BILKIS BAKARE
Unlike widows, widowers are often neglected and left alone to painfully bear their cross. Universally, it is a common practice to empathize with widows. This is due to the conviction that men are the bread winners in all families. So, when the head of the family dies, it is expected that the extended family members, neighbours, religious organizations as well as non-governmental organizations assist the deceased family financially and materially. Indeed, most spousal loss support group focus more on widows than on widowers!
However, the goal post is now shifting as more women are now bearing the burden of providing the basic needs of their families due to prevailing global economic recess. Now, in many homes, women are now bread winners. Therefore, when such women die, the husband would experience various challenges and vacuums difficult to fill would be left in such homes.
Although the death of a spouse is more common for women than for men, a man’s chance of becoming a widower increases as he ages. Oftentimes, widowers’ experiences are affected by a variety of factors, including their age, the relationship with their children, how well they are able to assume new responsibilities, and how much emotional and material support is available from others. Similarly, the loss of a wife can have adverse consequences on the widower’s physical health. This, too, can vary depending on the widower’s prior health, his lifestyle, and to what extent he possesses the skills he needs to take care of himself. Finally, while many widowers have the resources and skills that enable them to eventually cope and adapt on their own, a significant few turn to more formal sources of help. Widowers’ motivation to seek assistance as well as the effectiveness of that help often is a product of their beliefs and expectations about how a man is to grieve and respond to loss.
The degree of difficulty that widowers face can be dependent on when in their own life the loss occurs. Although not necessarily true of everyone, many widowers whose wives die around the same time that they are retiring from their occupation (or soon thereafter) or just lost their jobs can be prone to more difficulty. Married couples often have expectations about how they intend to spend their retirement or their incomes together. Those expectations can be shattered as newly bereaved widowers suddenly find themselves facing retirement or loss of a job alone, which could be a source of depression or hopelessness. Conversely, men who are in their preretirement years might adapt more easily. They are typically still employed, could be more socially connected due to ties in the workplace, and might still have children in the home. Of course, these also can be potential sources of difficulty, particularly if relationships with children are strained or if assuming new responsibilities around the household interferes with the widower’s effectiveness at work and elsewhere. Conversely, these life circumstances could represent a sense of feeling useful, involved, and being engaged in meaningful activity—all potential constructive coping mechanisms for the widower.
The unemployed or not so economically buoyant man would be left as the sole parent; no matter how old the children are, available for any of their concerns at any hour, as family and friends return to their own normal lives after the initial expressions of condolences and being alone after a wife’s death is difficult. The widowers had difficulty expressing their grief outwardly; therefore, emotions associated with their losses are expressed in isolation. In essence, loneliness is the most common feeling experienced by the widowers. They found this emotion to be nearly all-consuming when not with family or work colleagues.
The widower has difficulty defining himself after the death of his wife and difficulty making decisions. He often equates the death of their wives with the loss of their primary source of protection, support, and comfort. This went to the very core of his overall sense of wellbeing. It has been described as “being lost without a compass,” usually due to their profound loneliness but also because widowers often depended on their wives for many things like managing the household, caring for their children, and being their only true confidant. This sense of being lost is more profound when widowers need help but have difficulty obtaining or even asking for it. They also can experience ambiguity about the emotions they are feeling and the uncertainty of how to express them. In most homes, both parents take joint decisions after a long deliberation on the problem at hand and often times the woman’s antidote to the problem usually work. More often than not the widower, after his wife’s death is too distressed to take on his children’s grief as well as his own.
Several studies suggest that widowers can be prone to depression after the death of their wives, especially when they are compared with their non bereaved married counterparts. On average, married men are less likely than married women to be depressed. Most epidemiological studies report that marriage tends to be protective for men in terms of depression and other mental health problems, largely because a supportive marital relationship buffers them from the negative impact of the stress and strains of everyday life. Bereavement, therefore, is more depressing for many widowers because they, quite simply, have more to lose than widows. This is based on the assumption that a man’s spouse is often his primary source of social support. Consequently, although a widower may have been more apt to express his thoughts and feelings to his wife when she was alive, he may be equally unlikely to be so open to others. Health of widower can suffer because they lack many of the skills that are important in self-care. This is due to the fact that many tasks of daily living that are essential to health and well-being were primarily the responsibility of the deceased wife.
Because of the unique problems widowers have assuming new responsibilities, they can benefit from programs that focus on skill-building and self-care education to help them successfully manage those tasks of daily living important to health, functioning, and independence. Issues of greater concern for widowers might include meal planning and preparation, housekeeping, and doing laundry, particularly if the children are still too young to assume these responsibilities or are now independent of their parents.
Although the option of remarrying is open to every widower, but not all embrace it as they are emotionally and spiritually attached to their deceased spouses. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for everyone to be concerned about the welfare of the widowers. Like the widows, they too have lost one of the most important treasures in their lives and no form of assistance is too small or too big to alleviate their sufferings. Government institutions, corporate organizations as well as individuals and non-governmental organisations should put mechanisms in place to assist the widowers in their efforts to cope with their irreparable loss.
Bakare writes from Alausa, Ikeja.
