The National Widowers’ Organization added a new resource to its website for men trying to adjust to a new life without their spouse. The website SuddenlySolo.org provides men with insights, tips and recommendations to help make them and their families make the changes needed. The material they offer is based on extensive research making it meaningful and valid. A book of the same name, “Suddenly Solo A Lifestyle Road Map For The Mature Widowed or Divorced Man” is also available. Written in a light style but loaded with valuable information that is backed up by solid research this book should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in men’s issues.

Gerald J. Schaefer

Gerald J. Schaefer, a 26-year professional in project management, wrote ”The Widower’s Toolbox: Repairing Your Life After Losing Your Spouse” after his wife died. He is a member of the Wisconsin Regional Writer’s Association and the Neville Public Museum Astronomical Society and is active in the Boy Scouts of America. He lives with his two sons in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You can find out more about him, his book and his work here.

New Holiday Traditions

The loss of your wife takes on a whole new meaning around the holidays. How does a widower move forward without his loved one to reflect on the holiday’s purpose, without sharing good conversation, without celebrating love and enjoying togetherness?

It hardly seems possible. Even though the joy and happiness are abundantly present in others, those emotions are not felt in a widower’s heart. For these reasons, holidays become a very painful time for the bereaved.

Holidays are highly valued in our busy lives and there are many ways we can choose to celebrate them to meet everyone’s desires. Deciding how to celebrate a given holiday so that we don’t offend others while still enjoying a break in regular routine can be overwhelming. So many of us establish routine ways of celebrating them to ease the stress. We justify this same routine year after year by labeling these predictable behaviors “family tradition.” We plan dinners at Grandma’s house, we go to the annual parade, we display well-used decorations that just have to be there for the holiday to feel complete. Our holiday memories are centered around these family traditions.

Typically, your wife played a major role in these traditions, but now with her loss it becomes all too blatantly obvious that these celebrations will no longer be the same as they were in the past.

Men generally struggle more than women with the concept of establishing “new traditions,” probably because the great majority of traditions are all about family gatherings, usually involving large meals with extensive preparation at which women have historically been more skilled in the home. Men become overwhelmed with their inability to solve the problem of preparing an acceptable meal for the family to enjoy; then they become depressed about their inadequacy. This depression is compounded when a soul mate is no longer there to share a cherished tradition and the “special day” often becomes a painful reminder of the loss rather than a time of joy.

You may find it helpful for your holiday planning to deliberately include your lost loved one in some memorable fashion. Additionally, creating new traditions will become a meaningful way of channeling some of the feelings of loss and pain into a sense of renewed purpose for you, as well as other family members who also may be struggling with the loss.

Here are some simple ideas to consider:
Start by having a family brainstorming session to come up with ideas for celebrating the holidays. There may be family members who were waiting for an opportunity to start their own family traditions and now want to include you in their plans. The opportunities are endless; it’s time to try something new.

Continue with the established traditions, with other people standing in to take on the responsibilities your wife once filled. Split up the chores by making the meal a potluck where each member brings one dish. Use this opportunity to finally learn how to cook a turkey as a tribute to your wife! Not that you’ll ever do it as well as her…but who knows?

Assign a new turkey carver. Did your wife always carve the turkey? This is a great opportunity for the oldest child to step in. Then, when he or she reaches a certain age, the role can be passed down to the next in line. In their first attempts, it is not the end of the world if the turkey becomes minced meat in the process. Having family fun is the goal!

Volunteer at a homeless shelter on the day of the holiday. Dedicate that day of selfless charity and altruism to your late wife’s spirit. Get out of town. Use this time to travel to new places to see how other people celebrate the holiday. Maybe the holiday now becomes a new family ski trip. Or even a day trip to some special place nearby.

Make it all easy on yourself by hiring a professional chef to set up the meal the day before the holiday, so you can truly enjoy the company of those closest to you.

These ideas are just a start. The main thing is to focus on the importance of the day: to remember what did the holiday mean for you and your wife? Then live that day with that in mind, as yet another annual testament to her. 

Excerpted from “The Widower’s Toolbox: Repairing Your Life After Losing Your Spouse,” by Gerald J. Schaefer with Tom Bekkers, MSW, APSW. Copyright (c) 2010 by Gerald J. Schaefer and Tom Bekkers, MSW, APSW. Reprinted by permission of New Horizon Press, Far Hills, N.J.

Phyllis Silverman, Ph.D.

Phyllis Silverman, Ph.D., a member of the National Widowers’ Organization, Inc. board of directors, is a widely recognized expert of grieving. She is the author of five books, including “Widow to Widow: How the Bereaved Help One Another” (Routledge, 2nd edition; 2004). Read more about her here:

Is There Really A Gender Difference in the Grieving Process?

In feminist literature today there is a good deal of emphasis on the way men and women are more alike than not. I would agree that on one level this is true. I know that men and women have similar feelings when someone close dies. Their sense of sadness, loss, emptiness, and yearning for the person who has died may be very much alike.

However, what we do with these feelings, how we cope, seems to be in many ways different for men and for women. It may also look different from person to person, depending on who died and when in the life cycle the death occurred. To understand the differences we need to look beyond the individuals to ask about the world they came from. How was grief handled in that community? What are/were their traditions of mourning, and the differences between the roles men and women were assigned? While each of us grieves in our own way, each of us is conditioned by the community around us.

I have recently been reflecting on what I learned from more than 40 years of research in the world of the bereaved. We no longer talk about stages of grieving; grief doesn’t go in a straight line. We are changed irrevocably by the loss of someone so close as a spouse, or a child, even a best friend. We do not recover. This is an integral part of the life cycle. It’s human, it’s normal, we’re not “sick.”

That said, we learn to live in the world differently. We do not put the past behind us. Instead, we find ways of carrying it into the future, recognizing how these deeply felt emotions and experiences make us who we are today, and who we will become. In the past 20 years there have been many changes, not only in the way we understand grief but also in the roles men and women play in their families, and in their community. Yet in many ways those roles have stayed the same. It is more acceptable among younger men to cry, to give voice to a sadness and emptiness in their lives when their wives pass away. Many men still insist on appearing strong, able to manage on their own. They turn to women in their lives to provide care, sympathy, and support. They are often reluctant to join a support group because they do not want to appear “needy.”

I recall a father of young children I interviewed researching my 2009 book, “A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children.” He thought he should be able to mange everything when his wife died. While he was of a younger generation, he did not think it was appropriate for anyone to see him cry or let his sadness show. He was not influenced by a more contemporary image of how men behave. He did not see what he could learn from other parents, nor did he see his children’s sadness and need for attention.

A friend was concerned about this and finally convinced him to join a program for bereaved children and their families. As he listened to others stories, he was able to accept how his wife’s death had affected him and how he had to change to become more sensitive to his children’s needs and to his own grief as well. He says that he would now encourage any widower he meets to join such a group, to talk with others and to see how he needs to change in a more realistic way.

Older widowers may be more reluctant to accept their need for others, since they are more entrenched in old socialized roles that insist maintain an image of independence. Another man I interviewed had refused to visit a senior center where he could meet others in his community to share a hot lunch. His neighbors saw him getting more and more depressed while he insisted he was just fine on his own. He finally agreed to come, if only to get his neighbors off his back. Though he didn’t want to discuss his grief, after a few visits he joined a book group at the center. Over time he became more animated and involved.

As we professionals in the field gather more data on the grieving process, now focusing more attention on the growing number of widowers, we begin to learn that there is no one single kind of help to assuage the suffering of loss. It’s different from person to person. What strikes me most, especially after reading The New York Times story about widowers that featured the work of the National Widowers’ Organization, Inc., is that, despite our years of research, study and analysis, it’s the bereaved themselves who best learn from each other how to accept their grief.