Life's Final Lessons From Three Widows Who Embraced The Hard Truth of Life and Death

Everyone you meet knows something you don't know but need to know. Learn from them. -Carl Jung

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

It could have been the beginning of a joke—three widows walked into a bar and ordered a drink.

But it was no joke. That night was a life lesson taught by three women stronger, better, and more broken than I was.

It was my eleventh day walking the Camino de Santiago when the three Widows sat across from me in a bar in Carrion de los Condes, Spain. The youngest widow ordered vino tinto and the other two women ordered a vino blanco or white wine. And I, the hapless observer, watched as this wannabe Greek dramedy unfolded.

I sat in quiet fascination, wondering if it were sheer chance or fate or God playing dice with the universe, and if I was one of the dice.

The Widows laughed, hugged, and cried as they recognized a member of their lonely sorority. All night they shared their misadventures and mishaps on the Camino de Santiago. The only language they shared was the silent communion of loss, its sorrow so consuming it hollowed their bone marrow and sucked breath from the room.

They live half a world apart from each other and have nothing in common except the deaths of their husbands, each man lost a year apart. But that night, grief bound them together, creating a trinity forged in heartbreak and strapped together by pain, blood, tears, and one too many glasses of wine.

Listening to their stories, I realized the Widows were broken and yet stronger and more durable than steel, able to withstand the hard gravity of suffering that came with losing one's partner. But the wrong word, a furtive look, or a smile that reminded them of someone gone, and tears fell. Fast. So I kept quiet and watched.

A thousand shadows from yesterday followed them to Spain, whispering old dreams and dead words along the Camino’s worn path. They hoped the pilgrimage would soothe the sorrow and ease their pain. But as with most journeys, especially the spiritual ones watered at night with wine, memories don’t fade. They come like an avalanche. First in ones and twos, then all at once, wrecking the quiet valley of their lives.

The Camino does not grant peace easily or for free. It demands to be paid in your suffering. Give it willingly, or resist, but give it you will.

Since the deaths of their husbands, the sister Widows found moments of respite from their memories—a conversation with a stranger, time with their children, dating a new man, but that night, they welcomed the old memories, the tears, the anger of being left behind. That night, they had each other. But when no one was watching, you can see them gasping for air. 

There is no growing away from the death of someone you love. It follows you, chasing you into your dreams. Always haunting, never letting go, and constantly tugging at buried memories. 

In the aftermath of a loved one's death comes guilt, shame, and the unwillingness (or inability) to let go. You are never free. Just ask the three Widows. 

On this night, I was the bystander. My only obligation was to watch and sit in awe of their strength and ability to get up in the morning. Through the hours and drinks that followed, I wondered if I could go on if my wife died before me. I don’t think so.

The first drink was followed by a second one, then a third, fourth, and fifth. They joked and ate, ordered more drinks, and made fun of me. That’s okay. My flaws are painfully obvious. It was worth the occasional tease to watch the God roll dice in front of me.

There was something familiar about that night, that stirred an old memory. The Three Widows reminded me of an old animated series from the seventies, Schoolhouse Rock. One episode featured a song called Three is a Magic Number. 

Three is a magic number
Yes it is, it's a magic number
Somewhere in that ancient trinity
You get three as a magic number
The past and the present and the future
Faith and hope and charity
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number

(Song by Bob Dorough)

That night, three lives, three sorrows, three stories intertwined—not by choice, but fate. And in their shared grief, something unexpected emerged. Maybe three was a magic number after all.

History, religion, and literature love the number three. Both Norse and Greek mythology have the three fates. Christianity has the holy trinity (so does food, for that matter—onions, peppers, and celery). There are the Three Musketeers and the Three Amigos with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase. And now there are the Three Widows.

I asked for their husbands' names and each woman paused before answering. If this were a movie, my question would have stopped the music mid-song and sucked the oxygen out of the room. I tend to do that.

They told me. Their names were typical, average really, but their stories were not. But I won’t share that here. That’s the Widows’ path to take.

Though we were together in a crowded bar, a sheet of loneliness wrapped around the table, like tablecloth linen, smooth, creased, and presentable in the middle, but the edges were tattered and the strings of their lives hung loose, unable to come together. 

Carl Jung said loneliness doesn't come from having no people about you but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. 

How could the Widows communicate what the average person has not experienced? Few people know pain or loss of any magnitude. Most of us don't understand what it means to yearn, ache, to fall on our knees begging to hold the unholdable one more time. To lose a partner is to love an empty void. It is to say I love you and never hear the words echo back. But most of us won’t look into an empty void until it’s too late. By then we’re too old for it to matter. The young carry pain differently, but the old hold it longer.

The inadmissible is that the world does not understand this pain. But how could it? We try to find comparable losses like a real estate agent comparing house prices. But not everyone has lost a husband, wife, friend, teacher, mentor, or child. Especially a child. They have a name when someone loses a wife or husband—widow or widower. But losing a child is unthinkable. No name can grasp the enormity of that loss, of that sort of suffering.

I write about philosophy, believing I know the answers or at least the questions to many of life’s problems, but the truth is that I know nothing. The Widows were the shamans that night and I was the fool sitting on the bench trying to memorize each word, glance, and moment of clarity.

As the Widows laughed, drank, shared stories of their husbands, I remembered what Rumi said about the paths we take:

"It's your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can do it for you." 

The Three Widows are like most people who lost a loved one. Their families offered comfort, the well-intentioned stranger—like me—gave unwanted advice, and friends told them one day, they will outgrow the pain. But eventually, the hugs and platitudes of goodwill stop, and the house echoes in the silence at night, and these Widows, as all widows do, wash the dishes alone. Because now, everything they do is done alone.

The Stoics meditated on death throughout their texts. Seneca believed it was better to conquer death than to deceive it. Yet for all their wisdom, even the Stoic masters found the practice of accepting loss difficult to implement. 

The death of his daughter broke Cicero. The Roman statesman known for his eloquence, found no words to mend his grief. He turned inward, writing a consolation speech—not for Rome, not for his family, but for himself. He tried to find meaning in her death, hoping he could find the words, but he never could. His loss was beyond reason, beyond philosophy, beyond his understanding of the world.

When Marcus Aurelius's trusted friend and general, Avidius Cassius, rebelled against him, he did not order his soldiers to kill him. Instead, he wanted Cassius captured so he could forgive him. But when an assassin killed Cassius in Egypt three months later, Marcus was inconsolable. 

The Philosopher King forgave those who betrayed him, carried on ruling an empire, and lived by the principles he espoused, yet he still grieved. But for most, grief is not easily governed. It lingers, reshaping their world into something unrecognizable.

As the evening ended, we split the bill, promising to do this again. I looked into their eyes and knew they would never find true peace. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, renowned psychiatrist and pioneer on near-death studies, believed we will grieve forever, that we will never get over the death of a loved one, and somehow, we will simply learn to live with it.

I realized these women understood the reality of that truth, and yet hated it for what it was. They embodied the old Gypsy proverb:

"A gypsy only tells the truth once in his life, but he regrets it afterward."

Every night they don’t wait for the truth. They live it and have enough regrets.

Death exposes us. The Widows prove that in every sentence, breath, and gesture they make. When we suffer and have no corner to run to, we face what we are. Margery Williams wrote in The Velveteen Rabbit,

"Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you."

Much has happened to the Widows. They are real enough.

The Three Widows taught that everyone is searching for understanding. We want to know why something happens, why we are hurt, why we are alone, but we may never get an answer. That might not sound comforting, but if we accept that truth we will find strength in it. 

Like the Widows, we carry our pain, anger, love, hatred, compassion, and dispassion on the tip of our tongues. We use the truth as our tool, weapon, and means to comfort. 

In the shadow of our loneliness, we, as the Widows do, draw comfort from our families and friends and jobs, and I suspect, not much else. We use our laughter and witticisms as a sheer blanket to camouflage the suffering we endured and the scars we carry. 

C.S. Lewis said, "If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair." The problem with most of us is that we prefer comfort over the truth. 

The Widows show you can’t run or hide from the truth. We hope to care for it, cradle it, and find comfort when it is revealed to us.

Too many put off learning this lesson until tomorrow but die leaving it unlearned. The dead don't seek understanding. Hunger no longer haunts them. The truth means nothing. They're dead. 

But you are not. Don't wait for death to teach you its final lesson. 

Learn from the Three Widows.

---

Thanks for reading. I hope you find comfort in the people you love.

Love to you and yours,

Michael