I am Enough

The hardest part of widowhood, for me, is it changes your identity, without your permission.  “I am single now”––just saying that now makes me cringe. Single means you are one and one is an odd number.  I am from the Baby Boomer generation; therefore, I grew up believing I would one day be a wife like June Cleaver or Donna Stone; I never thought I would be Miss Brooks.  Miss was definitely a four-letter word to most baby boomer girls. As a matter of fact, in college, many girls would say I’m here for my “MRS degree”.   While I was in elementary school, I would lay in bed at night and wonder which one of the boys in my class would be my husband one day.  This is how programmed I was to believe that my ultimate goal in life was to be part of a couple. 

 

Then came the 70s when women began to challenge the traditional roles of Mrs. Cleaver and Mrs. Stone. We stopped believing that we should only give up our virginity to our husbands.  We boldly defied societal norms, went bra-less, and began to assert our independence. I changed my major to theatre, started to hang out with more free-spirited and creative friends and instead of laying in bed and imagining who would be my husband, I would conjure up an image of me accepting my academy award.  I no longer dreamed of being a wife and even told my mom, “I’m never getting married.”  She just said, “oh”, lifted her eyebrows, and nodded.  And then I met Mark.  

 

I don’t think I “fell in love” with Mark. Somehow, I feel that he was the boy I was always destined to meet.  There was some kind of inexplicable cosmic energy that was spinning around in the universe waiting to bring us together.  I never was so sure of anything in my whole 20 years of life.  That academy award I dreamed of could never compare to the perfect diamond ring Mark gave me three months after we met.  It wasn’t that I reverted back to the expectations of the 60s, I just wanted to be with Mark, forever.  How silly for me to think that forever exists. How silly of me not to consider that even “happy endings” end. 

 

So here I am, single, something I haven’t been in 48 years.  Being single at 20 compared to being single at 68 is like comparing morning to night. Morning is the beginning, filled with sunshine, promise and time; whereas, night means the day is over, it’s dark, you’re tired and there’s only a little time left to do anything, except sleep.   

 

For the past 18 months, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do single. That is the biggest challenge.  Being single means you no longer have someone waiting for you to get home, to share the mundane tasks of the household, to zip up your dress, to give you a foot massage, to tell you what outfit to wear or how beautiful you look. There is no longer that special person who shares every joy, sadness, or worry you have. When I lost Mark, I also lost myself; I didn’t know who I was anymore. Mark always called me his “other half”, so now I felt as if I was a half without my other half to complete me. My children could not help me; they were suffering with their own grief. My friends and family were my healing therapy that became my other half and filled the void that had taken Mark’s place.

 

“The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.”

 

The day of the funeral, my best friend, Meryl, flew up to North Carolina and stayed with me for several days. I never told her this but while she was there, I kept on checking to see where she was as if I were a child checking to see if her mom was in the room. My other best friend, Lisa, called me every single day and so did her husband, Alan, Mark’s best friend. Alan still calls me every day.  Our close friends, Shari and Jack, came all the way from Florida to be at the funeral. It was the worst time in my life, but oddly, I felt so blessed and loved. So many people were there for me and when I got home, so many friends from my community embraced me physically and metaphorically with their sympathy and love.  

 

I became very close to my friend, Lynne, a new friend from my community, who had become a widow a year and a half before me. She told me how she had to reinvent herself when her husband passed. She was there for me as I tried to accomplish every task that was so difficult now, like food shopping and making dinner. I probably survived mostly on her chicken salad for the first few months. I also had other widow friends, Judi, Sylvie, and Shelley. We all shared a common bond; I might have been alone, but I wasn’t “alone”.   

 

The hard work began when I decided to transform from being half a person and learn to be single again. I realized that even though it had been almost half a century, I’ve been here before.  So, I decided to tap into what I remember from my 20s that fulfilled me and let that guide me in finding happiness in my later years.  One of those things was my friends.  I remembered that being part of a group of girlfriends where I could laugh and be myself gave me joy and energy and made me feel like I was connected to people.  

 

“You know when I feel inwardly beautiful? When I am with my girlfriends and we are having a ‘goddess circle’.” 

 

 

While I was staying in North Carolina, my friends, Valerie and Kathleen, started a women’s circle (over 50) where we get together and eat, drink, play games and just talk about who we are. This has been so therapeutic for me. The bonus is that they also have a music room with all kinds of musical instruments and we get to sing.  When I got home, Lynne and I went out to eat at a restaurant that had dancing and after eating at the bar, we danced to the 80s. There were couples there, too, but for some reason seeing them did not sting me like it did before. I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin. But the most courageous thing I did was go on an all-girls 7-day cruise with Lynne and six other women and I had such an amazing time. Every day made me happier than I’d been in months and I made new lifelong single friends. Last week I went to an 80th birthday party, with another group, (in a party bus) to celebrate our beautiful friend, Phyllis, who doesn’t look a day over 50.  The venue was a club with a drag show. It was hilarious. The next night I went to a restaurant with another large group of friends. And when I look at the couples now at the restaurants, I think we’re having more fun than them.           

 

The biggest step I’ve taken, though, is dating.  Dating at 68 is very different than dating at 20.  My grandma always used to say that no matter how old you are, you always feel like the young girl you once were.  The caveat to this is that you might feel like the young girl you once were but the man you’re looking across at is your father’s age. Even though you’ve done dating before, although it was in another century, you feel as if you don’t know what to do, what to say, or what not to say.  My friend, Julianna gave me a sample list of dating criteria her father’s girlfriend had:

 

Judy’s senior dating criteria: 

o   Has to have his own teeth

o   Must be able to drive after dark

o   Hair is a bonus

 

The first two dates I had were with a fellow widower who happened to be a colleague and friend I had when I was in my twenties. Those dates were fun, he had teeth, hair, drove at night, and (bonus) made me laugh. But he lives in New Jersey. So, I decided to give in and try some dating sites, something I swore I would never do. I met one guy who had a lot in common with me and asked me out to dinner. The date began at 5 and ended at 6:30. In that excruciating hour and a half, I watched him consume six different plates of Asian food while talking incessantly and consequently spitting pieces of the sushi, pork buns, and Pad Thai as he spoke. There were onions and peppers, rice, and Kani salad––it was like a food storm. Obviously, that was a one and done date for sure.   

 

I decided to take a break from dating sites. I would love to have that special someone again; but I love my goddess circles and for now, that’s enough. As a matter of fact, even being single, I am enough.