“Widowhood has been much, much harder than I thought.”
Meet Hilary*, one of 6 courageous Kiwis who shared their lived experiences with Authentic Storytelling for Mental Health Awareness Week 2021. This is her story.**
TW: Depression, grief
“I’m feeling pretty good today, actually. Largely because I’ve got this interview and I had a teaching session this morning. That keeps me focused and in tune and content with the world.”
Hilary is a creative practitioner and teacher who lives alone in an apartment in Wellington following the death of her husband in 2016. “Like all creatives, I get work when I can. I don’t believe in the word ‘retirement’ for people like me. It’s not going to happen unless my mental or physical health goes completely out the window.”
The outwardly ebullient Hilary is known to the people in her life as a busy, sociable high-achiever, a description which she says doesn’t always gel well with her own self-image. “I see myself very differently to how I did 10 years ago. What I see now is someone who tries to keep as busy as I can to fill a very large void in my life. I pride myself on being open and honest, but I’m also very good at putting on smoke and mirrors and telling people I’m fine.”
Hilary’s earliest challenges with her mental health date back decades, she says, but have come into much sharper focus since she lost her husband of 48 years. “From my 30s onwards when I started working as an actor full-time I became aware that, when work wasn’t coming my way or things weren’t going as well as I’d hoped, there would be a slump in my mental health. I definitely experienced what I would describe as low-grade depression during that time. Since Richard became terminally ill 6 1/2 years ago and then died a year later, I’ve struggled a terrific lot more.”
Her move to Wellington from the South Island in the final years of Richard’s life provided Hilary with a needed new chapter, but also weakened her support system, she says. “My oldest and best friends are probably still in Dunedin and I do go down there for work and visit with them a few times a year, but I know that I could never live there again. That was my married life with Richard. I have great friends here in Wellington, but I don’t know if I would turn to them in a crisis. They’re mostly younger than me with partners and children and busy lives.”
As a woman of 75, Hilary feels that both her physical and mental health concerns have been dismissed by the medical system which should have been in place to look after her. “I’ve not yet found a GP here where I’m on the same trust level as the one I had in Dunedin. The last GP I saw treated all my symptoms as a semi-joke, really. There’s an attitude that this is just what you should expect if you’re an old woman.”
She did seek counselling for a brief time after Richard’s death and has wondered, with all of the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic over the last 18 months, if she should go back. “I took a trip to the UK and Europe not too long after Richard died and, when I returned, my mental health just hit the wall. After I’d cried in my flat by myself for 3 days, I knew it was time to do something. I found an online counsellor who was actually very good and pragmatic. It cost me an arm and a leg, but she gave me some tools that I needed at the time and really got me back on track. I must say that, particularly over this last [COVID-19] lockdown, the thought did cross my mind that I should see her again.”
The pandemic has been extremely challenging for Hilary, with a daughter and young grandchildren in Australia that she hasn’t seen for 18 months. “My son here in Wellington has a very busy job and three kids to look after, but he does whatever he can to see me when we’re in [COVID-19 Alert] Level 2. And my daughter has had such a difficult time in Sydney during the pandemic, but she’s still been so good at Facetiming with me. We have long chats and that’s terrific.”
Despite doing all she can to stay busy and connected, Hilary acknowledges that her grief and loneliness persist, and have now been compounded with a diagnosis of the stress-induced and extremely painful musculoskeletal disorder, fibromyalgia. “There are so many myths around grief. It doesn’t get better with time. That’s bullshit. I think if you can just get to the stage where you accept that you’re going to have to live with it forever, that’s an important step forward.
“Because of my age, there’s also just an intense loneliness. A lot of time spent feeling lonely, lonely, lonely. I lost a lot of people when Richard died, simply because they found it too hard to reach out and ask me how I was or they felt uncomfortable talking to me about him. I’m a gregarious person. I like to be with people. I like to talk with people. I like to listen to people. And when you get all that taken away from you, it’s very hard. And now I’m also dealing with the fibromyalgia which I know is a direct result of losing Richard. The wiring goes wrong in your brain and it causes pain throughout your whole body. And they say it won’t get worse over time, but that’s bullshit, too.”
Hilary’s grief can be triggered by a whole range of seemingly innocuous circumstances, a trend which, she says, hasn’t lessened with time. “Still, when my friends use the term ‘we’ or they have celebrations or cope with problems together and tell me about it, there’s a part of me that resents that, which is awful, I know. Richard and I never quite made it to our golden wedding anniversary, so I had to watch all of our contemporaries celebrate theirs two years after he died, which was really hard. And, of course, there’s all the usual birthdays and holidays which are always difficult. But there’s also just so much extraordinary stuff that’s happened in the world in the last 5 1/2 years and I don’t have anyone to sit and talk about those things with.”
The otherwise effervescent Hilary wavers when she talks about her experiences with ageing and identity. “I daren’t even discuss this outside of this context but ageism, particularly for women, is a massive issue. Nobody thinks that an old woman’s views are of any value whatsoever. As you get older, you stop being taken seriously. You become a bit of a joke or a stereotype. It’s not right, but it’s absolutely rife. It still riles, but I’ve gotten used to it now. I’ve also had to learn that I didn’t just lose Richard, I lost the version of myself that was a married woman. I’m actually a different person now than I was 6 years ago; I’ve had to adapt my whole thought process and way of being. I just wish I had realised sooner that it was ok to let that happen, and to hold on very tight to the parts of the new me that are ok and valuable and useful to enough people.”
She did consider trying to pursue a new romantic life after Richard’s death and even experimented with online dating, an experience which she describes as largely humiliating. “2 years after Richard died, I had this feeling that maybe I could somehow replace him; maybe there would be someone out there who would love me and fill the space that he left behind. And it was a bloody disaster. Men have no problem finding women at any age. I don’t know any older men or widowers who have been without a partner for any length of time. But there’s a massive club of older women on their own.
“Your sense of value and worth is constantly being affected by these external experiences and, like with all things, if you hear something repeated often enough there’s a part of you that starts to take it on board and believe it. I feel like there’s this constant struggle just to say: I’m still me.”
Hilary’s hope in sharing her story is that people will understand that she is an interesting and valuable person in her own right, without any of the labels or boxes that society wants to put her in. “I think a lot of people don’t make the effort to engage with the likes of me, simply because they think there’s nothing else to me aside from being a widow who should be knitting in a corner somewhere or looking after cats. They can’t see that there’s a life and a history and that I have exactly the same feelings and hopes and dreams as everyone else, maybe just with a stronger dose of reality.
“It’s been especially hard with COVID, every day reading about countries that are happy to just let their older populations die because somehow that’s an acceptable cost of doing business. We so often get discounted and we tend not to verbalise our feelings, even to our own kids, because we don’t want to burden them. Having this opportunity to speak out about my experience is cathartic. We need to keep intergenerational conversations open if we want to be able to keep treating each other as people.”
She would encourage others who are struggling to speak out as well. “As New Zealanders, we’re not good at saying we’re not ok. I wish I’d had a bit more courage to say that sooner, myself. You can’t pretend that it’s not happening. And there are so many of us out here who know where you’re at and won’t judge or react negatively. You’re not alone.”
Though worries about her ongoing physical health — and, in particular, any associated loss of work — remain, Hilary finds solace in daily walks by the Wellington waterfront. She says that her 5 grandchildren make her feel grateful and hopeful for the future. “I see Richard in some of those kids. Their energy and awareness of what’s going on around them is really heartening. I feel quite happy to leave the world with them.”
* Some identifying details in this series have been changed to protect the identity of the participants.
** The stories in this series reflect the lived experiences of the participants only, and are not intended to be used as a reference for diagnosis or treatment of any condition. If you are experiencing mental distress, please find emergency resources through Mental Health Foundation, contact Lifeline or a reach out to a medical professional in your local area.
