Learning to Live Again

December 18, 1980. On occasion, students might learn from their teachers. But more often than not, teachers learn from their students. Such was my experience not long ago with one of my students, Ann. She is a widow.

After nearly twenty-five years of marriage, her husband died, and she moved to Provo to continue her education. She wrote a paper in my class titled “Learning to Live Again,” and some of her comments may help us gain further understanding about marriage. In this case, it is a second marriage. Ann wrote:

People who have lost a spouse through death still need to experience emotional and physical love. A few years after my husband died, my brother-in-law greeted me with a kiss on the cheek. I had to fight back the tears, as I realized how much I missed that kind of affection.

My relationship with married men was very guarded because wives sometimes become jealous when their husbands show any attention to unattached women. I also had a real fear of single men. I did not want to enter into just any relationship and did not know how to relate to men in general in a friendly way.

Some face the task of preparing for a second marriage more easily than others. Maybe it requires letting yourself become attracted to or fall in love with the opposite sex.

I am just now beginning to adjust to being able to make friends with men, and that is one step along the way toward a possible second marriage. I finally found the courage to attend a singles dance and found it to be fun and a socially acceptable way to satisfy my need both to touch and be touched by others.

Dancing with men and feeling that some might enjoy my company is good for my self-esteem. And after returning from a recent dance I wrote the following poem.

We danced

            You held me close

A new or renewed feeling

            Came over me.

What are my feelings,

            Now that I discover

            I can still have feelings?

            Is it love?

            There are many kinds of love.

To be able to love again

            Is a marvelous feeling.

            I am human, alive.

But what does it mean

This love that I feel?

To be committed totally, or

            To love as a friend.

            A fellow human being?

Appreciation in someone

            Who has set me free from the

Prison of subdued feelings.

            Where life is a desert, just existing,

            No real joy,

            Afraid of taking a risk.

But freedom is so thrilling,

            The world is more beautiful

            The willow tree is aglow

            And radiant in the autumn sun

And so am I.

Thanks Ann.

Dr. Allan Fromme, psychologist in Florida, apparently agrees with Ann. He said, “Other than expressing our grief, mourning does nothing to remove it. Just as tradition is best served by continuing what existed yesterday, so is the memory of a person best served by living as one did before his or her death.  Aloneness is a violation of the memory.”

He concluded, “We need others to re-capture the semblance of life’s earlier quality. The sooner we reach out for them, the more fully we can once again count ourselves among the living.”