What My Widowed Husband Has Taught Me

When two people become one flesh by way of marriage, it is not only their hearts that are united, but their minds and souls as well. Intertwined in unison, this melding of two spirits gives rise to a new way of looking at the world, for it is no longer just your own heart that feels, but your spouse's as well. His pain becomes your pain; his joy becomes your joy…and vice versa. And along this marital road to discovering each other, your spouse's traits which you have learned to love, admire, accept, appreciate, nurture, and respect, become your own personal goals as well.

Before I met my previously widowed husband, I lacked experience in and knowledge about issues such as death, dying, and grief. All I possessed were some basic beliefs about each, but nothing tangible upon which to base them. My husband, however, had cornered the market on all three, sadly enough. Not only had he lost his terminally ill first wife of seven years, but his past also harbored the losses of a dearly loved father and brother. I'm sure we'd all agree that he has endured the greatest tragedies one can ever humanly experience.

But we who are without experience can only speculate how we would handle such occurrences if and when death touches out lives, either directly or indirectly. Yes, we would be heartbroken…our lives shattered and upended…but would we survive, perhaps even thrive, because of it? Via the example set by my husband, and the wisdom he has shared with me, I have learned some valuable insights into this thing called grief and its effects on the lives of its survivors. Through the years of being truly "as one" with him, I have absorbed my husband's character into my own, and now see things not only through more compassionate eyes, but more hopeful and wiser ones as well.

The following are my tender observations and life lessons gleaned from loving a man who has endured tragic loss, and yet has found his way out of the darkness of grief into the light of life anew. They are the reasons why I love my husband eternally, and they are also the inspiration for the best changes I have ever made to my outlook on life. Though they may sound like platitudes or cliches, when learned along the journey of grief or by loving someone who walks this journey daily, they tend to take on a whole new meaning for everyday life and become words to live by:

All things happen for a reason - even if you have no idea what that reason is at the time. After my husband lost his first wife, a minister quoted this line to him in great earnest and sympathy. Thank God he was a man of the cloth, or my husband probably would have pounded him into salt, for the last thing a newly bereaved spouse needs or wants to hear is that their dearly departed was taken from this earth "for a reason". To them, there is no earthly excuse for a loving God to take away a life partner, thereby causing the survivors so much anguish.

Years later, however, my husband came to realize that these words were true. He now, after all these years, possesses the wisdom of hindsight, and has surmised that perhaps his wife died for reasons he cannot and may never fully understand, but are within the perfect will of the Almighty. Having such a tragedy deepen his faith has only served to comfort him when faced with other dark times in his life.

I have learned that there is much peace to be found in accepting that a Higher Power with greater plans for our lives than we can ever fathom - as well as a love that is bigger than we could ever imagine - allows bad things to happen to us so that we might pass the tests of faith, grow, learn, and yes, even prosper because of them.

Life is a choice - as is how you handle the pitfalls along its bumpy road. "You can be better or bitter - the choice is up to you". I have heard these pearls of my mother's sage advice echo in my mind many times when I have experienced devastating blows in my life. But I never really accepted them until I met my widowed husband.

There is something attractive about a man who faces life's challenges with a positive outlook, and often, this perception is forged from great loss. My husband chose to live a positive, productive life after the death of his first wife. He could have remained a bitter, angry survivor, stuck in a rut of self-pity. And while no one could have blamed him should he have chosen this path, it would not have served him well. He made a decision to focus on the positive aspects of the life he now faced, and spent productive time nurturing those seeds until they rooted in his character.

I have learned that life is what you make of it. The power and control of all things, good and bad, lies in how you choose to mold the outcomes of each life situation. There are many things in life that are beyond our control. But there are few things in life that are beyond our power of choice and our ability to make lemonade from lemons if we just put our minds to it while we focus on the gifts of the present

You're stronger than you think you are. As my husband's late wife was dying of cancer, he often thought of how he would cope with her eventual death when it finally happened. At the time, he wasn't sure he would survive it. His dark thoughts of making funeral and burial plans for the love of his life were soon realized, however, and although he numbly attended to the details of her passing and the emotional carnage of her loss, he did survive. He often tells me that in retrospect, it surprised him how much stronger he actually was in spite of his prior thoughts of how weak and unable to handle the grief he might be.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I'm not sure who first quoted these infamous words of wisdom, but whoever it was, he/she was correct. Remember how nervous and insecure you felt the first time you ever gave a speech? Or delivered your first baby? Or went on your first date? You may have thought you'd just die. But you got through all of these scenarios with courage. The next time you spoke to a crowd, or birthed a baby, or took the homecoming queen out to dinner, you weren't as afraid. You had slain the dragons of fear the first time, and danced in their ashes the next. And the next. And so on, until your newfound inner strength became your shield. I have learned that coping with fear is a challenge for which I welcome. It only means that I will become a stronger, more capable person. Giving into fear, and forever allowing it to paralyze you, is the antithesis of growth.

Accept what you cannot change. For my husband, the diagnosis of his late wife's terminal cancer was not something he wanted to accept. He delved into reading all he could learn about this dreaded disease in the hope of finding a miracle cure, perhaps something that his late wife's doctors had not yet thought of. He tells me that he wasted precious time - time he could have been enjoying with his late wife, making the most and the best of her final days - as he desperately searched for something…anything…that would change the inevitable.

Had he accepted the doctors' grim but verifiable declarations that they had exhausted all means available to reverse her cancer or keep it from killing her, my husband might not have felt so guilty about using up the last hours of his late wife's life with meticulous and unrelenting research. Instead, he may have been able to cope much easier, and may have been able to ferret out the sweet memories from the horrific, leaving him less prone to guilt. Hope is a beautiful thing. It gives us peace and strength, and keeps us going when all seems lost. Accepting what you cannot change doesn't mean you have given up on hope. It just means you have to focus your hope on more humanly tangible and attainable goals. It might even mean that you must refocus your hope onto yourself, knowing that whatever the outcome, you will be alright.

I have learned that by accepting what I cannot change, I can embrace the "here and now", live for the moment, and focus on what IS possible, not on what is not.
By Julie Donner Andersen