On November 10, 2023, I held a funeral for my wife, Lynn. It was the fifth anniversary of her death. I had three men join me for the funeral ceremony—one who also lost his wife to breast cancer and mental illness, one who was in the process of losing his partner to breast cancer and mental illness, and one who was losing his wife to a form of Alzheimer’s disease. In invited all of them to bring their own griefs and feelings, and they did.
But this was an unusual bunch of men. The funeral, which I will write about separately, was beautiful, and it started a process for me of finally engaging the fundamental fact of my life today—I am a widower. After the ceremony, I started looking into resources for men who are widowers and I was surprised to find how little there is. Maybe this is another form of the competency curse—that men are just supposed to know how to handle whatever life throws at them. The problem is that we don’t, and because we don’t we miss our greatest opportunities to grow—including those presented by the death of our wives.
A few images came into my awareness through friends and reading.
First, a widow friend of mine told me about a widower retreat she had heard about. It had a Christian affiliation and was led by four men, all of who were widowers. It was also revealed that all four of them were remarried within one year of their wife’s death.
Second, Herb Knoll’s book The Widower’s Journey paints a picture and a path for the widowered many that includes taking action in the world in his wife’s name—create a foundation, take up research on her illness, or whatever.
Third, Knoll also made this comment in comparing women and men after the death of a spouse: “Women mourn, men replace.”
Fourth, I started another book called Widower to Widower by Fred Colby. Once again, this book like Knoll’s, reads more like an effort by a man to tell other men what to do—kind of a typical male response to hard stuff.
My questions become: Where’s the depth? Where are the insights? What is the work I need to do to process this tragedy that upended my life? How can I think about this and go forward? Indeed, how do I actually heal? Somehow, it didn’t seem like writing an advice book or starting a foundation in her name was adequate to what I had experienced.
In all frankness, however, I think I get it. I get it because I undertook similar strategies to avoid the pain—I got a new girlfriend asap. I didn’t realize I was doing that at the time, but I do now. As I have watched my widower friends and acquaintances, I recognize this as a common strategy. When you have a new squeeze, as they say, it is a lot easier to forget the pain of your previous loss. Although it took me a little longer, I did eventually propose marriage again even though that didn’t work out—again, I’ll explain in another post when and if that seems relevant to the discussion. It seems that finding a new girlfriend and getting remarried is a favored strategy by men.
Here’s the thing: It works. At least for a while. It works as long as that woman doesn’t provoke your deepest pain places. Some guys put that pain away so far that no one, not even themselves, can access it. That’s a strategy. Others, like me, try to engage it but fail due to our own pains, traumas, and agonizing fears. She doesn’t want to go there, and actually, neither do we. A kind of underhanded agreement to avoid takes root, and so the avoidance continues.
I successfully avoided my pain and the necessary confrontation with trauma, anger, torment, and rage because I was with Cheryl. I loved her urgings to move forward and not get stuck in the past because they were exactly what I needed at the time. I wanted to move forward! I tried to move forward. I did move forward. But eventually, the net of my reality caught up with me. Turns out there is no way to outrun the inner reality of your suffering. But dang, you can sure try!
This is no statement about her; it is completely a statement about me. I think men choose their women at this stage because of the comfort they get from them. Often, the new woman fills in gaps, at least in the beginning. Different men I have talked with identify different gaps—spiritual gaps, creative gaps, sexual gaps, adventurous gaps. Love gaps, support gaps, travel gaps. They are all different, but they all seem to reflect the completion of gaps that were left behind. We seem to always need to back to those gaps to get the life we think we wanted. It becomes a projection and a supposedly easy answer, but we are missing one crucial thing—our own growth. You can’t marry growth, guys. You can’t even date it. You have to do it.
When we choose our new woman this way, we set ourselves up for further heartbreak. Why? Because as I said, you can’t marry your own growth. When we do this, we are expecting our new woman to grow us, and that can’t be done. We have to grow ourselves. And so the eventuality is predictable—either you settle into a relationship that is not what you want because it soothes you, or you have to end that relationship so you can go heal yourself, and as far as relationship is concerned, see what happens. This is where I ended up. I love Cheryl deeply, but she cannot heal me, and asking her to is inappropriate, useless, and unfair. I need to heal myself. I wish I had done so long before I met her, for if I had, we’d have a chance to be living a beautiful life together today. Lots would depend on what needs she was bringing, but that is a different story.
This is the point I am trying to get to for men—it will feel good to be soothed by a woman after the awfulness of death or the pain of a less that satisfactory marriage. It is okay to engage that comfort; maybe even necessary. I know it was for me. The only point is that it is not the end of the line. I have a ways to go. My healing was not completed simply because I found a good woman who loves me. I still have to heal my inner wounds to be able to be there fully for her, for my children, or for anybody—and most importantly, for myself.
Perhaps I have learned that after tragedy, healing is needed, it is difficult, and it can be very desirable to delay it. But just as we know about houses, boats, and cars, maintenance deferred is maintenance not done. Healing deferred is healing not done. I delayed my healing. It became healing not done, and it destroyed the new love that I desired.
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