None of us ever expected my sister to become a widow in her late thirties. It’s still so new it’s hard to believe, yet his absence is very real. I’ve never talked on the phone so much with her as I have in the past couple weeks.
She tried meeting with a grief counselor, but my sister has never really been one for sitting in a room and talking about herself. The thought of repeating her agony over and over is just too painful. So she’s trying books.
It’s been years since she read a book. Always busy with work, her dog, and her husband, there wasn’t much time and she didn’t really have the desire. Now, finding the right books is its own form of therapy.
Out of the nine she bought, There Are No Rules: A Young Widow’s Perspective on the Early Days of Grief by Britany Rivera has been the most helpful. Deliberately written in easily digestible sections it covers the myriad of things that are most pressing in those first few days and weeks of losing a spouse.
The repeated message is that grieving looks different for everyone and there is no right way to handle it or all the decisions you now have to face alone.
I have not finished it yet myself, but I found comfort in those pages. This was what my sister was dealing with that first week. Hosting all of us, making funeral arrangements, choosing photos to display, a photo for his obituary, ordering enough death certificates, going through the funeral. Being surrounded by family and then most of us leaving to return to our lives.
Rivera also talked about what’s to come for my sister. Trying to decide what to do with his stuff, whether to stay in her house or sell, wearing her wedding ring, filing as a widow on her taxes for two years, and is she even going to be able to return to work.
Being a young widow is rare. It is an agony none of us want to experience. The author did not shy away from the truths of this, while also asserting that it’s survivable. This book has been the most helpful in my sister’s journey and I am grateful for that.
The Accidental Domestic Goddess 