#50: Widowed yet surrounded by love.
Learning to let your life evolve after loss.
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“Emergency contact?”
The front-desk clerk at the surgery center looked down at my paperwork, seeing a blank amidst the filled-in boxes.
Not that terribly long ago, that simple question made me cry.
Fellow widows and widowers, even divorcees and singletons, you know what I’m talking about.
When we take an exercise class at a new studio, see a doctor for the first time, go zip-lining or go-kart racing — or in this particular case, have foot surgery — the emergency contact box is there, staring us down. A space as vast and white and impassable as a Greenland glacier.
But seven years after initially experiencing the heartbreaking indignity of this seemingly innocuous question, it has lost its sting.
“Oh, sorry, it's my brother-in-law Richie. He’ll be here to pick me up,” I responded.
Forty-eight hours post-foot surgery, I was snuggled into my gray fuzzy sectional at the treehouse.
Richie had taken the instructions from the surgeon, wheeled me out to his Jeep, and deposited me safely at home. “I’ll call you tonight, sis!” he chirped as he left. “And I’ll be back tomorrow for a check-in.”
Surrendering to couch-potato-dom, I popped open Netflix and tediously typed in the search bar: Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. In case you’re not hip to longevity science, blue zones are regions around the world where people consistently live to be 100 or older. And there’s nothing like surgery to get you thinking about living longer.
So over the next few hours, I giggled at white-hairs’ jokes and patted my own back for having most of the blue zone characteristics already. Community. Laughter. Purpose. A decent diet. A good amount of (pre-foot-surgery) walking.
Essentially, I was lulled into a false sense of security by this feel-good show… when the second-to-last episode dropped a bomb on me: those with partners live longer lives.
And there I was, sitting in my treehouse alone.
Oh dammit, Mike! You are supposed to be here still to help me live longer!
Bring in the black balloons and spoiled cake. Cue my personal pity party.
I mean, what the heck?! I’m supposed to HAVE a partner. I HAD a partner. Everyone else HAS a partner. What the f—
Interrupting my anti-celebration, a muffled buzz came from the seam in the couch. I squeezed my hand between the cushions, extracting my phone. A text message lit up the screen.
It was my beloved 82-year-old Uncle Joe in Houston. Joe is technically Mike’s uncle. But we’ve been thick as thieves since I passed the first family initiation test: not running away screaming when introduced to this raucous and rowdy side of the family way back in 1995. One of my favorite photos from my wedding is Joe and I cutting a rug.
Fast forward to 2023, and out of the blue Joe was texting me,
“Sue, I can’t help thinking about the beautiful home you built on your own. What a great independent futuristic undertaking. Love you for the person you are. Keep it going. Love and admiration.
“As an old guy I know you have a great future.
“You will make a difference.”
Thanks Universe and Uncle Joe! I needed that.
Like a rabid bingo player, I want to check all the boxes in the blue zone.
I seek out hillier terrain to challenge myself, better food to nourish myself, more community to enrich myself, new opportunities to laugh at myself. I enjoy pushing myself this way — in order to live longer, to enjoy my time on earth more, and to make the biggest impact I can while here.
In other words, I generally appreciate any guidance about how to get more out of life. But I reacted to the partner insight (which was literally ten minutes in a four-hour series) like a child having a meltdown.
I felt like I was getting scolded for doing life wrong.
Because here’s the honest truth. I don’t miss having a partner. I miss having Mike.
I have little interest in dating. My time alone is precious. My dedication to the kids remains paramount. And The Luminist is my passion.
So am I missing out on something life-giving by no longer having a partner? Or are partners just the most common source of many essential blue zone nutrients — support, kinship, affection, and companionship?
The last episode of Live to 100 made the answer obvious.
In the final montage of smiley, wizened faces were many widowed elders surrounded by their families, groups of decades-old friends connecting over cards, clusters of two or three tiny grannies climbing ever-upward in their hill villages, and grey-haired volunteers working slowly but surely to help others in their community.
Here’s the secret I think I’ve been keeping from myself…
While I was railing against my early widowhood because of what partnership could have (and should have!) done for me, I was missing the larger, blue zone perspective.
As social creatures we need connection, both to live longer and to enjoy life more. When we expand our concern beyond our own skin to include family, friends, and community, life gains meaning — meaning that is surprisingly more powerful than straight self-interest.
Life gets dull if all we care about is ourselves.
It’s what we do for others, as part of a community, that gives us good reason to get out of bed in the morning… even after a hundred years.
In other words, longevity is a symptom of being part of an interconnected web. Often this web centers around a partner and kids, but it doesn’t have to. Richie picking me up from the surgery center. Uncle Joe sharing his love via text. Mike and my other work friends making our company feel like a family.
And well beyond this. I receive daily reminders of the community I have unwittingly built to fill the spaces a partner used to consume.
The spritely lady at the dry cleaner who has assured me, “You’ll pick up men’s shirts again some day!” Barista Kristina at my favorite coffee shop who writes my name on the cortado cup with a little heart next to it every single time. Retired Marine Mike who swims in the rec center lane next to me at 6am, and always offers to come help with anything I need because his mom was a widow too.
There is not one singular kind of human interaction that helps us thrive. There are myriad kinds. The blue zone centenarians made me see my gap…and also see what I’ve made of it. The mosaic I have formed from the colorful pieces of love across all the areas of my life is a worthy work of art.
This is one of the greatest lessons loss has ever given me.
Sooner or later, something essential in our life is going to shatter — broken into a million pieces so that we can never put it back together again.
Grieve the shattering, honor the void, mourn what was.
And when you’re ready, let the empty space become your blank canvas. Make art of your loss, meaning from your pain. Let the hole be generative. Be curious and open-minded about what blooms in its place.
Because life will surprise you with the wild and beautiful things it creates when you stop assuming you can only get certain things from certain sources.
That’s just not how love works. Love is bigger in every way than our expectations. My life is proof.
In connection,
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If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:
#12: How I became a heart-seeking missile (in a good way). The epic power of our hearts to take loss and turn it into even more love.
#14: Things will be great again. Giving each other permission to believe in the future while honoring the pain of the present.
#26: Wired to share (despite what our culture tells us). Seeking sanity between evolutionary instinct and modern impulse.
#44: You can’t go home again. Side-stepping nostalgia to love what is.
#48: Allowing reality to be on your side. Surrender, the hard way and the easy way.
Sue, once again your words make me feel heard in a world that often doesn’t seem to understand the complexities of deep love and deep loss. Many of my friends and family are baffled by my lack of interest in finding another partner—which hurts my heart in a deeply visceral way. They don’t understand. I, too, don’t miss having a partner. I miss having Phil. Thank you also for the reminder that surrounding oneself with community is a vital part of living a fulfilled life, with or without a partner.
Loved the dry cleaning lady comment to you!!!! Just this week my wife and I offered to a friend to share Thanksgiving dinner with our family. Community!! She and her daughter are going through what have to heart wrenching decisions separating from a decidedly bad time with her former husband. My impression is although early in the change, we know her as strong, and always has been open to new people and circumstances, ( her husband is also, but in his case, maybe too open, therefore the problem ). I told her I see it as not an issue of growing up, but of not accepting that we all age, and we all have to agree with ourselves to start growing older. But I mean growing older is not cutting off any of life’s possibilities, ; but to grasp, to enjoy, to live life in those moments as new and as precious as if we were a teenager!