And then there’s my favorite: I’ll never forget how hard it was when my dog died. I thought I’d never get over it!
Now, good intention or not, that person should really be smacked.
I’ve even fallen into this trap myself. The question of “How are you” has become such a natural greeting that we don’t expect a real answer. We expect a “good” or “I’m fine.” But I can pretty much guarantee that about 98 percent of the people we ask are really not “good” or “fine.” They’re worried about money or kids or who they’re dating. But we never really expect them to give us an in-depth answer. And when they do, it ups our discomfort level.
I was visiting a friend whose infant daughter had just had open-heart surgery and was in the ICU at Children’s Hospital. I walked into her room and saw Becky bending over her baby, who was covered from head to tiny foot in tubes and bandages. And before I could stop myself I asked brightly, “Hey! How are you doing?”
The second it came out of my mouth, I thought, “You moron. How do you think she’s doing?”
But at least I knew enough to immediately backtrack and say, “I can’t believe I just said that. But really. How are you?”
Even a simple question like “how are you” can easily send me over the edge, depending on the day I’m having. On certain days, I can have an automatic response to your automatic question. And then on others, the bitter, sad, irritated little widow within me really wants to let you have it.
“Well, my husband died six months ago. I can’t figure out how to use my snowblower; my kids have decided they’d rather camp in the backyard than live with me; and I have a rash right here and I can’t tell if it’s contagious or not. What do you think?”
I used to fluctuate between not wanting anyone to know what had happened so that I could dodge those awkward moments and resisting the urge to tell complete strangers every detail of my story. Sometimes I would correct them when they assumed that I still had a husband (or an ex-husband), and some days I would go along with pretending that he was still around, giving myself one blissful second of feeling like life was normal.
About a year after Brad died, I was walking into Walmart, wearing my most comfortable oversized Air Force Academy sweatshirt, when the sweet, little old man who was greeting shoppers as they entered the store struck up a conversation.
“Good morning! Nice sweatshirt! Did you go to the Academy?”
“No, my husband did, though.”
“Oh! Is he a pilot?”
“No, he was an engineer.”
“Well, that’s good! At least he gets to come home every night!”
And with that, the greeter sent me on my miserable, widowed way into the store so that I could stock up on maxi pads and peanut butter.
There were days when I would completely avoid eye contact and only respond to a stranger’s friendly “hello” with a small smile and a nod of the head. And then there were other days when I wanted to spill the entire contents of my life on some random person walking down the condiment aisle at the grocery store.
“Do you see this jar of Miracle Whip?” I wanted to grab a stranger by the shirt and yell into his face. “I don’t have to buy this anymore because my husband died. Do you know how much I hated buying Miracle Whip a year ago and how much I would give for someone at home to want it right now?”
One of the most painful moments I have ever gone through with someone who meant well but whose comment was about to send me over the edge was with my own mother. Now, she is usually the first person I call for comfort and understanding. But right after Brad died, she would often say to me, “Oh, Catherine. This is awful. Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful.”
And I knew that she meant well. She was trying to commiserate with me. She was trying to tell me that she knew that my life had been turned upside down.
Dammit. She was just trying to help.
But it didn’t help. It made me feel terrible. It made me feel like I was sinking into a hole I would never be able to get out of. And finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Mom. You have to stop saying that,” I said to her one day over the phone.
There was a silence and then a little sniffle. And then her voice, shaking with hurt, said, “I’m sorry. What would you like me to say?”
I thought about it for a minute and then said miserably, “I don’t know.”
I didn’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what someone could say to comfort me because there were times I just couldn’t be comforted. Jollying me along seemed insensitive, and commiserating with me depressed me. “I’m sorry” seemed shallow and even silence with a look of pity was too much for me to bear. I didn’t realize until years after Brad died that in most cases, we widows don’t want people to say anything.
We just want you to listen.
That became clear to me when I was attending a reception for a neighbor who had died suddenly. I walked next door and felt like the pressure was on. After all, I had been through this so I should know what to say, right? But at that point I had already learned that what was comforting to me might make my neighbor want to throw herself under a fast-moving Geo in the parking lot of the mall. So, as I walked through the grass between our houses that summer night and let myself in through the gate to their backyard, I was kind of at a loss as to what to say.
“I’m so sorry,” I began, knowing that those words were futile. “He was such a great guy. I can’t believe that he’s gone.”
She gave me that little half smile we widows acquire that says, “Thank you for your thoughts but you’re really not helping.”
I sat at her kitchen table with her mother and her sister, listening to them all talk about her husband’s death while she remained silent, and I could see by her face that she was sinking lower and lower.
“You know,” I said. “I’ve never heard how you guys met.”
She started talking. And talking. Her face brightened a little as she told me how they met in college and about their wedding. I sat, my eyes fixated on her face, actively listening, nodding my head, and laughing at the crazy things they did when they were younger.
“Hey!” she said. “There’s a slide show set up in the other room of us. You want to watch it with me?”
I grabbed my glass of wine and she led me to the family room where there were pictures looping on the TV, and she sat there for about forty-five minutes, explaining every slide to me and telling me what they were doing. There were others in the room, family members and friends, who had either already heard the stories or had been there to witness them. Every once in a while, one of them would chime in with what they remembered. But they all seemed to benefit from having a fresh pair of ears who had never heard any of it laughing along and enjoying the history.
“That’s it,” I thought. “That’s what we all want. To tell our stories to someone who cares to hear them. I don’t have to say a word. Just let her talk.”
I love telling stories about Brad. If you get me started, I’ll talk your ear off. Usually, I don’t want to talk about his death. I don’t even want to necessarily talk about how hard it’s been since he’s been gone. But when someone I’ve known for a long time says, “Remember when?” and I can help fill in the blank with some outrageous memory from our life together, I could talk for hours. Or if someone I don’t know well says, “Tell me about your husband,” I could tell a lifetime of stories. Sure, I’ll feel that pang of loss and grief in my heart. But it’s no match for the joy I feel remembering the man I love.
And telling those stories reminds me over and over again that even though he’s gone, the memories are mine forever.
• • •
It wasn’t just the remarks of strangers that took me by surprise. My kids developed a knack for making comments that alarmed me on a regular basis and could often stop any conversation midsentence. Remember that old Bill Cosby
show Kids Say the Darndest Things? Well, those kids had nothing on my own who had many thoughts and questions when it came to their dad and his death—and had no problem sharing them at any given time.
Sarah, in the beginning, had no filter. I’ll never forget swimming with her at the local indoor pool when she was a toddler and watching her play with another little girl. I don’t know what prompted this, but I suddenly heard the echo of Sarah’s voice from across the water: “Oh yeah? Well, my daddy’s dead. DEAD!”
And then I watched the other child quickly swim away from her.
While Sarah seemed to come up with these little comments for shock value, Michael just wanted information. His questions, while difficult for me to answer, were part of his process and as time went on, I began to practice age-appropriate honesty: answering those questions as truthfully as I could at a level I thought he could understand.
“Mom?” he asked me when he was about four. “What does ‘extinct’ mean?”
And I told him, “It means something isn’t around anymore. Like the dinosaurs are extinct.”
There was a silence as he pondered that one. Then he asked, “So is Dad extinct?”
Pause. “Yes. I guess he is.”
It was a question that really made sense when you think about it…especially to a four-year-old boy. But, of course, as he got older, the questions got harder. And once we had had some space and time away from Brad’s death, they were also more jarring when he asked them because I wasn’t expecting them.
“Was there a lot of blood on the road when Daddy had his accident?” he asked me about three years into our new life.
“Uh…no…” I said, trying to catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror so that I could see his face. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering,” he said, as if he had just asked me what was for dinner.
For some reason these questions always seemed to arise when we were in the car. It could have been that just being on the road reminded him that his dad was in accident and that he still needed more information to complete the puzzle that had become the life we were living. It could have been that there was something about the quiet rocking of the car that made him think deeply about things he was normally too busy to contemplate. Or he could have just been testing my skills as a driver, wondering what it would take to throw me off enough to crash through the door of the local Dairy Queen so that he could get a Blizzard.
With kids, it’s always hard to pinpoint their motivation.
• • •
Of course, my children weren’t the only ones who could stop any conversation in its tracks. After a few months, I realized that I, too, had that superpower. I recognized that by merely uttering one phrase—my husband died—I had the ability to make just about anyone run from me as if what I had was contagious.
The first time it happened was a few months after Brad died, when I was at a bar in downtown Denver. I’d just been to a Colorado Rockies baseball game with a girlfriend who had somehow scored an extra seat, and even though I wasn’t a huge baseball fan, it seemed like a good excuse to get out and have some adult interaction.
I sat at the game with Stephanee, and for the first time in months, I felt normal. No one seated around me knew that my husband had died. No one knew how hard it had been to even think about going out and doing something so normal. No one knew how complicated my life had become and how worried I was that it would never be simple again.
To the people sitting around me, I was just a thirty-one-year-old woman out enjoying an evening with a friend.
After the game, Stephanee and I ran across the street from the Stadium to a restaurant so we could grab a beer. We made our way to the rooftop bar and I watched everyone around me in wonder, disbelieving once again that life had still gone on for all of these strangers while mine seemed to have completely stopped for the last few months. I got so caught up in the “normalness” of the evening that I started talking to a guy standing next to me at the bar.
“So…are you a Broncos fan?” he asked me.
“No, actually I’m a Steelers fan.”
“A Steelers fan? How did that happen?”
“Well, my late husband was from Pennsylvania. So I guess that would make me a Steelers fan by marriage.”
I’m not kidding you, the second I said “late husband,” that guy turned around midsentence and walked away, leaving my widowed ass alone sipping my pathetic little beer.
Wow. I had no idea I had it in me.
I’ve since experienced many moments of extreme discomfort thanks to my dead husband. Those conversations (or lack of) have left me feeling alone and hurt and unlikeable, and it took me a while to figure out that those uncomfortable moments really had nothing to do with me.
They had to do with the idiots that I was talking to.
Eventually, once I had a better handle on this amazing power, I could control it and use it to my advantage. As time went on, I learned not to start every conversation with, “Well, my late husband and I…” but save it so that I could spring it on people when they were least expecting it.
This can also be commonly known as “pulling the widow card.”
Of course, it’s hard to pull the widow card on people who know you really well. After a while, they build up an immunity so that when you say, “I can’t come to your party tonight because I’m widowed,” it’s met with a “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get your ass over here and buy some overpriced cookware.”
And in an effort to keep my friendships intact, I would. I have the skillets to prove it.
I learned fairly early on that if I wanted to keep the friendships in my life that I’d had for years, it would be up to me to make a lot of the effort. Oh, I had some amazing friends who would call as if “Call Catherine” was marked on their calendars every week, and I knew that if for some reason I didn’t feel like calling them for a few days, they would understand.
But many friendships started disappearing not long after Brad died. And it was as much my fault as it was theirs. I didn’t put in the effort I had before he was gone, and since none of my friends had gone through anything even remotely as life-altering as I had, they just didn’t know what to do with me. It didn’t really offend me that much. I know it probably should have, but since they had no idea where I was coming from or deep down what I was going through, it would have been pretty unfair of me to expect them to suddenly acquire a mind-reading ability the moment Brad took his last breath.
They didn’t know what to say, what not to say, what to invite me to, or what I wanted to avoid. And it didn’t help that an activity or get-together that sounded good to me one minute would change into something I would rather shave my head than do the next.
At one point, I actually called Kristi about going on a wine tour downtown, and in the time it took me to come up with this plan, pick up the phone, and dial her number, I had completely changed my mind.
“Kristi, I just called you to do something. And now I don’t want to. So never mind.”
Yes. It’s just as crazy as it sounds.
So, if I couldn’t keep up with what sounded good and what I wanted to do, how in the world could I expect it of my friends and family? I mean, after a while, dealing with someone who doesn’t have the attention span to make a plan and keep it all within the same hour can get a little irritating. I know because I was irritated. And I was the one who was doing it.
Being social again became like forming a new habit. Whether I wanted to or not, at any given moment, didn’t matter. Because if I listened to myself, someone who obviously didn’t know what was best for me, a year later I would have ended up as “the old widda woman” on the block who never turns on her lights and hands out pennies for Halloween.
Oh…you know what I mean.
What compounded the problem were my friends’ husbands. Brad and I were constantly throwing
parties and having people over. In fact, on the day of his funeral, we were supposed to have our huge summer party and we had invited a bunch of his coworkers and all of our local friends. I had been working for weeks on the menu and decorations, and figuring out how in the world we would have enough chairs to accommodate everyone. And the night before his funeral I remember thinking, “God, I hope the word got out to everyone that we’re having a funeral instead of a party.”
I mean, how awkward would it have been if some couple had shown up in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops ready for burgers and beer…and we greeted them at the door wearing black and handing them a plate of HoneyBaked ham?
Anyway, as soon as Brad was gone, so were most of his friends. It actually took me a few weeks to figure out that they weren’t there. But after a couple of months had passed and I hadn’t seen any of them, I realized that they weren’t just busy at work. They were avoiding me. And that scared me.
It was around that two-month mark that Brad’s boss from his Air Force days in Florida, Ron, called me to see how I was doing. I was so shocked that he did that, given the fact that I hadn’t seen or heard from a male friend in so long, that I actually emailed his wife after he called.
Dear Peggy,
I just wanted you to know that you should be extremely proud of Ron. I was so touched that he called last night to check on how I was doing and I’ve come to realize that, for a man, that takes more courage than going into battle.
Sincerely,
Catherine
I could never understand why the men avoided me so much. I guess they were worried that I could have a complete emotional breakdown in front of them at any moment. Like the top could blow on Mount Widow without warning and they were terrified of it happening in their presence. I should have explained to them from the beginning that the mountain would stay dormant unless it was fed copious amounts of chardonnay. Then eruption was imminent.
Confessions of a Mediocre Widow Page 16