Dealing With the Death of a Spouse

Lisa Bonsteel of Anaheim couldn’t eat or sleep. “It was like my whole inside was gone. I was raised in World War II in Germany, and I never experienced anything as bad as this.”

For Paul Borcherding of Newport Beach, “it was like my life was out there in pieces, shattered.”

Charlie Ferguson of Anaheim lost weight and suffered depression. “I went to the doctor, and he said he’s never seen me look worse. Now I have more up moments than down moments. But I still break down.”

What Bonsteel, Borcherding and Ferguson are describing is the intense emotional pain they experienced while trying to overcome what surveys show to be at the top of the list of life’s most stressful events: the death of a spouse.

In the United States, it’s usually the husband who dies first. Indeed, according to the Census Bureau, there are 11.4 million widows in the United States--five times the number of widowers.

Regardless of which partner survives, the emotional pain--the shock followed by varying degrees of denial, anger, guilt and depression--is the same.

How severe the grief is--and whether it takes months or years to run its course--varies from person to person, but it is unavoidable. As Edwin Shneidman, founder of the Suicide Prevention Center in Los Angeles, once explained it, “Grief is the ransom you pay for love.”

“The first and most important thing is adjusting to the fact that your whole life system has changed: You’ve been a team and the team isn’t there,” said Marjorie Anderson, a Costa Mesa licensed marriage, family and child counselor.

Anderson leads Another Passage, a grief support group for surviving spouses at Oasis Senior Citizens Center in Corona del Mar and one of several dozen such groups in Orange County.

One of the best ways to help overcome the death of a spouse is to join a support group, “a safe place” where widowed people can feel comfortable sharing their feelings with others undergoing a similar experience, Anderson said.

Tony Bell, a Cal State Fullerton professor who has been teaching a course on the sociology of death and dying since 1972, agrees. He said the emotions many surviving spouses go through are so intense and overwhelming that they feel as though they are losing their minds.

“We tend to be very private with our emotions in our society,” he said. “I think that gives rise to a lot of closet grievers. That means they have to carry the burden all by themselves.”

In Anaheim, help for surviving spouses is coming from an unexpected source: a mortuary.

For the past 1 1/2 years, the family-owned Hilgenfeld Mortuary has sponsored Renaissance, a grief support group that meets twice a month at Anaheim United Methodist Church.

The idea for the group grew out of mortuary president Margie Hilgenfeld Field’s own difficulty coping with the sudden death of her father, Melvin Hilgenfeld, 4 1/2 years ago.

“I knew I was going through physical pain, but I didn’t know how to adjust or deal with it,” said Field, who runs the group. Field received emotional support from a church friend whose mother had died about the same time as her father and, after attending grief counseling seminars, “I felt this is where we could be of help to the bereaved,” she said.

More women than men seek help from grief support groups in which discussions cover everything from financial problems to how to deal with relatives who give unwanted advice.

“Women are more likely to acknowledge the need,” said Anderson. “In general, our society asks men to be strong. We’re unkind to men in our society in my view because we ask too much of them at times like that. Men often don’t have intimates with whom they can share (their feelings) and aren’t accustomed to doing it.”

Anderson said that when she was growing up more than 60 years ago the custom in the United States was for a widowed person to wear a black armband “so people knew you were bereaved and treated you gently.”

“That wasn’t a bad idea because (the bereaved) are unduly sensitive, and it’s perfectly normal that they are,” she said. “They all need to progress at their own pace. For the majority of people it’s a time of getting to know themselves in a different way: recognizing that you need to build your life anew.”

Lisa Bonsteel, Paul Borcherding and Charlie Ferguson are among those who have begun to build new lives.

Lisa Bonsteel’s husband, Bob, had been home in bed for a week recuperating from a successful leg artery operation when she left him to go to the bank. When she returned 15 minutes later, he was dead of a heart attack.

“He always told me, ‘I hope you never see me when I die,’ ” said Bonsteel. “He didn’t realize how hard it is when you’re not home because then you feel guilty.”

The German-born Bonsteel had met her American Army corporal husband in Germany after the war. They had been married 38 years when he died in 1986 at age 61.

“I was absolutely devastated,” said Bonsteel, 61. “I was thinking everything was going so well. I could not even cry until that night when I went to bed. I could not sleep. That’s when the emotions came out.”

Although the initial shock of her husband’s death wore off after about a month, Bonsteel found that for the first 6 months, “I was doing everything automatically. I acted like nothing’s happened: He’s coming back and I have to do these things. It’s really denial. You don’t want to face it.”

Up to a year after her husband’s death, she said, “I was always running away, always going somewhere.” Even today, she said, “I keep extra busy. The weekends are the worst because your husband was always home on Saturday and Sunday. I make sure I’m busy on those days.”

Her first New Year’s Eve without her husband was particularly difficult. She spent it with friends at the Phoenix Club, a German-oriented social club in Anaheim where she and her husband went for dinner every Friday night.

“I tried to be without tears and have a good time. Then midnight came, and that was it,” she said. “I flooded out the Phoenix Club. My doctor said, ‘Let it go. If you hold it in you’re going to wind up with a serious sickness.’ ”

An infrequent churchgoer, Bonsteel said her faith “helps somewhat, but I also got mad at God for taking him too soon.”

She started attending Renaissance, the grief support group in Anaheim, in September, 1987. At first she told her friends that she didn’t need a support group. “Then I realized I do need it, to talk about it. And we learn from everyone’s experience. They have helped me get over my grief and control my emotions. I still go for myself, but now I’m able to help the newer ones coming in.”

As she sees it, “staying home is the worst thing you can do. When you start thinking, that’s when your problem comes. I try to do something.”

Bonsteel has begun teaching a German class at the Phoenix Club and plans to act as unofficial tour guide for a group of her students who are going to Germany in the spring.

Twice a week, she has dinner at the club with friends, including a group of widows which meets every Wednesday. “They know what you’re going through and everybody else doesn’t,” she said.

Through the support group, Bonsteel has learned it’s advisable for widowed persons not to make any major life changes for at least a year after their spouse’s death. She said one woman sold all her husband’s jewelry, a move she now regrets. And while many people say they can no longer live in the same house because it contains too many memories, Bonsteel recommends moving the furniture around or redecorating instead.

Bonsteel said she hasn’t made any major mistakes since her husband died. “I think Bob geared me in the last 10 years on how to run things on my own in case something happened.”

Bonsteel said her 37-year-old son, James, who has been living with her since her husband died, has been a comfort. “He may not talk a lot or do the things I do, but at least I know he’s there when I need him.”

Recently, when she had a plumbing problem in her kitchen, Bonsteel said she got really angry at her husband. She smiled: “I really let him have it.” Her son ended up repairing the plumbing, but she felt better after blowing up. “You can’t let it build up. You have to let it out.”

Bonsteel said she hasn’t started dating. “I think it’s a little too early. My husband used to always say, ‘When I’m gone, take care of my body and the next day go get married.’ I said, ‘No way.’ He said, ‘You’re not the type of person to be by yourself.’ I need someone around. That’s why I have a lot of friends.”

Bonsteel no longer has extended periods of depression. But while she has made progress, there are still times when the feeling of emptiness returns.

She’ll be sitting in a restaurant having a cup of coffee after shopping and start to cry. And for some reason, she also finds herself crying when she gets in the car. But those times, she said, are getting fewer and fewer.

“Time, I guess, will heal everything. We hope.”

Paul Borcherding had never felt as alone as he did after his first wife, Helen, died in 1980 after 42 years of marriage.

Borcherding, 79, a retired contract negotiator for NASA, mostly stayed at home in Newport Beach.

“A man is not supposed to cry,” he said. “I did, here at home. You just feel like half of you is gone.”

A month after his wife died, however, Borcherding joined Lifelines for the Widowed, a support group in Laguna Hills.

“I just thought help is out there, and I’m going to have to seek it out and I did,” he said. “You try to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You have to let the world know you need help.”

Borcherding said the group helped him bring his feelings out in the open.

“That’s always been the best therapy for me, talking,” he said. “These people all have the same thing: They have lost a spouse, so you can talk about it.”

Borcherding said one neighbor who had also lost his wife turned down several invitations to come over and have a drink and talk. “He didn’t seem to want to get back into life, and he died within the year.”

Still, it was about 4 months before Borcherding started socializing again. His support group counselor set him straight.

“She said, ‘Just one of you died, not the two of you. The other is still alive.’ That turned me around.”

But it wasn’t easy: “The first date I had was a dinner date, I felt guilty, like this is something I shouldn’t be doing. I felt like my wife was looking over my shoulder saying this is wrong.”

Responding to a suggestion from a couple of women at the Oasis Senior Citizens Center in Corona del Mar, he signed up for a ballroom dance class and began attending the center’s weekly tea dances.

“Dancing is a touching thing, you know, and it was great therapy,” he said. “That started me off getting acquainted with other people. In fact, that’s how I met my second wife.”

Fourteen months after his first wife died, Borcherding married Vaudys Kline, a widow, whose husband had died 4 years earlier.

Like his first marriage, his second was successful, Borcherding said. But his second wife died in October after battling pancreatic cancer for a year.

Two weeks later, Borcherding started attending meetings of Another Passage, the grief support group at Oasis.

“It hurt just as much, but I can cope with it much better this time,” he said. “I realize I can do nothing about bringing them back. It’s very final. My second wife said before she died, ‘You can go a good while longer, so you live.’ ”

Borcherding goes to the Oasis Senior Citizens Center every day for games of shuffleboard and classes in ballroom dancing and square dancing.

When he returns from his outings, however, he still must get used to coming home to a quiet house. “The first thing I do is turn on the television to hear a voice,” he said. “The hardest things are the quietness of the house, the lack of companionship, being lonesome, having to do my own cooking.”

The holidays, he said, were especially difficult. But he didn’t have to face them alone.

In December he met Newport Beach artist Vickie Harrison, a widow, at the dollar lunch at the senior center.

“She helped me a lot to get over the holidays, which was a rough time,” said Borcherding. “She invited me to parties, to her sister’s house, to see the floats after the Rose Parade. . . . She’s been a very enjoyable companion. She talked to me one day for a whole hour on the telephone. She’s a widow. She realizes what I’ve gone through.”

Charlie and Cleo Ferguson, Anaheim residents since 1959, lived a quiet life.

Charlie, 66, worked as a tube mill operator at a Whittier radiator manufacturer and was involved in union and church activities. Cleo, 10 years Charlie’s senior, was a homebody who enjoyed playing cards, dominoes and solitaire. “She was a very simple person, an old-time individual,” said Ferguson.

Although Ferguson was not much of a game player, both he and his wife enjoyed miniature golf and going for walks together. And every Sunday they would go to church, always sitting in the same pew and going out for Sunday dinner afterward.

In July, while they were visiting relatives in Texas, Cleo Ferguson died after suffering a massive heart attack.

And for the first time in 35 years, Charlie Ferguson was alone.

“I guess I went through the grieving period, but I still grieve a lot,” he said. “I’m not sad all the time, just at certain times and places.”

Church on Sunday is one of those times and places.

“It’s very sad,” said Ferguson. “When I see the minister, or certain people and hear certain songs we sang, I break down. I cry. I make no bones about it. It’s very upsetting.”

Because his wife handled everything at home, Ferguson, who is now retired, has had to learn to do everything--from cooking to paying the bills.

“When she died I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “Cooking is very hard on me; I don’t know how to cook worth a flip. I had to make out my own Christmas list because I couldn’t find the old one. Here we’re coming up to income-tax time again, and I don’t know what to do. To me, this is the importance of a man and woman working together and sharing.”

Sitting home alone at night is especially difficult, said Ferguson, who now has a golden-brown kitten named Cricket to keep him company.

“It’s nice to have someone to come home to,” he said. “If you don’t have any children, it’s real bad. And then you go to bed at night and she’s not there. And you’re going to talk to her. If you have a problem, you say, ‘Well, how am I doing? What would you do?’ Or you get up in the morning and say to the picture, ‘Good morning, Cleo, how are you?’ It helps.”

Although his neighbors “were just wonderful” to him after Cleo died, Ferguson said he has learned that “people aren’t going to come to you. You have to go to other people.”

And that’s what he has been doing.

“I figured the worst thing I could do was stay at home and sit in the house,” he said. “That’s the secret, I think: getting away. Now I’m seldom home.”

Ferguson visits the senior centers in both Anaheim and Buena Park and goes to an exercise class three times a week. He also goes out to dinner with friends and goes to dances.

“I meet a lot of people there--people in the same position--and have a lot of fun,” he said. “I enjoy dancing--the jitterbug, rock ‘n’ roll and all that. My wife would never dance, especially with me.”

At one of the dances at the Buena Park Senior Citizens Center several months ago, Ferguson met a widow named Mary Martinez.

“She didn’t think I had the strength to dance, I was so run down,” he recalled with a grin. “She was sitting there and I said, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ She said, ‘I don’t mind.’ Then she turned and said, ‘Do you dance?’ I said, ‘Of course, I dance.’ So we danced all evening together.”

Since then, Ferguson has been seeing Martinez regularly, going out to dinner, dancing and playing miniature golf. She is, he said, “very sympathetic to my cause.”

Ferguson, however, has found that his active social life has come in for some criticism.

“Some of the members of the church have been running me down behind my back,” he said without bitterness. “I don’t care. I love my wife, but my wife made me promise before she died--she wanted me to go on living and not just sit around.”

One of the best things he did, Ferguson said, was to join the Renaissance support group in Anaheim.

“I’ve gotten a great deal out of it,” he said. “We have all lost a mate and for that reason we have comradeship. One can help the other because we understand each other.”

Ferguson said one man dropped out of the group because he felt it wasn’t doing him any good.

“He’s not through with his grieving period,” said Ferguson. “People break down and cry in this group, but this is what they have to do. You don’t feel ashamed of it. It’s just part of the healing process.”

The main thing, Ferguson advises others in his position, is to get out there and live.

“I’m enjoying life. I’m having more fun than I ever had before, but the thing is I still have my moments of grief. It doesn’t go away.”

While sitting in his regular pew at church one Sunday in December, Ferguson met a young mother whose children were in the Christmas play. Ferguson and the woman shared a hymnal and struck up a conversation. The woman said she usually sits in the corner because her children can be noisy. But if Ferguson didn’t mind sitting with her kids, she said, he was welcome to sit with them on Sundays.

“She’s a real nice girl,” he said. “She has helped just by talking to me. If the kids are noisy, I don’t care. It was nice of her to ask me. These are the beautiful things that happen.”