by Isabelle Simmons UCSB Sociology/1970
One might paraphrase the above to read, "And the lonely must learn to be strong," especially the widow who wants to do more than just survive. I have been a widow for two years now and have tried to objectively view my reactions, situation, and prognosis for the future. I found myself, after the first searing emptiness was absorbed, wondering why a woman in our society is not prepared for the eventuality of losing a mate. To better understand, I started at the beginning of my life to assess the facets that I accumulated in decades of dealing with this country's and this century's milieu.
If I had been born two hundred years ago in Guyenne Province in France, from whence my ancestors came, I would have been part of the "we" of the village as well as my family, my occupation, and my social class. I would not seek to belong as I could not imagine not belonging. But I was born to an immigrant mother and father who did not feel accepted by their neighbors in Brooklyn, New York, and whose dialect, education, position of father, religion, style of dress, and income proved subtle and not so subtle barriers to social acceptance. There was even a hen-pecking order among relatives: members of the extended family who arrived last from Europe were on the bottom of the pile until a new greenhorn stepped off the boat.
Without doubt, my mother was pulled in different directions in raising her family. She remembered her childhood in Ireland and the way her mother had raised her family, but rearing a family in a small apartment in a large city in a foreign land as opposed to one on a farm in the old country didn't offer many similarities. Due to this, I remember no aura of comfortability in my life until I was in my late twenties. I was forced to seesaw between my parents' requests and those of peers on the street, in church, at school, or among relatives who could rule the family in so many subtle ways.
Confucius said: "The woman obeys her father before marriage, her husband after marriage, and her son when widowed." He forgot about sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles; especially aunts. For example, my Aunt Maggie's visit would mean a week of ceiling to floor cleaning, special food, and our best clothing. She was noted for running her finger under a bed's mattress to see whether there was any dust on the springs! I hated her for what she did to the atmosphere in our home, whether physically present or not. Years and years later, when my mother and I could hold an honest dialogue, she expressed her sorrow for submitting to Aunt Maggie's and other relatives' authority, but she said she could not imagine at the time not submitting to them—that was how she was brought up: family mattered!
For me, however, I carried a vague burden during childhood; one that asked, what did my parents want from me who had nothing? I was too young at the time to realize that I served as a scapegoat, a scapegoat for my mother's familial resentments and my stepfather's job frustrations, which he released through whipping me. I learned that family mattered, but for different reasons. For instance, in a kind of self-preservation when my stepfather came home from work, I became expert at face and body language, and if thus warned would retreat into the safety of doing chores or going to the library; anything to get out of his way. As an aside, authorities today postulate that child abuse is a repeated pattern, but in my case it served as a deterrent.
Writing this, the thought comes to me about Freud's contention that a girl envies her father's penis. But, if she hates him or doesn't even know that a man has one, how can she possibly envy it? No, a girl craves her father's affection and is envious of it.
Perhaps, being born when I was to the parents I inherited, I served as a psychological cutter of their umbilical cord to the traditions of the small village with its unquestioning acceptance of authority—I wouldn't just go along with what was expected. I don't know, but I found it safer to conform to the authority of the nuns and priests in school and to obey the unwritten laws of the gang in the neighborhood.
Oddly, my parents expected me to work and contribute to the upkeep of the home, so beginning at the age of twelve I worked summers yet did not question that assumption. Still, I followed orders from my employers much more easily than requests from my mother and stepfather.
(I will say that in my own family of four children, I discarded this philosophy of "paying me back for all I have done for you." Here is another instance of a treatment being a deterrent.)
At sixteen I met my future husband and from that time until we were married at twenty-one our lives became intertwined. He was the first person I met that openly questioned authority and, at first, this attitude raised uneasiness in me. He had an I.Q. of 145 and my parents resented his briskness in solving problems and his questioning of tradition-bound values. Of course, at that time I didn't know what an I.Q. was, and so was torn between my parents' assessment of him and my admiration for his uniqueness. He came from an Episcopalian background and from a family of intelligent and gifted people who had lived in Brooklyn since before the Civil War. Here were no johnny-come-latelies from Europe, and I think for that reason I felt extremely uneasy with them. Nonetheless, we were married and, after three years of working in Manhattan, decided to move to California.
My husband opened his own business in a small town there, and I assisted in the shop via my secretarial skills. We prospered and bought a home. This I found very difficult to do as my parents had always rented, stressing in a negative way the responsibilities of owning a home. But my husband came from a family who had always owned a home. It was not a drastic decision for him, nor did he fear the responsibility. And thus he kindly led me through expanding social, mental, religious, and psychological experiences that upset me to different degrees at the time, but which resulted in a world unknown to my parents. I would also have to say that it prepared me in a way for widowhood.
(I hate the word, widow.)
I obeyed my husband easily until, as a hobby, I started going to college at night. After being exposed to three semesters of psychology plus one of philosophy, I stated to question some of his assumptions, backing up my disagreements with facts from my classes. As I look back on that period, I realize it was a turning point for both of us. Like Nora in Ibsen's "Doll House," I came alive in a dimensional way, and the dialogue in our home assumed depths of compassion, interest, analogy, and humor that lasted until severed by his death.
With his death I lost my habitual modes of need satisfaction: communication needs, sexual needs, emotional supportive needs, social needs, plus infinite solutions to life's complex problems. I was forced to develop a self-acceptance of what I was with no pretending. I was a widow. Period.
In my mind's eye I have envisioned a "living" painting of myself from that time. In it I'm sitting on a sofa with the spirit of my husband enveloping me, but as time passes, his spirit gradually evaporates until, in the end, only I remain, faded and alone. In the old days, the widow would throw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, but suttee isn't practiced in the United States. Instead, I believe Vannevar Bush's saying is more pertinent to our time: "It is the duty to so live that there may be a reason for living, beyond the mere mechanisms of life. It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding." Or one can empathize with Hawthorne in "The Intelligence Officer" when he states: "I want my place, my own place, my proper sphere, my thing to do, which nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry (as one is in widowhood?), and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime."
So, here I am for the first time in my life with no one, if not to obey, then to comply with or at least to consider their concerns, and the abyss at first was frightening. The freedom to pursue any path, live in any place, and impose only those restraints which guarantee interaction and self-acceptance by esteemed others was intimidating. It's a fear which creates the feeling that the most important need is to get connected again to something…someone. Back in my ancestor's province, God was the unquestioned authority distilled through the church on earth, but today one does not have any certainty in that connection—could widowhood be easier for those who do? It seems we are on a planet that rides an orbit through the universe that is constructed of atoms, and widows suffer a pluralistic ignorance1 due to lack of "divine" communication. How can we tolerate the silence, the loneliness, the burden of decisions when there is no God to share them with? Today, becoming a widow is like being born again, but without anyone to fulfill our dependency needs.
In the province, loved ones would be there until you died. But, in the United States one's children might be 3,000 miles away or overseas, married, with a family and pursuits of their own; one's parents most apt to have passed away; and brothers or sisters unconcerned due to distance and a lack of interaction over the years. So, today one must realize that, if one has followed the homemaker route—staying in the home and providing an aura of love, concern and respect for independent thinking in that home—when death enters, security flies out the door. Take money for instance, a widow receives no social security until the age of sixty, but even then not the amount that would have been paid to her husband. If she tries to get a job, her age is a negative factor, even if she is fully qualified for the job, which is unlikely with only homemaker skills. She may find that her talents as a baby-sitter are wanted by her children, but no there is no mention of remuneration. Instead she finds they would like to borrow money at no interest.
At the time of her husband's death, everyone is so thoughtful and kind that a widow finds it difficult to believe what she has read or heard about the position of a widow in our culture. But as time passes, she becomes aware of changes. For example, if she has been left financially well-off, subtle hints and digs are made about how sweet it is to be free to travel, to redecorate one's home, to buy a new car, and to entertain so often. They don't see the reasons behind the actions, just the surface act.
Gradually, even one's closest friends forget to invite you to their dinner parties which contain couples. One finds oneself, more and more, getting together with women in the afternoon. And to talk to a man, one has to seek out a son or banker, or clergyman, if still going to church. Husbands of friends become prizes in a widow's eyes and, in a cyclic fashion, this brings about strain on everyone's part.
Widows are a minority group; pitied at first, but later shunned or told how to look younger to "catch a man" as if he were a fish. When I was young, the main focus of teenage girls was to get engaged and then married. Here I am in my fifties and, for some of my widowed peers, the focus hasn't changed.
Then there are the other widows who negate your attempts to broaden your horizons because it threatens their complacency. Or there's the gloom ball-type who is negative about every suggestion. One hears of the jealous type who wants to be first in everything one thinks and does. There is the philandering type who humiliates you after she is caught using your apartment for a love affair. There is the thrill-seeking widow who wants to fill the void with gambling, strange blind dates, exotic cruises, and drinking.
The word "lesbian" is snickered over, yet one grows wary of the gushy kisser with her veiled passes and invitations, which seem only to cover her aggression and envy.
Or we have the martyr-type widow who hugs her grief and makes a show of it by arriving late for events, crying on cue, and moping around with down-curved mouth. We also have the widow who allows relatives to move in, but then constantly complains about them. Or the woman who sews, cleans house, baby-sits, and generally intrudes on her children's families to the negation of all else.
Some of us are stretched like amoebas between society's and our own expectations. Should we continue to wear our wedding ring after the grief has passed? What are we? We are alone, but not single. We have a Mrs. in front of our husband's name, but we no longer have a husband. Forms have no place to indicate being a widow; sex, yes; single, married, divorced, yes; but our state of aloneness after being suffused with togetherness...none!
Other security problems widows face center around the syndrome of protecting one's self and one's belongings. A widow in New York City was robbed so often that she had eight locks on her door, some of which she left unlocked in order to frustrate the robbers. We are advised to have timers for lights in our homes, chains on doors, to list our name with initials only before the surname, to have a dog, to learn karate, carry a whistle or mace spray, know how to use a gun, and just put a number on our mailbox—no name. In fact, the Holiday Humane Society in Los Angeles is currently giving away fifty good-natured cats and dogs to women who live alone, plus a case of pet food every month. Society cares!
What is the answer? Communal living in America? Should there be a different set of expectations for men in our culture? Are we asking too much too soon from our males? Are the pressures placed on them too great? What is the point of striving for material items if we don't have our mate to share them with? Let us question anew our values! For something is wrong when we lose so many men to heart and stress-related diseases before the half-century mark. And so many more to wars and auto accidents. One has only to visit hospitals and old-age homes to note the high percentage of women still living; their husbands having died ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years previously. So let us question the authority behind the institutions—be it marriage, church, education, big business, war or government—and find the reasons for so many men dying before their wives. I am reminded of Nietzsche's statement where he said, "Insanity in individuals is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."
I have filled my emptiness by going back to school—I will receive a B.A. of Sociology this summer. I am also filling out a form for the Peace Corps, and another for teaching substitute and teacher's aid at my local school office. I have donated many hours of service as a Pink Lady at our local hospital. And I am a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Church.
Fortunately, I have reached a plateau where I no longer seek to belong, nor worry about acceptance. I am me. I am doing my own thing, while not hurting anyone by my pursuits. My imagination was stretched by my husband and my education, and now I can imagine doing a wide range of things in my future. I am not afraid to travel alone. And my friends are autonomous, not conformists; we relish each other's uniqueness.
The lonely must learn to be strong, but strong friends make it easier.
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1. In social psychology, pluralistic ignorance is a process which involves several members of a group who think that they have different perceptions, beliefs, or attitudes from the rest of the group.
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