Posted on 2nd April 2021, written on 26th March 2021

Image by Sarah Treanor, fellow widbud, on www.streanor.com

Written for Emma’s birthday, 27 March 2021

My name is Neil, known also as “Medjool.”
Since June 2019, I have had the immense good fortune to step into the life — and the heart — of Emma.

Emma lost her husband, Mike, four years ago. She also lost their youngest daughter, Julia, who ended her life twenty-one months ago. A few years before that, she had already lost her younger brother, Edward, and a very dear friend, Don.

Some time ago, Emma suggested that I share here, in her blog, something of my experience as the “new” partner of someone in grief — of a widow, in particular. I do so with enthusiasm, but I want to acknowledge two limits from the outset.

First, because every relationship is unique, I make no claim that what follows offers any sort of lesson for others. I believe it is in the crossing — even the friction — of our individual experiences, stories, questions, and doubts that our perspectives are enriched.

And second, grief is now an inseparable part of Emma, my partner. I cannot disentangle, in the way we love each other, what is linked to her bereavements and what is not.

With those caveats in place, I return to the original question: what impact does widowhood — does my partner’s grief — have on our relationship? In what ways does this relationship differ, in that regard, from those I have known before?

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Loving, while wishing this love had never been possible

My first answer lies in the absurdity of death itself: I came into Emma’s life because Mike died — not because she had left him. Since I love Emma, part of me wishes she could still have Mike by her side today, not me. And since she loves him deeply, how could she not wish that too?
“You are Number Two, not Second Best,” she says to me often.

Loving one another, while wishing this relationship had never needed to exist — I quickly placed this absurd contradiction among those unfathomable, non-rational parts of life that are beyond me, and which I accept as such.

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The immense richness in another’s grief

My second answer springs from a conviction that, in some way — or perhaps through sheer determinism — we “choose” our relationships for their potential to help us grow.

Put differently: being with someone like Emma, who is not only living with grief but engaging with it in a deep, conscious way, is to have the privilege of observing up close her passage through it, and all that it calls forth.

It is to learn how to better accompany others in grief; to learn how to accompany myself when loss arrives in my own life (I lost my mother last year); to learn to accept my own mortality. And above all — through the mirror of Emma’s journey — it is to learn how to live more fully today: with greater presence, gratitude, compassion, and courage.

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An invitation to love more — oneself, and the other

Grief is extraordinarily demanding, and at times draws on every resource. Because of this, Emma is, on occasion, less available to the relationship. Such moments are not, of course, scheduled in a diary — they can arise in the middle of a romantic weekend in the mountains.

They show up as her withdrawing; as my own sense of powerlessness to help; as questions about whether I should stay close or give her space.

In these moments, two voices speak in my head. One says: Who are you to complain, when you have no idea of the scale of what Emma is going through?
The other invites me to look inward: If Love were my guide, what would it counsel? How can I better love myself here, so that I do not depend on Emma’s love and resent her absence? And how can I love Emma fully, with compassion, accepting her suffering without being able to take it away?

I have learned that reacting in such moments — hoping to soothe my own wounds — leads nowhere. If I had chosen Emma in the secret hope of giving myself a role by “helping her heal,” our relationship would likely never have begun.

Instead, her emotional absences are invitations to return to myself, to care for myself better, and then to act towards Emma — with love — once I am re-anchored in body, heart, and mind.

Of course, every couple encounters periods of emotional distance. But when they come from day-to-day pressures — work stress, fatigue — they can feel less “legitimate” than bereavement, and it is easier to slip into blame. With grief, that shortcut is not available.

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A ménage à trois

Emma told me early on: Mike will always be part of her life. She will always love him. His portraits are everywhere in her home, and we speak of him often.

A sort of ménage à trois: Emma, Mike — his presence, his memory — and me.

To my own surprise, this doesn’t trouble me in the least. On the contrary, I love Mike — even though, sadly, I never knew him.

I love him because he shared almost thirty years of love and happiness with Emma. Because through that relationship, Emma gained the lived experience of building something enduring and joyful — the capacity to listen, to dialogue, to offer generous attention to herself, to me, and to “us.” Such qualities, in my own experience, are not so easily found on dating sites — and they make for rare and precious ground on which to grow.

And finally, I love Mike because he knows Emma so well that, in those rare moments when I am lost — when I do not know how to be with her pain — I can turn to him for advice. And every time, he answers me, from within my own heart.

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In conclusion

Our society does not like death.

Yet those who have been bereaved are no less capable of loving life. On the contrary: to accompany a partner, or any loved one, to the end is to touch the sacredness of life.

For me, sharing my life with a widow — a widow marked by multiple griefs — leads me to inhabit life more fully, to celebrate it each day, in love. It is not easy, of course. But the few snags, restored to their rightful scale, become sources of growth.

So yes — there can be life, and love, after the loss of a partner. Grief and new love are not incompatible — provided that there is room in the relationship for that grief, just as there is for all the other life experiences each partner brings.