Heartbroken Open by Kristine Carlson

Author:Kristine Carlson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

12. Everyone’s Sister

I am too young to be a widow. One afternoon my girlfriend and I were sitting around and talking. We stared into each other’s tear-filled eyes as I moaned: “I’m a widow now”—then we simultaneously burst out laughing at the image “widow” conjured in juxtaposition to me. We decided that there should be a new name for forty-something women whose husbands pass in midlife, like “willow.”

I instantly became everyone’s sister. As women, we take care of each other like sisters when our marriages end in divorce, when we have sick children or are sick ourselves, and when any number of tragedies befall us. Women rally reflexively to support women, and for many, it’s okay for men to care for our close female friends, too. “Sister” is a sacred and safe frame for both men and women.

In the beginning Richard’s closest friends, many of whom were my girlfriends’ husbands, banded around to protect us like a firewall to the outside world. I found it fascinating that these instincts are innate and that death wakes us, each in our own way, to meet in our grief. There was a deep need among his friends to let me know they were watching out for me and my daughters and that I was not without male influence. Yet, I missed my man and the intimacy that we shared every day.

I didn’t have many male relationships outside of my marriage. All my energy went into Richard and the kids, my girlfriends, and our parent, teacher, and soccer families and relationships. But I immediately missed the maleness of Richard’s presence, of just having that male perspective to balance and center all the feminine energies of our home. Richard had a wonderful way of disarming all the emotional “drama” by his grounding presence and peaceful perspective.

We lived in a couples’ world that revolved around family life. Now it felt odd to hang out with my friends who were still partnered and married. The awkwardness did not come from them but from me. I did not feel comfortable with growing too close in my friendships with my girlfriends’ husbands as I quickly felt a new, subtle barrier of being a woman on my own. I didn’t feel comfortable at dinner parties where odd numbered seats at the table made me self-conscious. I turned down many invitations. The weekends could be long. The girls were busy, and I didn’t want them to feel responsible for me. They needed to be with their friends and try to be in their lives as normally as the circumstances allowed. I came to dread Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday mornings, too, reminded me I was no longer coupled.

You don’t ever count on being a widow at forty-three. You’re not young any longer, but the fountain has not stopped flowing—that’s for darned sure. We know that women enter the prime of their sexual lives in their forties. Still, I never would have anticipated that my libido would explode shortly after Richard died.

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