Widowed

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project © Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project © Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project View all images ↓
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There is nothing like the grief one experiences after a life partner passes away. When I lost my first husband in 2008, I searched for books and articles addressing this particular loss. I was looking for suggestions on coping techniques from others who'd been widowed. There wasn't much.

I remarried in 2012. After focusing on my loving relationship with my second husband, Joel in my body of work “Second Time Around,” I realized that my feelings about my first husband’s passing were still evolving, bubbling up occasionally at random times.

Since March of 2018, I have been meeting with widows and widowers of all ages, gay and straight, having been in legal marriages or in committed partnerships. We have a conversation, recorded for accuracy, and I make the portrait. A printed statement from the subject accompanies each photograph. This process is emotionally satisfying as my sitters and I examine together how a marriage can shape us going forward. I hope that by sharing their stories, those suffering this profound loss - whether recently or not - will take comfort in recognition and shared experience.

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Britten - 40 years together, 1 year after: "Mike passed away from prostate cancer. He was sick for a couple of years. The last four years, I kept telling him, baby, go to the doctor. 'No, leave me alone.' I don't know what's wrong with Black men, they don't like to go to the doctor."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Melissa - 30 years together, 2.5 years after: "I went back to work about two weeks after the funeral. It's a very strange feeling to go back. People look at you. They don't know what to say to you. I guess for some people it's easier to ignore it and just ignore you than to confront you and say, 'How are you doing'?"

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Stephanie -10 years together, 3 years after: "The way I kind of wrap my head around it all is, it's not just that someone died - it's like a weird way to end the relationship. It's the weirdest way because all these conversations were never finished, and nothing is ever resolved."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Darrell - 25 years together, 1.5 years after: "We had a cocktail hour every Saturday evening after Roger came home from church and before going out to dinner. It usually included wine or champagne, cheese, some fruit, nuts, and crackers. We would have some unobtrusive music on. This would be our time, every week, to really talk to each other. About life, our shared or personal histories or any plans we had for the future."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Robin– 41 years together, 2.5 years after: "You need to like yourself. And I think that's important. Forty-one years together. And I know we were very different personalities. And so, you temper each other and then suddenly, he's not there. And I thought, who am I, what parts of the tempered me do I want to hang onto now that he's not tempering that anymore? I know, as I go around thinking, all right, Brian, yeah, you'll be pleased. I did this and I did that. And I think that helps because I think we become better people as a result of living with somebody for that long."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Santiago - 25 years together, 2 years after: "It's been two years. I think about her all the time. When I see my sons, my daughter - I see my wife in them. She was the best woman for me in the world - a beautiful person."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Dale - 54 years together, 4 years after: "I guess that she, when she died, it was a ble​​​​ssing completely. She didn't know who I was. She could no longer stay here because she tried to get out and escape. And that's what keeps me going now. Whenever I thought about how sad it was that she wasn't here, I always thought about how awful it would be for her if she was."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Andrea -25 years together, 2 years after: "We often had arguments and he was sometimes not kind to me. But we always felt it was important to stay together and stay married and work on our marriage and our relationship.:

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Mike - 21 years together, 1 year after: "She died when she was 39 and I was 40. We met in high school, traveled to college together, traveled around the world, ended up here together. It was kind of crazy because we became adults together and so everything that ​​​​I knew about being a functioning adult was a skill set that I had developed in tandem with somebody else. And, so all of a sudden being single, it was really disorientating. I mean, beyond everything else that goes with coupledom, everything that I loved about her and everything, I mean, everything that was her, that was lost. And not having a sounding board."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Edward - 58 years together, 8 months after: "Neil was sick for a long time. I'm glad he died before me. He couldn't have managed on his own.Now, I don't know what to do with myself a lot of the time. I mean, there's lots I have to do. I haven't really been able to settle down to writing for about five years because things got very heavy. I'm now starting to think about that. It's coming to me that it would be a very good thing to do, to write about the story of our relationship".

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Karen - 37 years together, 11 weeks after: "I said to my friend the other day, I don't know whether I'll ever feel like a whole person again. But she said, 'think of it like you were an injured tree and that you'll grow around it'."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Denise - 26 years together, 15 years after: "I have strong feelings of regret sometimes; they're more petty regrets. And probably my biggest regret is the day the doctor said that it's time to look into hospice. We went out and we sat down in the waiting room, and he started to weep, and I was all kind of, ‘Oh, we'll do this, and we'll do that’. You know, I can't even remember, but like, ‘We'll look at this, we'll try’. And I just have always regretted that. I simply didn't sit with him in that moment and let him just grieve what he had now been told."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Barbara - 54 years together, 3 years after: "When he died, I went right back to work. I took a week to do all the paperwork and all of that sort of thing, the administrative stuff you have to do, cleared out his clothes immediately - everything."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Dennis - 12 years together, 3 months after: "She died the second month of this year, February. I'm seeing a lot of people from all walks of my life. I'm getting together for lunches, dinners, hanging out with people and I'm also seeing my therapist twice a week. So I guess I'm taking care of myself the best I can."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Elaine - 16 years together, 8 years after: "Money was nothing for him. He had great friends, lots of great friends. And he was just a great guy. And even when he was ill, I never felt it was a bur​​​​den taking care of him. I felt in a way, it was a blessing that I was allowed to do this, because if he was single, what would have happened to him if he had gotten this."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Katy - 37 years together, 9 years after: "I think I lost myself a lot in the relationship. I lost my confidence and my ability to love myself. I had one of those battered women type mentalities then. I felt I wasn't good enough. I wasn't battered physically, but mentally, it's just as bad. The hurt of him alive hurting me was a different type of hurt...now that he's gone, I'm going to go through that hurting and it's going to be done. I won’t have to learn to just manage it and I won’t have to live it every day over and over. His sister actually said, now you're free."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Josi - 40 years together, 2.5 years after: "I said to my grief counselor, I want to take away the pain. How do I take away this pain? And she said to me, you cannot take away the pain. You have two choic​​​​es. You can either take drugs, and or sleep for the next six months. Or you can face it, cry all the time for a short period of time. Get through it. And little by little you'll get stronger. And that's the choice I took."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Lori - 22 years together, 11 years after: "I was looking for comforting books and trying to reconcile God's role in the whole thing. And how can bad things happen to good people. And why is there so much suffering in the world and all those age - old questions. And then afterwards I got really caught up in the girls and I started doing a lot of reading about that. I remember I have this book called Fatherless Daughters - I just really wanted to know how could I help them, and there was almost nothing on it."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Edith - 33 years together, 4 years after: "Every Friday I have breakfast food for dinner because it was a Friday that he died and I made him brunch. I made this brunch and that's when he asked me, you know, you usually do Sunday brunch, why Friday, you know something I don't know? I said, no, I just figured that we should do this. He said I don't know- you're up to something. I said 'no' and so now every Friday I'm alone, and I have breakfast food on a Friday."

© Susan Rosenberg Jones - Image from the Widowed photography project
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Charles - 48 years together, 15 months after: "The first thing that was unexpectedly, profoundl​y​, upsetting - our older daughter, Rebecca, was going to take Hope's jewelry box home to put jewelry in and I was 'fine, fine take that.' But, after she left, I panicked, because I suddenly realized I didn't want her to take it."

Widowed by Susan Rosenberg Jones

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