Would Dying With Him Have Proved to You That I Loved Him?

You’ve heard the story - maybe more than once:

He died on a Tuesday and she was so devastated that she just died in her sleep a few days later.

Or:

She died on this day, and he died this many days later.

He loved her so much, he literally died of a broken heart. 

She loved him so much, she never dated anyone else.

I get it. I have felt those stories. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you how many weeks I spent each night outside, after finally getting my kids to sleep, literally begging God to reach down and take me, too. 

How many hours I spent lying flat on my back, attempting to slow my own breath to the point that it would just stop all on its own.

How many turns I took a little too fast when I was driving alone, how many times I dove into the waves one day, hoping one of them would take me. 

I don’t remember how many pills tumbled out of that bottle, into my hand, the day I sat in my bedroom, this close to taking them, before it felt like someone’s had wrapped around mine and poured them back.  

I don’t talk much about those moments. I did include some of them in two of my books, because they are important. But I don’t talk about them in general.

Why would I?

Those moments aren’t something I wear like a badge of honor. I don’t feel like I have to defend my survival or my happiness anymore. 

I don’t feel like I owe anyone my pain.

But I do admit, I’m still tweaked when someone feels like they have to tell me one of those stories, and top it off with noting how someone’s heart was so broken, they died - always with a wisp of wonder in their voice. 

It triggers all the old insecurities and guilt I carried when I made the decision to seek love again - and when I found it. Fortunately I’ve mastered the ability to quickly reframe my emotions and recognize them for what they truly represent. They come at me and are immediately deflected. 

Still, I wouldn’t mind never hearing one of those stories again. 

Did you know there was once a tradition practiced by some, where a woman threw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre- or was sometimes forced onto it? It was called Sati, a practice in parts of India in which widows died on their husbands' funeral pyres, sometimes willingly, sometimes through coercion or outright force. Imagine living in a world where a woman's ultimate expression of love was to die alongside her husband.

Thankfully, we've come a long way from that.

Or have we?

Obviously, no one is expecting me to throw myself on a funeral pyre. But sometimes I wonder just how much suffering people need to see from a widow before they're satisfied she loved her husband enough.

How long should she grieve? How many years should she spend alone? How much happiness is she allowed before someone decides she's moved on too quickly?

And who the hell gets to decide?

I loved my husband. I loved him when he was alive. I loved him when I begged God to take me, too. And I loved him when I finally decided I wanted to live.

I didn't love him any less when I started laughing again. Or when I stopped feeling guilty about having a good day. Or when I opened my heart to another man.

None of those things erased the life we'd shared.

I understand why stories of people dying of broken hearts move us. There's something undeniably poignant about two lives so intertwined that one seems unable to continue without the other.

But there's something beautiful about the person who does continue, too.

The person who gets out of bed when every part of them wants to stay there. Who learns to laugh without apologizing for it. Who risks loving again, knowing exactly how much it can hurt to lose someone.

That's a story worth telling, too.

In fact, I wrote a whole novel about it, How to Woo a Widow, and these days, between writing my clients' books, I'm working to bring that story to the screen.

Because I believe there's room for more stories about widows who don't just survive, but fall in love, laugh, build beautiful lives, and find happiness again.

Not because they forgot the love they lost.

But because they never stopped living.