Please don’t tell us we’ll meet someone else
Women are more likely to be widowed when young than men. But what’s rarely talked about is the isolation they suffer — and the often crass responses of others to their loss
Vicky corbett is not looking forward to christmas this year. it will mark her second without her late husband, Phil, who passed away in March 2016, age 34, from oesophageal cancer.
it was his favourite time of year and long before the couple had two children — Zach, now four, and immy, two — he’d leave milk and mince pies out for Father christmas at their home in Hampshire.
‘i don’t know why he’d do it, as he’d just eat them himself,’ chuckles Vicky, 35.
Last christmas, however, is filled with memories of a very different kind.
‘i was fine during the build-up but then christmas morning came and i lost the plot,’ she explains. ‘the reality of the kids coming down and opening presents was too much.
‘i stupidly went on Facebook and saw everyone posting happy pictures of their families all together. i remember ringing Dad in floods of tears. they dragged me over to their house and i got very drunk. this year i’m determined not to let that happen again.’ Although time is a panacea of sorts, for Vicky, nothing can fill the gaping vacuum left by the loss of her young husband, whom she expected to spend decades beside.
‘i thought i’d prepared myself before he died. For almost two years we’d had the diagnosis. but when it hit it was a million times worse than what i could have imagined. it’s impossible to understand unless you’ve been through it.’
if the word ‘widow’ conjures up an image of someone in their 80s or beyond with greying hair and a sense of a long life well lived, Vicky is far from it. She’s one of a small section of society to be widowed at a young age and her experience offers a stark contrast to that notion. According to the office for National Statistics (oNS), the number of widows under the age of 49 is 83,310, less than 3 per cent of the overall total of some three million.
charities such as Widowed and young (WAy), which supports those who are 50 or younger when their partner dies, speak of a figure of more than 100,000 due in part to official counts failing to provide a complete picture or include those who cohabit and are not married.
either way, it amounts to the same unfortunate fact. A young widow is a statistical outlier, whose circumstances suddenly no longer fit with their contemporaries at a crucial moment in life, when others are career-building and child-rearing.
What’s more, women are far more likely to be widowed at a young age than men.
Approximately 72 per cent of widows and widowers under 49 are women, according to the oNS — which is attributed to high numbers of young male deaths from suicide, heart disease and road accidents.
Many unique issues unite young widows, from isolation from friends to the upending of finances that have not yet had time to accrue. ‘you also have to cope with your children’s grief while being cast suddenly as a single parent,’ says WAy’s chairman Georgia elms. ‘you have to build a new life.’
it was the reaction of people she met following Phil’s death, and this sense of becoming a social pariah, that made Vicky remove her wedding ring in the months after he died. conversations at playgroups had become excruciating as people saw it and asked about her husband.
‘i’ve always just said he had cancer and passed away,’ she says. ‘People recoil, back away and are so apologetic. they go so awkward. it’s not easy.’
Vicky, a teacher, and Phil, who was in the Army, were set up on a date in their mid-20s by friends.
He WAS laid back, she was feisty and independent, but their differences pulled them together and they married after four years of seeing each other, in 2012.
Zach arrived the following year, but at a friend’s wedding soon afterwards Phil complained of being unable to swallow properly. Doctors found an inoperable tumour in his oesophagus and discovered the cancer had spread throughout his body. Vicky and Phil had been married less than two years.
‘you have horrid dark moments when you just sob,’ says Vicky. ‘but when you have children you have to get on with it.’
over the next two years, Phil endured bouts of rigorous chemotherapy. they had immy using iVF — the chemotherapy affected his sperm — and managed holidays to South Devon and Disneyland until, in September 2015, they were told the tumour was growing.
Vicky had hoped he would rally, even if the chemotherapy was so strong that at times it seemed her husband had almost given up.
by then, Vicky had quit her teaching job to be Phil’s full-time carer, and they’d pulled out of buying their dream three-bedroom house near the sea in Hampshire to save money, relocating to Vicky’s parents’ in Sussex. Phil’s decline was swift.
‘He passed away in a hospice with me holding his hand and his mum next to him. He knew i was there, but he couldn’t speak much. you look back and it almost doesn’t seem real.
‘i went back to the hospice the next day to check that it had really happened. i’ll never forget going into the chapel. From then i went into autopilot, telling those who needed to know and organising the funeral. My mum and dad took over a lot.’
More hurdles were ahead as many of her friends stopped contacting her, embarrassed by the taboo of death and the juxtaposition of their own lives with her loss, and she had to explain to her young son the concept of dying. (immy was only eight months old when her father died.)
‘it’s only in the last couple of months immy has started asking: “is Daddy at work?” She doesn’t understand what has happened. you can’t hide it from them because it gets difficult further down the line. Zach knew Phil was ill, he saw the ambulances and him in hospital. i say the doctors tried to make him better, but they couldn’t.
‘i told them: “Daddy has died. Daddy has gone to heaven. Zach has accepted it, but he doesn’t yet fully understand.”’
Vicky is considering counselling for Zach as his frustration grows alongside the dawning realisation his family is different from his classmates.
the practicalities have also overwhelmed her. ‘Suddenly i had to look after everything — the children, the house, the car, the finances. you don’t realise how much you do as a pair until you are just one.’
She is child-minding part time and used Phil’s life insurance to buy a house near her parents. the idea she’ll meet someone else — as many so lightly assume of young widows — feels both laughable and terrifying.
‘it’s hard enough to find the right person in the first place. With young children you have to be even more careful. Also, who would want to take us on? they’d have to accept i’m only seeing them because of what happened. Phil and i would never have broken up. i will always love him and he will always be a part of our lives.’
Holly Matthews, 33, from coventry, is in the rawest first stages of young widowhood. the former casualty and Waterloo road star lost her husband, ross blair, in July. He had terminal brain cancer, diagnosed in 2014, and she is working out how to raise their two daughters, brooke, six, and texas, four, as a single mother.
‘We hear about the grief of losing a child, but people don’t talk about the grief of losing a partner at this age,’ she says.
one of the biggest problems she has encountered is others’ perceptions of how she should act. ‘We see grief in a certain way — the grieving widow in a black veil. there’s an assumption your life is over. if you are the opposite of that, there’s a worry you aren’t playing the right role and will be judged. i have moments of sadness, but i
won’t deliberately torture myself thinking about things.’
The couple met nine years ago at a London promotional event. They connected instantly and the next day Holly had moved from Essex to Coventry to be with Ross. Four years later, they married and, for a short while, life was bliss until he started experiencing anxiety attacks and splitting headaches.
After one particularly bad episode left him on the floor in pain and vomiting, Holly called an ambulance. A CT and MRI scan confirmed that Ross, aged just 29, had a grade-4 tumour on his brain the size of an egg.
Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy followed. ‘We had this mantra “whatever it takes”. That’s how we got through it at every stage.’
For a while, they thought it was beatable, but in May 2016 the tumour grew and, despite more surgery, nothing could halt the inevitable. Seven months ago Ross had a seizure at home on his 32nd birthday. ‘I was on the sofa with the girls writing 32 reasons why we love Ross. When I looked around I thought he was chatting to himself, but it was a seizure. From then on his brain didn’t recover.’
Holly finds night-time and being in groups the hardest. She is claiming the Government’s controversial new bereavement support payment, previously the widowed parent’s allowance, which was altered from April this year and shortened payments to 18 months. Previously, families with children could claim a weekly taxable benefit until the youngest child left full-time education.
Now, after a one off £3,500 lump, Holly will receive £350 a month for 18 months. WAY is campaigning against the changes and its chair, Georgia Elms, wants to see payments stretch until the youngest child is 18. ‘The new measures are so harsh,’ agrees Holly.
She is saving while working as a motivational speaker and has established The Happy Me Project, a 21-day online positivity course.
‘I’m at a transitional stage. I don’t understand life now. I have to work everything out again. What do I want? What don’t I want? What won’t I accept?’
Indeed, Holly reveals that she has already been approached by men asking if she wants to date again — something she says feels strange at this early stage.
She has also felt pressure to support Ross’s family, including her in-laws, something older widows typically don’t face. ‘You are not just managing your own grief, you are managing everyone else’s around you. There’s are times I feel great and then come back and see my mother-in-law who isn’t.’
No MATTER what lies ahead, Holly has faith in her children’s ability to blossom without their father around.
‘I don’t have concerns for the girls. I would never wish this on anyone, but it will make them more empathetic kids. Not a day goes by when we don’t speak about Ross. We just have to navigate it, together, as best we can.’
With the number of young widows exceeding widowers, men can struggle as they find themselves even more in a minority.
Martin Eggleston, 45 — whose wife, Jane, died nearly four years ago from breast cancer, leaving him to raise their seven-year-old daughter, Amy, now 11, alone — knows the trials of being a widower and moving on.
In the same year Jane passed away, having joined WAY, he met Kirstie, 41, a publisher, whom he has married. Like many young widows who are lucky enough to strike love twice, preconceptions abound. With young children in the equation, recoupling can be infinitely more complicated.
Martin had discussed meeting someone else with his late wife, who sanctioned the idea as long as he was happy and remained a good father. Still, there were eyerolls from some corners.
‘It’s not up to anyone else to tell you what the appropriate period is to grieve. We knew Jane was ill for a long time and I had six years of saying goodbye to her. Psychologically, I had done a lot of the grieving before she died.’
Although Amy was ‘obviously very wary at first’, the new couple promised to put the brakes on if it became too much for her or Kirstie’s two sons; Luke, five, and Dan, 12 — she was a widow, too.
A former civil servant, Martin has since become a stay-at-home father to his new brood of three.
‘We said: “Neither of us is a replacement for Mummy or Daddy. It’s about sewing two slightly damaged families together to help each other,”’ he explains. ‘Slowly it started to make sense.’
He also had to balance the expectations of Jane’s family. ‘I was worried about them but they’re coping with the fact their granddaughter is being looked after by a stranger.
‘They now agree it’s an unusual but loving family and all the children are doing really well.’
Equally difficult have been comments from well-meaning friends.
‘People do say stupid things. They make comparisons such as, “I know how you feel because I lost my uncle or my dog died last week.” It’s not helpful.
‘The number of people who said “You’re doing so well” to me because they saw me taking my child to school. But how do you know? You’re not there in the middle of the night when I roll over and she is not next to me or I’m weeping. Actually, I’m not fine.’
Now he feels anger, too, notably when watching others. ‘An old couple would walk off hand-inhand and you assume that they’ve had 40 or 50 years of happily married life — but here I am with this enormous hole.
‘When an older person dies you celebrate their life and achievements. When a younger person dies there is that sense they’ve been unfairly taken away. It’s that unfairness which is so hard.’