Whats a widower to do?
When my wife died at the age of 40 from a brain tumour in 2007, I remember going in a daze to the council offices with my four-year-old daughter to register her death. The certificate was laboriously scrawled with an ancient fountain pen, and the registrar solemnly asked me to check the details before signing it. I dragged my eyes through the words, which all seemed to make sense, until the bit about me: Relationship To Deceased; and then there was a word I couldn’t make out. It should have said Husband, but I couldn’t make the spidery blue marks on the paper form into that. I gave up and asked what it said. “Widower,” he replied, clear and factual. And that was the first time I’d contemplated that word, in relation to me and my new categorisation in the world. I’d known for three years that Katherine was going to die (“It will come back,” the surgeon had said), because this was a recurrence of a particularly aggressive kind of tumour. But nothing really prepares you for losing someone
Related Questions
- My spouse passed away and now I must file as single instead of married. Because a widow or widower still maintains the home, wouldn that be considered head of household for tax purposes?
- How can a widow or widower find out if their deceased spouse had a life insurance policy?
- What Are the Benefits That a Widow/Widower Can Receive?
