What's in a word?

My spousal loss bereavement support group met this week and I hosted it at my house.  I love these people.  They are all so courageous and kind and, well, supportive.  I realize that I do love entertaining and I plan on doing it more often.  On that evening we noted that it had been 52 weeks to the day since we met at our first meeting at Hospice. So we felt we should each share about the last year.  I shared with the group how the home equity line of credit that Tom and I had taken out 15 years ago came due and I was given no notice, just 21 days to pay off the balance.  I then applied for another line with a different bank and had signed the paperwork the day before.  What I found so distressing was twofold.  First, I had to have Tom's name removed from the title.  Our home meant so much to us and it almost felt like I was erasing him.  But more disturbing was seeing myself described as "an unmarried woman".  I wanted to cross it out and write in widow.  The members of the group then discussed the meaning of the word and how each felt about it.

Some stated they did not like the word, feeling that it was dated.  And truly, it does give off some connotations that may be considered less than flattering.  I, however, prefer the label of widow.  In reality I would rather be married, but even the IRS doesn't consider me married any longer--that ended on the last day of the year that Tom died in 2015.  The term single (or even unmarried) implies that one has never married and for a woman, spinsterhood.  Now I really dislike that term.  We married in our 30s, I was already considered a spinster by the legal definition and it felt like a personal failure.  I am not divorced. A divorce is a decision to end a marriage.  We did not decide to end our marriage.  It ended because Tom died.  The term widow tells a lot of my story in one word.  To me, wrapped in that word is the 20 years of a happy marriage and the devastating loss that will forever be a part of me.  Wrapped in that one word is the courage and fortitude to keep living despite the pain, to try to build a new life without my beloved.  To move forward, I must let go a little at a time.  Not the love.  I will never let go of the love, for it transcends death.  If my genes are any prediction of the length of my life, then I have several more decades to live and I intend to live life to its fullest.

But I still struggle.  I still feel a lot of pain.  I am still experiencing the body and mind numbing exhaustion.  I still can't force myself to power through things like I used to and it frustrates me to no end.  I am finding it difficult not to berate myself for my lack of action.  I am not depressed.  I am mourning, those are different things.  I was prepared for the emotional symptoms of grief and some of the mental one.  But the physicality of the process I was not expecting.  It continues to surprise me. 

Now that I am in the second year, I have found that what other widows(ers) have told me is true.  The second year is just as hard, perhaps even harder, but in a different way.  It is all so real now.  I am having a harder time being positive as I realize that I now am living a life that I did not want to have.  And while I know that it is up to me, and only me, to build a new life, I have no idea what that is, or how to do it.  And I have no energy at all to do it.  And I'm tired of whining but I also know that not dealing with it leads to isolation.  And that is not good for me.  I have been doing a good job of isolating the last few months.  Work and rainy weather have made that easy. 

Today is the first day of spring, my favorite season.  It is the season of new beginnings and growth.  I can only hope that is also true for me.