Widowhood is not something we choose. It hijacks your life and leaves you wondering about the edge of this world as it melts into the next. My own father had evaded death for five years when he finally refused intubation in the ER. It fell to me to tell my mother.
"Are you sure?" she begged, as if the nurses may have been unduly hasty.
I listen to husbands and wives whose partners are gone, and may fool myself into thinking I know what it will be like. But that is as probable as comprehending the experience of the Sahara from buying a National Geographic and reading it cover to cover. I will not know until I am there. For awhile.
The woman in this
Ted Talk is articulate. Not surprising, in that she is paid to peddle words. But she speaks honestly for people like me who have never traveled the dark waters of widowhood. Her book is
The Cost of Hope, and she describes the human tendency to hang on to hope not as a bug in our design, but as a feature.
I may try to avoid preparing for the death of my husband, or even take preventative action like getting him to go for a check up. But in all likelihood one of us will be left weeping at the grave. And however unshakable my belief that we will be reunited, I think I need to peek into the quiet reality of what it will feel like to set a solitary plate at the table.
