Error 404
In her ninth year of blogging, Sue closed the blog. It had served its purpose, she wrote, and she had nothing left to say about her experience as a widow. “Widows Speak Up” would go silent, returning a 404 Error in perpetuity.
This was the first time, to my knowledge, that Sue Larrison lied to her sister widows. I believe she lied because last week as I worked on my memoir of widowhood, I decided to check on Sue and thank her for creating such a wonderful place for so many. In the information age, it’s easy to find anyone, so it wasn’t difficult to find her.
I discovered from her obituary that Sue died a little over a month ago, on September 27, 2017.
The happiest years of Sue’s life happened up to the moment before Lane collapsed and died. She was never as happy again after that. Sue didn’t want to remind us of this truth, so wished us well, sent us her love, and left us with the fabrication that everything was “fine, just fine.” Perhaps an intention of keeping our collective hopes for better years ahead prevented her from sharing that the cancer had returned, that she was dying.
I cried over Sue’s death, because her own hopes of better years ahead had died with her. We widows and other bereaved folks who cannot get past or get over our losses fear being unhappy the rest of our lives. Like amputees experiencing phantom limb sensations, we feel an abiding pain from being uncoupled from what was once part of us. We fear that trauma and grief have irreparably damaged and changed us for the worse.
Here’s what Sue wrote about how losing Lane changed her:
Monday, January 23, 2012
Flat-lined
Like most of you, my life has been a series of ups and downs. In college I was diagnosed and treated for cancer. That was a down. Moving into my first apartment and being so excited about living in a big city was a definite up.
Over the years, work and friends both treated me to real emotional highs and lows. Looking back I realize how easy it was to get excited or feel let down by others. Family, of course, creates a lot of emotional upheaval. Some of it made me crazy happy, some of it made me crazy mad and some, crazy sad.
Meeting and marrying Lane was the greatest emotional experience of my life. I really did not understand my capacity to love someone until we got together. It was wonderful to be able to share happy times and be there to comfort one another when things weren’t so great.
Now emotionally, I have flat-lined. I never feel really happy, and truthfully I never feel really sad. Mostly I don’t feel. I am pretty good at faking it, which sounds so awful when I say it out loud.
Am I the only one who has flat-lined emotionally since losing her husband?
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