I was greeted by a post from a friend from law school this morning.  She shared a video of Zsa Zsa Padilla’s eulogy for Dolphy.  My friend was taken aback by how strongly she related to Zsa Zsa Padilla’s pain. And she wondered why she was able to relate to Zsa Zsa’s pain. I have an idea: it’s the pain all wives fear to feel: the pain of widowhood and loss of love.

Your husband doesn’t need to die for you to lose love in a marriage. Some wives suffer a thousand and one widowhoods during the existence of their marriage before finally becoming widowed.

If you have a husband who lacks enough emotional quotient to realize that marriage is exclusive and onto your marriage bed he brings in people and things that crowd you out and endanger the exclusivity of your marriage, you suffer widowhood by accident each time someone or something encroaches on your marriage bed.

It could be his mother, it could be the regular nights out with the barkada; it could be the GRO (or GROs, secretaries or other lady friends) he spends time with instead of you; it could be liquor, it could be metamphetamine hydrocholoride or other poison of choice; it could be his career or it could be his ego.  Each time he brings these things onto the marriage bed, you feel crowded out and you suffer a thousand widowhoods. If like Zsa Zsa Padilla, you share your man with the other women and children in his life, then you experience a thousand and one widowhoods because the man can never be entirely yours.

Admit it or not, each time these encroachers crowd you out of your rightful place in your husband’s universe, the tigress in you becomes a bit unhinged and homicidal. Lorena Bobbit’s image dances before your vision. You recall the rat poison under the kitchen sink; maybe you imagine pushing him down the stairs because he was too drunk he could easily have fallen all by himself. You feel like stabbing him or mutilating him.  You never do, instead you retreat into yourself and you lick your wounds.  You’ve experienced a thousand widowhoods!

If you have a good husband who is the sun to your moon, then you also experience a thousand widowhoods. Like Zsa Zsa Padilla, if you married a man much older than yourself, you have acquainted yourself with the likelihood of being a widow because he is that much older than you.  If like Zsa Zsa Padilla, you married a man with a chronic ailment, you have more than ever accustomed yourself to the realization that each hiccup, each rise in blood pressure, each rasp, gasp or heart murmur could well be his last, then you live through a thousand widowhoods as a matter of course.  If, after a hair-raising medical emergency or brush with death, you husband recovers somewhat only to plunge into a more profound medical suffering, the roller-coaster ride that is your husband’s health is a thousand and one widowhoods.

Then one day, after emotionally limping through yet another health crisis and you have settled down to a predictable routine of maintenance drugs, doctor’s visits, tests and procedures, the doctor suddenly smiles and says to you, “There’s an improvement in his heart function.” You feel a huge boulder slide down from your shoulders and you are relieved: your husband might yet see your children graduate from high school.  You renew your vow to take better care of this wonderful man 24/7 because he means that much to you and you’re gunning for him to live till your 25^th wedding anniversary. You have lived through a thousand widowhoods.

When because the doctor said there was some improvement and you all felt so relieved, hubby says, “To heck with the office today, let’s go pick up the kids and eat out.”  So you pick up the kids and have fun sharing a meal.  Then as you stroll down the mall, hubby says to you, “Why wait for our 25^th to buy new wedding bands? I can’t wear mine because it has gotten too big and you can’t wear yours because yours has gotten too small.” And he buys you new wedding bands.

And then while waiting for your names to be engraved in the rings, he sees a wristwatch and says, “I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything nice for your birthday.  Do you like this one?” You blink uncomprehending (because he has been sick on and off for so long, all female selfishness for tokens of love have dissipated and have been eclipsed with the threat of the loss of the one love of your life) and you furrow your eyebrows.  Then it clicks! You don’t want a new wristwatch; you certainly don’t need another one.  Then he says to you, “Alam ko na, advanced anniversary gift, his and hers ang bilhin natin.”  You again blink uncomprehending (you didn’t use your feminine wiles to get this treat!). He buys one for you and another for himself.  Never mind that he may have dipped into the emergency fund or the kids’ college fund, you are so relieved that he is doing so much better.  You are counting on sunny days for a while.

And then, just when you are driving back home, he suddenly becomes quiet and you know that he only becomes quiet when he is conserving energy or listening to his own body, you glance at him nervously.  You suggest dropping by the emergency room or calling his doctor.  He says no, he’s fine, it must be something he ate.  The whole night, you know there is something wrong but he’s not telling, you live through a thousand widowhoods overnight!

You keep asking yourself is it time?  Is this the time?  Is this the day you take him from me, Lord?

Zsa Zsa Padilla wasn’t even married to Dolphy and she was widowed! How can any wife fare better? Theoretically, Zsa Zsa Padilla could have walked away from her relationship with Dolphy but she chose to stay.  Wives have more complicated issues: there is the legal and societal bond that ties them to their man who is their husband, whether he be a bad husband, a so-so husband, a good husband or a wonderful husband. Her existence is inextricably linked to him, and she is not quite herself without him.

Indeed how do wives cope with the thousand and one widowhoods they experience?

Some wives withdraw into themselves: they harden their hearts at the widowhood imposed by their husbands’ infidelities and go on with their married life on the basis of duty.  They concentrate on the kids, their careers or their hair and make-up and this becomes their life. They may be widowed, but boy, do they look lovely.

Others walk away.  They go abroad, find greener pastures or cultivate their own garden because their husbands will never bring them flowers.

Still others, because they were lucky enough to have made an emotional investment on a good man, can do nothing but hold on tight for the bumpy ride.  Each brush with impending widowhood is met with tears that betray a rugged resolve.  These women survive.  Of course, if your husband is the sun in your life and you are the moon, when the light of the sun extinguishes itself, the moon becomes nothing but cold wind-beaten rock.  These women pick up the pieces and move on knowing they have lost the one shining light of their lives.  They are forever impaired.

Still others fight.  They bargain with God, asking him desperately for added days, weeks, months or even years. They go through every single religious or paranormal rite or ritual just to prolong life. These are desperate women.

Still others surrender.  This wife realizes that her husbands’ breath and life are borrowed from God.  Her husband has and has always been lent to her by God and now the owner, God himself, has thought it wise to take  back.  She cannot refuse the God who made him and sustained him all these happy years he’s been with her.

Tears flowing from her eyes, she kneels before God and she says, “Lord, if you want to have him now, I will give him back to you with thanks and praise. Thank you for lending him to me.  I wanted a bit more time but I submit to your will, take him as you wish.  You are so much better at taking care of him that I ever will be.  In my presence there is joy, but in your presence, there is fullness of joy. Take him, he’s yours. He was yours before he was ever mine.”

And after she has surrendered and submitted, she goes inside the bedroom to check up on him and he greets heer with a smile and with a joke as though nothing had happened, she tells him the crisis of emotion she had just gone through and they both laugh.  He says to her, “You gave me up that easily?”

And she says to him, “Of course, look at Abraham, when God demanded Isaac, he immediately and wholeheartedly obeyed.  He tied up Isaac and would have stabbed him, but God returned Isaac to Abraham. I was hoping if I surrendered you to God, He’d give you back to me.”  They laugh some more.

We relate to Zsa Zsa Padilla’s pain because hers is every woman’s pain. Wives live through a thousand widowhoods whether their husbands are good or bad.  When sometimes you get lucky and widowhood  is delayed, even for just one more day, it is widowhood denied.