So I’m driving back to my office after a meeting today and I think again about this widow thing and why I am poking at my fear of widowhood and it hits me: My mother. Oh yes. When I was 18 my father died. He was 56. I knew that he died when I was young but I only understood later that he died when HE was young. And now that I am 55 it hits me: My mother was young too. She must have been 54. Sadly, I remember how embarrassed I was by her grief. I remember her silly behavior at the funeral home and thinking she was undignified but the worst part was months later, when I was out with her shopping or having lunch, and she cried. I hated that. I didn’t get it. He was dead a long time—months—and she was still crying.
How could I have been so insensitive? No, maybe it’s more like how could I have known at 18 what it means to lose your 56 year-old husband. After all I wasn’t exactly dealing with the loss very well. My father died in July and the following June I married a man that I met two weeks after my Dad died. Most people wouldn’t need a therapist to see what was happening. Sadly, it took me more than one therapist and an attorney and a civil annulment and one from the Catholic Church to undo all of the consequences of my denial and repression.
But it’s coming at me. Today even the Chick-Lit book I’m listening to in the car: “Certain Girls” by Jennifer Weiner—the book I picked to listen to while driving around town—the book I picked to give myself a break from death and illness and fear—this book has a dead husband. Even in my fun reading the widow thing is in my face? What would a therapist make of that?
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