Baby Boomer Widow

Consoling the Dog

For five years, Joe and our dog, Mikey the Nike, were inseparable. They ran together, they ate together, they watched sports together. After funeral directors removed Joe's body from our home, Mikey jumped into his sickbed. For two weeks, he refused to move from the spot where his master had died. His only activities were to reluctantly nibble on food in the kitchen and relieve himself out in the yard. Whenever I entered the bedroom, Mikey looked up with grief-stricken eyes as if to say: What happened to Daddy? Or was that me talking?

Scattering the Ashes

Say what you want about comedian Joan Rivers: her horrific facelifts, her awful red carpet interviews, her annoying New York accent. I adore her. Why? Rivers knows that the only way of coping with death is to joke about it. Here's a prime example from one of her stand-up routines. "Before my husband Edgar died, he made me promise to visit his ashes. Every day if possible, he said. So I knew exactly where to scatter his ashes. I went straight to Bloomingdale's."

Rejecting Cliches

"He's in a better place" is such a cliched expression of sympathy that I didn't really expect anyone to say it to me after Joe's death. But they did. After hearing the line a half dozen times, I developed a stock reply: "A better place -- what do you mean? The man was resting on a Tempurpedic mattresss, lying in my arms, and enjoying free access to all the morphine he could ever want. How could there possibly be a better place than that?"

Failing at Grief

This week's Time magazine contains an article about grief. Prompted by the recent mass shootings in Tucson, AZ, the piece says that the vast majority of people are fully recovered from the death of their spouse in less than a year. Joe died six months, six days, and 16 hours ago. I continue to be awash in sadness. The last thing I need right now is to learn that I am a grief failure. Note to Time: please cancel my subscription.

Longing for Closeness

As soon as Joe learned his condition was hopeless, I assumed that he would want to spend his final days discussing philosophical thoughts regarding the meaning of life and death. These conversations would occur, of course, as we cuddled in each other's arms, openly savoring whatever time we had left together. Joe went along with my plan for about five minutes. Then he told me he wanted to live as normally as possibly, kibbutzing about the Philadelphia Eagles, the latest software, his tennis game. He was zippo interested in my cuddling plan. I was dumbfounded. How could any sane individual would wish to die without emoting like a crazy person? Before the end, I hoped, surely Joe would abandon his stoicism and die my way.

Buying Funeral Clothes

After learning Joe had pancreatic cancer, I did the first thing that popped into my so-called mind: I started buying black dresses. Long sleeved, short sleeved, sleeveless -- whenever I saw a dark oufit in a catalog or on a website, I bought it. I suspect I became the darling of Draper and Damon, an e-tailer marketing apparel mostly to baby boomers. A few weeks into Joe's illness, I had accumulated 25 different outfits. They hung side by side on a bar beneath Joe's dress pants. One morning, I decided to return them all. Why? I had come to my senses. Surely, if I didn't have a thing to wear to Joe's funeral, he couldn't die.

Reeling in Disbelief

I will never forgot the exact minute that Joe told me he was dying. It was a Friday night, and I had just returned home from a business trip. I travel all over the country giving communications workshops. As I leaned over Joe to kiss him goodnight, he blurted: "I went to the doctor today. I have pancreatic cancer." I burst into tears. Although I had no idea at the time of the terminal nature of Joe's disease, I knew it was serious because of actor Patrick Swaze's much publicized recent death. Like the "Dirty Dancing Star," Joe was the epitome of fitness. He ran five miles a day. He played competitive tennis. He bicycled 100 miles at a clip. Until this moment, I had always figured that Joe would carry me around when I got old and decrepit. Hell, I was counting on it. Now, I realized in horror, I would have to get a scooter.

 

 

Facing a Nightmare

When my husband, Joe, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2009, I scoured the Internet and bookstores for information for caregivers and widows directed at my 60-ish age group. The blog posts, articles, and books I unearthed were aimed at women of my mother's vintage sheltered all their lives from pesky topics such as money and technology. The writers failed completely to speak to my need for contemporary content and even an occasional laugh. By the time Joe took his final breath while lying in my arms in July 2010, I was determined to write about my experience to give future widows mytake on dying, tears and laughs alike. Talk about a roller coaster of emotion. As stand-up performers Jerry Seinfeld and Rita Rudner have long known, one of the best definitions of comedy is this: tragedy plus a few days. So here is the story of what it has been like to become a shocked and despondent baby boomer widow learning the true meaning of gallows humor.