A Letter from the West

I sat down to write for Dialogue on the position of the widow in the Church, but I could never get past the first sentence, which was: “There is no place for a widow in the Church unless she is willing to look resolutely and cheerfully toward the grave.” I’ll probably write such an article some time, but it won’t be now and it won’t be for Dialogue. 

The truth is I don’t like being “single” again and yet it gives me a great deal of freedom and mobility which I love. I find my greatest joy in being a mother, the role I take most seriously and which has the most stabilizing influence in my life. So far as the Church is concerned, the mother who must work is regarded in a far different light from one who does it for other reasons. 

I also think that so far as the Church is concerned a widow is in quite a different position from someone who has never married or from a divorced woman. It’s not a position I like because it does carry with it a certain amount of pity and condescension, but on the other hand there is no feeling of censure, which I think the divorced and single often get, and my strong sense of identification with women who are married helps them to see me as a person rather than as a position—widow. 

Although I can in no way explain it, my relationship with people who knew my husband has a different aspect to it than my relation with people who only see me alone. The best way I can describe it is to say that people who only know me, only know a part of me.