Why Young Widows Can’t Let Go
I joined the ranks of young widowhood just over two years ago, and while I belong to Facebook groups comprised of widows and widowers of all ages, I can’t help but notice that it’s we young ones who ferociously cling to our identity as widows. Here, I speculate why…why the archetypal shift is so remarkable for us and so accepted by our aged peers.
It’s because death cheated us. Last night, the clock inched toward 8 PM as I waited for the person I have been dating to come back to the house after he spent his day watching television re-runs with his mom. I felt overwhelmed. A week ago, I had a minor surgery to repair an umbilical hernia. I’m tired. I’m just freaking tired. I’m a widowed mom with three young daughters; the year prior to my husband’s death was no picnic either; he had cancer, and somehow, I paid the bills, worked, took care of the children, cared for him, and earned a second master’s degree without missing a beat. What my friends have said I need in a future partner is someone who will worship me and adore me and do all of the things for me.
Last night, as I looked around my messy house and lost count of the “we need to do” house projects, I felt the need for a man who worshipped me and who would put my rest and needs and household and sometimes surprising me with dinner or flowers far above how own creature comforts or free time in my bone marrow. Oh. My. God. That would be nice.
Weary, I sat down at the kitchen table across from the 21-year-old who has been staying at the house for the past month while her apartment gets ready and fought the teary tickle that kept grabbing at my throat. “The thing is,” I said, “none of this is his responsibility. It’s all mine, and I’m tired.” My husband would’ve shared my burdens — the kids, the house, the chores, the partner’s feelings because he was a co-creator in our life together. Our laborious contributions and our recreation would have been equal. As my children’s school year gets underway and dance lessons, cheer practice, and kiddie football games become commonplace, my free time and energy zap to nil. And as great as my current partner is, he is not equal in sharing my life unless he wants to be. Otherwise, I have to be grateful for what he gives me and shut up about the rest.
The thesis of my lamentation to my young friend was simply that if you can stay with the person who shares equal love and value for the life you co-created, then make it work. Of course, I didn’t have a choice. And now, as I fight sadness, disappointment, frustration, and exhaustion…as I remind myself to not save chores and house projects for my partner to handle because what / if he chooses to help out is optional, I remind myself that I have choices.
This is where the unrelenting cling to widowhood, to being the bereaved battle-ax, becomes a fixation. If my partner and I don’t work out, I go back to being a widow. I am not single. I am a widow.
This is where the unrelenting cling to widowhood, to being the bereaved battle-ax, becomes a fixation. If my partner and I don’t work out, I go back to being a widow. I am not single. I am a widow. I have been through the gates of hell and back. I have been in a strong, solid, stable, respectful loving marriage that brought four beautiful babies into the world (one of whom didn’t survive). I know what love looks like. I know that I was willing to see my marriage through to our natural deaths, but death robbed me blind. Death made me a young widow, and the young widow coven is one comprised of go-fuck-yourself, ballsy, sad, mad, frustrated, misunderstood, and culturally disregarded women.
Death made me a young widow, and the young widow coven is one comprised of go-fuck-yourself, ballsy, sad, mad, frustrated, misunderstood, and culturally disregarded women.
We are approached by the lamest, least literate, and ironically most egomaniacal members of the opposite gender. These limp-dick losers see the lonely widow and believe that by showing up, they are saving us from spinsterhood. They believe that we are grateful for the bone they’re throwing us as we find ourselves un-yoked late but not too late in the game. They fail to realize that they fall profoundly short; most single men are outmoded on all forefronts: emotional intelligence, basic intelligence, fortitude, resilience, talent, passion, ambition, and character. Their sloppy entreaties are an insult, an insult that binds young widows ever closer to the point that we would rather stay married to our widowhoods.
This has become apparent to me in three forms. One is my own widow and dating journey. The blithering idiots who populated my inbox mere weeks after my husband died aside, I can say that dating again is rocky terrain even in the context of a relationship with staying power because every hard day or challenge we overcome invariably reminds me of what I lost…of what I wouldn’t have to be doing and of hurt I wouldn’t have to be experiencing if death hadn’t been so goddamn selfish.
Another revelation came from watching my friend date someone and ultimately end the relationship because she felt undervalued. One of the refrains of her lamentations was how this man stacked up next to her late husband…or rather how he failed to. The expectation, reasonably, was that her paramour would both want to show up and would actually show up in the ways that her husband did, and when he didn’t, she took it to mean that this man didn’t love her. When an attempt to address her grievances didn’t result in the “grand gesture”, she broke her own heart, ended the relationship, slipped on her wedding ring, and resumed her vigil behind the veil.
Finally, I realized that even though I was with someone who I genuinely loved, dropping my Facebook ‘w’ for widow and adopting the “in a relationship” identity was a massive step. Like, couldn’t there be an option to also check “previously widowed” just so people would know that I’m not like some divorcee or regular single person? I’m a single person with baggage that isn’t going anywhere, dammit.
Dating me isn’t like dating someone who has never been married or who wasn’t willing to see love through to the end of her life with one person or who didn’t also watch that person die or who didn’t go through the trauma…. The ‘widowed’ status on a 38-year-old woman’s profile is a flag proceed with caution: trauma victim ahead.
Admittedly, to most, that’s not what it signifies. It just signifies that something sad that happens to lots of people happened to me. But to fellow widows, it’s a beacon is sisterhood. Older people don’t cling to their widowhood because we all know we are going to die. We expect to die, even if we don’t prepare for it. It’s unfortunate when a 70-something dies and their partner has 10 or 15 years left alone on this planet. It’s a completely different thing when partners don’t even get 10 years and they’re left alone for the remaining 50 years on this planet. It’s a trauma.
Young widowhood is a trauma bond.
Young widowhood is a trauma bond. Death weds us to our memories to our pain to our grief to our strength to our resilience to our compassion to our passion and to our love. We are impenetrable forces. We are wild, witty, sarcastic, and altogether freaking amazing.
Our standards are sky high. We do deserve the world, but for those of us who are realistic, we know that cannot come from a new person; no matter how much that person loves us, they’re not obligated to give us the future and the life death stole. We and we alone do that. Sometimes, we do meet someone who we can coast along companionably with, someone who makes us feel love and connection more often than they remind us of our loneliness (for relationships can easily remind widows of their loneliness particularly in the early stages), and that’s nice. But at the end of the day, young widows know with a poignancy lost to their peers that we are and we alone are obligated to give ourselves the life and the future that death tried to steal.
And that is why young widows can’t, don’t, and won’t let go.
