The nurse turned to Joel and asked, “Does she speak English?”
I began to laugh. What started out as a giggle turned into full-on hysterics. My entire body shook. I looked crazy. I couldn’t catch my breath from laughing so hard. I found that last question to be so outrageous. Do I speak English? Really? Am I that far gone? I laughed myself better. Joel couldn’t help but laugh, too.
“Yes, she speaks English,” he managed to say.
“Yes, yes, yes!” I said. “I can answer all of your questions. I just needed a minute.” I cackled.
“Thank goodness!” that nice nurse said. “You had me worried.” She started laughing, too.
Without Joel next to me, though, I didn’t think I could ever be me again.
I didn’t know how to respond to the TSA guy who stood there looking at me, cautiously.
“Ya alright, there?” he asked me again.
People were staring at me. I noticed the clock; my flight was now leaving in forty-five minutes, and I was nowhere near the front of the line. I tried to think of something to say. I needed help. I couldn’t miss my flight home. I took a deep breath, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and without thinking, said something I had never said before:
“I’m a widow.”
The TSA guy and I shared the same expression, which was: surprise. It was the first time I had said it out loud. The TSA guy, whose name tag said John, gave me the once over and I understood why. Out of all the things I could have been crying about, being a widow probably didn’t cross his mind.
“Jesus,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I need to get home to my daughter,” I cried.
“Of course you do. Come on.”
It’s possible, given my emotional state, that he thought I had just been widowed that day. I didn’t bother to clarify. John opened up a space in the rope and let me through. He reached for my suitcase, and I let him take it.
“Which flight you trying to catch?” he asked.
“To Los Angeles,” I told him.
He whistled. “Cutting it close.”
John led me through to the front of the line, easily passing a hundred other people.
“Ya gonna be OK,” John said as he lifted my bag onto the security belt for screening. I couldn’t tell if he was asking me or telling me.
“Thank you so much,” I told him as I walked through the scanner. “Really,” I said through my tears. “That was really nice.”
He nodded from the other side of security. He called after me, “Get home safe. God bless.”
I took that blessing. I felt it and luckily made my flight.
Back in LA, I called Jillian on the way home from the airport. She asked about my trip.
“It was great but terrible,” I told her. “I loved seeing Jennie but I cried the whole time. I missed Joel . . . But I figured something out.”
“What?” she asked.
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yes!” she said.
“Jill.” I paused. “Guess what?”
“What?” she asked.
Then I said it. “I’m a widow!”
I could practically see her take the phone away from her ear and stare at it. She either thought I was crazy or stupid. She knows I’m not stupid.
“Um, yes. I think I knew that,” she said.
“No, you knew, but you didn’t know. I’m a widow!”
“Huh,” she said. “Give me a minute to think about that.”
I waited. Looked out the window. Yawned.
“OK,” she said a minute later. “I do get that now. Wow. You’re right. I can’t believe it either!”
“Right?!”
It was a revelation. The word suddenly felt different. I may not have looked like a widow, but I felt like one. Widow once described a much older woman. Old, wrinkled, tragic. Wearing black. Maybe even a veil. I felt like a version of Charles Dickens’s jilted old Miss Havisham, but instead of being left at the altar and staying in my wedding dress forever, I was left in midlife, barefoot in shiva clothes and a blowout.
Once I started referring to myself as a widow, I couldn’t stop. I don’t know what took me so long to claim it. That’s what it felt like; that I was claiming the word, asserting some truth about myself because it wasn’t obvious if you looked at me. And in saying it, declaring it, embracing it, I was convincing myself that it was real. Joel was gone. He was still my husband. We were still married, but I was a widow.
A widow.
I’d be at the car wash, and while waiting for our cars, the person next to me might say something like, Last time I got a car wash, it rained the next day.
I’d reply, Oh, I hate it when that happens. Especially because I’m a widow.
Or, Sophie and I would be at the In-N-Out Burger drive-through. I’d give our order through the speaker. We’ll take one double-double, two large fries, and two chocolate shakes . . . because I’m a widow.
Sophie would roll her eyes, mortified. “M-o-o-o-m!”
“Maybe they’ll throw in something free!” I’d say to her as we drove to the pay window. “Some sympathy fries or something.” They never did.
Once when I took the dogs to the groomers, and they said they’d be ready at three o’clock, I replied, “No problem. I’m a widow; I’ll be here at three!”
The word didn’t scare me. It didn’t make me cower. It gave me something to say, a way to place myself in the world. I had a word for what I was, and I used it. It felt powerful.
When I dropped the word, and the stranger realized that I said widow, I would see the wheels in their mind spinning, waiting to register. Once it did, they would stare at me, stunned, confused. I never would have guessed! someone once said. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to tell people, to say it out loud. Saying I was a widow made it real. For me, it was impossible to understand that my husband died. It made no sense. We were supposed to grow old together. We shared a life. We loved and liked each other. It’s not that I wanted people to know, I needed them to.
Everyone in my neighborhood, of course, already knew. Some decided I was in need of not just their condolences but their sympathy. I was once at Trader Joe’s trying to figure out what to make with the chicken I had just put in my cart when a woman I knew from the neighborhood came up to me crying, tears pouring down her face.
“Melissa.” She sniffed. “How are you?” She tried to pull me into a hug, but thankfully my shopping cart was in between us. She settled by putting her hands on my arms.
“I’m so sorry. I keep thinking of you and Sophie, and I just keep crying.”
This woman was never my favorite. Years ago she had a birthday party for her kindergartner and invited everyone in the entire class. Everyone but Sophie. I’m sure it was an oversight, but I never got over it. So when she came to me crying, I offered no words of comfort (because, hello, I’m the one who is grieving) and I didn’t feel the need to fill up the space. I preferred it being awkward. I watched her face get red, the tears pouring down. She continued to cry, and then the truth of her being upset really came out.
“I just . . . ,” she said with a sob. “I don’t know what I would do if it were me.”
There. She said it. Her tears, her crying, her sympathy had nothing to do with me. It had to do with her. Her fears. Her own anxiety over the possibility, however slim, of losing her husband. Having her world rocked upside down. I looked at her with indifference.
“Feel better,” I said as I wheeled my cart away.
I could own the fact that I was now the town widow, but what I couldn’t take was everyone’s projections and assumptions. People knew about me, so they thought they knew me, thought they knew my story.
They didn’t.
They didn’t know my suffering or Joel’s. They didn’t know that I felt like I was grieving long before Joel had even died. That I was grieving before I even knew I was grieving.
It’s common for widows to feel like they are the ones who need to comfort those
who are trying to comfort them. I wish I could offer suggestions of the appropriate things to say, but the truth is, I don’t know. Grief is personal and private.
For me, I just wanted the acknowledgement (I’m so sorry would usually suffice), and depending on the person, I didn’t necessarily want much else. I didn’t want to make small talk or hear about their eighty-five-year-old aunt who just died in their weak attempt to make their situation relatable to mine.
Nor did I want a hug.
Some people got it just right. Like the time I was doing Clooney, and I saw a woman from the neighborhood who hikes there daily. We aren’t friends, but we’ve known each other for years. She saw me crying, sniffling, working my way up the hill. She was coming toward me in the opposite direction. I didn’t want to stop, but I saw her sigh when she saw me. She simply reached out and squeezed my arm as we passed each other. There was no pretense. No over-the-top outburst. My situation was sad. Unbelievable. Hard to fathom . . . and her simple, silent acknowledgement was enough.
Or the friend I ran into from my early days of working at Atlantic with Joel. I barely recognized her; it had been so many years. But she stopped me and said, “I heard about Joel. I’m so sorry.” And then continued reminiscing about the old days. I appreciated that she saw my circumstance as a matter of fact. She didn’t exude any pity or projections of her own.
People knew Joel and me as a happy couple. They knew us as Sophie’s parents. They knew that we lived in the house close to the elementary school (which at one point or another, everyone with kids in our neighborhood had parked in front of). But now I was the woman whose husband had died. The husband who everyone saw riding through the neighborhood on his bike. The husband who was so nice. What did he have again? What was wrong with him? How did he die?
And if that could happen to me, couldn’t it happen to anyone? How will she manage? In that big house, just her and her daughter? Oh my God! What’s she going to do now?
No one knew what to make of The Widow.
The truth is, I didn’t know either.
THIRTEEN
Small Steps Forward
Hi, this is Allison Frank. I got your name from Rabbi Hannah. My husband died three years ago, and if you ever want to talk to someone, I’d be happy to meet you. Thanks.”
I saw the name Allison Frank listed as a missed call on my phone, but it would be weeks before I would listen to her message. I let it sit in my inbox because I just wasn’t interested. Some friends had told me about Allison. I knew that she lived in our neighborhood, that she had also lost her husband, and that her kids were a little older than Sophie.
I was aware that she might be calling and was encouraged to meet her, but I bristled at the idea. Why in the world would I want to meet anyone else whose husband died? No, I was territorial over my grief. No one but me was married to Joel. No one knew what it felt like to lose their everything.
So I made up my mind to ignore her message. For now.
Besides, it was a busy time. Or at least, a time of transition. Joel had been gone for nearly six months. Everyone knew that Sophie was my priority. In a bit of a role reversal, whenever I was invited anywhere, I would first check with her. I didn’t want to leave her alone or with a babysitter. She was getting a bit old for that anyway.
I tended to make my plans during the day, when she was at school. The problem was that friends were inviting me out to dinners. To happy hour. To the theater. I tried; I really tried to just say yes to everything. But the truth is I missed out on many events. The thought of showing up to a friend’s fiftieth birthday party by myself, for example, seemed daunting.
I was developing an unhealthy dynamic. I would wait to hear what Sophie’s plans were, if any, before making plans for myself. If she was invited to a sleepover on a Friday night, only then would I agree to meet my friends for dinner. If she was going to a movie on a Saturday with one of the grandparents, then I would agree to a hike or to meet someone for coffee.
Everyone was encouraging me to make time for myself. Happy mom, happy kid, they’d say. I would try, but how could I ever be happy again given that I was now facing a future without Joel? I was afraid. I didn’t know if I would ever feel whole again.
But the truth is, with the exception of my husband dying, my world being completely rocked, and having to do the heavy lifting of two parents, I was a happy person by nature. I had to believe that I could be that way again. It’s not that I was no longer laughing or enjoying myself at times, I was, but Joel’s absence was always a presence. The minute I would sense it, I’d get sad. It was hard to reconcile.
Leigh, a woman I had known since our daughters were in preschool together, had encouraged me to join her writing group. Leigh’s daughter and Sophie had become close friends in middle school, and she and I became close during the girls’ bat mitzvah planning and even more so in those difficult months leading up to when Joel was in the hospital, and beyond. Leigh offered an open-door policy to her home at all times. Sophie and I loved the chaos of her house with her three spirited children, doctor husband, and big dog. We could sit there for hours and just watch all of the action. It was so different from our quiet life on our cul-de-sac.
Leigh had a degree in spiritual psychology and shared the same alma matter as one of my “healers,” Iyanla Vanzant. You could say she had me at Iyanla.
“Look. You’re a writer; you should be writing,” Leigh told me. “I think it will be very healing for you, and we’re a very friendly group. No one bites.”
I recognized that I needed to find my way back to myself. Joining a writing group would be a baby step; although, it was also a big one. It meant that I’d actually be getting dressed and leaving the house. But Leigh’s presence in the group gave me reassurance. Plus, the class was held in a house in the hills just above my house. I could walk there if I wanted to.
“Soph,” I said on the way home from school one day. “I think I’m going to join a writing group.”
“OK,” she said as she fidgeted with the radio, looking for a good station.
“It meets once a week. Right around the corner from home.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll only be gone for a few hours. I’ll leave after dinner and be home by nine thirty, maybe ten, the latest.”
I kept driving while Sophie kept changing stations.
“I just think it will be good for me. I haven’t written anything in a while, and Leigh’s in the class, and I think I just need to start doing stuff again and—”
Sophie took her attention off the radio and glanced at me. “Mom, it’s fine.”
“You’re sure? Because if you’d rather I stay home with you—”
She raised her hands in the air, exasperated. “Oh my God! It’s no big deal. Do it. Take a writing class. I’m fine with it!”
I don’t know if I was looking for an excuse to get out of it or just making sure she was really OK with my being gone. I asked myself, WWJD. Hun, Joel would have said, do it. You have no excuse not to.
So I signed myself up to join Leigh’s writing group. Every Thursday evening for eight weeks, I drove up the hill. I’d park my car, take a deep breath, and climb up the stairs that led into the house.
The class was composed of about eight people; all were nonprofessional writers. I was the only one who had ever earned a living from my writing, and unfortunately, my worst qualities came out. I was a snob. What could I possibly learn from people who only write as a hobby? I had no patience. You mean every single person is going to read what they wrote? Out loud to the group? And I have to actually pay attention? And I hated reading what I had only just written. It hasn’t been edited yet; it won’t be any good!
But halfway into the first class, my reservations slipped away. When we went around introducing ourselves that first night, I told them that I was a widow. They reacted in a way that was becoming familiar. I could see them trying to process this information, their smiles fading. Did she say she’s a widow? And then the qu
estions came. How old was your husband, if you don’t mind us asking? What was the cause of death? Then the gasps, and condolences, hands on hearts, a few tears were wiped away (including mine), and then we moved on.
Each session started with a five-minute meditation. I didn’t mind that. I would try to conjure peaceful thoughts and quiet my mind. I would breathe. Over the course of the first few weeks, I let go of my preconceived ideas about the group. They had interesting things to say. Most could actually write. Anna, the group’s founder and facilitator, created such a warm and nurturing space, it felt womb-like. I felt a part of something. Something that had nothing to do with being a widow, or a mom, or even a “professional.” This was something that was just for me. Just for fun.
Writing was a way back to myself, and the writing group became integral to my well-being. I loved it. The group was supportive and encouraging, the antithesis of what it was like working as a screenwriter where you always felt disposable, underappreciated, and anxious, regardless of how successful you were.
In Anna’s group people were writing poetry. Personal essays. Short stories. Romance novels. And I was able to tap into a creative well inside my mind that I forgot existed. I wrote stories and made up scenes. I created characters and built an entire world inhabited by people whom I gave lives to, with children and homes and cars and hobbies. It was exhilarating. Anna’s class was the one activity I had planned for myself every week, and I never missed it. When the first eight-week session ended, I signed up again for the next, and the next few sessions after that.
Life was still surreal, but Sophie and I were moving forward. In the tiniest of steps, we were making a life without Joel. I encouraged Sophie to look for him every day, to find him when she needed him, to talk to him. I wanted her to know he was with her, always, and would always love her.
“Daddy loved the Clash,” she’d say after reading our nightly passage.
“And the Who,” I’d add.
“He looked like Pete Townshend,” she’d say.
“And some people thought he looked like Ralph Fiennes,” I’d say.
Widowish: A Memoir Page 11