A New Beginning On Her Own: Grieving From The Loss Of A Spouse
"By the time my husband died," Eileen A. remembers, "I had already experienced much of my grieving because the man I had nursed through his cancer was not the same man I'd been married to for fifty-four years."
Eileen, now eighty-eight, met Roy at a Whidbey Island bonfire when she was eighteen, gave birth to the first of her three children at twenty-one and settled into the life of mother and wife for the next fourteen years, when she entered college. Roy was twenty-five when they met, though he had told her he was twenty-one so as not to scare her away.
Like many children of the Great Depression, Ray and Eileen were not used to having much, so they developed a love for simple pleasures like camping, an experience her children have thanked her for many times.
This article continues at Grieving the Loss of a Spouse.