Widow Speak and Those Slow Knowing Nods

(And maybe Widower Speak, I haven’t had that many conversations with Widowers)

I had the pleasure of taking my mom to a nail clinic yesterday. This particular nail clinic seems to specialize in diabetic foot care. At one point I was sitting with two women older than I am but a few years younger than my mother’s 85 years. We all struck up a conversation. At first the conversation was about the weather, diabetic shoes, and the bizarre opening statements in a trial taking place in Tennessee where a wife killed her pastor husband, but it wasn’t long before the conversation turned personal. Since I was the youngest they all asked about my husband and did I have children. When I stated I was a widow with two children I could sense a change in the room. If asked, I could not state what exactly had changed, but I found myself feeling intrigued by the feeling.

When I stated I was a widow, the two women did a slow nod of their heads, indicating they understood. It was after those slow knowing nods that the conversation became what I can only call “widow speak.” It went something like this:

Woman 1 (“W1”): “When did it happen?”

Me: “It will be a year in May.”

W1: “5 years for me.”

Woman 2 (“W2”): “It is hard.”

W1: “Yes, don’t I know it.”

W1: “How?”

Me: “Cancer”

W1: “Never gets easier, it feels easier, but it isn’t.”

Me: “Yes, you go along, then wham.”

Slow knowing nods all around.

W1: “Sure gets lonely.”

W2: “Sure does.”

Me: “I miss the conversations most.”

Slow knowing nods all around.

And so it went. Everything was in short speak with several slow knowing nods as emphasis on key points. It was oddly comforting to be speaking in such a way. I went away feeling good because we were not together long enough to get into a long depressing remembrance, but had enough time to commiserate and remember that we are not alone in the world.

I do not personally know a lot of widows/widowers, but I know a lot of people that have lost their parents or siblings. Having lost my father and now Raymond, I find the loss of my spouse to be very different from the loss of my father, even though I was close to my father. It has been my experience that the loss of a spouse can only be understood by a person that has experienced the same loss. The widows and widowers I have met have been the only ones to truly understand the loneliness, the loss of conversation, and the emptiness the room always seems to have even when full of people. It is a profound loss, and yet, it can be expressed in a slow knowing nod.