“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out…”

                                                                              Walter Winchell

     One of the hardest things for me to accept after my husband passed was what I like to call the shift. This shift is not one seen right away but happens over time. It takes you by surprise. The worst is the shift is not caused by anything you did, nor by anything you had control over. It happens despite your best efforts.  Once you are a widow, people you know often see and treat you differently. You also see yourself differently. So, your relationships start to change, and often this change comes from people you would never expect it to come from. People you have been friends with for years. It is not all bad. Sometimes this shift comes from people who you never expect and believe it or not that is the good part of this shift.

    By now you probably are wondering so what is this shift you are talking about. It is a shift in relationships and the roles people play in your life after the memorial service is over and everyone else seems to go back to normal, but you. You are no longer part of a couple. This changes a lot of things. Rob was a very outgoing guy who had a great way of bringing all types of people together He reached out to people to make plans to get together. When he passed, I knew I might have to be the one to do this, and to be honest I did a lot of inviting at first. I invited our coupled friends to dinner at our house and often called them to see how they were doing. The sad thing is that even though I had my friendships with these couples it all has now changed.  Some of these changes are subtle and happen because you are no longer part of a couple. I lost half of my relationships with the men in the couples. I still see the wives, but rarely see the husbands. Other people who were friends with your husband first, just disappear from your life without any kind of warning. It is not because they did not like you, but because their friend is no longer part of their lives. I did not necessarily feel we would, became the best of friends. Yet, I felt they cared enough to at least check up on me and my daughters to see how we were doing. I know my husband expected they would. Yet, after his death, they seemed to disappear into thin air. At first, it takes you by surprise and you are not sure what to make of it. From what I can gather some of this is because my husband was the one who initiated contact more often than not. I did try to keep things going, but often I just did not have the time or energy to always be the one entertaining/inviting since now I had twice as much to do. My other half was not here to do it.I also understand couples tend to hang out with other couples and I was no longer part of a couple. I still miss hanging out with mixed company. Most of the time, I am in the company of woman alone. Being in a mixed company is much different than being in the company of only women. I do still see my single male friends I brought to the relationship I hang out with, them from time to time, usually with their wives present since their wives have now become my friends too, Being middle-aged makes it more difficult to find single friends of both sexes to spend more time in mixed company.  Life as a single person has certainly been different. I use to really treasure my time alone when I was married, now not necessarily so much, because now it is not always by choice.

     The shift in how my friendships functioned was the hardest part to accept. So many of what I considered mutual friends just completely disappeared after proclaiming they would always be there for me and the girls. Some of these people Rob fully expected to fill in for him and help support me and our daughters. Having people not be there for my daughters was the most hurtful things for me..They were both teenagers and I really thought old friends would get how they would need people to be there for them, since their dad could not. I knew what it felt like not to have a parent there during some of the biggest milestones in your life. I had lost my mom in my early twenties. It hurt to see them be disappointed by people when they failed to show up for their biggest milestones and know there was nothing I could do to save them from this kind of hurt.

Being disappointed by the shift , a part of me wanted t be angry at people for just not getting it! Yet, I also understand now, that maybe I should have spent more time asking for what I thought we needed from them. The drifting away may not have been as intentional as it felt at the time,. When you become a widow, you suddenly are more sensitive to when people are not in your life as much as you want them to be. It just rekindles the flame of wanting your love one who passed to be there. Yet, I know for some of them, it was not their intention to disappear from your life. For others, life without the deceased friend was too much . They could not handle the idea of loss. and for them it was easier for them to disappear than to deal with facing the loss of their friend, as well the possibility of their own mortality. As time has gone by, I have learned to forgive them understanding the way many people deal with loss is different than the way I have been dealing with loss. I just wish I had been aware I would loss some friends I felt were close after I lost my husband.

      Some friends disappearing was certainly not what I had believed would happen however, the good news is many true friends stayed close to me and my daughters.. Some friends who stayed were not a surprise, but others we could not helped .but be surprised. These were friends we had not been particularly close to stepped up and were there for us through one of the most difficult times of our lives. These friends now became some of my closest friends and filled in the roles where others had failed us. For those who stayed around, we felt sincerely grateful, without them our journey toward healing would have been much more difficult.

Having gone through this shift has made me more aware of what kind of friend I need to be when others I know lose a loved one. I need to try to remember to reach out to them and mean it when I say I am here for you. I think this is a lesson my daughters also learned. Being there means not only at the time of their loss ,but also in the days and years after their loss. It is not always easy to do, but one should try their best to do this for others. For as the quote in the beginning of this post states , a real friend is the one who stays when the rest of the world walks out. They are the people who deserve your time and your friendship..