about an illness. And it would have nothing to do with thinking the person should have moved on from their loss.

The assumption that her friend asking if she had been sick was an insensitive reaction to her grief, and that it means her friend doesn't know how to talk to her, strikes me as very unfair.

[The Blue Flower]

2. My sister lost her son in 1988

We were close until her loss. But according to her, I have never said the right thing. Of course, no words can ever heal such a loss, but she's been sunk in anger and bitterness ever since. When she isn't getting her way with someone, she reminds them that she's a grieving mom. IOW, she uses his loss to manipulate. We aren't even friends anymore. So I say, the words don't matter. Just try to convey that you care and you're there for them.

[cpamomfromtexas]

3. I have been criticized for both

Not moving on fast enough and moving too fast. Doing too many things simultaneously to heal.

I didn’t announce my husband’s loss here because he kept making the news and I was doing too much healing.

Widows, especially young ones, remind people life isn’t forever, even couples who were friends are weird. They don’t want their husband’s looking at you as an option.

Everything about being widowed young is weird.

[plimsoll]

5. The only answer to that is

No shit.

[plimsoll]

4. As a widower I agree with the sentiment, but think the statistics detract from the pain

of widowed people in general.

I was 37, and I yes I have remarried although my 2nd wife is actually older than my first wife by a year. It's subtle things that people don't get, and the words and wording matters. In general though many people will not understand until they experience it themselves, and that realization is kind of horrifying.

At 20 plus years I still get asked "How long did it take you to get over her loss?" I want to be honest and reply "Never, I'll never get over that loss," because getting over it would imply that I've returned to who I was before my wife died. I've gotten through maybe, and found a new normal, but the old normal died too. So there's a never ending bleakness, but that doesn't mean you can't be happy. When you learn to accept that sorrow as part of who you are, you can participate fully in life again.

As for the reduced economic status of widows, just a little more systemic misogyny of our society. I've tried to compensate as much as I can, but that will only protect my wife.

[Blappy]

6. People generally mean well, but feel awkward

when there is an unexpected early death of a spouse, so the survivor often feels very alienated. Maybe not overtly made to feel that way through the action or inaction of others. For me, it was always the feeling that as a single father, people simply assumed the wrong things. I have and have always had quite a few single friends, both male and female, and since my loss have just tried to engage with them as simply that, as my friends. Friends need support from their group of friends, whether you or your friend(s) be widowed, single or married.

It is simply too uncomfortable for most people whether single or married, to consider what it is like in the widow or widower's shoes. They really can't unless they are widowed. When considering the loss of my dear wife in 2003 (which left me to raise my children aged 5 and 7 alone) others would tell me they 'could not imagine' what that is like. I usually responded with 'you don't want to imagine it', and they usually agreed, with some relief, because that gave them credit for at least trying to feel what I had been through, while acknowledging that it is something they could not completely understand.

After almost 20 years, I'm not re-married (yet) and not 'over it' - still think about her every day and cry often over the loss, not just for me, but also for my now-adult children who lost their mother at an early age and were raised by a continually grieving father. My true friends (and my kids own friends) have some concept at least of how profound an effect that simple, and not so uncommon, event changed each of us.

Those who have lost a spouse don't really need sympathy so much as they crave empathy (speaking for myself at least). Others who have also lost a spouse can better relate, having been through the trauma and loss.

This is only my experience, other's results may vary (disclaimer).