Who I Am or, More Accurately, Who Am I?

Life is supposed to go on a certain pattern. We are supposed to grow up, get married, have children, grow old together and face certain things at certain points in our life. When those events take place on a certain schedule, we are able to cope fairly well. When they happen in a way that falls out of the natural order, we lose much of our ability to cope.

Such is what happens when a young woman becomes a widow. Even the word conjures up images of black veils and grandmothers. One day you are a woman with hopes and dreams of your life together and the next day you are a widow. And none of it fits right. It is just impossible to wrap your brain around this concept.

I remember when my husband died and sitting with him after the doctors and nurses left us alone. They told me to stay as long as I needed to. I sat there looking at his body and I filled with more thoughts and emotions than I ever knew existed. I talked to him and I remember saying, “I am a widow now,” and the words felt so foreign.

I sealed my new label, moving from wife to widow, by taking off his wedding ring and slipping it onto my right hand where it will always remain. It was like a vow at a wedding. “I forever promise to be your widow,” or something like that anyway. I know that the minute I put that ring on my widow’s hand, which is what many widows call their right hand, my life changed. It was a way of acknowledging his death and embracing this word “widow>” Ten minutes before I was a wife and although I am always his wife; I now am his widow as well.

Out of the natural order. Until that happens a person cannot fully realize the impact it has. A couple always knows on some level that one of them will die before the other. They know and give it a brief thought at their wedding. Till death do us part. But that is forever and a lifetime away. It certainly isn’t something that needs to be thought about in the immediate future.

I always felt on some level, I would have to face my husband’s death someday. My husband was over nine years my senior. But, I assumed that we had another 15 to 20 years. But a massive heart attack that was totally unexpected, with no prior history changed all of that, and I lost him when he was 55 and I was 46. With two young children, pets, a house, a career and all that life consists of, yet now alone.

I left the hospital alone with his ring on my right hand and entered my new world.