On a friend's grief

Thirteen years ago, my mother became a widow. She had never wanted to be a widow, of course, but now she often speaks of herself that way. Refers to herself as a widow. She and my father had been married 40 years when he died.

Around the time mother was becoming a widow, my friend Becca was marrying her Matt. Well, I didn't know them then. I met them a year or so later when they moved into the building just down the street from us in the University Village, one of UC Berkeley's family housing compounds. I still remember the first time I saw her face--freckled and grinning, with her strawberry blonde hair back in two braids. She was the giggly one in the relationship. He was darker--he had that brooding aura and beautiful almost-black hair and beard (though I'm not sure he had his beard the day I met him). He was fun and funny and witty, but in a way that balanced her effervescence. It was a stunningly good combination, from what I was allowed to see.

We met that day, helped them unpack their U-Haul, and became friends.

We weren't best friends, but we did a lot together. We both lived in the G apartment of our respective buildings--these atrocious Army barracks built for the dock workers in the 1950s. Oh, those apartments. They weren't fancy, to put it mildly, but I have such happy memories of the time we lived there. Our neighbors just three buildings away were a big part of that. Matt and Becca. I loved them. I still love them.

Yesterday, after 13 years of marriage, Becca had to announced to her friends and family that he was dead. I know nothing of the particulars--the cause or circumstances of his death. I know he wasn't ill and hadn't suffered any kind of decline. He was at her side in Utah one week (where she is visiting family with her children) and had gone back to their home in Hawaii the next. And then, over the weekend, he died.

That is all. He died.

She is on her own with her three daughters, one just a baby. A sweet beautiful little thing. Yes, three beautiful girls.

I grieve for all of them today. In a certain way, I feel I know what she must feel, what she must be facing, but I would never actually say that, because I know that in thousands of ways, I have no idea what she is facing. I can only imagine, as they say. In a certain way, she knows what she's about to go through having lost her mother to cancer as a teenager. But in a thousand other ways this is different. And in a certain way, she knows what this will mean to her daughters--losing a parent at such a young age. But again, her shift in roles in this coming grief will, I fear, leave her as unprepared as any of us are.

Because I believe all of us are unprepared for this kind of grief. Even when intellectually we know it is coming, our souls rebel at death. Our natures say, no no, this cannot be. I will not accept this. Of course there may be exceptions--souls who are more resigned to it. But such grief as this is no small matter. It isn't over in a matter of days or weeks. It fades over time, but then we find it has morphed into a different blurred kind of grief that is every bit as painful, just in different ways. Over and over again these changes come and we must face that loss anew. Becca will have to. With her daughters.

She will do this. She will have happiness and laughter and exuberant joy along the way with her family. Because that's Becca. Giggling and setting out confidently into new adventures in ways I've always admired. But now she'll carry him with her, the loss of him on her heart and mind forever, instead of simply having him right there at her side. I guess that's what it is to be a widow.

My love and prayers to Becca, her daughters, and the rest of Matt's family and friends.