Linda Feinberg - Im Grieving as Fast as I Can: How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal

IM GRIEVING
AS FAST AS I CAN

How Young Widows and Widowers

Can Cope and Heal

IM GRIEVING
AS FAST AS I CAN

How Young Widows and Widowers

Can Cope and Heal

Linda Sones Feinberg

Copyright 1994 by Linda Sones Feinberg

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanical, or any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission should be addressed to:

New Horizon Press

P.O. Box 669

Far Hills, NJ 07931

Feinberg, Linda Sones

Im Grieving As Fast As I Can:

How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-61688

ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-0-88282-442-0

New Horizon Press

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

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This book is based on my research and experience counseling young widows and widowers, as well as my clients own real-life experiences. Fictitious identities and names have been given to all characters in this book in order to protect individual privacy.

Linda Sones Feinberg, M.S.W., L.I.C.S.W., founded the first nonprofit organization for young widowed people. She served as director for six years. Since 1989, Linda has continued to run weekly support group meetings for young widowed people as well as middle-aged widowed people. She has a private psychotherapy practice in Newton, Massachusetts, specializing in grief and loss counseling of all kinds.

I wish to express my gratitude to all of the young widowed people, whose words and deeds inspired me to write this book. I am especially grateful to Diana Bianchi, Diane Bradley, Diane Bull, Linda Canto, Harvey and Sally Cook, Jean Cross, Brenda Culiane, John Curtis, Jackie Ellison, Dorothy Flanagan, Lucille and Tom Gerardi, Diane Giglio, Agnes and Dogan Gunes, Dennis and Kim Hallinan, Leila Hamori, Maria Horta, Judy Hoyt, Pat Kelley, Vikki Kendall, Sherry Kenney, Arthur Oestrich, John Pen-nisi, Donna and Tom Ringenwald, Susan Rosen, Paul Santos, Gary Singer, and Diane Talty. A very special thank you to Andrea Kaplan for her suggestions and encouragement.

Thank you to Chaplain Ann Carey of the AIDS Actions Committee in Boston. A special thank you to the late Dr. Sandra Fox for our conversations of the past.

Thank you to Joan Dunphy at New Horizon Press.

I am most grateful to the members of my family, Alec, Maris-sa and Jennifer, for being my support group.

I knew when my wife died that there would be many humps to climb over. I just didnt know there would be so many bumps in the humps.

There are many ironies when somebody dies. The person you need most to help you through this experience is the person who died. Just at the time you need support the most, those around you think you should be all better. You spend your whole adult life living for Fridays, but after somebody dies, you spend your whole life living for Mondays. As Beth, one young widow reported, Now that hes dead and Im finally in charge of the remote control, nothing on the TV interests me anymore.

Sometimes it takes death to appreciate life.

Although Im Grieving As Fast As I Can is a book about loss and would be helpful to anyone who has suffered a loss, the emphasis of this book is on young widowed people, and the case examples are drawn from my work experience. I am the founder and former director of an organization for young widowed people. During the past ten-and-a-half years, I have led weekly support group meetings for young widowed people under fifty and for many years I held weekly meetings in more than one location. I worked with nearly one thousand young widowed people, more than any other social worker in America. I have been greatly encouraged to write this book by clients who complain that there is no book in print especially for them.

If you see a man is drowning, do you ask him to call you sometime if he needs help? You just jump in.

Linda Feinberg

It seems fitting that I met my first young widow at a swimming pool. For indeed she was drowning. I was invited to a swimming pool club in Haverhill, Massachusetts with my three-year-old daughter. While standing by the pool, we were immediately introduced to a lovely woman named Sherry Kenney who was, like me, quite tall and thirty-three. She also had a precocious three-year-old son who was alternating between pouring water down his mothers back and trying to remove her eyeglasses. Linda, Id like you to meet Sherry. Would you believe shes a widow? What a bizarre way to introduce someone. Yet my curiosity was aroused. I had never before met a widowed person my age. Being a social worker by profession and a naturally nosy individual, I started asking her all kinds of personal questions. She didnt seem to mind. Sherry was verbal and poeticgrateful for the attention and a chance to speak about what had happened to her.

Sherry was a French teacher at the regional high school. She had been married to her handsome teacher-husband for eight years. The summer before we met, her thirty-two-year-old husband became very sick with flu-like symptoms. She drove him to the emergency-room at the local hospital. It was a very hot day, and the emergency room staff was expecting a case of heatstroke. They took one look at my husband and without giving him any tests, proclaimed him to be their expected case of heatstroke. They sent him home. He died the next day. He had had a severe bacterial infection in his bloodstream. His body was sent to Massachusetts General Hospital for study. They wouldnt even release his body for the funeral. His case was written up in a medical journal.

When I asked what her biggest problem was one year later, Sherry replied, Ive never met another young widowed person in the year since he died. I feel so isolated. No one understands me. I went to a support group for widowed people at a hospital, but they were all over seventy. I felt worse after I went than I did before. One old lady said, You have no right to be depressed. You werent even married that long. I was married for fifty years and when my husband died, I felt like I lost my right arm. I didnt have the energy to argue with her. I just wish there was a support group for young widowed people. Im sure that if there was such a group, it would change my life.

I can help you with that, I said. Im a social worker. Ive run lots of groups. Sherry was dubious. Really. The only problem is I dont know anything about young widowed people. You go home and put together a pile of any books and magazines you have found on grief and widowhood, and make a list of all your problems. Ill come over next week and well talk about them. In the meantime, Ill find a place for us to meet. A librarian suggested an available meeting place at a bank in And-over. We placed ads promoting the group in three local newspapers.