A magazine article - Widowhood

What do you think of when you consider the word "widow?" An old person perhaps, white haired and having reached that stage of life where the present status is to be expected?

Recently I went to meet other widows for Sunday lunch. We were all younger than 55, still looking young and full of life. Each of us had a tragic tale to tell; the beautiful blonde girl at the top of the table, nine months pregnant, struggling to control her beautiful two year old daughter, who had lost her husband in a meaningless motorbike accident; the woman in her early thirties who had woken up next to her dead husband whose 4 year old daughter proudly showed us photos of her Daddy; Simon, widowed less than a year ago who had lost his wife to brain cancer. Simon's wife, knowing that she was dying had kept a journal for her son to read through the long years of his growing up without her, and now Simon had written poetry and had made a memory book to honour her and he brought it to show the rest of us knowing we would understand his need to talk about her - to remember - to share.

One the topics most keenly discussed was the similarity of our experiences after the loss of our partners. Where we had expected kindness we had often found indifference, where we had expected nothing we had often discovered empathy. We had all had experience of neighbours who crossed the street rather than talk to us as if our new "condition" was contaminating. We had all had many so called friends who had promised to ring us "next week" two or three years ago. We had suddenly become invisible. One of the consequences of this invisibility was that there was noone to share our memories with, nobody with whom to say "Do you remember when........." This was especially true for people widowed in early middle age, where the children were grown up and had left for college (as mine had) and where there were no longer many relatives living close by.

Becoming a widow as I did in my early 50s was the defining moment of my life. My husband, to whom I had been married for over 29 years, had just made me a cup of coffee and was going upstairs to the study. I heard a crash in the hall and a strange groaning sound. I ran and found him lying face down on the floor and realised immediately that life had changed forever. I dialled the emergency services and turned him - somehow and with superhuman strength he was able to put his arm around my shoulder and that is how 5 minutes later the paramedics had found us. As I gave him into their care he turned blue and I had to help to try to perform CPR on my husband as the paramedics struggled with their equipment.....all in vain. Within the space of 30 minutes my old life was shattered and I entered a strange world where I tried to make sense of people and events without the man who had been my closest companion and best friend for so many years.

The time that followed remains a blur of misery. Without him everything seemed to fall apart - in the words of WB Yeats "the centre" did "not hold" and I fell into disarray. Even the fabric of the house seemed to conspire against me as the heating system failed the day after the death, the fence fell down, the pipes sprung leaks, the car exhaust fell off.....this was "his" territory and I was adrift.....

I think if someone had reached out then and said "please stay with us awhile," or "would you like to come and share a meal with us" or even "can I come and just sit with you" I might have fared better. There were long weekends where I spoke to noone from Friday to Monday and even one week when I was on holiday when I spoke to noone at all and lost the use of my voice as a result. I struggled with simple things like shopping, walking around the supermarket as late as I dared with my eyes on the ground to avoid making eye contact. I lost the ability to make rational decisions for a while. I stopped sleeping, preferring to stay up all night and watch endless tv programmes about gory operations and near death experiences. I wore dark glasses even when the sun stopped shining. ............

I have recovered a sense of self. Yesterday, with my new partner at my side and my little dog Martha at my feet I stood looking out at an unbelievably blue sea on what must have been the first day of summer and was glad to have survived. At the weekend, talking to other widows and listening to their stories I had almost "gone under" again, I had almost allowed myself the luxury of a downward spiral into grief, but I will not go there again until I have to. I want to make the rest of my life count and thereby honour my late husband's memory. I want to survive and prove that it is possible to do so.

And I want to remind people that it is only a small act of kindness - the sharing of a meal or simply some time - that would have made the loss easier to bear in those early dark days.