An acquaintance asked the question "Is there a difference between the widowed and divorced." Emphatically yes. The challenges of learning to live on one's own may be similar, even the same, but the similarities end there.
The fundamental difference between the two states is the matter of choice. The widowed have no choice regarding their marital status. Death makes the decision for them. An external force takes away the marriage. The survivor had no choice.
One the other hand, the divorced make the choice to end a marriage. The marriage is not wrested from them. It doesn't matter who the instigator of the divorce is or which party did what to whom, the fact remains that at least one, if not both, of the parties made a conscious decision to walk away and make a life exclusive of the other.
The ability to choose or not choose defines the response of family, friends, and the community. With the death of a spouse, support flows in for the widowed. There's chicken salad and Jello mold in the refrigerator, flowers, people answering the phone and cleaning the house along with the arrival of the spiritual leader. People know what their roles are. They know what to say and do.
The widowed get closure, something not readily available to the aging divorced. For the widowed there is a body, the disposal of the body, and a marker serving as the visual declaration of the bereaved: "I didn't choose this. Forces beyond my control did this to me. There was nothing I could do." Dreadful though it is, there is an order to the timely death of the aging.
On the other hand, the newly divorced and aging person walks out of a courthouse with legal documents in hand. The choice for divorce is manifested by a business transaction. You sign a paper, leave decades of your life on the table, and walk away. There will be no chicken salad waiting for you in the refrigerator. Why not? It’s because you had a choice; it didn't have to be this way.
Unlike dying at the close of a long life, to divorce at that point upsets the perceived natural order of things. We accept divorce among the young by assuming they lack the skill or wit to stay married. We expect the older adults, with decades of marriage behind them, to soldier on if for no other reason than to be a model of endurance.
There is no formal closure for the divorced and as there is for the bereaved If I require formalities, I must invent them myself, but that is now. Recognizing the emotional and spiritual need for closure, some faith communities are beginning dialogues on what recognition of the dissolution of public and/or sacred vows might look like. For some people this is a non-issue. Others like me would welcome some form of communal recognition of this significant life change.
As individuals and as a society, we have no rubric for integrating divorce of the aging into the collective experience. For example, close mutual friends are a casualty of divorce at any age. For the friends of divorced older adults, the pain is relative to length of time shared together. Some of the relationships go back for decades. The children went to school together, he was your son's soccer coach, you planned her daughter's wedding together, and you lost your parents together.
What do they do with their own grief and anger when one member chooses to leave the foursome even if the reason are patently clear? When death breaks the bonds, structures exist to allow grieving together and comforting each other. But this is not so when the pain and loss result from a choice from which they were excluded.
Compounding the pain of the friends is that their discomfort goes mostly unnoticed. No one brings them flowers and a Jello mold. Speaking with a man whose best friend divorced and moved away, I remarked that he must miss his him terribly. He began to weep and said, "Oh I do, everyday.” Looking at me he said, “No one remembered me" and we didn’t.
Comparing the states of the widowed and the divorced, the defining feature is choice…and whose it was to make.
Neither situation is a walk in the park.
Martha, thanks for the question. It's an important one.
You have such a gift Jo! I am always interested in what you have to say even when it doesn't apply to me.
ReplyDeleteI do have one comment related your statement that "The widowed have no choice regarding their marital status." I agree that for the majority that is true, however I've watched enough Dateline to know that some people are "widowed" by choice :)
since i went through the process TWICE, by God--& you can't do it well without consulting Her-- i now realize that i missed out on chicken salad and jello mold TWICE. i should make up for lost nourishment with a commemorative visit to whole foods, but neither the diet nor the debit card could stand it.
ReplyDeletefact it, after the 1st one-- 'annulment' in californiaspeak--and the 2nd, which was an 18-year stint also ended by choice, i learned that, for awhile at least, it was exactly like widowhood but coping with a live corpse in the same town. and motherhood--according to the divorce papers--was supposed to be every other week. what passed for a return to wholeness came when the corpse moved to another state. like south carolina. not transmutation. or something. although it woulda worked either way, eh?
and then real life got better and better and here we all are. with new problems. but they are lovely, aren't they? you know how to appreciate the problems you chose with such hard gained wisdom.