By Sandi Amorello

“Magic Hour” is a film business term…used to describe the hour of the day just before sunset. That final hour of daylight…soft, filtered, indescribably luminous. When everything seems to glow from within and without…and everyone looks a bit more beautiful than they did in the harsh midday sun. Imperfections vanish. Reality is covered with a translucent layer of golden fairy-dust, and for a brief string of moments connected in time…the world seems perfect.

Drew was in the film business. He adored it. It was his passion. And he loved magic hour. He taught me about it. I thought “magic” was the perfect word to describe it. In fact, it reminded me of the way he looked at life…and at people. He seemed to look at the world through a soft focus filter… always giving everyone the benefit of the doubt…always trying to see the good in others. He knew how to forgive and forget…how to not hold a grudge. He seemed to know how to take things in stride…how to let things roll off his shoulders. He held onto the positive, and let go of the negative. He knew, somehow, from the start, that this life is fleeting. That our days are to be cherished and lived mindfully. That love is all there is…and that inner and outer beauty is a gift to be appreciated.

It is a fragile time of day, magic hour…fleeting and ethereal. Life is bathed in golden light…and our beauty and goodness is illuminated and magnified. The beauty we see before us in all that we take for granted at most other hours leaves us in awe. It is a bittersweet time…because while we are appreciating the beauty of it…we also can see it slipping away…moment by precious moment. We don’t want it to end. But, eventually, the edge of the golden orb that illuminates our way dips out of sight…and the light dims. The moon rises higher up into the sky. The darkness quietly wraps its arms around us…and it is night.

On the day my husband died, there was a magic hour…but I didn’t notice. Everything went dark on that bright winter’s day long before the sun set in the December sky. And it remained dark. Until 48 hours later…when our seven-year-old son came into our bedroom. He quietly approached me as I lay in our bed, crying silent tears that wouldn’t stop flowing…and said, “Mommy, can we stop being sad now?”

That was when I knew I was going to have to find a way to get through the darkness…because my children needed me to be their sunlight.

Being widowed is not fun. It has, however, turned out to be rather funny at times. In between the tears, that is. One day you’re going along, trying to survive the day-to-day challenges of raising three little children with a man you’ve loved forever…a man with whom you happily share a house, a bathroom and a bed. The next day you’re logged onto match.com at one a.m., getting emails from men who want to drink merlot on the beach with you and give you a back rub. Men who are not your husband. Men who might have restraining orders against them. Dear God… Men with screen names (that they chose on purpose!) like “the Gregster” and “BetrayedAgain.”

I never intended to be on this journey. I never in my wildest imagination or worst nightmares could have foreseen this tragic turn of events. However, now that I’m here, I have to admit…it’s not such a bad place to be sometimes. In between the tears, that is. It’s been over four years since my husband died. I have been on my own, raising our three children, sans a husband… for over four years. Then you add in the 2 1/2 years that we resided in hell after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and you could say that nearly 7 years of my life has been…well, let’s say my life hasn’t gone the way I imagined. But now that I have come to terms with the whole situation, and now that I am away from doctors and hospitals and the joys of macrobiotic cooking (i.e. eating steamed fish and seaweed for breakfast)…. well, life isn’t so bad.

Do not misunderstand. I miss my husband immensely. I miss him every day. I miss him for myself and more than anything; I miss him for my children. But, that said, I have something most women never get. I have a chance to reinvent myself. I have a chance to live where I want and do what I want and be who and what I want. And although my first choice is still to have the love of my life back again, I can’t make that happen…so I am choosing to make the best of it. I mean, I have a chance to be with a completely different sort of man if I wish to be. And I had a wonderful first marriage. How many women get to have a fairytale romance, and then have a chance to experience a completely different storyline?

When I fell in love and got married, I never thought the “till death do you part” thing would actually happen when I was only 41. I thought maybe somewhere around age 89 we’d both die simultaneously in a plane crash on our way home from our little love nest in the south of France…. or from drinking a few too many martinis while we were on heart medication. It never occurred to me that 14 years and three kids later, he’d check out on me. Never.

I am here to tell you the parts about young widowhood that most women would never share. Or admit. I am here to tell you that it is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and possibly the best thing that ever happened to me. That may sound insensitive. You may be thinking, “How can she say something like that?” I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that I have been given the chance at a second life…all within the same lifetime. It’s sort of like a two-for-one deal at the grocery store. Two boxes of spaghetti for the price of one…. two bunches of carrots for the price of one…two lifetimes for the price of one. I have paid a huge price for this opportunity, however. In fact, I have been overcharged…ripped off…and no one even gave me any coupons. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it if unless you are forced into it.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that plenty of women are given a second chance. There is divorce. Women get divorced all the time. They get a second chance. But there is a difference, and it is a huge difference. I know plenty of divorced women. The difference between them and me is that most of them went through hell…and their hell has a name. Bob or Bill or Jim or Richard. If they’re really unfortunate, their hell has the nickname “Dick.”

Now, being widowed, I went through hell too. According to the life stressor charts, a 25% more horrendous version of hell. But my hell doesn’t live and breathe and reside with his second wife in a 4 bedroom Colonial 20 minutes away from me. My hell was due to a bunch of pancreatic cells run amuck…and the fact that I was still madly in love with my husband…and with his pancreas. In fact, his being ill just made me love him more. More deeply, more passionately. It made me appreciate all of his wonderful qualities. It reminded me of why I fell in love with him in the first place. Why I married him. So, by the time he died 2 1/2 years after his diagnosis, I was more in love with him than the day we first met. I lost my best friend and the one person I loved more than anyone else in the universe. I lost my future. You don’t hear many divorced women telling you how much more they loved and appreciated their ex’s after the court proceedings were over and the custody agreement was signed.

The bad part is that I married the love of my life…. and now the love of my life is dead. The good part is that I was married to a man who adored me…and so, now that I am dating again,
I have standards that are quite high. I know what it’s like to be adored and loved completely. I know what it’s like to be in a wonderful relationship and marriage… and I won’t settle for less the second time around, if I indeed even decide that I want a second time around. Which is a huge “if.”

Many divorced women that I know are bitter. Many of them don’t trust men, or don’t want another man in their life…and for good reason. Most of them had husbands who didn’t cherish them or truly love them. When women like this begin dating again (and you know who you are!), they have trouble because any man who treats them better than their stinky ex-husbands look pretty good to them. The problem is, many of the men who are a couple of steps up the ladder still aren’t exactly Mr. Wonderful.

Now this may shock you…but I consider myself lucky. I would rather have a dead husband who adored me and who treated me with respect and love than an ex-husband who cheated on me with the 21-year-old Swedish nanny. I cry when I see how much my children are missing, no longer having their father in their lives. I cry when I think that he won’t see them play in their first little league game. Go to the prom. Grow up. Graduate from college. Get married. But at least I don’t have to be tethered to some icky ex-husband for the rest of my life. At least I have that as some consolation, albeit a very small one.

So I’ve written these stories because I want to share the insights I have gained about the state of being widowed. Especially at a young age. Although I didn’t consider myself particularly “young” when it happened (I was 41)…the fact that I had children who were 4, 7 and 9 at the time…and the fact that their dad was only 42 at the time…certainly qualified my state of widowhood as “premature’” at the very least. Well, okay…I guess I was young. Now that I think back on it. The first time I went to a “grief support group for widows and widowers” the next youngest woman was approximately 65. So, I take it back…I was young.

In the beginning, I sat around crying for hours, days, weeks and months. All right, years. I cried for years. I still cry. I will most likely always cry for what I have lost. I read the books on widowhood…I went to the grief support groups…and I didn’t get much out of any of it. I just wanted someone to assure me that I would want to smile again. To give me hope. To tell me that I’d have great sex again and that I’d have a life again…and that it was okay and maybe even normal to entertain thoughts of selling my three children and ending my own life to be with my husband who was six feet under the ground. I wanted someone to be honest with me and tell me it was okay to hate him and love him and curse him for not keeping his promise to be with me forever.

I wanted someone like ME to have some lighthearted, hard-earned wisdom to share with me. To inspire me. Now that I have made it this far, and no longer own stock in the company that makes Kleenex…I am hoping I can inspire someone else…and possibly be their beacon of sunlight. Helping them move ahead into a future that might sometimes seem like a place of overwhelming darkness. Telling them to believe in themselves…to follow their hearts…because, the sun is going to come up again.

Widowhood isn’t fun. But, if you hang in there long enough…the magic comes back.

© 2007 Sandi Amorello/Silver Crayon Studios, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Irreverent Widow, Silver Crayon Studios and the SC Studios mark are all trademarks of Silver Crayon Studios, Inc.