BY SHAWNA WASKO, M.OLP
As many of you know, I was widowed in 1980. My 25-year-old husband Ken was killed in a logging accident and our only child, Brandie, was 22 months old. I quickly found out that the vast majority of people did not know what to say to me, and the others who thought they knew what to say to me were huge idiots.
I have been facilitating widowed support groups for over 41 years now. I am in the process of writing a book on all the stories I have been told by my widowed persons who have attended my groups, male and female. What an honor it has been. Recently, I had a widow in my group that shared she went out to the funeral home to prepare for her husband’s funeral and when she came home her family had washed all her husband’s clothes and the sheets on the bed. She cried and cried because all she wanted to do was go home and sleep in the bed that still smelled like her husband of 55 years.
I had a sister-in-law tell my daughter that God took her daddy because He knew Brandie was tough enough to take it. After I got through shoving the sister-in-law up against a wall and informed her not to speak to my daughter again about her beliefs, I cried for hours.
I have had a funeral director in one of our eight counties tell newly widowed men, “Hey, now you can date.” What the guy did not know was if a man marries too soon after the death of his spouse, he often makes a huge mistake and statistics prove that this man’s life expectancy is shortened. A man who waits at least a year to date and marry has a long-life expectancy. So essentially the funeral director is trying to build up his business (albeit unknowingly) by encouraging someone to date too soon. The exception to this is someone whose spouse dies over a long period of time; i.e. from Alzheimer’s, ALS, etc. They simply lose these people long before they lose them. So, they have grieved for a long time.
I have people who told me I should remarry. I have not, and people see this as strange. But statistically, if a woman is widowed at the age of 45 and above, only 1.8% of them will ever remarry. If they were widowed under the age of 45 (I was 23), only 7.8% of those women ever remarry. Simply put, widowed women rarely remarry.
When I was first widowed, we outnumbered widowed men 6-1. Now, in 2022, we outnumber widowed men 4-1. Small pickings. Reason they don’t remarry? Money mostly. They will lose pensions if they remarry. Also, they fear loss again.
We are told we need to go through personal effects, we shouldn’t cry this much, we should be over grief by now, blah, blah, blah. Just shut up. You need to cry. You need to take your time with personal effects. My daughter is still mad I didn’t wait for her to be older so she could have gone through her dad’s things. She simply rifles through my house and takes anything that was her father’s. She doesn’t know where the good stuff is. She will find it after I die.
We never ‘get over’ grief. We assimilate the loss. I will miss my husband forever, but I am happy, and date, and love my grandkids and all the groups I facilitate, all my friends, and all my family. I have a full, wonderful life. Best grievers take about two years to grieve the loss. But they get better as the year or two moves on. Suicide deaths and murders take longer to assimilate. So be more patient with these souls.
Don’t say, “Call me if you need anything.” For crying out loud, my spouse just died, I need a lot of things! How about you just show up.
My father-in-law, Greg Wasko, used to come to my house twice a month for a long time. He would get out of his truck, put his coveralls on, pick up his toolbox and come in and repair anything he could find in the house to repair. I often unscrewed things, and said things like, “I think my dryer is broken,” knowing full well it wasn’t. He simply wanted to help me and Brandie and doing these things for us helped him grieve. He never once talked about Ken’s death. He just showed up. It meant the world to me, and Brandie. He would take her out for a “Happy Meal” after and give me a break to be on my own for a little while. A good man he was. I miss him.
So, what should you say? How about nothing. Just hug them and tell them you love them. My husband’s cousin’s wife died fairly young. When I went to the funeral, I simply walked up and held his hand for a while, then walked away. You could actually show up afterwards. I lost every friend I had when Ken died. They didn’t know what to do, so they wrote me out of their little black books. The older we are, the less this happens when we are widowed. But when you are no longer a couple, couples don’t want you. We find new friends.
I had a lady I admired once ask me how it felt to grieve. I made the mistake of confiding in her. She said to me that I had married too young, and she would never have as much trouble as I have with being widowed. She was a nurse, mother of two, and two years older than me. In 1981 the housing market went under. Her husband was a contractor in Washington State. He had to leave the small town we lived in and be in Seattle all week, building houses. He came home on the weekends. This lady had a complete nervous breakdown, and he had to leave his job and come home and take a much lower paying job.
His wife was ‘committed’ for over a month and could no longer do the job of nursing. They lost their home. It was terrible. So, people think they know what it is like to be alone, and they don’t. I hope you know now what you don’t know.
You could always tell widowed people about my group and other grief groups. You could treat them kindly and not run the other way. I remember being at the grocery store and people would see Brandie and me coming down the aisle and they would turn around and run. Being widowed is very isolating. We need love and kindness. And we need our friends.
Remember that most widowed persons are burned-out caregivers. They are exhausted before the death happens and more exhausted after their loved one dies. Feed them, pray for them, and love them.
Take care, all of you. Take care of those in your life who have lost someone. They need you.
Sincerely,
Shawna Wasko, M.OLP
CSI Office on Aging
208.736.2122
swasko@csi.edu