I don’t look like a widow. I am one, but I’ve been told I don’t exactly fit the bill. I think it’s because I’m not old and I’m not prone to wearing a lot of black. I became a widow the day my husband Chris died of a brain tumour. I was 35. He was 33. Our son, Liam, was two. None of us were old enough.

It all started when I got the call from Chris about two weeks after our first anniversary. I was at work, and he was crying. “You need to meet me at the hospital emergency room right away.” It was the first time I had ever felt that frigid bite of panic. It certainly wasn’t the last. “Why?” was all I could say. “I don’t know,” he said.

Chris had gone to the hospital after suffering from a series of severe headaches. The first occurred after a friend’s wedding. It was so crushing, he cried with the pain, and spent the whole day, and the whole terrible drive back to Montreal where we lived, throwing up. When I remember that day, there was this moment when Chris looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. I should have known then that something was terribly wrong. But by the end of the day he was better and we chalked it up to food poisoning. He’d eaten the shrimp, and I hadn’t.

After two more painful headaches he went to the doctor, who ordered a CT scan. It revealed Chris had an anaplastic astrocytoma — which is scary medical speak for brain tumour. It was at stage three out of four, and it was inoperable.

This was the moment I really got to know the man I had just married. We’d been together since university. He was the charming one with the incredible smile. I was the strong one with the better grades. First, he apologized. He said he was sorry he had married me. “I feel like I ripped you off.”

I told him I didn’t regret marrying him, not for one second. I told him that no matter what happened, marrying him was the best thing I had ever done. Then, I could almost see the switch flick in his eyes. He stopped crying. He squared his shoulders and he held his chin up. “I’m going to be okay. I just have to accept that this is my life now, and I will deal with it, and I am going to get better.” It turned out he was the strong one.

Chris was never in remission, because he still had his brain tumour, but his condition, thanks to radiation and chemotherapy, was improving and stable. With no symptoms, he went back to work full-time. We traveled. We had fun. We changed jobs, and we moved cities. We talked about having a baby, but it was not an easy decision. Chris told me he was afraid of leaving me alone with a young child. A year after our first discussion, he told me he wanted to have a baby.

If he was worried about dying after that, he never showed it. He treated every step of my pregnancy with wonder and pride. He threw himself into prenatal classes, and when he held our newborn son, Liam, in his arms, I wasn’t sure which one of them was crying harder. He loved everything about being a dad.

Then, when Liam was 18 months old, Chris’s tumour started to grow again. The doctors told us there was nothing they could do. He tried chemo again. He tried medications. Nothing worked. During that next year, Chris began to disappear. Every week, it seemed, he would be unable to do something else. He stopped being able to give Liam his nightly bath. He started to fall down, and had trouble standing up. His personality changed and he stopped talking. During the last months of his life, he couldn’t speak or move. He just lay in a hospital bed in our room, as friends and family came by to play movies for him, read to him, and talk to him.

Life became a blur of caring for others, and swallowing my pride to let others care for me. I had to keep working full-time to pay the bills. I had to keep Liam in daycare, since there was no one else who could watch him. After working, coming home and preparing meals, feeding, bathing, changing and reading to Liam, then feeding, bathing, changing and reading to Chris, I would have about 10 minutes of time for myself before collapsing in bed next to him. I used my “me time” to shower, or throw in a load of laundry.

Then, nearly six years after he was diagnosed, Chris died at home. Although it was slow, and horrible, Liam barely noticed what was happening. He had lost his father by degrees, so when he actually died, all Liam noticed was that the hospital bed was gone. I explained that his father had died. When he asked if he was coming back I explained that he wasn’t, but that I would be there with him, and that we would be okay. He seemed to really need to know where Chris was, physically, because it was too hard for him to imagine him being nowhere. So I told him his dad was in heaven, and that seemed to satisfy him.

I had read a few books about how to talk to my son about what was happening, but none of it seemed suitable. Most focused on older children, who could process what was happening. Liam was just too little. I was careful never to use the word “sick” so he wouldn’t worry that I would disappear the next time I got the sniffles. One book said I should tell my son that Daddy was “all gone.” I didn’t do that because nothing is ever “all gone” in a toddler’s world. There is always more — more cookies, more Goldfish crackers and more Blues Clues DVDs that can be played forever.

For the first year after Chris died, I avoided the word “widow.” I just needed to keep going. It was only when the first anniversary of his death had passed that I slowed down enough to consider the term, and to explore what it meant to be a widow. I looked it up in the dictionary once. It comes from the Latin word videre, which means “to separate.” The dictionary said: “1. A woman who has lost her husband by death and has usually not remarried; 2. A woman whose husband leaves her alone frequently or for long periods to engage in a usually specified activity (a golf widow).”

There is also no handbook for widows. There’s no Girlfriend’s Guide or Widowhood for Dummies. When your partner dies, you’re on your own to figure out what to do with his old clothes and shoes, or when it’s okay to take off your wedding ring.

It’s been five years since Chris died, and Liam and I have found our way forward in a new life that’s actually quite wonderful in many ways. Liam is a happy, chatty boy who loves pirates and action figures, and I think I’ve done okay with him. We still talk about his dad. I share stories, and tell him how much his dad loved him, and he doesn’t seem to need anything more than that yet. There have been a few questions about what heaven is like, where it is, what you can do there, and if Chris can see and hear him.

I still feel a sense of being alone from time to time, especially when there is no one there to kill spiders or hold my hand at the movies. But mostly, I just miss Chris’ incredible smile.

Jennifer MacLean is a producer for CTV’s Canada AM and just spent four whirlwind days sightseeing with her son in New York City.

Comfortable Conversation

The situations I don’t handle well come from the people who don’t know me, and don’t know I’m a widow. It’s so socially awkward. For a long time, I couldn’t stand meeting new people. When they learn that I’m a mom, they inevitably ask, “What does your husband do?” There’s just no way to answer that question in a way that doesn’t make everyone involved cringe.

One of the reasons widowhood is awkward is because no one knows what to say to you. There’s a great website called Widownet, which helped me through the rough patches. The site has special chat rooms for military widows, spouses of suicide, young widows and widows with children. On the home page is a great rundown of what not to say to a widow, called “Dumb Remarks and Stupid Questions.”

First up on everyone’s list is: “I know how you feel.” Unless you are a widow yourself, you don’t. No matter how hard what you’ve been through may be, it probably doesn’t compare. Especially if you’re talking about your dog who died.

I personally hated “How are you?” since it was always asked in a way that dripped with pity. If I wanted to talk about how I was really feeling, I’d do it when I felt up to it, not to suit someone else’s curiosity.

The best thing to say to someone when you find out he/she is a widow or widower is just a simple and classic “I’m sorry.”