White, Widowed, and Privileged
While I can control my own actions, I cannot choose how I’m labeled. I am white, widowed, and privileged. I can’t deny any of those.
The simplest ways to support a grieving person are to acknowledge their pain, listen to them, and help them in a way that contributes to their needs. You cannot tell a grieving person to get over it and think that’ll do the trick. Grief becomes engrained in our bodies. It is exhausting.
Our country is grieving. More specifically, our black brothers and sisters are grieving. Those actually paying attention are grieving with them.
The world is witnessing collective grief.
And, unfortunately, many of our white brothers and sisters refuse to listen and acknowledge the issue, because somehow that takes away from them. It somehow takes away from their own problems.
While I know I write mostly about grief and parenting widowed, beforehand I wrote about social issues and politics. Those are now overlapping.
When my husband died, I was left living a life that was thrown on me. My actions did not cause me to be widowed. I didn’t choose it.
People have often told me I’m “lucky,” because my husband died while working. They felt I was in a good place because (in their eyes) I still have an income without having to drastically change our lifestyle. That always irritated me because my husband is dead, the father of my young children is dead, and my finances are quite a bit different. On top of that, I live away from my family and lost contact with most of his family and friends. I was also left a mess to clean up, which I took care of on my own. Still quietly working on the rest.
It’s strange to tell a widowed person they are lucky. In no way did I feel lucky or privileged or fortunate because of that.
Once I started connecting more with other widows, many who are blamed for their husband’s suicide or put in complete financial ruin from hospital bills or legal fees or loss of an entire income, I started to recognize how I could be considered “fortunate.” But it still hurts my tongue. Luckily discomfort doesn’t kill me.
While I can control my own actions, I cannot choose how I’m labeled. I am white, widowed, and privileged. I can’t deny any of those. My sons are privileged. My husband was privileged.
When my husband was viewed in his casket he was wearing a baseball cap, Nike t-shirt and sneakers, and tattoos on his arms. It didn’t feel right to dress him in a suit, so I picked clothes he would actually wear. That he would be comfortable in. I pulled music from his personal iTunes to play during his viewing. Those who came to pay their respects listened to Tupac, Big Sean, and Wiz Khalifa. While I’m sure some people took issue with that, no one judged my character (or his) for it.
While there was a quick news briefing around my husband’s death, he wasn’t headline news where everyone around the country (and possibly the world) decided if he was worthy of tears. Any indiscretion that may have been uncovered about him was quickly brushed off and excused. It didn’t define him.
I live in a suburb. My kids’ school district is one of the best around. Because of that, my kids have counseling support and grief sessions available during the school day. Not all districts have that accessibility. Not all students have that access. The students who identify as White in our district make up about 64% of the demographic while only about 15% of students identify as Black. We are privileged with technology and transportation and plentiful resources to our students. The privilege really came to light when we had to switch to virtual learning due to the pandemic. It’s safe to say that many districts with the demographics flipped, did not have that same access.
My privilege directly follows me into being a widow. When looking at statistics, a smaller percentage of black widowed women of a working husband are approved for benefits compared to white widowed women of a working husband. After connecting with more and more widows of various backgrounds, I created a support and empowerment group on Facebook for us to grow together. Yet, it’s not far off to guess that 95% of our members identify as white. I would love for our group to become more diverse, but I honestly don’t know how to make that happen.
Thinking back, I remember when I was in my anger stage of grief. It still comes and goes. But in the beginning, there were times I wanted to scream for everyone to hear how fucked up it is that in North Carolina you cannot sue a person for unsafe working conditions that lead to death (unless it’s blatant disregard), but you can sue a person for sleeping with your spouse. There were times I wanted to break everything around me. I wanted to smash windows. There were people I wanted to stomp in the ground. But I was home with my kids. I was stuck in silence.
If I had the opportunity to be in my stage of anger with my fellow widows also feeling anger, I guarantee we would have broken something. If I gathered every person who lost a spouse in a work related accident, I wouldn’t be surprised if a window was smashed. I’m sure they were also slapped with the corporations over people mentality so many of our states follow.
Today we are seeing the culmination of repeated trauma. Black people have watched and witnessed over and over again how easily one of their lives can be taken, then how quickly the conversation around it will be directed to any indiscretion they’ve had in their life. They’ll also hear how the white guy was scared. And very rarely is adequate justice ever served.
A national, peaceful protest started in the NFL. That was deemed unpatriotic. A peaceful protest was started in almost every highly televised entertainment award show. That was considered inappropriate. Peaceful protests happen almost every year when a black person is killed by the hands of prejudice. Those were viewed as wrong, too. And now, soon after a black man was killed while jogging and a black woman was killed while sleeping in her own home did the country witness a cold, callous murder by police officers of a black man they arrested for suspicion of a fake twenty dollar bill. That was his alleged crime. Twenty dollars. They decided death was his consequence.
So, hell yeah people are mad. Yes, they are marching. And yes, property is also being destroyed. There are thousands of people marching and protesting while a small percentage are causing destruction. I do acknowledge that. There have also been plenty of calls for the property damage to stop and initiatives put in place to make that happen. Yet, we still wait for the same swiftness and urgency to stop the unjust killing of our black brothers and sisters.
It’s collective grief that has been silenced. It’s being told over and over again that what you feel and what you witnessed isn’t really what happened.
and over again.
On the news.
On the playground.
In the office.
I am able to distance myself from people who tell me how to grieve or belittle my way of doing so. I am able to jog in daylight with very little worry. I am able to sleep at night without worry there’s a possibility I could be shot doing so. I know that if I’m ever in a troubling situation, I can call for help and receive it.
I am privileged. I am paying attention.
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Teaching Black Lives Matter in schools
Thank you. I really enjoyed reading this and learned a few things as well.
I have been thinking a lot about my grief as a young widow, the way I feel lonely/unheard and how the black community must feel. You put this into words beautifully.
Thank you, Janice! Thank you for reading. Grief does feel very isolating, I look forward to having you in our group!
Everyone grieves in different ways. Everyone has a right to their own experience. It’s too bad more people are not as understanding of this as you are nor as open to listening as what you are too. Nice read.