47.8 F
Clarksville
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeCommentaryOn Being a Widow

On Being a Widow

CommentaryClarksville, TN – If your marriage has been happy, as ours was for the 23 years we were together, the idea of being a widow is not one you ever want to encounter.

My husband’s health had been deteriorating for 12 years but death was not something we considered an immediate possibility. Life had another scenario in mind so on February 1st, I became a widow.

Although we had discussed what arrangements my husband wanted at his death, I had not fully comprehended what was facing me.

Coping with the loss of a spouse.
Coping with the loss of a spouse.

According to his wishes, I arranged his cremation, the first anyone in either of our families had requested. Instead of a traditional funeral, my husband wanted a party to celebrate the good times of his life.

The wonderful people at the funeral home I chose made all these wishes reality and the day of the party came and went without a hitch. So many people who were there for me that day said that this was the way things should be. People sat and talked and admired the sculpture my husband had carved and were participants in the release of 50 balloons as he had done so many times in the past when he sent one into space.

I held my grief in for the entire afternoon and went home alone to face life without him.

For about three weeks, I walked around feeling as if a fog had engulfed me. I did everything I was supposed to do but did not seem to feel that anything was real.

Shocks hit me within that first few weeks. The bank shut me out of our accounts because after I told them he had died, they insisted the passwords I had used on the account on line were his. He had never touched the computer to deal with all our business, but his name was first on our account so the passwords were his. I wrestled with anonymous bankers over the phone for a week. I finally had to go to our local bank manager who promptly got the matter straight.

The Social Security people deemed that since my retirement was nearly the same as his, I no longer needed his income and awarded me $10.00 a month. No one explained to me how since the bills were the same, I was supposed to stretch my reduced income to cover them.

The worst adjustment was sleeping alone after so many years. I was not afraid in our home, but I was not able to cope with darkness. I started out be putting on most of the lights in the vicinity of the bedroom and slowly turning out one more every night. I could not sleep more than a couple of hours at the time in spite of trying various supposed sleep aids. Medications worked for only a half hour or so longer. Wine helped for only a little while. I played music on the television in the bedroom all night so that when I woke up frequently, I would not hear the silence.

I told myself repeatedly that I had to make a new life for myself and I attempted to do so. Other people did not approve of my seeing anyone else and began to interfere in various ways. That caused extra drama that I could have lived without and ended a relationship that had seemed promising. I learned that many people I had thought were friends were actually just busybodies who ran on jealousy, deceit and meddling in other people’s affairs. I began to learn that very few people I had thought were friends were to be trusted.

I quickly learned whom I could trust and was fortunate to have some people on whom I could always rely.

Over the next few months I began to accept my situation and to begin to sort out what future I hoped to live. I removed many extraneous items in my house that I no longer wanted or needed. I had always run the business matters in our lives so had no adjustment except to learn how to do without many things I had thought were important in the past. I struggled with sleeplessness and loneliness but managed to go on alone.

When people were unkind to me, I regretted that my husband was no longer around to take up for me. I learned to control my temper as much as possible but was not inclined to take unpleasant matters without standing up for myself.

I’m not sure that being a widow for the rest of my life is how I want to see myself, but time will tell. I know not to make major decisions like selling my house until a year has passed. That gives me time to decide what I really want without being overwhelmed by the grieving process. The disbelief, the anger, the sadness, the acceptance do not take an hour or a month or even a lifetime to take over one’s emotions. It involves one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time for coping.

The next time a friend to you encounters this transition in her life, try to remember that she is transitioning from a sense of safety with a partner to a sea of newness as one alone. She may look as though she is still the same person you have always known, but she’s not.

Sue Freeman Culverhouse
Sue Freeman Culverhousehttp://culverhouseart.com/
Author of Tennessee Literary Luminaries: From Cormac McCarthy to Robert Penn Warren (The History Press, 2013) Sue Freeman Culverhouse has been a freelance writer for the past 36 years. Beginning in 1976, she published magazines articles in Americana, Historic Preservation, American Horticulturist, Flower and Garden, The Albemarle Magazine, and many others. Sue is the winner of two Virginia Press Awards in writing. She moved to Springfield, Tennessee in 2003 with her sculptor husband, Bill a retired attorney. Sue has one daughter,  Susan Leigh Miller who teaches poetry and creative writing at Rutgers University. Sue teaches music and writing at Watauga Elementary School in Ridgetop, Tennessee to approximately 500 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. She also publishes a literary magazine each year; all work in the magazine is written and illustrated by the students. Sue writes "Uncommon Sense," a column in the Robertson County Times, which also appears on Clarksville Online. She is the author of "Seven keys to a sucessful life", which is  available on amazon.com and pubishamerica.com; this is a self-help book for all ages.
RELATED ARTICLES

Latest Articles