In January, my first and longest Westfield friend’s dear husband died. We’d met in 1980 when I strolled my baby daughter down our street near Wilson School. She, too, had a toddler, a boy, and in no time, both families gathered in our backyards for playdates, barbecues, and laughter. The kids went to preschool together, two shy tots who’d enter class holding hands for comfort. The teachers dubbed them “the couple.”
Last month, my husband and I attended the memorial service for our lovely friend’s husband. Their son, my daughter’s preschool buddy, is now 44, though his expression and gentle eyes still hold the traces of the sweet boy I once knew. I could picture his face and my daughter’s covered in blue icing, which had topped the imaginatively designed cupcakes his mother had prepared for his third birthday. We, parents, laughed to see a table full of tongues and mouths coated in blue, amused that none of the children had eaten their chocolate cupcake bottoms.
“I’m a widow now,” my friend said to me earlier that week, adding, “It’s an awful term.” I’d never thought about that before, and her words stuck.
How awful, indeed, to be defined by the loss of your spouse. Just when you’re suffering one of the most personal and devastating losses in life, you’re assigned a new undesirable label: widow or widower. A label that announces your loss and demotes you to a lesser status in many eyes. Imagine wearing a billboard on your chest, announcing, “My husband died.”
Curious, I looked up the history of the word. To my surprise and horror, I learned that the archaic term for widow is “relict.” Relict means “someone left over,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and derives from the Latin word “relictus,” which means “left behind.” Imagine if today’s widows defined themselves as being left behind!
Sadly, many widows feel forgotten, even discarded. Dining out nights with other couples fall away. Fixing cars, plowing snow, and managing finances, once shared by both people, now fall to the remaining spouse. Health emergencies pose the loneliest challenges.
How about conjuring a new term for widows and widowers, one that doesn’t broadcast their marginalized status and doesn’t define them by their loss? Or imply they’re destitute, as do the Hindu word “vidwa” and the Hebrew word “amanah.” With life expectancy for averageAmericans steadily rising, one can foresee years, often decades, of time no longer married.
Even though I believe we should address people by the most respectful terms possible, I hesitate to jump aboard the language sensitivity bandwagon with a new admonition. Still, if we let empathy drive our language, we can find words that cradle widowed women and men with care and respect. Let’s safeguard their privacy and allow them to choose when or if they want to share that their husband or wife died.
Let’s call them people, not widows or widowers. Your thoughts?
Please tell us your new names for a widow or widower by emailing press@goleader.com or pattisteckler@gmail.com.
