When you are widowed, you don?t just lose your husband,? a friend said to me the other day. ?You also lose your raison d?etre, your social life and your status.? This friend spoke feelingly. When she was widowed two years ago, the shock of her husband?s death left her devastated. Initially there were hordes of friends and family who visited her and tried to alleviate her pain, but gradually, and inevitably, the numbers dwindled and disappeared. Left to her own devices, she slowly began to come to terms with her loss and take stock of the situation.
?That was when I realised that I was totally rudderless and without direction,? she said. Like so many other women, she had sacrificed everything on the altar of making a home and rearing a family. Caring for the household had been her sole occupation. Her days were taken up with household chores and generally coping with all the crises that crop up in a family. Once the children left the nest, she had less to do. But she still had her husband to look after. Also, as so often happened, with the children no longer making any demands on their time, husband and wife grew closer and did many more things together. ?When he died, there was no one to do anything for or with,? she explained. ?Overnight, there seemed to be no point to my existence.?
As it happens, she was luckier than most. Though her son lived in the US, she had a daughter here. This daughter and her husband insisted that she move in with them. ?They took very good care of me and made sure that I never felt excluded in any way,? she continued. ?But however warm and generous they were, I felt redundant. If their friends were good to me ? and they were ? they were still their friends and not mine. If my grandchildren needed something, they went to their mother, not to me. Everyone in the family was busy with their lives while I knitted jerseys that no one would wear, or embroidered table mats that no one would use. Though surrounded by the family, I found myself feeling lost.?
It was a friend of her daughter?s who recognised the problem and took it upon herself to solve it. She worked in an adoption agency, and persuaded her to come with her for a couple of hours a day. Neither onerous nor physically taxing, it gave a focus to her day. Within a couple of months she had made herself fairly indispensable, and both staff and children looked forward to her arrival every morning. Most important, she had found a place where she was genuinely useful and where her need to be needed was satisfied.
?I still grieve for my husband,? she said, when I last met her, ?but I am no longer miserable and lonely. There are now people in my life who want and need me, and that has given me the raison d?etre that I had lost.?
