Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Saturday Night Widows

"Saturday Night Widows" by Becky Aikman

This book is about 6 women who suddenly find themselves widows at an early age.  They are women who don't fit the mold of a widow.  Women whose lives have taken a drastic turn and they find themselves floundering and needing help navigating their new paths.  It is an unlikely group but the loss of their husbands has brought them together, that might just be the only thing they have in common.  "There's nothing you can do.  My husband was the best thing I ever had.  When I lost him, my life changed in an instant.  But this has made me totally fearless.  Because the worst thing that could happen has already happened."  Perspective, we all need it, and sometimes it comes in the form of hardship and loss.  "I often wondered about the definition of home.  Is it the place where you live, or is it the place where the people you love reside?  And if the people you love are gone, where is home then?"  The death of someone so close turns your world upside down, so many people feel lost.  "Then there was the missing.  The bottomless missing.  Of course, I knew that I would miss Bernie, but what I didn't know until those hyperconscious nights was that grieving would be so much more than any missing I'd experienced up to now."  "How does a human being remake a life when it's shattered by loss?"  That is the question that begs to be answered.  How do you hold on to the past and remember but still press on and make a future?  "Humor is one of the strongest predictors of an eventual return to emotional equilibrium."  You've got to be able to laugh.  Loss is hard, life is hard, but when you can laugh you can be okay.  "But grief has a way of invading the simplest things, the most everyday things, the happiest things, sometimes more than the sad ones."  It comes in waves and surprises you at moments.  "Sometimes, in order to get strong, it's necessary to...face the pain."  And oh is that hard and scary, but the only way past it is through it.  "Because she's fearless to the point where she doesn't care if she fails."  That is a kind of fearlessness that we all need, to not be afraid to fail.  Big things happen when we try and do not care what others think.  Success comes from those kind of failures.  "I'm trying to come to appreciate the not knowing."  For us planners, the not knowing can be torturous.  That is where the big faith comes in.  "How safe we feel with each other.  It's sacred."  And that is something to truly be thankful for, another human being that God has graced you with that you can be yourself with.  It truly is a gift.  "Yes, I still knew, attachment can be suffering.  Attachment can be scary.  Attachment can be messy.  But attachment is life."  And life without attachment is no life at all.  I enjoyed this book and the resilliance of these women striving to make a new life from the rubble.  They embraced the fact that loss is not the end, it is hard, but it doesn't have to be the end.      

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