I’m Not Married, but I’m Far from
Alone
By Rachel Harris
Last year the worst thing
happened to me--a divorced, 55-year-old woman who is without living parents and
has only one estranged brother, distant cousins and a 19-year-old daughter who
was away at college. I had a medical crisis.
One month I was driving along a
winding coastal road, vacationing on a remote Caribbean island, and the next
month I was staring at my MRIs. An old injury that hadn't bothered me in years
had resulted in serious deterioration of three of my neck vertebrae. Even my
untrained eye could see that my spinal cord was round and full in most of the
views, but flat as a pancake in others.
This explained the relentless
dull ache that traveled the length of my arms whenever I tried to lie down. I
thought I was damned to a life of verticality in order to escape the pain. No
gentle easing into horizontal relaxation for me, even for sleep.
The orthopedist gave me two opinions. "You need
surgery as soon as possible," and "In recovery, you'll learn who your
friends are." He was right on both counts. I left the office in shock,
with the risk of catastrophic spinal-cord injury looming over me. One unlucky
stumble before the operation could land me in a wheelchair for the rest of my
life. The doctor's final words, "Don't get back-ended," were ominous.
I walked to my car in a daze and carefully drove home to an empty house where
there was no husband, life partner or lover to call or comfort me. I was alone
and scared.
This was the reality of a life
I'd never imagined for myself. I'd always assumed that there would be a man in
my life, that we would share a future together, weathering whatever problems
arose. I was wrong. I divorced in my late 40s fully expecting to remarry. But I
was a devoted mother who didn't want to take my energy away from my teenage
daughter to concentrate on dating. No one I met inspired me to change my mind.
I didn't understand the social reality of being a postmenopausal woman. It had
never occurred to me that I would not always be seen as desirable. Of course I
knew I would age, I just never thought that meant my social stock would fall so
precipitously. I had to adjust to a level of independence I'd never chosen.
This was a crisis, however, that
I couldn't face alone. So I began to call friends. I was fairly calm in
describing my situation; however, as soon as they offered help, I would burst
into tears. Choking, I would thank them and then sob uncontrollably after
hanging up. It wasn't just the reassurance they expressed, it was their
willingness to interrupt their own lives to move in with me and do whatever was
necessary.
Claudia drove me to the hospital
and kept me company during those long hours of waiting for surgery. She
appeared again hours later in the recovery room, where my clearest memory is of
her voice. Carol flew cross-country to take care of me my first week out of the
hospital. I could barely walk across the room when I arrived home and needed
help in getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Sonya came the
second week as I gained the strength and confidence to shower on my own without
mishap. Karen insisted on moving in for the third week, not because I needed
help, but because she wanted to keep me company during my recovery. I was so
intent on becoming independent again that it took me a little while to
understand that I could accept her help without having to need it.
For three months I wore a large
collar around my neck and couldn't lift anything or drive. Friends, both male
and female, called and came regularly to drive me on errands, bring groceries
or take me out to lunch or a movie. My daughter came home from college on her
spring break and was amazingly solicitous. Of course there were also friends
who called and barely asked how I was before launching into their own current
dramas, and there were even a few who didn't call at all. But there was such an
abundance of love and support for me that my prevailing emotion throughout my
whole experience was that of gratitude. It was as if my healing went beyond the
physical reconstruction of my spine and entered my heart.
I hadn't realized that I wasn't
alone even though I lived alone. I hadn't realized that I was part of an
informal family even though I didn't live in a traditional one. The support I
received from my extended network carried me through my medical emergency and,
I'm convinced, quickened my recovery and deepened my healing. It seems that a
growing number of middle-aged and older women are, like me, living on their
own--whether due to failed marriages or because they have outlived their
husbands. We will, all of us, need help from our friends at one time or
another. When our time comes to give or to receive such help, let us do so with
both graciousness and a generosity of spirit.
(Newsweek,
May 19, 2003)
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