Widowed or Single?

“Has the mental image of ‘widow’ changed all that much?

One of my friends shared a post with me yesterday. Ironically, it turns out I know the woman who wrote it. And, I know her well enough to understand what she meant by what she said about being called a widow. The writer, Jan, said she didn’t like the term “widow” because it conjures up this preconceived notion of “old” and “feeble”. As she says, we live in an era where ageism runs rampant. Our gray hair and social mores puts the widow in an unenviable position on more levels than grief alone.

Jan says she hates going into doctor’s offices and filling out the forms, having to select widowed or single. She has taken to saying she is “single-by-death” because, she DOES feel single. I’m all for changing the vernacular and the image of widows. Of course, the early throes of acute grief is a time where most of us feel old beyond our years, lost, destined to a life of lonely sadness. After that period of crisis, we do begin…in our own time…to heal and move forward. I don’t know any widow who wants to be looked down on and pitied. In this day and age, widows aren’t a bunch of doddering old ladies wearing black and sitting in the corner crying all the time.

I hated the term widow, too. I thoroughly resented it at first because I was very, very busy trying to pretend he didn’t die. Calling me a widow just turned a spotlight on my spectacular ruse and left me with nothing but shadow puppets of my former life. I sometimes rebelliously referred to myself as “single-by-chance” simply because I hated the word death as much as I hated the word widow. “Single-by-chance” could cover a lot of situations…death, divorce, break-ups. I liked it. But eventually, I just went with widow and tried to show what one looks like by pulling a huge camper across the country alone and dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly and going into the wilderness and backroads of Colorado for three months…alone.

In researching photos for this post, I Googled “widow”. There was a plethora of images of spiders and Scarlet Johansson in a black latex catsuit with the occasional Civil War era tintype of a haunted woman in black thrown in for good measure. This got me to thinking…if Google is any indication, maybe the world isn’t as obsessed with the word “widow” as widows themselves are. Widowhood and grief are lonely pursuits. We are singular. We are rather myopic. We have lost half of our whole. At least, we have for a while. Eventually, half reduces itself…bit by tiny little bit.

I was widowed…singled-by-chance…surely not by choice. Now that Mr. FixIt and I have married, when I relate my story in my work as a speaker and a writer, I say I was widowed. I suppose in the absolute vernacular, I am a widow. But that is a far smaller piece of who I am today than it used to be. I think that’s the way it should be…for me. 

That’s the beauty of language and social norms. We can change things. We can change the words and the images of who we are in the world today. Who we are and how we want to be seen. What works for one may not work for another. Be who…or what…you are. Empirical evidence says…I am a Child of God…first and foremost. The rest is superfluous.

❤️

““Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!””   

Deuteronomy 27:19 NIV