Today I had breakfast with Paula, a recent widow. Perhaps because I myself had been widowed, I am drawn into that special sorority of women — those who’ve lost a beloved spouse. I find them, or they find me. Though it’s a sorority none of us would wish to join, it has brought me into the presence of people at a precious time. When people are grieving, they are raw. They haven’t time or energy for pretense or trying to be impressive. Because they are real, they are at their most beautiful.
I originally visited the Santa Ynez Valley from Northern California 22 years ago. My young husband had died in November. We had two kids, ages five and 10. A few weeks after his death, I was sitting in the tub. It was a place where, back then, I spent a lot of time. After I made breakfast, packed lunches for the kids and got them off to school, I’d soak, allowing the steaming water and tiled walls to obliterate anything else.
Then the phone rang. A pleasant voice announced herself as Mary, calling from the Alisal Ranch in Solvang, California. She said that they were holding reservations for us — for the time between Christmas and New Year’s. The week was already paid for. She was just confirming as she hadn’t heard from us in a while.
I gulped. My newly-deceased husband had booked the four of us into the Alisal Ranch earlier that year, but I’d forgotten all about it. “My husband just died,” I blurted out. Now it was her turn to pause. “Okay, honey,” she said, gently. “So what else are you going to do for the holidays?”
She had a point. The kids and I did go to the Alisal Ranch for the holidays, where we were treated gently and with kindness by everyone — even the horses. It was that week that showed me the possibility that we were going to survive. Between kind people, the animals, and the beautiful Santa Ynez Mountains, I began to emerge from my dark cloud. Ever since then, this Valley has been my happy place — it represents good people and nature. I never suspected that one day I’d call it home.
Today, at my breakfast with Paula, she told me her husband had been gone eight months and three days. You can tell someone is recently bereaved when they can tell you — in such precise time increments — exactly when their loved one died, calculated in months and days.
I suggested a book to Paula, something that helped me. It is called “The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion, and describes the insanity of that first year after loss. We are not quite ourselves. We do and say crazy things. Forgetting the loved one is gone, we think we see them approaching in a crowd. We dent our car or drop a favorite plate. We forget things.
At breakfast Paula said that people kept offering well-meaning advice after her husband’s death. They tried to get her to talk when she didn’t want to talk. They quoted inspirational pieces. They suggested grief groups. They pushed her to get out of the house more. She didn’t want advice. She didn’t want to go to groups. She didn’t know what she wanted, other than staying in the comfort and security of her own home, but she did accept my book offering.
After Paula and I finished breakfast, I went to an appointment at Bethania Church. That day, it seemed that grief was following me. When I walked into the church office, I noticed another book, this on the receptionist’s desk. It was also about loss. Was Kristyl, the church secretary, another member of the grieving sorority?
“I know that book,” I said to her. “What made you choose it?”
She told me that although her father died 40 long years ago, when she was still a little girl, she is still sometimes overwhelmed with grief for him. The grief comes by surprise, when she’s not at all expecting it. She wishes she’d gotten to talk about it more when she was a child. She wishes her little brother had, as well.
“It’s our culture,” she observed. “We don’t talk nearly enough about sorrow.” And she added, “We also don’t say, ‘I love you’ enough to people when they’re still alive.”
It’s been that kind of day. I’ve been talking about grief non-stop. Yet the blessing of these conversations is that they brought me in contact with Paula and Kristyl. So it was a very good day, indeed.