”I spent my first anniversary alone,” says Ira Nerken, a 35-year-old Washington lawyer whose wife was killed in a car accident five months after their marriage. ”We`d just bought a house, and suddenly all our plans were shot,” Nerken says. ”We never had a chance to live our dreams.”
Sheila Lichter`s 43-year-old husband died while they were attending a wedding. ”I felt total disbelief,” says the Baltimore teacher, a widow at 43. ”I kept expecting him to come back, to hear his voice.”
In many ways, expressions of grief know no age differences. Yet losing a spouse early in life carries added nuances of tragedy: plans never to be realized, alienation from married friends, young children to raise alone, guilt about dating and other distinct problems that have generally been ignored, according to Adele Rice Nudel, author of ”Starting Over: Help for Young Widows and Widowers” (Dodd, Mead & Co., $8.95) and director of Sinai Hospital`s Widowed Persons Service in Baltimore.
Although widowhood is usually seen as one of the cruel concomitants of aging (most of America`s 11.5 million widows and 2 million widowers are over 65), more than one-third of those 13.5 million lost their spouses before 45, according to the Census Bureau. Bereavement specialists have begun to pay attention to this huge population, and only recently have support groups geared to their needs been formed.
For young widows and widowers the shock, anguish and disbelief of losing a spouse are amplified by the bitter feeling of ”how could this happen to me at my age?”
This pain is often compounded by the circumstances of death. Historically war has been the major cause of young widowhood, but even in peacetime a large number of early deaths are violent and unexpected. Accidents are the leading cause of death among Americans 44 and under, followed by cancer, heart disease, suicide and murder, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Widows of the 150 or so police officers killed each year–like those of murder and accident victims–face the ”extremely draining” trauma of publicity and prolonged litigation, says Suzie Sawyer, executive director of Concerns of Police Survivors.
Younger widowed people often feel ”the rug was pulled out from under them,” says Nudel. Plans–buying houses, having children–are lost to the realm of what-might-have-been. Because of the brevity of their marriages, they feel cheated out of memories and, Nudel says, ”often silently feel envy toward married siblings and other young couples.”
Friendships, too, often change, some deepening, others withering. Many young widowed people say that friends and coworkers can`t understand their grief and distance themselves, perhaps feeling uncomfortable, as if a widowed person embodied death. ”Many younger people are extraordinarily insensitive,” Nerken says. ”They`ll make inane comments like, `It`s God`s will` or, `It`s time to talk about something other than your wife.` ”
Unlike older widowed people with peers who have also lost spouses, widows and widowers under 45 ”feel so alone, that there`s no one else like them,”
says Ellen Gorman, director of the Metropolitan Widowed Persons Service of Brooklyn. As married friends talk of children and spouses, young widowed people feel like social outcasts, shunted to the periphery of a couple-oriented society.
In support groups they often feel uncomfortable, surrounded by older widowed people ”who think your loss isn`t as great as theirs,” says Ivy Chisley, an accounting technician with the Peace Corps, who was widowed at 39. ”They say you`re young and can marry again. But they had their spouses longer. They didn`t have to deal with young children and they are more financially secure.”
Younger widowed people are also more likely to have parents and in-laws living. According to Nudel, though they may provide support, parents may be intrusive, and grieving in-laws may feel betrayed if the widowed person starts dating.
Raising children alone is a daunting task for young widowed parents, who must also deal with their children`s often inchoate grief. Children may have difficulty grieving or fear their remaining parent will die, says Sherry Birnbaum of Young Widows and Widowers of Westchester (N.Y.) County.
Another unspoken issue, Nudel says, is the deeply felt loss of physical intimacy. ”The hardest thing has been not being touched and not having another person to share my day-to-day activities with,” says Shirley Gorka, a 42-year-old X-ray technician in Laurel, Md., whose husband died of leukemia two years ago.
Unlike older people, however, young widows and widowers are more likely to remarry. The 1983 remarriage rate for all widows was only 6.2 per 1,000 and, for widowers 30.7 per 1,000; the comparable rates for widowed women and men under 45 are 51.3 and 149.3, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Dating, however, is fraught with guilt and awkwardness. ”The first time I had a sexually exciting thought about another woman,” Nerken recalled, ”I felt like an adulterer.”
”One date felt I was constantly comparing him to my husband,” says Debra Case, a 35-year-old Baltimore nursing instructor who was widowed two years ago, ”and he asked me to move a picture of my husband. One man even joked, `You`re bad luck.` ”
Widowed people often feel set off from young divorced people, who chose to end their marriages and may be eager to find new and better partners. By contrast, widows and widowers remember their spouses lovingly, and what Nudel called a ”halo effect” causes them to idealize their lost husband or wife.
Widowhood, at all ages, strikes women with disproportionate cruelty. Because of women`s greater longevity and that wives tend to be younger than their husbands, 84 percent of all widowed people, and 89 percent of those under 45, are female, according to the Census Bureau. Many women who have never worked are suddenly faced with entering the job market. For them, the financial hardships can be considerably greater than for older widows, who are more likely to have savings, Social Security and survivors` benefits.
Conversely, young working women, as well as men, may be lucky to have careers in which to invest their energies. Yet many professionals, proud of their problem-solving abilities, feel frustrated by their inability to
”solve” the problems of a suddenly derailed life.
Men, too, have special problems. Given society`s strictures against men expressing emotions, many younger widowers are unable to grieve effectively. Men in more traditional marriages may find it harder to take care of children and household tasks. In addition, a recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that men are much more likely than women to die within a few years of their spouse`s death.
The effects of unresolved grieving, including prolonged depression and psychosomatic problems, can be attenuated if widows and widowers receive nonjudgmental support from friends, family, therapists and mutual-support groups, according to Marjory Marvel, who oversees the Widowed Persons Service of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). This natiowide network includes hundreds of professionally and volunteer staffed programs for the newly widowed and long-range groups for widowed people and their children.
For referrals for Widowed Persons Service groups in the Chicago area call Carole Aston at the AARP in Des Plaines: 298-2852.
