Lost & Found: Widower's Survival Guide

By Robert W. Swanson

Each year 250,000 American males involuntarily join the ranks of widowers. Unfortunately, I lost my beloved wife after 41 years of marriage. Because of this personal tragedy I wrote Lost & Found, a Widowers Survival Guide! LOST pertaining to vanishing. Love/companionship/and special order. And FOUND pertaining to finding pragmatic solutions for a widowers daily life challenges. LOST AND FOUND is not a clinical analysis of grief prepared by well meaning psychologists. On the contrary, each chapter is the result of my personal experiences coping with unfamiliar demands of life without my mate.

Regardless of where widowers come from economically, ethnically, or spiritually the destination they arrive at is sadly the same. They are all LOST! Unfamiliar and freighting challenges appear to stay or sell their home, altered finances, house keeping, cooking, health concerns, the mystery of dating, vacationing solo, single grand parenting, sexuality, remarriage, cohabitation.. New widowers desperately need pragmatic answers to these critical issues. Analysts and psychologists will probe a widowers inter self, but they dont wash dishes, change bedding, prepare meals, and select female companionship!

In my straight-forward book I have detailed my experiences struggling with the personal melt down emanating from the loss of my beloved wife. With candor (and some wit) my travels in LOST & FOUND are rubber meets the road, widower tested tips for daily survival. Thus this work becomes a very practical guide with easy-to-follow support for the suffering widower, and others wishing to help such a soul rebuild a life. It is currently the book on the market that addresses these delicate and demanding issues.

Chapters include such topics as on-line dating understanding contemporary women to sell or stay in your home re-marriage cohabitation disposing of wifes wardrobe single grand parenting traveling alone help from consolers childrens attitudes altered finances maintaining health keeping house meal preparation and dozens more.

The topics covered in my book LOST & FOUND have been endorsed by Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, and have become the basis for an in-depth series of seminars created to help widowers beyond grief. Currently hundreds of widowers are enrolled in the program entitled LOST & FOUND, a Widowers Survival Course.

My personal background is that of an award winning, non-theatrical film producer,having written hundreds of scripts for international clients; working on high value projects spanning over 50 nations. Scripts covered a wide variety of subjects from German and French Wines, the menace of communism, to showcasing the major hotels of the world. Awards include the coveted Golden Camera, New York Film Festival, Gold Medal Berlin, and the George Washington Freedom Foundation Medal. My background in creative writing is adroitly reflected in LOST & FOUND.

I urge all widowers (and those wishing to help a man in such circumstances) to check out LOST & FOUND. The book that tells it like it is!

Robert W. Swanson
10427 Longwood Dr.
Largo, Fl. 33777
Email: [e-mail]
Tele 7273930770

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469117676

Robert W. Swanson

Robert W. Swanson is an internationally recognized producer of documentary films/videos, spanning 50 nations. His professional scripting and directorial accomplishments have been recognized with such distinguished awards as the Golden Washington Freedom, New York Film Festival, Gold Medal Berlin, George Washington Freedom Medal, and many Golden Eagles. His cinematic credits include productions on French and German Wines, Boy Scouts of America, many of the worlds major hotels, and dozens of Fortune 550 companies. Swanson (a graduate of the University of Wisconsin) is father to two children, and grandfather to three youngsters. Now a widower, he makes his home in Largo, Florida.

Book preview

WIDOWER’S

SURVIVAL GUIDE

Pragmatic solutions to

life-altering challenges

when a mate is lost.

Written by

Robert W. Swanson

author of

LOST & FOUND

Copyright © 2007, 2014 by Robert W. Swanson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2007903387

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4257-6297-1

                Softcover        978-1-4257-6296-4

                eBook             978-1-4691-1767-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 12/15/2014

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

546328

Contents

Prologue

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 The Beginning of the Beginning

Chapter 2 Work in Progress

Chapter 3 Nutritional Challenges

Chapter 4 To Date or Not to Date

Chapter 5 Understanding Contemporary Women

Chapter 6 Meeting a New Lady

Chapter 7 Help From Counselors

Chapter 8 Cloning!

Chapter 9 Online Dating

Chapter 10 Puppy Love

Chapter 11 But Daddy, What Would Mother Think

Chapter 12 The M Word

Chapter 13 Keeping the Old Bod Ticking

Chapter 14 Dollars and Sense

Chapter 15 Sell or Stay

Chapter 16 Keeping House and Hearth Together

Chapter 17 A Closet of Memories

Chapter 18 Bills, Bills!

Chapter 19 Final Tribute

Chapter 20 Being a Single Grandparent

Chapter 21 Have a Nice Trip

Chapter 22 Spirituality

Chapter 23 How Others See Us

Chapter 24 Not the Beginning of the End, but the End of the Begining!

EPILOGUE

Book Endorsements

Prologue

Marriage was the most important decision I ever made. But it didn’t happen easily. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and a two year stint as an Air Force motion picture officer stationed in Hollywood, California, I selected a career in film making. One day while in a studio casting for a film, I met a striking model named Elizabeth Anna O’Neil, a native of Belfast North Ireland, visiting the States on a tourist visa. After several dates, we fell deeply in love. Elizabeth wanted to marry. I dilly dallied, foolishly thinking that marriage would be a millstone to my budding career as a film maker. Exasperated with my many months of indecision Elizabeth left for a career in Hollywood and I accepted a filming assignment in the Soviet Union. On the plane to Russia and all during the filming there, Elizabeth’s parting words still haunted me, Robert Swanson, if you don’t marry me you are making the biggest mistake in your life.

The Soviet Union of the Cold War era was a vast suffocating nation offering its millions a near poverty life style. Foreigners were followed everywhere by the KGB. Posing as a tourist filming only famous landmarks, I narrowly escaped being arrested as a spy. With the misery of the Russian people before me, my reservations about marriage soon faded away. I cabled Elizabeth in Hollywood asking for her hand. Thank the Lord she accepted.

Our marriage proved to be a story book with a wonderful home life, two amazing children, grandchildren, and a booming film career. It was truly the best decision I ever made! Then after 41 years together Elizabeth suffered a fatal cancer and left this earth for her heavenly home. With her passing, the bottom fell out of my life. Gone was half of my being… the better half! How I coped with the dark days and rebuilt my life in this book. I have lived every line I wrote. If you, or a close friend or relative is entering a maze of life altering challenges of widower hood, may these pages help form your survival guide.

Robert W. Swanson

Largo, Florida

Dedication

This tome is dedicated to

Elizabeth Ann O’Neill…

the love of my life.

A 41 year love affair that began

in 1964 and ended in 2005.

                                 RWS

On a recent trip to England, I ran across this ancient prayer carved on a tombstone dated 1635.

Lord, you save me life.

My stay here is over.

My tomorrow’s are far away.

Bless and guide me on my new journey.

PREFACE

After the last floral tribute has wilted and well-meaning out-of-town relatives and friends have departed, you will wake up to the first day of the rest of your life. Your bed will seem more massive than ever because your mate will never be beside you again. The home you happily shared will be eerily quiet, missing are the comforting sounds of a coffeemaker perking in the kitchen. The jolly, effervescent morning announcer on your alarm radio seems to be terribly out of character. As you adjust your eyes and mind to the new dawn’s light, it will slowly become apparent that you are now a single man. And with it rolls in an uncomfortable feeling of being very alone!

What happened? Men are not the ones to be left behind. Women (God love ‘em) from the beginning of time have outlived men, but not in your case. You are now (and it is certainly not voluntary) on your own to cope with the future without the love and companionship of your loving mate. Your comfortable social order has all but vanished, and you will be very lonely.

Sociologists often state that loneliness is a powerful catalyst for extreme mental suffering, often more than any other experience of the human condition. Most men feel they have lost life’s guiding compass.

This book is not intended to be another tome on grieving. Our libraries and bookstores are filled with well-written works on this sensitive subject. However, few works have ever been published containing practical methods to guide new widowers through the life-altering challenges—health, housekeeping, meal preparation, budgets, finances, dating, etc.

This writer was left behind after a blissful marriage of forty-one years. In the following pages, you’ll find some steps I have found that helped me work though the unexpected.

Robert W. Swanson

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING

One of the most time-worn clichés is from an ancient Chinese philosopher: "The first step is the start of a long journey." Dear fellow widowers, we are now taking our first steps in a long and often tedious life-altering journey. It is not by choice that we are on this road weighted down with the sad ending of a lovely dream. The path ahead may be littered with uncomfortable challenges reaching the very depths of our souls. How well we individually proceed is so personal, so unalterably tied to our surroundings, that a book offering the proven path to total recovery has yet to be written and probably never will be. Navigating the way ahead will have many sharp turns and steep hills. But it is the only road to happiness, so let’s start our engines.

It is often said that women grieve and men replace. Therefore, one well-traveled way is to immediately begin to seek and find a replacement for your departed spouse. To quote John Selby’s excellent book Solitude, The Art of Living with Yourself,

A rebound relationship is not a solid relationship, but just an attempt to ease pain by substituting a new person for the one lost. The grafting process might temporarily ease the pains of loneliness, but in the long run, it interferes with the healing process. And the new relationship may explode at some point and leave us in worse shape than if we had faced our solitary condition