Some years ago I wrote a monologue, The Hourglass, about widowhood and disenfranchised grief. About a woman who could not tell anyone that her lodger was actually the woman she loved, and who loved her.
Disenfranchised grief or hidden grief is grief that isn't recognised by other people, because they don't see it as significant, or it is a grief that isn't or can't be made public. Some widows experience disenfranchised grief when they lose a partner who is not recognised as a partner to the outside world. This could be because they were separated or divorced at the time of death, together for only a short time, or together but could not admit that they were together because of cultural or social pressures. People who are lesbian, gay, bi and in a same sex relationship, but aren't out. People who are trans, or in a relationship with a trans person, and aren't out. People who are in a poly relationship. People who are having an affair. People who lose a friend with benefits. Disenfranchised grief can also be associated with losing someone when they were involved in a crime, or killed in a violent crime, who had addiction issues, who had mental health issues, or who died by suicide. Coping with disenfranchised grief People experiencing disenfranchised grief may not be able to have an involvement in a funeral or wake, and may even be excluded from any of the mourning rituals. Creating your own mourning rituals to honour their loss can help, from planting a tree, through fundraising or donating to charity, to walking in a favourite place. If you have someone you can talk to, let them know how you feel. Talking to a therapist might also help. Please remember You are a widow* and are welcome here if you have lost your partner. Young or old or somewhere in between – you are a widow. Committed to each other for a few months, or the whole of your life – you are a widow. Living together or living apart – you are a widow. Going through tough times when they died – you are a widow. Queer or straight – you are a widow. Cis, trans, non-binary, agender, gender-expansive, gender-fluid, intersex – you are a widow. Childless, child-free, have children or have lost children – you are a widow. In a traditional or a non-traditional relationship - you are a widow. Got another partner or are dating, or haven't got another partner, don't want another partner or don't want a traditional relationship – you are a widow. Days in or decades in – you are a widow. *I use 'widow' as a non-gendered term
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I moved house a fortnight ago, from the house that Tim and I bought to house his bookshop, and where he died suddenly and unexpectedly, to a house near the sea that I hope that my wife and I will make into our forever home. The whole process, from making the decision that we wanted a house that was chosen by both of us, rather than chosen by me, to opening the door here for the first time, actually only took around seven months, but felt so much longer. It was exhausting and involved builders vanishing leaving work unfinished, arguments with the local National Park Authority, and solicitors (not ours) causing delays. It was also a very emotional process, as it meant moving away from a friendship group that carried me through some really hard times, as well as leaving behind a place that had been very important to Tim and me.
I got rid of a lot of stuff, because that’s what you do when you move, and some of that was a huge wrench. But it also was oddly freeing at times. Packing felt interminable, and every time I thought I was nearly there, I turned round and saw more. Dee fell ill with a horrible viral infection, and then I got it two days before completion date. But we got there. The wife, dogs and the van went off, leaving me alone in the empty house with the cats. Friends scooped me up, fed me and gave me a bed. And then on the day of the move, I drove 146 miles in a two-seater sports car packed to the gunnels with all the last bits and pieces, along with a pack of cold and flu capsules, a lot of Haribo, and two profoundly irritated cats. One sulked, the other yowled for 93% of the journey, and glared silently for the other 7%. I was worried that I would lose Tim in the move, and in some way, lose me as well. But now the house is beginning to feel like mine, rather than someone else’s. I have my office in place. There are touches of Tim here. And the sulking cat is asleep on the bed. Joanna Sedley-Burke is a Trustee of Widowed & Young and became the chair in July 2021. She talked to The Widow's Handbook about her wife Paula, and about being an LGBTQ+ widow. You and Paula were part of the campaign for same-sex marriages in the UK Yes. We collaborated with the Stonewall campaign for civil partnerships, and then for same sex marriages. We were lucky enough to be the first civil partnership at The Ritz in London, and we where then invited to be one of the first five same-sex marriages at Westminster. Whilst we were married for 11 years, we were together for 20 years. I am lucky to be able to say that her family have been nothing other than supportive; in fact, they call me their fourth daughter. Tell me about Paula's illness Paula had autoimmune conditions, including Crohn's disease and ankylosing spondylitis, and she had a number of flare ups over the years we were together. She wasn't well, but she wasn't seriously ill by any means. Back in February 2017 she was having chest problems, and we went to A&E, where she was X rayed and they told us that there was nothing wrong. We went home. Paula clearly still wasn't well. We went back in and they did more blood tests. We were told at this point that she had an infection, but they weren’t about to specify where, and they sent us home with antibiotics. She got worse during the following week, and they finally diagnosed a chest infection, and gave her different antibiotics. But her breathing got worse, and I called 999. We were blue-lighted into our local hospital and went straight into the resus unit. At this point they did more X-rays, which showed a shadow on her lung, indicating pneumonia. We were relieved as there was a fear she had sepsis. They put Paula on oxygen, and it must have helped because she demanded a roast chicken dinner. She never lost her sense of humour, all the time that she was ill. The doctor said that she would probably in for a number of weeks because of her compromised immune system. I went home, and I tried to call her mobile later, but there was no signal. The next morning I called the hospital and they said she'd had a quiet night, and to call back in half an hour. When I did, her speech was slurring a bit, but she was like that when she was hungry. An hour later I received a call asking me to come in and talk to the doctors. She had developed hypoglycaemia which then triggered sepsis. She was already underweight, and the infection set off a downwards spiral. The nurses had paged the doctor, but sadly no one responded to the call out. Paula died five minutes after the hospital called me. What were the issues that you had with the hospital? Three months later my mother-in-law told me that the hospital had called her indicating that the X-ray had shown that there was a problem. I put in a complaint to say that they should not have divulged this to her mother. Not only was she in her late 70s with a heart condition, but more importantly I was Paula's next of kin. In my head this was a breach of confidentiality. The hospital's response was that they could as because Paula had died, it was no longer a data breach. I requested all of her medical notes and much to my horror I found out that the hospital had put a DNR [do not resuscitate] in place. Paula and I had discussed this, and I could not believe that she would ever have asked for it. She hadn't mentioned it to me. The hospital had referred itself for a serious incident investigation. This review took months, and when I saw the report, I couldn't believe it. They spelled my name wrong, said that I was the husband, got Paula's date of death wrong, and said that I had put the DNR place. It was as if it was written about a completely different person. This really wasn't a proper investigation, and had 48 major errors in it, despite it having been read and approved by six different senior managers in the Trust. Going through the report just left me reliving the original trauma, and the way I coped was treating it as if it was a work project. I had to detach myself. Did they finally get a revised report to you? I finally managed to get a revised version of the report after four months. I questioned everything that had happened. Finally, the Trust admitted that the doctor had put the DNR in place without discussing it with anyone. Luckily for me, I had a medical friend look through the information. One thing that was particulally hard was finding out that the X-ray that had been taken in February had shown evidence of a shadow, but that this hadn't been passed on to Paula's GP, so nothing was ever done with the results. However, something that did help was my friend telling me that when the doctor finally saw Paula on the ward as part of the rounds, she was already at a point where she could not have survived. That she was just going to fall asleep and never wake up. What did you do next? I wasn't happy with how things had been handled and after months or formal complaints not being dealt with appropriately, I went to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), and they were amazing. I felt zero discrimination, and I felt that I was working with someone who was doing it for me and for Paula, and doing it to bring about policy change. We made the hospital's life hell, because I felt that if it could happen to Paula, it could happen to anyone, as nothing had changed in the hospital's processes. Eventually the PHSO found in my favour, and I take some consolation that the hospital was forced to change its processes and systems to avoid these errors happening again. How is being a widow in a same sex marriage different to a heterosexual widow? It sometimes feels like you are having to come out all over again. And again. But without the excitement of that first coming out. Perhaps as a response to years of lived experience and of unconscious bias, there were times during Paula's illness and after her death where I started to doubt myself, or ask myself 'would you have done that if I was straight?' After her death, when I went back to work, the response of one of my colleagues to the news was 'but I didn't know that you were gay', as if that information trumped the news of her death. And that left me feeling that the most important thing about me was that I was gay, not that my wife and partner of 20 years had died. When I went to register Paula's death, I was asked if I was her daughter or her mother. When I started the admin after her death, on the very first call when I said that I was a widow, the immediate response was 'when did your husband die?' I know that same sex marriage was relatively recent then, but it put another layer on something that was already hard. Some businesses had it right. John Lewis for one, they train their staff in dealing with people who are grieving. But others were harder. When I cancelled her phone contract, I wanted to be assured that her number wouldn't be handed on to anyone else, and that took almost as long as probate. How did you find WAY and what were your first impressions? I found it by accident, through a friend's sister, but I didn't get involved initially, because I thought it was a dating group for straight people! There certainly weren’t any resources for LGBTQ+ widows. I suspect I also didn't want to accept that I was a widow. But I went back and joined a few months later and found my fears completely unfounded. The support and friendship have been a life saver for me. Just having people who ‘get it’ is invaluable. WAY has shown me that I am valued. I’ve never been one to stand in the shadows and when I looked at the trustees and saw older white men, I contacted the then Chief Executive Rebecca Cooper and talked to her about diversity. She invited me to join the board. Five years' on, WAY has a wonderful LGBTQ+ widows' group that is a safe space, and we are working to improve our diversity. This is the second of a two-part guest blog post by Maria Margetts - the first part is here. Maria is a WAY Ambassador representing the widowed LGBTQ+ community The second year of grief started better. I suddenly found (or rather she found me) a new partner. A blind date went up on one of our Widow's Facebook groups and someone said they fancied me. Only one person had shown any interest, so I said her name and was told "yes it's her, go and talk to her". So we had our first chat and one of the first questions that she asked was about some photos that were on my old Facebook profile. The pictures were of me at a Comic Relief Day at work. My wife had arranged with my colleagues to dare me to come into work in 'drag'. These photos were from 1995 and I was still very much in the closet. I was very much in my element but so scared that people would get that this was the real me. She asked me whether I did this often and I admitted to my blind date that yes, this was part of me and had been for a long time. She accepted that, we talked more, and she became my girlfriend. The first time she came to my house she was a little freaked out when she saw my walk-in wardrobe. The one side that still had my wife's clothes, the smaller section was held male clothes, and then boxes and boxes of MY clothes. With this she realised it wasn't just a 'knicker fetish' – this really was part of me. Over the next 18 months our relationship grew, and we each supported the other in our grief. My feelings about who I was, and who I wanted to be were allowed to also grow as my partner slowly came to terms with my other side. I went out shopping as Maria and I was so pleased with how I was. After some prompting from a widow friend and my partner I came out as Trans to one of my Widow Facebook groups. Suddenly I went from perhaps 10 people knowing to 400+. Out of those 400 I had only person who made some awful comments. That person is no longer in my life. Six months after this I came out at work and 2000+ people got to know me as Maria. I changed job in November 2019, starting as my old self, but after three days I picked up a security pass for me as Maria and I never went back as my old self. Since January 2020 I have only been Maria. I got rid of my old clothes within three months and I asked my GP to put me forward for gender reassignment. It's been three years and I haven't heard anything back, such is the queue for this consultation. I may be waiting another five years or more for that first consultation. But there's nothing I can do to make this go faster. I have to wait, but I'm waiting as me. I am Maria. I changed my name in July 2022 and that statement is official. Another step along the way to where I want to be. It's been eight years since my wife died and it's not been plain sailing, by any stretch of the imagination. My son has grown up, having gone through his own grief and adversity, and now has his own little family. I don't see him much now but I've been there for him whenever he has needed me, for whatever reason. My daughter still lives with me and has caused me a lot of strife over the years. And yes there have been times when I've wished it was me that died, that I know Mandy would have coped so much better with my daughter and her special needs. Or maybe not. We will never know. This is the first part of a two-part guest blog post by Maria Margetts - the second part is here. Maria is a WAY Ambassador representing the widowed LGBTQ+ community In February 2015, after seven years and two bouts of cancer, my fabulous wife Mandy died and my world turned upside down. She looked after the house; she looked after my kids and I. She loved me and I couldn't see how I could live without her. It wasn't until I was a few months down the line that I realised how much this was true. Six months after Mandy died I found WAY (Widowed and Young), joined and I got to listen to hundreds of voices who sounded like me. That were going through the same things as me. And I realised I hadn't grieved, and I crashed and burned. My first December, first Xmas without her, her birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary hurt so much that I melted down Christmas Day, at my mom's and found myself, Sunday best clothes on, in the pouring rain, trying to climb up the Client Hills, where I scattered her and my son's ashes, to be with her. Halfway up, soaked and mud filling my shoes, I turned back and went home and sobbed all afternoon. Me and my other self I had been questioning who I was all my life. My late wife Mandy met, fell in love with and married him. My other self. She didn't start to meet the real me until a couple of years into our marriage, after I tried on some clothes that I'd bought her but she didn't like. When I was around 11 or 12 I stole some of my mum's clothes, but I got too big for them. I started college then work, I had to hide who I was and forget about it. But in my own home, with my wife's acceptance, I started showing this part of me. For 25 years I hid who I was from the outside world. My wife was very apprehensive about people seeing me or knowing about me. "What would the neighbours say?". It wasn't until the last three years of my wife's life that we went out together. Mandy knew how much I hated being on my own and a few weeks before she died she told me to find a new wife, which really upset me. But she didn't realise how much she impacted on this side of me. I realised, very quickly, how much her acceptance of 'Maria' had impacted on how I came out. The first year after Mandy's death I tried to come out a couple of times and I didn't feel I was able. I was crushed by the grief of her loss and I felt that I was just an indulgence. That trying to become 'me' wasn't and shouldn't be my priority. I went back to my male self. I've always had a bit of a wry sense of humour, and a somewhat cynical view of the world. I was worried that I had lost my sense of humour, along with my rather dirty laugh, after Tim died. They both did come back, but my sense of humour is now somewhat darker.
Dark humour is a coping mechanism. It's a distraction and a way of accepting the situation. It can also be used to bring people in the same situation together – I've seen it in doctors, nurses, ambulance crew and police. I have used dark humour about my sexuality when telling other queer people and allies about experiences of biphobia. An incident in a local pub: "You are marrying a woman? But you used to be married to a man, and he's dead? Your husband knew you liked women? Did you sleep with women while you were married to your husband?" I have also used dark humour to tell other widows about dealing with muggles (people who haven't been bereaved). A woman rang up, wanting to talk to Tim, who used to be a bookseller. She launched into a stream of explanation about books she wanted to sell. I finally managed to break in to explain that he had died. She paused imperceptibly and then asked me if I still wanted to buy the books. I said that I wasn't involved in the shop and she rang off. About five minutes later, the same woman, the same explanation. I broke in, this time to say, "You've already spoken to me and he's still dead." She responded to say, "I didn't – I dialled another number…" and I put the phone down. Comedians and writers who have used humour to handle widowhood include Kat Lister, Tawny Platis (founder of Death is Hilarious) and Sandra E Manning. It's important to remember that dark humour can be disconcerting for people outside of the community that you are in. I made a dark widow humour comment on a Zoom writing workshop about one bonus of his death being that I could finally get rid of his grandmother's coffee tables, and there was a moment of dead air followed by some nervous laughter. I've known that I was attracted to both men and women since my 20s. Actually… the crushes on a couple of truly awesome female teachers in my teens might mean I knew it before, but didn't realise what it meant. The first time I came out as bi to a lesbian friend, she told me that bisexuality is just a phase, and I should pick a side. Consequently, I didn't tell anyone else for a long time.
I married Paul at 24, which now seems impossibly young. Over a decade our marriage fell apart. Tim, who I'd known for many years, helped me through depression and a divorce, and we drifted from being very close friends to falling in love. While I spent this period of my life 'straight passing', I was still bisexual. Tim knew about my sexuality and loved me all the same. He died suddenly at 50, after we'd only been married nine years, and my life crumbled. Some friends had known that I was bi, but I wasn't really out. Even before Tim died I'd been feeling that I was somehow living a lie, and betraying who I was. As I started to build another life, I became more open about what I was. And when I started seeing a woman, I couldn't really hide any more. The responses to me coming out, as well as 'picking a side', ranged from total acceptance and 'when I met you, my gaydar pinged, but I assumed that I was wrong – I see now', to 'I don't understand – you used to be married to a man but he's dead' and 'does that mean you were sleeping with women when you were married to your husband?' Now I am married to a woman, I guess I'm 'lesbian passing', and I suspect that many people think I have made a major lifestyle change, finally picked a team, or only just realised I'm gay. This isn't helped by bi erasure, and by the media and entertainment tropes about bisexuals showing them (us) as cheating, confused, greedy, promiscuous, villainous, unable to stay faithful, or just bi-curious. And that's just the women. The bisexual men are much less visible. However – I am proudly and defiantly queer. I am bisexual, from the pink and purple in my hair down to my awesome Pride Converse. Have a wonderful Celebrate Bisexuality Day! #CelebrateBisexualityDay #BisexualPrideDay #BiVisibilityDay You are a widow* and are welcome here if you have lost your partner.
Young or old or somewhere in between – you are a widow. Committed to each other for a few months, or the whole of your life – you are a widow. Living together or living apart – you are a widow. Going through tough times when they died – you are a widow. Queer or straight – you are a widow. Cis, trans, non-binary, agender, gender-expansive, gender-fluid, intersex – you are a widow. Childless, child-free, have children or have lost children – you are a widow. In a traditional or a non-traditional relationship - you are a widow. Got another partner or are dating, or haven't got another partner, don't want another partner or don't want a traditional relationship – you are a widow. Days in or decades in – you are a widow. *I use 'widow' as a non-gendered term I've shared my story on the WAY Widowed and Young website. "I was widowed at 50 when Tim, who I expected would be my happy-ever-after following a marriage break-up, died suddenly from heart failure linked to his type 2 diabetes. Although we'd known each other since our early 20s, we’d been married less than ten years. I was fortunate to find WAY Widowed and Young and the subgroup WAYWOCs (Widowed and Young WithOut Children) just a few days after I was widowed. I can honestly say that I couldn't have got through the past four years without this incredible bunch of young widows, male and female, cis and trans, straight and queer. We have shared (virtually and face-to-face) our tragedies, our successes, our tears, our laughter, and any number of truly bad puns and Marmite-related comestibles. I’m bisexual, I’ve known since my 20s but been married and divorced and then married and widowed, each time to a man, had me hiding in plain sight. I’m now in a same-sex relationship with an amazing woman called Dee and we’re getting married in August. It’s important to me that I am a bisexual woman, and that I am still me, whoever I’m in a relationship with. Getting involved in queer communities has helped me explore who I am. The amazing WAY LGBTQ+ group allowed me to be out in a safe space, where I felt supported and listened to. These amazing people looked out for me as I came out to my family, and told them that I had a new partner. The LGBTQ+ group is a little glittery place of fabulousness filled with people who are looking after each other and shouting out for each other. We celebrate the good days and the successes, support each other through the bad days, make each other laugh, talk about frocks and lipstick and films, rant, and send each other virtual hugs. I have been fortunate that, apart from some rare occasions, I’ve seen nothing but acceptance. My family, friends and village have fully accepted my partner, which is fantastic. But I know that the WAY LGBTQ+ group would have been there for me if it hadn’t been like that." |
AuthorI was widowed at 50 when Tim, who I expected would be my happy-ever-after following a marriage break-up, died suddenly from heart failure linked to his type 2 diabetes. Though we'd known each other since our early 20s, we'd been married less than ten years. Archives
February 2024
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