The Joyful Widower

The worst thing anyone ever said to me as a new widower: “you were lucky.”

A couple days after Melinda’s death, I called Social Security to notify them and to apply for whatever survivor benefits I was entitled to. The surviving spouse gets a one-time $255 death benefit (possibly more, depending on earnings, age, disability status, etc.). The amount hasn’t gone up in the history of Social Security. Last year I called to report Tracy’s death. Yup. Still $255. Paid for the little bulletins the funeral home printed up.

Here’s how the process works: you call SSA to report the death. They have a list of questions that they gather the answers to, then they go away and let the computers chug on your answers, and then call you back a couple days later to notify you of your benefits.

When I first called Social Security after Melinda’s death, the agent got to the question about children. Melinda and I had conceived once, and lost the baby just a day or two after we discovered we were expecting. We tried for several months after that, but never again did we conceive. “No,” I replied, “no children.”

The agent said, “you were lucky. You could have been stuck with kids.”

At the end of the interview, the agent came back to the topic of children. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but you were lucky. I had a guy the other day, he was stuck with twins.”

I’d been a widower less than 48 hours at that point, and too in shock to reply. I just didn’t have it in me to say, “ma’am, I’d give anything to have a child by Melinda with me right now. I’ve just gone through 8 months of negative pregnancy tests with my wife.” After I hung up, all I could think was how messed up her life must be if she thought children are little more than a burden.

I’m grateful that Tracy and I had children together. It is hard to walk through the grief of losing a parent with kids, but I’m honored to be their dad and to have this blessed responsibility. The three of us have grown together, have had deep and intimate conversations together, have argued together, have supported one another, have had adventures together (especially our trek across Scotland, England, France, and Germany last summer). I’d give anything to make it all better, but I can’t. There is no magic bullet, no way to fix this. This past year, the experience of Tracy’s death has shown me more clearly than anything else that I can’t fix everything, that sometimes children will experience brokenness and all you can do is love them, be present to them, and cry out to the God of infinite love out of your own finitude to make up the difference.

Having kids to get through this with has given me a profoundly different experience of grief than the first time I was widowed. With grief it can be tempting to turn inward, but you can’t do that when you have to take care of others. Yes, there are times you want to get away for yourself, and when emotions are cranked up to 11, that feeling is stronger and more frequent. With teenagers, getting out for breaks is doable; if I had toddlers or elementary school kids, I’d have needed babysitters to facilitate time to myself. But having a daily life “in community,” with others who are experiencing the same thing but in their own way, is an opportunity to grow in love, to become a better listener, a more compassionate person. We’re not perfect, no family ever is, but I’m grateful for the love that my kids and I share as we work through our life together now that it’s the three of us.

The week after my initial interview with Social Security when Melinda died, I got the callback from a different agent. Since I was expecting the call, I was in a more collected frame of mind. As soon as the agent identified himself on the phone, I said, “please, let me tell you what was said to me the other day,” and then calmly but directly reported the first conversation. The agent was shocked. He immediately told me that he would report it after our review of my benefits. At the end of our conversation, the last thing he said to me was, “again, Mr. Tilson, I’m very sorry for what was said to you, and I want you to know that I am now standing up from my desk and the moment I hang up the phone, I’m grabbing a manager to tell them what was said to you.” Thanks be to God that there was good closure on that interaction. I pray that nobody else had to hear how lucky they had been.