Emerging from Widowhood and Finding Myself
“I am a widow living a life of my own.” - It only took me almost five years to be able to say that without breaking down into agonizing tears. Widowhood is a club no one elects to join and yet, here I am … uncoupled and living my ‘new normal.'
When my beloved husband of 20 years died, I was by his bedside at home with our children and a hospice nurse on standby. The night was very still, with only the gentle pumping of vital oxygen flowing through a machine by his bed; a sound I grew accustomed to during his final days with us. The nurse that evening had told me he would not make it to the next morning, so we all took turns that night to say our long goodbyes. They were very much one-sided. He had been unresponsive for quite some time then, but I would like to think that he heard and understood our every word of gratitude and love for him until he slowly gasped his last breath.
It is difficult to accept that the person you spent many of the best moments of your life with is gone. Even now, a part of me still feels like he is going to walk into the house any minute now. I can just hear “I’m home!” and I would echo that with the usual “How was work?”
Grief is deep and I don’t think it ever really goes away. Some learn to live with it (chronic grief) and others learn to grow from it. I choose the latter, but it hasn’t been easy – I guess easier said than done. The grieving process was agony, mainly because the mundane became a reminder of my sadness. I remember being so sensitive and triggered by being asked: “How are you?” and breaking down into uncontrollable tears I could not turn off once they started pouring out. Little things such as certain scents, images, foods, and places we’ve been to (or wanted to go to), would also bring forth the deep emotional outburst of my suppressed sorrow regardless of where I was at the time.
Today, I do not struggle and beat myself up anymore for feeling sad years after. I am certain feeling tired of feeling broken by loss had something to do with it. Or maybe I was ready to slough off the widow image and realize that widow is only a word and not a condition.
Today, I have learned to make peace with my new life, just as I had once made peace with my bleakly new and unwelcomed status years ago. Maybe I have finally given up on being my husband’s wife and must now face the reality of shaping a separate identity for myself.
I have finally learned to embrace the new me; and if you’re reading this, most likely you have experienced the loss of your other half as well, and will eventually need to embrace the new you too.
Perhaps for some widows (myself included), the struggle is no longer being defined as a wife but the disrupted sense of being one’s self. If you feel you can never achieve a new sense of self in your despair, I implore you to abandon your sense of widowhood and see how you view yourself without the attachment – ask what has changed in yourself. For me, it was a revived sense of worth – I am different than I used to be. I lost a lot, but I gained an appreciation of my own ability.
There are still times when tears well up in my eyes and sadness overwhelms me. I suspect that I will have those until the day I leave this world, and yet, somehow through it all, I can now say that I have truly met Grief.
Who am I now? I am a person, me. I think of myself and act for myself. Something in my whole life I seldom did. I know that as a single woman, my life is different, but it can be an exciting, rewarding, and happy one.
Love, peace and light,
