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Wednesday August 22, 2001 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER B3 Widow copes with loss by reinventing her life l/Vrofe chapter in Beyond Coping By Wilm a Blokhuis BEAVER FOCUS EDITOR How does one cope with a major change, and loss, in their life? After Joan Cole lost o f her husband o f 37 years, needless to say, everything changed. H er husband Douglas died in 1990. She found adjusting to her new single life difficult. One o f the first changes she made was to move to Oakville, from Etobicoke, to be closer to one of her two daughters. "M y husband and I were very close, and losing him was very, very difficult for me. Family and friends were very helpful. I had support from my marvelous daughters. In situations like this, you have to push yourself to get out." Coping alone is very difficult in a world geared to couples, C o le . observes in her contribution, Changes, published in a recently published book, were fed up with it. I began to try and talk about other things. This in itself was therapeutic. My daughter suggested keeping a diary. Each night I would write down how I felt that day. I must say that it helped tremendously." However, the real turning point in her life, since the death o f her husband, is her introduction through her daughter, to a man who had recently lost his wife. They met at a wine and cheese. "He asked me if I would like another glass of wine, and I realized then how much I missed male companionship. "I had always felt that my marriage was made `in heaven,' as they say, and that there would never be another man in my life. Because we were both lonesome and missing our respective spouses, we decided to go out for dinner every Saturday night." This friendship blossomed. Three years after they met, they visited Scotland. "It was a wonderful trip, but my old-fashioned conscience was playing havoc with me," she relates. `T h ree years later we w ent on our fourth trip together, and I felt perfectly satisfied with this arrangement. W hat was even better was that I real ized that I had come a long way from worrying about what anyone would think. My daughters still love me. My friends still phone, and I did some independent thinking." She has replaced her `m undane' chores with volunteer work, pleasures, and new interests. She sings with Oakville's Interlink Choir, and volun teers at Oakville Trafalgar M emorial Hospital. She's also attended some university lectures, and keeps current reading two newspapers a day. She's learned to deal with taking her car to the garage, and to "negotiate with plumbers and car penters . . . Things I have not done on my own before." Cole has learned to accept the change in her life, savour the happy memories, and to live her new life to the fullest. "Life will never be the same as it was for me for 37 years," she writes. "If we widows could only get that through our heads in the first few months of widowhood, we would save ourselves a lot o f grief. However, I have learned that time and a great deal of hard work on one's own part brings some m ea sure of happiness. It will come but it's not easy. "You know you're getting some place when you can think o f things you and your husband used to do with a smile on your face instead o f a tear." In conclusion she states: "My perspective on life has broadened through my own loss and through the loss o f those I have come in contact with in my new life. "Change comes whether you want it to come or not. Now you cope with these changes depends on you. Various friends and family will help you on the way, but it is your working towards indepen dence that will win the battle in the end." For more information about the book, and or order copies, visit www.pearpress.com. Beyond Coping: Widows Reinventing Their Lives. Her story was one o f 20 submissions accepted for the book, self-published by Molly Hurd and Margie Macdonald, both widowed in 1996. They received about 200 stories from Canadian women of all ages. These stories not only deal with the loss of their loved ones, but also about how these women coped with the loss o f their best friend, financial support, the home handyman, and their social circle. "I enjoy writing," says Cole, who is currently working in her memoirs. "I saw an ad looking for women to write stories about coping as a widow for a book being published by two women whose hus bands had drowned in a kayaking expedition." Cole adds she's "pleased" they decided to include her story. "The hardest task I had, after he died, was to participate independently in my changed world," she wrote in Changes. "With a great deal o f effort, I believe I have accomplished this." Cole had to find new friends - widows like her self who understood the change in her life. "The first few years were extremely lonely," she continues. "For as much as I always had my own interests, there was always this soulmate to come home to. Being a talkative person, I felt an enor mous void in my life. No one was there to listen to my recounting o f the day's events. In desperation I phoned newfound friends. Needless to say, there were all widows, who understood . . . My new friends were very obliging and I couldn't have managed without them." Her new friends replaced the couples Cole socialized with when husband was still alive. Maintaining her rapport with these couple-friends became difficult, as they w ere a constant reminder Photo by Barrie Erskine Joan C ole with a copy o f the book B eyond C oping: Widows R einventing Their Lives to w hich she contributed a chapter, and a picture o f herself w ith her late husband D ouglas. o f her lost husband. At the same time, she felt out o f place, and longed for companionship. "The wives of these couples were very thought ful at first," she writes. "As time w ent on they were, understandably, occupied w ith other things, although I saw them now and then for lunch. "I had a terrible need for companionship. My older friends, with husbands still alive, often left me depressed, as I thought about them going home from our luncheon dates to their respective spous es. "Instead of pursuing these old friends, I decided I would have to start all over again and hook up with women in the same situation as me . . . To my pleasant surprise I discovered that there were many others like me, dying for someone to talk to." She lost her inhibitions about `pushing herself on others' and developed a network o f new wid owed friends. "The first three years or so after the death of my spouse were very difficult, as you can imagine," Cole writes. "My advice to anyone would be to push yourself to the limit. Every day was the limit for me. "I really would have preferred to stay in my home, in hiding, but I made m yself go to anything I was invited to. I came home from most o f these events in tears, but my goal was to somehow grow into some kind o f normal life." She persevered. Her daughter suggested keep ing a diary, writing down each day's thoughts. "I found for some time after his death, I was unable to talk about my husband. Then I talked too much about him. 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