Everyone shows up in week one and nobody shows up in month seven. The dates that gut you are on a calendar, so put them on yours.
Keep the Widow's First-Year Calendar
Put one widow's hard dates in your phone for the year — the anniversary, his birthday, the first Christmas, the day he died — and show up on every one.
What you'll need
- Four or five calendar reminders, set the day you hear the news
- A note in each reminder saying what to do — call, come by, bring dinner
- Nothing else
Pitfalls
- Set the reminders now, at the funeral. You'll forget by March, and March is the point.
- Say his name out loud. People stop saying it, and that silence is its own grief.
- Don't ask if she wants company on the anniversary. Bring food and let her send you home.
Religion that God accepts as pure is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. — James 1:27