Widowhood Quotes

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.”
― Gloria Steinem

“Some things just couldn't be protectd from storms. Some things simply needed to be broken off...Once old thing were broken off, amazingly beautiful thing could grow in their place.”
― Denise Hildreth

“What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?”
― Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“It's like Romeo & Juliet,' I say. 'You can't separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.'
Silence.
I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, 'Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even afraid to die.'
Bussey's eyes, already wide open, grow even wider. My death is the last thing he needs.
I have the strange feeling that there are two of me. One observes the conversation while the other does the talking. Everything is abnormal, especially this extreme calm that has taken me over. I try to explain to Bussey that if I decide to die, it will be without bitterness. I know I did everything I possibly could, so it will be respectful farewell. I will bow to life like an actor, who, having delivered his lines, bends deeply to his audience & retires. I tell Bussey that this decision has nothing to do with him, that it is entirely mine. I will choose either to live or to die, but I cannot allow myself to live in the in-between. I do not want to go through life like a ghost.
'Do you think you'll find Danny this way?' Bussey asks.
My mind sifts through all available theories on the afterlife. It is as if this metaphysical question has become as real as the air we breathe. Buddhism teaches that life is an eternal cycle without beginning or end. I recall the metaphor: "Our individual lives are like waves produced from the great ocean that is the universe. The emergence of a wave is life, and its abatement is death. This rhythm repeats eternally."
Finally I answer Bussey, 'No, I don't think so.'
Bussey seems relieved, but I'm more panicky, because I had never thought that I could wind up alone. In my mind, whatever the odds, Danny & I were & would be together forever.”
― Mariane Pearl, A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl

“I remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with John.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“In this way unwittingly the Widow-to-Be is assuring her husband’s death—his doom. Even as she believes she is behaving intelligently—“shrewdly” and “reasonably”—she is taking him to a teeming petri dish of lethal bacteria where within a week he will succumb to a virulent staph infection—a “hospital” infection acquired in the course of his treatment for pneumonia. Even as she is fantasizing that he will be home for dinner she is assuring that he will never return home. How unwitting, all Widows-to-Be who imagine that they are doing the right thing, in innocence and ignorance!”
― Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story

“Did the people of Nineveh migrate to Athens after hearing Jonah’s pronouncement of doom? No. They repented where they stood. Although they were foreigners, the Ninevites prayed to the God of Israel, fasted, and asked Jonah to intercede in their behalf. (Jon 3:5-10) Yahweh took note of Nineveh’s sincerity and spared them. Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 3”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: A Woman's Guide to Husband Material

“To be fair, the pleasure of home and memories had been ripped from Naomi. Not all at once. There is a problem with widowhood: the survivor has no one to remember with. Their co-rememberer can no longer remind them of what they shared. Our dead take our memories with them.
Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 21”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: A Woman's Guide to Husband Material

“Every storm ends. The skies are usually clearer; the soil is usually richer; that combination will help you to be more receptive to community love.
Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 27”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: A Woman's Guide to Husband Material

“Still standing. I think this is a pretty good description of where I was at this point.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Particularly difficult for partners is the reassertion of self, unless they have been very strong as individuals throughout the partnership. Learning to say ‘I’ instead of ‘We’ can be a painful task for two people who have grown into each other and become enmeshed.”
― Virginia Ironside, Youll Get Over It: The Rage Of Bereavement

“This voyage of ours is lonely--the more so if we find a companion, only to suffer the bitterest loss.

In truth we are alone.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“Do I have what it takes to help my young family survive my husband's terminal illness?”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“If your kid goes to a therapist weekly, a peer grief group monthly, and a grief camp for a few days in the summer—which would be a lot of grief work, by the way—there are still somewhere around three hundred days in the year where it’s all on you, the widowed parent, to figure out what to do.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“For the duration of Dennis's illness, I felt like Hester Prynne. I had the overwhelming sense that I was walking around with a giant 'FW' emblazoned on my shirt: "Future Widow.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“The question 'How are you' would usually throw me into an existential tailspin. It seems like such a simple question--but it would cause fits of uncertainty in me almost every time.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“I had no guidebook to tell me what to say to the kids--nor the time to find such a thing, if it even existed.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“No profound remarks are required. The simplest message--I'm here and I care--is all that's needed.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“I've been too tired to post much for a few days. Or maybe more precisely, too tired to think about what to post.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“It breaks my heart now to remember that Megan wanted to give Dennis the gift she made at school right away--in case Daddy dies before Christmas.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Thinking about how many years--decades, actually--I'd deferred my dream of learning to play the guitar, I find it remarkable that I finally took it up not long before Dennis got sick.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“If I don't own my own life, who else will?”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Because I love you, and we don't have much time.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again

“Ask yourself this question:

If my life is the same five years from now as it is today, would I be OK with that?

If the answer is no--or especially if the answer is hell no--then now is the time to do something about it.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Someone mentioned that the Johnny Cash songs I was practicing were appropriate for Dennis. I guess that's lucky--because those are the only Johnny Cash songs I know.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“I wish I'd made time to check in with the kids more. To start a conversation. To let them know that it was OK to be sad, and OK to be worried.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Every child deserves a chance to thrive--even if their parent has died.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“I knew in my gut that the first time attending the Seattle Brain Cancer Walk would be in Dennis's memory--rather than in his honor.”
― Jenny Lisk, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice

“Maybe it was selfish, but I didn’t want to let her rest in peace. She could do that when it was my turn.”
― Kristy McGinnis, Motion of Intervals

“Some day she [Ana Ferreira Evans] would write what she had learned about love in her widowhood. Love needs a place to go. Your heart doesn't stop making it when you lose the single adored person of your life.”
― Nancy Horan, The House of Lincoln