I was far from ready to be a widow – in so many ways.
Let’s think about the word 'widow.'
There is the Black Widow.
There is the Merry Widow.
There is the Rich Widow.
There are all those witches who are, without doubt, widows too.
Chekov had a widow who wore her ‘widow’s weeds,’ but still powdered her face – a predatory widow, by implication.
The word 'widow' is loaded with stereotypes which suggest that they are not to be messed with. You must steer clear because they are dangerous creatures: desperate, demanding, grieving. Out of control.
These negative stereotypes of widows most of us feminist girls of the seventies had not visualized as something we would have to experience ourselves and, stupidly, we had not created new roles for us to grow into. After all, we didn’t really think we were ever going to fall for all that romantic happily-ever-after-richer-or-for-poorer-sickness-and-health sort of narrative.
More fool us.
Thus, the stereotypes are still there and, I don’t know about any of you girls out there, but none of these are roles which I feel happy to slip into.
So, as well as this terrible problem of trying to fill the empty space in which my love used to live, a space which I sometimes see as this sharp cut-out of the shape where Jonathan used to be, with a howling black infinite nothingness yawning behind it, I have to deal with the new space I am supposed to fill.
