From wife to widow

There comes a time for suffering to cease, and our husband and dad finally was at peace – while suddenly, incomprehensibly, the kids were fatherless, and I was alone.

By PAMELA PELED
old woman shopping in shuk 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem / The Jerusalem Post)
old woman shopping in shuk 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem / The Jerusalem Post)
The thing about all the world being a stage on which all men and women play many parts is that we get time to practice our seven ages. We are infants, mewling and puking in our nurse’s (or mom’s) arms for months or years; we grow slowly into schoolboys or girls. Think about it: It takes nine months to get used to the idea of impending parenthood, and middle age with its wisdom and serenity seems to last a lifetime. Decrepitude creeps up slowly; Shakespeare’s age of oblivion is a gradual losing of teeth, eyes and taste – we don’t wake up one fine morning “sans everything” all at once. There is time to prepare.
But grief often hits you where it hurts most in an instant. One minute you are a mother or a brother or a wife – then someone dies and boom! You are bereaved – an orphan, a widow, an only child. It’s a sea-change of status in a nanosecond. For the longest time afterwards, it’s hard to wrap your head around the weirdness. In my case, I had two years to re-frame my reality. My beloved husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given six months to live. The extra year and a half seemed like a miraculous gift, albeit hugely challenging at times. Martin was so very precious to us that we willed him to claw onto life, and we clung on with him – another shot at chemo, more alternative drugs, difficult diets, one more little muscle stretch. But there comes a time for suffering to cease, and our husband and dad finally was at peace – while suddenly, incomprehensibly, the kids were fatherless, and I was alone.
It’s not a stage you embrace, no matter how long the preparation. When death comes decades too early, the sadness seems to expand and overwhelm. There is the world of difference between being the wife of a very ill spouse and being a widow (horrible, horrid, terrible word). When someone is sick, your home is bustle and work; you nurse, you clean, you cook, you administer pills and do the other 1,000 things that ailing patients need. When someone dies, all that is left is silence.
It’s a silence that has to be experienced to be understood. My mother, widowed like me in her mid-50s, said the silence “screamed.” It’s not the same blessed absence of noise that envelops you when everyone is unexpectedly out as you walk in the door from a hard day’s work.
That peace is precious, that silence sings as you sip your tea and read the paper uninterrupted. You hope the soccer game goes to extra time and the meeting runs on and on. You don’t turn on the radio and you will the phone not to ring. This is because you know with certainty that very soon the clatter will kick in: Kids will be wanting food and needing to be fetched, and talking and laughter and commands to bring me this and help me with that will begin. And your husband will come home, handsome and hands-on, and help out.
When someone is never coming home, the silence screeches and sears. There are so many things to negotiate in the stillness of the night: To throw out his toothbrush or leave it there as testimony to the one who shared the bathroom that is now always free? And when you’re down and troubled and you need some loving care, and you close your eyes and think of him but you know he won’t be there – not soon nor ever again – what you need is a friend. When the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds, you need to hear a friend knocking at your door.
Friends can save your life. Some do. The trick is to know whose name to call out loud. How to be a friend to a friend in need should be a compulsory course at school. Turns out it’s not such an intuitive skill. Avoid the unintuitive! I’ll give you an example. Only days after I got up from the shiva mourning period, when I still could not work out how to continue putting foot in front of foot alone, a friend of mine came to visit, bearing gifts. She was also armed with advice, it turned out later, and she imparted it before she left.
“Do you have many single friends?” she asked as she gathered up her scarf and coat.
Then she added, “sweetheart.”
Martin and I breathed through each other. I was still struggling to complete one inhale-exhale on my own. My throat constricted even more.
“Why?” I croaked. Where was this going, I wondered, two weeks after my darling had died.
“Because it’s ghastly to be a third wheel on a bicycle,” she explained. “So sad, so awkward, so nebbish. Far better to socialize with single girlfriends and have fun.”
She is married. I thought of asking her to leave so I could put her advice into immediate practice – but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
I don’t have single friends. We’re too young to be widowed, my friends and I, and though she suggested that hanging out with divorcees might serve as a (less suitable) alternative (“They are dealing with different issues”), most of my circle is happily married. What to do? My daughters, when I reported back, suggested I kill off some husbands – especially those of my closest girlfriends – so I could retain some vital relationships, at least. One lovely (married) childhood soul-mate declared that a tricycle is more stable than a bike, and I was still welcome in her home… But all joking aside, it was a terrible thing to hear.
Remember that old maxim: “Think before you drink before your drive”? I would say to friends who genuinely want to be friends: “Think before you act the shrink before you drivel.” New widows are negotiating complications enough; it’s unfair to put this extra stuff on us.
You know what? She may have had a point, my so-called friend. It might be easier, in the long run, to acquire some new acquaintances for Saturday evening bridge and movie nights out and the like (oy, oy, oy and oy again). But I suppose that switch in social life occurs organically; you can’t go to the supermarket and order some widows for weekends. Sometimes it’s just not helpful to hear even sensible stuff too soon, in the first flush of heart- rending grief.
And it’s hard to know how to react to the plethora of advice that is suddenly thrust at you from all directions. I have been witty in my day and quick on the uptake. I thought of retorting to my friend what Gloria Steinem is supposed to have said (though it was actually Irina Dunn, an Australian educator, journalist and politician): “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” – but my addled brain could not think quickly enough. I found no appropriate connection and concentrated instead on containing my tears until she had flounced out the door, secure in the knowledge that she had helped me hugely. Then I cried for two days.
So, here’s the first thing I think is a useful tip for friends to friends who need a friend: Think before you play the shrink, before you drivel.
Remember, someone is going to absorb the advice you throw out so carelessly. Be gentle with it.The writer is a lecturer at Beit Berl College and the IDC. She collaboratively runs MaP workshops to discover one’s authentic voice through art and writing. peledpam@gmail.com