The Good Widow: A Memoir of Living with Loss

By Jennifer Katz

What do we do when life ends? How do we honor the past while moving into an unimaginable, uncertain future? This tender, bracingly honest memoir explores how Jenny, a young widow, navigates the sudden loss of Tris, her beloved spouse of eighteen years.

With Tris gone, Jenny suddenly finds herself a single mom to a teen daughter and adult stepson. The newly splintered family finds ways to celebrate “milestone firsts” —including birthdays and other holidays that, without Tris, now feel hollow and bittersweet. Jenny finds herself drawn to new people, including other widows and psychic mediums, and becoming open to different kinds of connections based on sharing and spirituality. She also embarks on a halting quest for new romantic love. Initially, as she endures awkward first dates and unpleasant interactions with self-proclaimed “nice guys,” she resists her new reality —but over time, she finds someone unexpectedly comforting, blending the pain of loss with the pleasure of closeness. For readers who have also lost a loved one, The Good Widow offers both a comforting guide to grief and a form of companionship; for everyone, it’s a beautiful example of how even after death, love endures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647421502

Jennifer Katz

Jennifer Katz, PhD, taught for 16 years in diverse classrooms from K to 12, including special education and inclusive classrooms in Winnipeg and Vancouver. She has also served as a resource teacher and counsellor. Her work as an advocate of inclusive education has spanned several countries, provinces, and territories, and multiple audiences, including students, parents, teachers, educational leaders, and curriculum and policy development ministries. Dr. Katz received the MCEC Outstanding Achievement Award for Leadership, 2016. She now serves as an Assistant Professor of Inclusive Education at the University of British Columbia.

Book preview

PART I

Contracting in Pain

Grief is frustrating. It leaves us with a permanently unresolved yearning, an insatiable need, an unscratchable itch. Grief is also cold. There’s a chill to the lifeless body, to the loneliness of bereavement, to the icy barrenness of a new year, a new decade, without our person in the world.

Grief forced me to confront different forms of emptiness. I’ve faced physical emptiness: a body without a heartbeat, our half-empty bed, his unworn slacks. I’ve faced emotional emptiness. Without my husband, my children and I crave the love and support he once provided. And I’ve faced spiritual emptiness, too, wondering who I am and who I’m to become. What’s the point, really, of anything?

The following essays describe the pain of grief. That pain manifested in a literal aching of the heart and a chronic tensing of muscles. I was forced to adapt and change, learning to bear the unbearable and to stop resisting the new reality of a life I didn’t choose—and definitely didn’t want.

The End

My husband, Tris, died on a Monday morning.

We hadn’t actually spoken that day. His alarm went off at the usual time: 6:30 a.m. I vaguely remember reaching out to him and stroking his lower back and hip. The light was dim. I closed my eyes and fell back asleep.

We’d had a lovely final weekend together. He had been away on a work trip to California and took a red eye flight home Friday night. I stayed up much too late on Friday so that I, too, would be overtired. It worked. We napped together for almost four hours. We then drove over to the gym, where I biked while he lifted weights and used the elliptical machine. Sweaty, we sat in the home office for our weekly Skype meeting with our oldest child, Jonah, now living in New York City. Tris was interested in Jonah’s updates but was undeniably sleepy, eyelids fluttering. My poor man. I suggested that I take him and our youngest child, Maddy, out to dinner to celebrate his homecoming. Eyes widening with mild surprise and appreciation, Tris responded with a shy, sweet smile: That would be so nice.

I drove. We dined on Asian fusion but, before we were even close to done, Maddy begged for frozen custard dessert. We agreed—on the condition that immediately afterward she’d join us to watch a movie, A Few Good Men. On a recent vacation, our family had toured and spent the night at a military academy, inspiring us to share this classic film with her. She agreed but grew bored as soon as the custard was gone, so we told her to run along and that we’d call her back for the major, climactic scene. Tris and I were not bored. We sat closely together on our yellow couch, hands intertwined, enthralled with the quick pacing and speedy dialogue. The scenes packed a powerful punch. We paused the film long enough to fetch Maddy before Jack Nicholson growled, You can’t handle the truth! It was thrilling. It was also funny. Tris loved to use that same phrase, in a joking way, in everyday conversations. This was our own inside joke.

The next morning, Tris had a busy day. He went to the grocery store and the farmer’s market, as he always did. He brought home flowers for me, as he always did. But he also went to the lab for a blood test and took Maddy to a local arts festival and to the Verizon store where he purchased a new iPhone and iPad. Hello, Siri. Hello, Tris greeted his new devices, introducing them to the sound of his voice. He also managed phone calls and emails. From my lazy perch on the red couch, devouring a wonderful new novel, I’d periodically see and hear Tris and Maddy between errands—entering and leaving, chatting and laughing.

My library book was a great distraction from the upcoming week. Tris had a major medical procedure scheduled for Tuesday morning. I was nervous, jumpy, and tense. His medical history included a bone marrow transplant. This was after chemotherapy and radiation were used to treat a cancerous, football-sized tumor in his chest. These interventions had destroyed much of his lung and heart tissue. About three years before our last weekend together, he had suffered a heart attack and had been diagnosed with heart failure.

Ever responsible and capable, Tris had rallied by being scrupulous about diet and exercise. Despite his efforts, he had suffered from various ailments. Most recently, his lung had collapsed. An initial scan showed no lung tumors, which was a huge relief, but on Tuesday he was scheduled to have the fluid drained and the lung biopsied. The oncologist wanted it done sooner rather than later. Her urgency concerned me. The procedure wasn’t complex, nor was it particularly dangerous. But there was risk because Tris’s blood didn’t always clot. In fact, we now had a regular routine for spending the night in the ER with his bloody nose. I had catastrophic thoughts about Tuesday and purposefully scheduled work-related meetings on Monday to free up time later in the week. Just in case, I thought.

When I expressed my worries, Tris gently teased me. It was fortunate for our relationship that he’d always found my catastrophic thinking to be more amusing than irritating. He told me the procedure would go well. He told me that he went for Sunday’s blood test to ensure it would be safe to drain the lung. He told me that he was confident the biopsy results would show that there was no reason to worry. Yet my anxiety persisted; I couldn’t be calmed by his even, reassuring tone. This was our general pattern in dealing with his health problems. He was tranquil, and I was terrified. Rinse,