Not Like Other Widows

I’ve known for a long time that a spouse of someone who’s had a stroke mourns the loss of many aspects of their relationship in months/years that follows. But it’s never been as crystal clear to me as it’s been since I started hanging around a support website for widowed people. In most ways I don’t fit in there. Sure, I just lost my spouse recently but that fact alone apparently isn’t enough to earn me full membership in the Crying All Day Club and its sister club: The Little Lost Lambs. I don’t cry all day and I have a two year transition plan for my future. Ya, little things will turn on the water works like finding a pin-on compass with Don’s favorite out west “toys” or telling a dear relative about fixing the wheelchair damage on the woodwork for the very last time. But all day cries? Been there done that just after the Don’s stroke. It didn’t help then and it won’t help now.

I don’t mean to sound cranky when I compare myself to other widows. I know I’m at an advantage---if you can call what Don and I went through in the first few years after his stroke an advantage. But in this situation it is an advantage in the sense that I’d already mourned the loss of things like in depth conversations, the feel of Don’s full body hugs, and having someone to share household responsibilities with. I went through the emotional roller coast of having to downsize my husband’s work and hobby lives. I also went through the financial cash-flow issues of having to sell houses and cars to make way for a new chapter of life. All these common “widow woes” I’ve faced and I came out the other side stronger.

By comparisons, most of other widows I’ve met make me feel like Mary Poppins and when they find out I’m a woman who still measures her widowhood in days, not months like most of them, they are shocked. It makes me nervous. Am I in denial? No, I don’t think so. But then again do people in denial actually know they are? When I go to their chat room, listen to them lament this or that it’s like hearing an echo from the past. The spousal caregiver’s mourning period really was like having training wheels on the bicycle for this final loss. Why do I keep going? That’s a question I’ve asked myself several times. And a comment I heard last night might be a reason. A woman said she thought I should give classes in how to move forward and another woman replied, “I think that’s what she’s doing now.” Perhaps I hang around because the community has become my new set of training wheels to help me transfer from being a full time caregiver to not being needed anymore. ©