One of the hardest things I’ve learned, still learning really, as a (young-ish, okay middle-aged-ish) widow is how to be alone. Ken and I were a couple for 30 years. Many times in those 30 years, I was alone — obviously — because we weren’t constantly in each other’s company. But I was always coupled.
I was talking to a friend recently about that process some of us newly widowed go through to figure out who we are. I know who I WAS but that person is gone. She left without warning and I didn’t know that she would never be back. I liked that version of myself and I still miss her. In truth, I wish that someone would have warned me (would I have believed them?) that when my husband died I would also lose the version of myself that I knew best.
As Ken entered hospice, his oncology therapist called me to see how I was doing. She was wonderful and made me feel safe enough to be honest. I said, “Soon, I will leave my house as a wife and return to it as a widow. That’s how I’m doing.”
But the act of being widowed is not, itself, the redefining of ourselves as widows and widowers. It’s the impetus, the event that pushes us out of the airplane, not the parachute that allows us to land.
So, when Ken died, the self who cared for him throughout his illness, that version of me, died too. I don’t miss her much, to be honest. Her life was an anguished misery of perpetual sorrow and bad news and grief. While I’m grateful that I was able to be with Ken through every aspect of his illness, there are very few aspects of it that are, in any way, pleasant to recall. So, no, I don’t miss that version of myself.
I miss the version of me who died when hope for Ken’s survival died. She’s the person I knew best, the coupled individual who laughed every day and planned her retirement with her husband and knew nothing bad would happen to them and worked too many hours and loved her family with every particle of her being. I do miss her and I know that version of myself will never return. I am forever changed by my loss and grief.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that I won’t ever be happy again or that I sit in a puddle of tears, awash in my grief. I mean, I have done that and it’s as messy and wet as it sounds. But those days pass. The frequency of tears lessens. But the work starts as the tears dry. It’s big work, heavy, as messy as those puddles of tears and just as necessary.
I didn’t even know who I was after Ken died. How could I like myself when I didn’t know myself at all?
Literally, the last time I was uncoupled, I was 22 years old. Ronald Reagan was still president. (Oh, yes, now you get it. Some of you literally weren’t even alive yet.) When Ken died, I flailed around trying to figure out if I was A Widow, A Single Woman, A Single Parent …. Of course, I’m all of these things, right? But they’re just labels. They couldn’t really help me figure out who I am.
The first time I was hit on after Ken died, I was absolutely outraged. Really. I was so angry. How dare this man, this stranger — someone whose name I didn’t even know …. The problem wasn’t that some stranger asked me to get a drink. It was that I didn’t even know who I was. That poor man — by the way, I was friendly in my rebuff, keeping my rage to myself — he couldn’t possibly have known that he started me on my journey of self-discovery.
I had to learn, in fact, that I was single. I might not have been ready to date — still not, all you well-meaning friends who keep trying to set me up with “I know someone” — but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t in the technical category of SINGLE, ALONE, AVAILABLE.
So, what did that mean? And what does it mean now, four years later?
After a spouse dies, it’s necessary to spend a lot more time than you’d ever guess on the phone, talking to customer service reps about death. The representatives all have the same script. It starts something like “I’m so sorry for your loss” and continues with requests for the death certificate, address changes, income changes, new beneficiaries, and ends with forms that need to be completed and sent back.
These forms always require the widowed individual to fill in a box that says SINGLE. The first time, the second time, the third time, maybe even the fourth, I cried. I’m not single, I said through my tears. I’m married.
About two months after Ken died, I finished making curtains and hung them in the front window. It was the first change I made in the house and it felt terribly wrong not to get his opinion. It was like a violation of coupling. Couples consult on major purchases, changes to the home, cars, furniture, pets, even dinner. Learning how to not be a couple means making changes without input. Curtains — not a big deal, right? But, at the same time, such a big deal because it changed the house from ours to mine.
For a long time, I really struggled to go to certain places because they were coupled places. Breakfast at Pamelas. Dinners at Eat’n Park. The farmers market. Shopping at Costco. Part of it is the disrupted ritual. Part is the memory of past trips. And part is the process of deciding without input. At Costco, one of us would hold up an object: do we need this? And the two of us would discuss or argue or laugh. Yes, we need lettuce. No, we definitely don’t need a riding lawn mower.
Yes, you all say. Companionship. We know. You’re lonely. No. No. No. That’s not it at all. I am lonely. I miss my husband every day. But this isn’t about companionship. This is a becoming, a change from one form to another — the coupled to the single.
Maybe a year after Ken’s death, I decided to eat lunch at Eat’n Park and then do a Sunday afternoon Costco trip, all by myself. Do I sound like a toddler? “I can do it myself!” In some respects, I AM a toddler. The new me, the self who is becoming, is only four years old. If that’s not toddler territory, I don’t know what is.
The trip was so hard. I had a huge lump in my throat, the kind that makes it hard to swallow your Breakfast Smile. I felt conspicuous and ALONE in my uncoupled-ness. I chose to sit at the restaurant counter so I could avoid the question “how many?” And somehow sitting at the counter was an invitation to all the single guys who were also sitting at the counter. “Why aren’t you talking to me? Put down your phone. What’s the matter?” Oh my gosh. I’m trying to figure out how to live without my husband, you intrusive idiots.
I made it through that day, and the many after it, one step at a time. I learned to stop doing what WE did and start doing things differently. I have some new habits. For example, now, I usually shop during the week, rather than weekends. It’s less crowded and it breaks the coupled habit. I do eat out — when we aren’t in the middle of a pandemic — but I sit at a table now. The ‘how many” question was hard to deal with at first but now I just answer. That person asking really doesn’t care that I’m alone. They just want to find a table for me and move on to the next guest.
There was a social media post recently by a woman who said that she was going to cook herself dinner for her birthday, even though she was alone. Girl, I’m alone A LOT. My kids are busy. I’m alone more than you might expect for someone who lives with two people. My advice — admittedly free and unrequested: Most days, even though you are alone, act like you are cooking for someone important — because you are.
Dinner alone isn’t lovely but it also doesn’t have to be punishment. Part of figuring out who I am is figuring out how to make this new future something I can face with equanimity.
I refuse to believe that my life has to include TV trays of cardboard dinners circa 1970s. I’ll pass on the Hungry Man meatloaf and gravy. Earlier this week, I made a very nice chicken piccata and sauteed zucchini. One day last week, I had “excellent boiled potatoes” (sorry, that was a Pride and Prejudice movie quote that I just couldn’t pass up) with some crumbled bacon and shredded cheese. Yes, of course, I smashed the potatoes a bit to make a modified loaded baked potato. I have to say, that was a particularly delicious, simple, dinner and it only took about 15 minutes to make.
Sometimes, I’ll grill chicken and slice it over a salad or grill a burger and make low-carb waffle buns (literally just egg and shredded cheese in a mini waffle iron). The biggest component of that was giving myself permission to grill for one. “Why would I heat up the grill just for myself?” Because I’m worth it, that’s why!
Some days, like any toddler, I really want to drop to the floor and scream, kick, cry. Unfortunately, tantrums are exhausting. When they’re over, I still have to face the undeniable reality that Ken isn’t coming back and someone has to take the garbage out.
Stay safe. Be kind.
Much love.
