Widowhood

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, November 2019; written by Lisa Pearson.

What do you do when your spouse dies? How do you cope with this new gap in your life, with the practical tasks that need to be done, with the sympathy and questions from the community? It’s a difficult subject that many of us will deal with at some point and yet it’s something most people don’t want to discuss. We have two new books at the library to help new widows and widowers cope with the financial, emotional, and legal changes in their life.

“A widow’s guide to healing: gentle support and advice for the first 5 years” is by Kristin Meekhof and James Windell. Meekhof has a dual perspective: she is a clinical social worker, and she lost her husband after a brief illness. It was her personal experience with loss and the uncertainty that follows that led her to write this book with Windell, a psychologist. Their book is less about the emotional aftermath of losing a spouse, and more about the practical week-to-week things that need to get done. In fact, the first chapter – “The 411 on surviving the first month” – contains weekly checklists that cover such tasks as contacting your employer, ordering death certificates, and managing your spouse’s social media accounts.

One of the most helpful lists in this chapter is about getting assistance from friends and family. When a neighbor, coworker, or relative asks what they can do to help it can be difficult to focus on what needs to be done. This checklist contains many suggestions, including ‘answer my voicemail messages’, ‘coach my soccer team’, and ‘pick up the ashes from the mortuary and hold onto them until I am ready ‘.

Other chapters in this book deal with solo parenting, family relations (especially the in-laws), navigating the legal system, and adjusting your lifestyle to your new financial reality. Meekhof includes not only her own knowledge of these topics, but she and Windell interviewed over 100 widows to include their experiences and advice as well. The excerpts from these interviews help the reader feel that they are not alone. And the timeframe of the book – the first 5 years – guides the reader through the lengthy process of grief and readjustment.

Megan Devine puts grief at the forefront of her book “It’s OK that you’re not OK: meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand”. Devine’s main point is that grief is not something you should feel pressured into overcoming. “Grief is not a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be carried”. In her book, therefore, she spends a lot of time talking about how to accept the pain and emptiness of grief without feeling guilty about your feelings, and about not succumbing to well-meaning advice to get over it quickly and move on.

One entire chapter of the book deals with the physical side effects of grief – insomnia, weight change, memory loss – and how to recognize these changes as the normal result of stress. She takes a very mindful approach, asking the reader to check in with themselves frequently and to really ‘feel’ how they are feeling. In keeping with her thesis that grief is not something that can be fixed, she doesn’t give specific activities to alleviate the physical effects; she gives the reader permission to accept them as part of their grief.

However, don’t think that Devine’s book encourages people to let grief swallow them up and take over their life. She includes an important chapter on dealing with thoughts of suicide and how to be kind to yourself. She emphasizes that the reader can live with grief, can live “inside the love that remains”. She gives the reader a sense of hope and truth that the pain doesn’t have to go away in order for them to go on living. In fact, the final section of her book is titled “The Way Forward”, and it is about survival and love.

You never know when something tragic may happen in life, and you may not always feel comfortable discussing your pain and confusion with others. But reading books like “A widow’s guide to healing” and “It’s OK that you’re not OK” can help you realize that you’re not alone and that you can survive.