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Nearly half of women over age sixty are left alone. Widows make up 38.6 percent of women over age sixty; divorced women make up 8.6 percent; and women who are separated, 1.2 percent.1 In Widow to Widow, Genevieve Davis Ginsburg argues that widows and divorcées should not be lumped together under such titles as “Single Again” and “Women Alone.”2 On the other hand, in a recent Law and Order episode, a widowed mother responds to her grown daughter, who has just been cut loose, that “loss is loss.” My own experience as a widow in her sixties—and that of female friends of similar age who are widowed, divorced, or dealing with a broken relationship— lead me to agree with the widowed mother on Law and Order. Loss is loss. Yet the similarities and differences are worth noting. Both the widow and the divorced woman are learning new roles. For a woman over age sixty this can be especially daunting. Each day, every occasion—whether birthday, holiday, or dinner party—is a rehearsal in being a woman alone. As with all new roles, sometimes what you try on fits, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all about taking chances at a time when you thought those kinds of risks were long past. The differences emerge from the basic fact that widows and divorcées are separated from their partners in starkly different ways. There is no element of choice for a widow. The decision is final. As John Robertson and Betty Utterback state in Suddenly Single, death is “socially acceptable in the widowed because the loss is obvious.”3 Divorce is another matter. It is often Left Alone Deserted by Death or Divorce MERLE FROSCHL 2 6 2 M E R L E F R O S C H L assumed that the separation is what at least one partner wants. The other partner may not want to let go, holding out hope that the decision isn’t final. Ultimately, widows tend to remember the best of times; divorced women, the worst.4 The issue, however, is not about whose loss or pain is greater, but about what widows, divorcées, and women in the throes of being cut loose can learn from the experience and from each other. As Beth Maccauley (Jessica Lange), a recent widow in the 1990 film Men Don’t Leave, tells her young son, “Heartbreak is life educating us.” What’s in a Name? In 1934, Hollywood offered charming but unrealistic images of widows and divorced women. There was The Merry Widow, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier (in the 1952 version it was Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas), and The Gay Divorcée, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. “Merry” is hardly the image that comes to mind for the word widow. Genevieve Davis Ginsburg says that the word itself is so dreadful as to have no synonym. But it does have a color: black.5 When one thinks of a widow, what usually comes to mind is an older woman, grieving and sorrowful. The tendency to equate widows with the elderly may stem from the fact that so many of the elderly are women (three-quarters of the people over age seventy are female).6 It is not a given that the divorced woman, like the widow, will evoke pity. As unfair as it may be, she might be viewed with a critical eye—what was her role in the separation, was she not a “good enough” partner? Though the picture of a divorcée is more diverse than that of the widow, “gay” is not the predominant picture. Yet despite differing images, there is a commonality in name: someone divorced or separated from her husband is called a “grass widow.” Bereavement and Betrayal It is generally accepted that both the widow and the divorced woman need to go through a period of mourning. Whether young or old, women left alone are united by grief. Descriptions of the stages of grief are influenced in the main by the work on death and dying of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. They include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.7 As frightening as it is, the widowed and the divorced woman must fully experience all the stages. As the shock sets in, heart-pounding, breath-gasping anxiety attacks are normal. Yet there is a great deal of social pressure to “move on” Given the sex-role stereotype of...

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