There are many books about widowhood and grief. While helpful when the time is right, the shock and the aftermath of such a traumatic experience can make it difficult to find the time and motivation to read them while surviving the daily obstacles that zap your energy.
Right now, the widow is too busy surviving funeral planning, endless calls and texts from family, tireless efforts to obtain the death certificate, meetings with social security, arrangements to be ironed-out with banks, mortgagors, and debts. Not to mention the practical things, like ensuring the children have been fed, arranging who will take them to school while you deal with the horrible details such as picking out his casket, or helping your children with things only you can help with?
And then it hits her, “How will I even tell them that their father is dead? They don’t even know what ‘dead’ means!” Just thinking of the unending list of things to be done can leave the widow feeling smothered and breathless. Now is not the time for a novel; now is the time for a survival book, because right now, that’s what the widow is doing—surviving.