Moses wrote laws to protect them; the prophets thundered against those who abused them; and Paul set out policies for meeting their needs. Jesus had many among his followers; and the early church nearly split over them.
Who are they? Widows.
There are 11 million widows in the United States—one out of every six women over the age of 21. More astonishing, perhaps, is the fact that three out of four women will one day be widowed.
Yet, if you are not yourself a widow, chances are you don’t know many women well who are. A widowed friend of mine says she has many married friends whom she loves dearly—“but I don’t see them very often.”
“I’ve talked about this with my widowed friends,” she says, “and we’ve said, ‘What did we ever do for widows when we were married?’ I know I never thought much about it. I didn’t know too many widows. I never sought them out.”
“I do believe that married women don’t want to think about it,” she continues, offering her own explanation of this benign neglect. “I think some of them avoid widows. Perhaps it’s a reminder of what might happen to them.”
Widows In Scripture
The Christian church has a rich tradition of ministry to widows. The Old Testament prophets from Moses to Malachi continually repeated that the Lord “makes sure that orphans and widows are treated fairly” (Deut. 10:18). Widows were entitled to a part of Israel’s tithes (Deut. 14:29; 26:12). They were to participate in the annual feasts (Deut. 16:11, 14). And they were to be given their legal rights (Isa. 1:17) and were not to be reduced to abject poverty, even if they could not pay their debts (Deut. 24:17). Indeed, many a prophet cried out against those who “take advantage of widows and orphans” (Ezek. 22:7).
Jesus treated widows kindly, commending one widow for her sacrificial giving (Mark 12:42–43) and raising the only son of another widow back to life (Luke 7:11–15). And his parable of the widow and the judge (Luke 18:1–8) and his condemnation of the religious leaders (Mark 12:40) show that the treatment of widows was an ongoing problem.
Still, the early church took pains to care for its widows and created the office of deacon to carry out this responsibility (Acts 6:1–4). Years later, Paul outlined for Timothy a comprehensive system for seeing to the needs of widows in the church (1 Tim. 5:3–16); James included care for widows as one sign of pure and genuine religion (James 1:27).
The medieval church cared for widows (homeless and aged women along with younger widows who pledged not to remarry) in convents, where the widows, in turn, benefited the community with their prayers and works of mercy. But during the sixteenth-century Reformation, many convents were destroyed, and those that remained were never able to regain their earlier influence.
Today few churches have widows’ support groups; and few charge deacons to look after widows’ needs. Few, in fact, know what to do with the bereaved once the funeral is over.
A Time To Mourn
“I’m writing an article about widows,” I told a close friend who lost her husband just three years ago. “Tell your readers,” she said, “that widowhood has little to recommend it. I still miss my husband dreadfully.”
Her reaction would surprise the people who responded to one journalist’s newspaper poll taken right after the Vietnam War. “The overwhelming majority [of respondents] thought that individuals should be through mourning between 48 hours and two weeks after a death,” reported Glen W. Davidson in Understanding Mourning (Augsburg, 1984). “Even physicians and nurses who work with mourners on a regular basis assume that mourning ought to be short. They become very concerned if the mourner exhibits characteristics of grief much beyond the first month,” he observed.
“I believe that American society has forgotten how to mourn,” says Ingrid Trobisch, whose book Learning to Walk Alone recounts her coping with the loss of her internationally known husband, Walter. “About two weeks after a friend of mine lost her husband, someone said to her, ‘You’re all right now, aren’t you?’
“ ‘No, I’m not all right,’ she said, and the person didn’t know what to do.”
According to Ann Kaiser Stearns, author of the best-selling Living through Personal Crisis (Ballantine, 1984), “when a significant loss has us in its grip, a minimum of six months to a year is usually required for healing. Some aspects of the grieving process continue into the second year. Resolution may not come until even later” (p. 5).
Says Mrs. Trobisch, “three years is the time of grief if it’s a good death, and five years if there’s trauma, like suicide or murder.” Shirley Wheaton, widowed for four years and head proofreader at InterVarsity Press, concurs: “Some of my friends say that the second and third years are harder than the first.”
Stages Of Grief
“At first you’re in a state of shock and grieving heavily,” Mrs. Wheaton explained, “but you have a lot of attention that first year. Your friends invite you to dinner and call you, and they’re very attentive. But after a while they get tired of that—as they should—and then you’re on your own.”
Glen Davidson, chairman of the Department of Medical Humanities at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, divides the grieving process into four stages. The first stage, numbness, lasts about two weeks. The widow feels stunned. She does not truly believe that her husband is dead. Everything seems unreal. This stage soon gives way to searching and yearning. She becomes restless and impatient. She may have feelings of anger and guilt that she does not understand. Mrs. Wheaton, although priding herself on her independence, made an appointment with her pastor when feelings of anger at God began to consume her.
“I thought my pastor would chastise me,” she says, “but he didn’t.” Instead he told her about a young couple who refused to admit their anger when their five-year-old daughter died. Within six months, the pastor said, they were divorced. Within a year the woman was in a mental hospital. “The point the minister was making,” Mrs. Wheaton says, “was that once I got my anger out, I would begin to heal. I still don’t understand why my husband had to suffer, but I’ve come to terms with it. My pastor said I would.”
Guilt can be even harder to handle than anger, because the past cannot be rewritten. Some guilt is for real sin and needs God’s forgiveness. Other guilt occurs even though the woman could not be expected to have done more than she did. Mrs. Trobisch felt both kinds of guilt. “There were sins that I felt I had to confess,” she says. “My pastor helped me with those.”
In about the fifth month, the widow enters the disorientation phase. She becomes disorganized, depressed, acutely aware of her loss. If she has not resolved her anger and guilt, they weigh her down. She may gain or lose many pounds. Actress Helen Hayes described her first two years of widowhood: “I was just as crazy as you can be and still be at large.” Author Lynn Caine (Widow, Bantam, 1974) says, “I was acting like an idiot.”
This distressing phase eventually—perhaps as late as two or three years after the death—gives way to reorganization. The widow finds she can concentrate better. Her judgment improves. Her energy increases, and she returns to normal eating and sleeping patterns. After three years, Mrs. Trobisch told me, “I could talk about Walter without weeping. When I weep now, it’s good tears of joy and not the terrible sadness I felt before.”
Needed: A Few Good Friends
It is one thing to begin to understand the grieving process that every widow must go through; it is another to know how to help. I asked Mrs. Trobisch what helped her get through the numbness stage—the first weeks after Walter’s sudden death at the age of 55.
“I think of a good friend who cooked a huge pot of stew that was enough to feed my family the day of the funeral and afterward,” she said. “That warmed my heart—much more than someone who gave me a little sermon saying I shouldn’t be sad.”
Sandra Hayward Albertson, whose husband died at 29 after a five-month illness, tells in Endings and Beginnings (Random House, 1980) of the comfort she gained from the Quaker memorial service held in Mark’s honor. “That time together was filled with love for Mark,” she recounts. “It was, strange as it may seem, a splendid occasion. Professional mourners we were not. It was like a great reunion of the best of friends.… Loving support and affirmation in such condensed measure was a high for me.”
Mrs. Trobisch remembers the gathering—in Austria, it is called a feast—after her husband’s funeral. “After the burial and the church service, our family and friends gathered for coffee. It turned into a two- or three-hour celebration,” she said. “People got up and told how they felt about Walter and how he had helped them. It just went on and on, and that was very healing for me.”
Of course, not everyone is comfortable talking with a widow about her deceased husband. Even family members may avoid mentioning his name. “Perhaps they hoped to spare me the pain of remembering, as if not talking about it would help me not to feel the loss,” suggests Mrs. Albertson. But such reticence may make facing life harder, not easier, for the widow. “Just thinking back on my great storehouse of loving experiences is a great comfort to me today,” says Mrs. Trobisch.
Nancy Sage, whose husband died after being bedridden with multiple sclerosis for 14 years, says, “Friends may hesitate to say anything because they think it will make you feel bad, but I love to remember things he said and did. I don’t think a man would be pleased to think his wife forgot him.”
Friends who do understand the grieving process and who are willing to support the widow through it are essential to her recovery. All of Davidson’s “five factors for healthy mourning” are facilitated by caring friends. Four of these factors have to do with physical health. The widow needs to maintain a nutritional balance, an adequate fluid intake, daily exercise, and daily rest—things most of us take for granted but that a widow may overlook without reminders from friends.
“One dear friend sat me down in her home where she fed me and gave me innumerable cups of tea,” Mrs. Trobisch said. “That helped both my nutritional balance and my fluid intake. And after ten days, with my son’s encouragement, I began swimming regularly. I found that in the pool I could dump all my responsibilities and grief for a short time, and then I could take it up again.”
It is not surprising, then, that Davidson’s first and most important factor is friendship itself. Mourners who are most likely to adapt, he says, “maintain a nurturing, supportive social network.” In Mrs. Trobisch’s words, “you need a circle of lovers—friends and family members that you can reach out and touch and talk to when the going gets very tough.”
Money Problems
To come to terms with her grief, then, a widow needs good physical health and good friends. She also needs financial security.
Sadly, many widows have never balanced a checkbook or even written a check. They may not know where the insurance policies and the will are kept, women who could easily have learned how the family finances were handled, but either they or their husbands did not see the need for them to do so. “I always thought my husband would outlive me,” one widow told me.
A husband’s death always requires financial adjustments. “The bulk of the expenses remain the same,” says Mrs. Sage, “but the salary goes down.” Twenty-two per cent of all widows are forced to live below the poverty line, and as Mrs. Sage notes, “unless you’re quite a bit above the poverty line, you’re not really comfortable.”
Stanley Cornils, author of Managing Grief Wisely (Baker, 1967), believes “a Christian husband is morally obligated, to the best of his ability, to insure the welfare of his wife and children after he has been removed from the scene.” He ties this in with Paul’s comment in 1 Timothy 5:8: “If anyone does not take care of … the members of his own family, he … is worse than an unbeliever.”
Many women who did not work before their husbands died must find jobs when they become widows. This is not all bad, because working forces them to spend some time every day focusing beyond themselves and their grief.
“Resuming a normal schedule of work activities as soon as possible is the best thing that you can do,” advises author Ann Stearns. “However, if you expect yourself to work with your normal energy level and ability to concentrate, you are placing an inhuman demand on yourself.… You may not resume your full powers of functioning for as long as two or three years.”
“I found I could go to pieces very easily if I neglected to structure my days,” says Mrs. Trobisch. “A friend said to me, ‘Thank God you are busy, because if you weren’t, it would be much harder.’ I had such a flow of things to take care of that I didn’t have the luxury of locking myself up and feeling sorry for myself.”
Still, feelings remain that no amount of companionship, healthful living, financial security, or work can take care of. “My times of grief were usually when I was going for a walk or driving alone,” Mrs. Trobisch says. “I have an aunt who lost her husband after 50 good years of marriage, and I asked her how she got through it. ‘Ingrid,’ she said, ‘about once a month I went into my coat closet and I screamed at the top of my lungs. Then I was all right.’ ”
A Time To Heal
Paul wrote, “Brothers, we do not … grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13, NIV). Says Mrs. Trobisch, “I don’t think I could have made it through this time of grief without my very personal relationship with my heavenly Father.” Mrs. Wheaton adds, “Life’s crises must be terrible for people who don’t have Jesus for a friend. He certainly got me through a very difficult time.”
“I don’t spend a lot of time theologizing,” says Mrs. Trobisch. “The Rapture is a mystery I’m leaving to the Lord. But I know we will be reunited, and my confidence in this grows stronger as the years go by.”
Still, she knows from experience that a strong hope and a deep commitment do not cancel grief. “I’ve heard of Christian widows who wear bright red at the funeral to show their belief in the resurrection,” she said. “I believe in the resurrection too, but it would be a rape of the soul to have to do that. I think Jesus wept with widows. I think he still does.”
The weeks, months, and even years slip by, and eventually the pain dulls and a new life begins. “I remember everything was gray those first weeks,” said Mrs. Trobisch. “But after a few months I found I was still alive. I could see colors, I could see children, I could realize that I had made peace with learning to live alone.” Not that she was forgetting Walter. “There will always be an empty place in my heart,” she says.
According to Steams, “one never completely recovers from a significant experience of loss.” But life goes on.
“I’ve learned a new kind of serenity,” Mrs. Trobisch says. “Now there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. I’ve faced the one thing I was most afraid of, the death of my husband, and I survived.”
Silent Saturday
On the Saturday before Easter, “Silent Saturday” they call it in Germany, I went to the cemetery in Attersee. Pastor Fuchs, who married us and counseled us over the years, always advised us on this day to place in the grave all our resentments and our bitterness against those who may have wronged us. We were to take all our self-pity and leave it there.
I went to Walter’s grave and placed on it the burdens which were still with me. My heart was sore, like a child crying for comfort. I had not yet grown up as far as my grief went. As I dealt with one layer of it, yet another layer would be exposed and the “grief work” continued, like peeling the layers off an onion. As I stood at Walter’s grave the sun broke through the clouds and I sensed my risen Lord. The words I heard were simply: “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Many little trees were growing up from Walter’s careful and caring ministry. My task, now, was to be a gardener, to strengthen those that were weak, to cultivate, to cut and prune, and also to await the right time, God’s time. I wanted to be like Isaiah 61:3: “A tree of righteousness—a planting to his praise.”
Easter Sunday came and Betty, my daughter-in-love, wrote to me:
“May our Good Shepherd lead you / beside still waters, / pools of deep rest / and restore your life / greening the dark expanse of a grieving soul / caring and carrying you for His name’s sake.”
