I suppress the rising panic as I nervously glance back and forth at the group two booths away.
My friend sits next to me, clapping and cheering as our friend sings a rousing, offbeat version of “Rocket Man.” Without noticing the circus act in my abdomen, he lets out a scream as the crowd joins in the chorus. I'm relieved he's busy. I need a moment to make a plan.
After seven months of dealing with extremely unpleasant situations, I have achieved professional status. From daily arguments with the mortgage company to polite smiles during well-meaning conversations that make me want to tear my hair out, it takes a lot to make me outwardly insecure these days.
But this situation feels different. There are no professional boundaries here. A knot forms in my stomach as I risk another look at the familiar face two stalls away. I catch his eye and disgust twists his face. Fear has chained me to my place; I'm too scared to run, afraid he'll grab my arm as I run past, but too frantic to pretend everything's okay.
Because it's not like that. Far from it. I'm on a date and staring at my dead husband's best friend.
The menacing looks come from Tim, my late husband's old roommate and diving buddy. He looks sloppy drunk and not particularly happy with my current whereabouts, a mix of perplexed and pissed. I can't say I blame him; From the outside, I'm a newly widowed woman having fun with a strange man. But Facebook's “It's complicated” status doesn't even begin to explain what I'm trying to do.
I'm not your traditional widow. For one thing, I'm young, only 29. And my grief isn't tied to sadness and loss; it is complicated by anger and betrayal. When Max died seven months earlier, our marriage was in trouble. I should never have agreed to his suggestion, but the ship had already sailed two years ago when he fell to his knees. We had one therapy session behind us and another on deck, but I knew we couldn't weather this storm.
“I’m not your traditional widow. For one thing, I'm young, only 29. And my grief isn't tied to sadness and loss; it is complicated by anger and betrayal.”
Whenever I think about my marriage and what happened, my brain turns to ocean metaphors. Not a surprise, really, since Max died in a diving accident on Thanksgiving last year. Ironically, he was one of the most respected professionals in the diving industry. He was also only 30 years old.
All widows share certain experiences. A tactful reminder of the day our marital status changed is tattooed into our brains without our consent. Time feels heavy, like it has dragged you under water. Slow movements require concentrated effort. Days become snippets of people floating in and then quietly retreating. Our fingers repeatedly dial the phone, deliver the messages and, in my case, make another call without thinking. Because that's where the danger lay – in the break.
These moments bind all widows together, whether we like it or not. Nora McInerny says it best in her book “The Hot Young Widows Club”: “We're sorry you're here, but I'm glad you found us.” But the second blow, I received shortly after Max's death, let me enter an even more exclusive and even less desirable club, although there are more of us in it than one would expect.
At the end of a marriage, whether through death or divorce, secrets bubble to the surface, no matter how much we wish they remained hidden. People always want to know how I found out, their voices laced with either obvious disbelief or blatant curiosity.
In my case it took six weeks. Six weeks full of shame, sadness and responsibility for Max's death. A sadness that I have burdened myself with because I have brought to light the doubts in our marriage. Because it wasn't right from the start to have one foot out of something that I knew to my core wasn't right. For six weeks, I wondered if our marital problems had distracted him underwater. Six weeks of guilt over the relief that I had been spared a hellish divorce while Max paid the ultimate price.
“At the end of a marriage, whether through death or divorce, secrets bubble to the surface, no matter how much we wish they remained hidden.”
So here it is, the ugly secret: Max cheated on me from the moment we first said hello. We arranged to meet; he has arranged to meet. We got engaged; he has arranged to meet. We have married; He continued his productive dating life. All without my knowledge. It wasn't until six weeks into my grief that one of my friends called me and asked, “What if I found out something bad about Max?” Really bad. Would you like to know?” Without hesitation I answered “Yes”. And then I promptly threw up.
I started digging deep into his phone records. For days, I sat at my desk with a thick stack of paper and a yellow highlighter. As the pages turned more yellow than white, I began scrolling through thousands of pictures and emails, reconstructing the timing and orchestration of a social life to which I was not privy. An email was sent before he left work. He received text messages in the middle of the night, which were then deleted from his phone.
The gap between the grief experience I had and the one most people thought I had was huge. My therapist described my grief as “complicated.” I was angry and fueled my anger by exposing every little detail.
As I discovered each new woman, I picked up the phone, cried, and cursed his name to my friends. My life felt like a soap opera: husband cheating on wife; husband dies; His wife is forced to deal with the reality of his many lovers.
But even as I raged, these terrible truths rarely came to light. Society still clings to the trite adage “never speak ill of the dead,” making it nearly impossible for people to voice their own stories and experiences that might shed light on the imperfections of the deceased. And I fell right in line.
Out of respect for his family, coupled with my own shame at being cheated on, I decided early on to only tell those close to me. This allowed the larger mourning community to keep Max on his throne. While it worked for them, for me it came at a price.
“Society still clings to the tired adage, 'Never speak ill of the dead,' which makes it nearly impossible for people to voice their own stories that might illuminate the imperfections of the deceased.”
I developed a strong gag reflex and couldn't even get through a short tooth-brushing session without vomiting. The truth was deep in my throat, punishing me for not letting it out.
Now, seven months after my husband died, here I am sitting in a bar with my friend, trying to live a normal life, and there is my late husband's best friend, drunk with his friends, staring at his friend's widow who cheats on him with another man. But I know so much that Tim doesn't. Or, worse, maybe he knows and doesn't care.
“Rocket Man” was coming to a thunderous conclusion when I decided a change of scenery was in order. Although I have been open and transparent with my boyfriend, there is a big difference between hearing about a dead husband and being confronted with his existence on a Saturday night. Plus, Tim doesn't look like he's thinking straight. The very last thing I need is a scene.
I lean in and whisper that we need to go and why, all the while working to contain my embarrassment. I'm ashamed. Dating a dead husband isn't exactly sexy. I also want to protect our budding relationship from those who don't know the whole story. Thank God my understanding friend is a stand-up guy.
“It's as if [a widow’s] The right to happiness has died in our spouses, and if we try to revive it too soon, we will be stigmatized.”
He takes my hand and we manage to slide out of the cabin and down the back stairs without having to get past Tim. I don't have to look in his direction to know that his bloodshot eyes haven't even left mine long enough to blink. I couldn't tell if it was the weight of his gaze or my shame that stayed with me the longest.
We hit the street and end the night at a bar at the end of the block. Although I'm grateful that nothing happened, it will take weeks before I feel comfortable going out again. Max's presence was felt on every corner for months. For years.
In general, widows are not viewed positively for finding happiness. The surrounding community sets the tone and determines what “appropriate” behavior is on an unwritten schedule that we are supposed to follow. When we deviate from this strict plan of mourning, we are met with thinly veiled judgment and, in some cases, outright contempt. It's as if our right to happiness with our spouses has died, and if we try to revive it too soon, we will be stigmatized.
Eventually I got to the point where I no longer felt like I was running into anyone who knew me, and once I did, the awkward situations became manageable. Instead of shrinking away from them with dripping palms and a painful pounding in my chest, I took a few calming breaths and then squared my shoulders. Progress.
I look back on all of this now as a 42-year-old, with the comfort of time on my side. With these events in the rearview mirror for years, I resist the urge to criticize my decisions. I would like to think that given a second chance, I would have pushed back with the truth instead of swallowing it and choking on it. But maybe not. Perhaps that would have been too much for 29-year-old me, a lost young woman desperately fighting to stay afloat amid the rubble. I did nothing wrong; I did my best.
And I learned to understand and appreciate what I was faced with, the internal and external pressures of being a young widow in uncharted and treacherous waters. I have a lot of love and forgiveness for my younger self and am very grateful. Without her, I wouldn't be where I am today, happily remarried and (mostly) free of the ocean metaphors.
Robyn Woodman is an author, speaker, and coach who has risen from the ashes of her own life multiple times and works with women who are ready to do the same. Robyn works and travels internationally encouraging women to prioritize themselves and live their lives without compromise. She and her husband have lived in his native Italy and currently reside in the Bay Area. You can connect with Robyn @robynwoodman on Instagram and Twitteror via their website, https://www.robynwoodman.com/.
Note: This story is a HuffPost editorial favorite and was originally published on the site in 2019.
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