For young widows, grieving is a different experience

For young widows, grieving is a different experience

Sylvia Berrey knew that when her husband didn’t text her back at the end of her night shift, something was wrong.

She rushed to their Kentville, N.S. home to find her seven-year-old son Will making breakfast and Wallace, her husband of 19 years, dead on the couch.

“I am a nurse; I knew he was not going to be revived by CPR,” says Berrey of that day five years ago.

Her first thought was getting her son to a neighbour’s house before she called 9-1-1.

“My world collapsed,” said Berrey. “I didn’t want to be a 45-year-old widow.”

‘I WAS NOT READY’

Cavell Smith-mason became a widow at only 36 years old.

The St. John’s woman met her future husband, Jody Mason, while he was undergoing chemotherapy.

“We met at a coffee shop that, like him, no longer exists, and I knew that he was going to be my partner for life. At least for the rest of his life,” she says.

Mason was deemed cancer-free for a year and a half. Then tragedy struck the young couple: his cancer returned.

He underwent countless surgeries, rounds of a variety of chemotherapy cocktails and radiation.

Five years later, Mason received the heart-breaking confirmation of what they knew was already on their doorstep: he had six months to live.

After watching a movie with a romantic marriage proposal, Smithmason wept, knowing she would never have that moment. That’s when Mason told her he’d already picked out a ring.

“Cancer took the romance and spontaneity from us,” she says, explaining how she needed to drive Mason to the jewelry shop to buy the ring, as he was no longer mobile on his own.

They planned a simple wedding in the coming weeks; however, five weeks after the prognosis, Mason was quickly failing.

“A voice in my head said, ‘if you want to marry this man, do not wait,’” says Smith-mason, who arranged for someone to come to their apartment to perform the ceremony.

Mere hours later, palliative care was suggested, but Smith-mason was in denial. She’d just gotten married, and she wanted a marriage.

Later that night, Mason fell on his way to the bathroom, bumping his head, and they had to call an ambulance.

He never returned home.

Two days after their wedding, Mason died in Smith-mason’s arms.

“I was a widow. What do I do with that? I was not ready,” she says.

BIG LOVE, BIG GRIEF

The best way to understand grief is to acknowledge that big love equals big grief.

“Grief is an emotional investment. It’s the price we pay for loving. If there is no investment, there is no grief,” says Sue Smiley, who has been a private practice grief therapist in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley for over 20 years.

Smiley fell into her career after her first husband, Michael Smiley, died from a congenital heart defect. He was 32, she was 27, and they had a twoyear-old daughter.

“I received some poor grief counselling then by someone who had taken a three-hour course in grief and decided I was not coping because I slept in my husband’s bathrobe because it smelled like him,” she said.

Smiley wanted to rescue other people who were in her shoes and transform grief into something natural, inevitable, and necessary.

“Grief, like pantyhose, is not one size fits all,” explains Smiley.

Berrey has also learned that difficult lesson, saying, “We grieve differently and that is OK.”

After Smith-mason lost her husband, her home became her safe place, where she needed to be.

“I didn’t have to put on a face and be OK,” she says, thinking back to the early days after her loss, when she worried everyone was judging her and talking about her behind closed doors. She became paranoid and ridden with anxiety, something she still deals with today.

Berrey says grief is exhausting, saying, “I can’t remember being so tired” as she was after her husband’s death.

Widows who watch their husbands dying are exhausted when they are going through it. Daily tasks are exhausting.

And it doesn’t end with death. Grief is not something you get over, Berrey adds. “You continue to go through it.”

Smiley agrees. ‘Closure’ is a myth, she says.

“Grief doesn’t end,” she says. “It’s transformational. It softens from a jagged hole to a smooth, soft opening to remembering with less sorrow and more joy.”

FINDING SUPPORT

After a loss, it’s important to reach out for support and build a support team. And that team might not be who you expect, as Berrey found out. She found support in a Kentville police officer she dubbed “Big George”, who was one of the first on the scene, a co-worker, the school principal, and people she didn’t realize were true friends.

Hospice P.E.I. is one such place that offers grief support to those in need, regardless of any connection to the hospice or the time of a person’s loss, says executive director Nancymarie Arsenault. There are one-on-one sessions, virtual or in-person, tailored to the individual’s needs. For registered group sessions, Arsenault says they try to match similar ages if possible.

That’s important, especially for younger people dealing with loss. Smith-mason says it was hard — if not

impossible — to find a support group for young widows. The average age in the group she attended was between 65 and 70, with no one else under 50. She stayed because it was all she had.

“I was at a far different stage in my life than these people. They had had their lives with their spouse. I was jealous that they had had so much time with their spouse,” she says.

Smiley, too, attended a few grief support groups for widows but had the same experience. She was the youngest by 20 or 30 years.

“The grief was not better or worse; it was different. I had different concerns and needs than someone who was older,” she says.

After five months, Smith-mason stopped attending because it was starting to do more harm than good.

“It became clear to me that many of these people were in a place of grief and they were content to stay there and be sad for the rest of their days. I was in a very sad place, but I knew I did not want to stay there forever,” she says.

HOW TO HELP

The best thing to do to help a grieving friend or family member, says Smiley, is by showing up, and continuing to show up long past the time when everyone has returned to their own lives.

That’s something Smith-mason noticed as well, saying people eventually drifted off over time as everyone else “got over” her husband’s death.

“There is so much attention at the time of loss. People can still be helpful months after the loss,” says Smiley.

Listen, and don’t advise, recommends Arsenault.

“Don’t say you know how someone feels. Because I don’t even know how a widow feels,” adds Berrey, noting

that everyone is different. “Don’t ask, ‘how are you?’ How the heck do you think I am?”

Instead, Smiley suggests saying, “I don’t know what to say and I am here to listen,” rather than a well-intended response that could shut down the grieving person at a time when they most need connection and not advice.

Many people tell a grieving person to call if they need something — but most grieving people can’t do that. Smiley suggests continuing to check in and be available.

Berrey appreciated it when people offered to do something concrete, like take her kids to the park, rake the leaves or make supper.

She also wanted to hear memories of her husband.

“Talk about him and tell me stories,” says Berrey. “I know he is dead, so you talking about him makes me happy, not sad. It reminds me that people still remember him, even years later.”

ALLOW YOURSELF TO GRIEVE

As for advice to other young widows, Berrey says to give yourself a break.

“You are one person. But get up every day. Shower. Eat. And reach out for help,” she says.

Above all else, be kind to yourself, says Smith-mason.

“What you are experiencing is traumatic. Take as much time as you need and as is possible to process what you are experiencing. For me, this was months,” she says.

And be clear about what you don’t want, she adds.

“When I went back to work, I asked a co-worker to let everyone know that I did not want people approaching me with hugs and notes of sympathy. I was fragile, and work was a place of work. I needed to compartmentalize, and this was not the time or the place,” says Smith-mason, who also encourages other widows not to be afraid to explore the darkest corners of their grief.

“Go to those dark places and face them, then you will know them better and they will be less scary,” she adds.

Smiley says we process grief by allowing ourselves to feel the fullness of the loss and sharing it with people who also feel it.

“The only way out is in. Lean into grief,” she says.

The process of grief is not linear, and there are no stages, says Smithmason, describing it instead as a very individual and tangled mess of ups, downs, and in-betweens.

She urges people not to “waste the happy,” words her husband lived by.

“There are always opportunities for and moments of happiness, despite the hardships,” says Smith-mason. “Sometimes you may need to look a little deeper to see them, as they can be clouded, but they are there. Don’t waste those moments. Don’t waste the happy.”