The Widows' Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival

Widow’s Lament

186 the widows’ handbook Widow’s Lament Rosalind Kaliden I reject what society wants. Stay alone, stay home and lick your wounds. Stay alone! The sting! How ridiculous! The last thing I want to be perceived as is a recluse. And the second thing I want to avoid is spending the rest of my life with only other single women. Why does my loss have to precede me into a room full of people? I am no less. I am not my loss. I refuse to give up my identity—the wholeness of me—because I lost my husband. Other widows—I hate that word—may wallow in their grief. That’s their choice. Not mine. And society be damned if everyone thinks they can prescribe how I should feel and act. The loss of spouse is loss enough. But why do I have to give up my social life, my friends, my married friends! The shock of that! What am I? The new leper? I walk into a room and the room clears or wives hook arms with their spouses! Come on! Lepers of old had to shout Unclean! Unclean! as they approached any people to warn them to clear out. As if grief were contagious, must I now shout out my widowhood in front of me before I pass, to warn those who don’t want to catch it? Shout Widow! Widow! Widow! What if I tell strangers, instead, that I am divorced, or never married or living with a significant other? These states have their own kinds of grief and stigmas but not to the degree of the abandonment that is served up to the widow. Even widowers are treated more kindly. Hell, they’re sought after! Does Florida have to become my destiny? To walk among darkly wrinkled widows and widowers with the skins of barbecued chickens? coping (more or less) 187 I grieve and maybe not grieve. Maybe I don’t have the time or the luxury, to grieve. What do I grieve more? Missing my life’s partner, my friend, yes, my soul mate? Or losing my social structure, my identity, my who? I must sort through the true and the false friends now. I want to say to the world, You idiots! In some way I am the aborted baby. My life has lost its social value! I want to say, Wait, it’s inevitable. You, too, will have your turn. Or worse (maybe), you’ll die first. My mother told me that she prayed to die before her husband. As she observed her many widowed friends, she decided that it was a punishment , a curse. Then, her remark baffled me. Is recoupling better? Probably, but not that easy for strong women, for free thinkers. The whole new world of dating—I talk little then, listen to their cues or their silences, which tell me a lot of what I don’t want to know. How do you meet someone in your social strata? When they’ve dropped you like a hot potata? The conundrum is that I have to be strong and many men don’t like strong women! Not unless you’re famous in your own right, like a Jackie Kennedy and a Mr. O, is there an exception. Taking on the varied and sometimes serious problems of the divorced becomes de rigueur. The never married are a stranger lot. Their issues might be less apparent but are equally challenging and draining. This is the age of frequent couplings and uncouplings. I’m not coupled. I’m a passenger car dropped off at the car barn lot and forgot. I’m an outdated airplane parked in the deserts of Arizona, my usefulness terminated. How dare my friends tell me that they feel sorry for me or tell another it was a severe blow, or a tragedy. (It was simply a death.) They say that and still want to claim me as friend? I know, I know, they may mean well. Nonetheless, why can’t we keep this simple? No additional dramatics needed. And for gosh sakes, let’s not play off this! 188 the widows’ handbook I am invited to ladies’ teas and holiday luncheons but not to dinner parties. Those invitations are reserved for their coupled friends and maybe widower friends with their new honeys or maybe for a specially selected single woman as an introduction to one...