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Bereavement:
A Life Passage
We call widowhood
an expected life event for several reasons. When we're younger,
widowhood seems distant and abstract but as we age, it starts
to appear more concrete: friends or siblings are widowed, our
spouse becomes seriously ill, we reach the age said to be a Canadian's
average life expectancy.
Most marriages
end with the death of one of the spouses, usually when both partners
are in their senior years. Widows and widowers accounted for 6.4%
of all Canadians age 15 and over in 1996 but for 32.5% of everyone
age 65 and over.1
A woman's
story
Widowhood
can happen to both men and women at any age, but because women
generally live longer than men, 80% of the 1.5 million widowed
people in Canada are women. More than 75% of them are age 65 or
older. The absolute numbers are just as striking: more than 1
million widows over age 60 and 208,000 widowers.
Along with
their longer life expectancy, women tend to marry men a few years
older than themselves and are less likely to remarry after being
widowed or divorced.2 Women's average age at widowhood and average
duration of widowhood are also rising.
Not only are
the numbers different for widows and widowers, so are the lifestyles.
Barry McPherson studies individual and population aging. He reports
that women are more likely than men to have a large peer group
for social and emotional support. They also tend to have closer
ties with their children, especially daughters. Though men are
no less vulnerable to grief, widowers are more likely to be isolated
from their families. Widowed men are generally older and in poorer
health, but they also tend to have greater financial resources
and opportunities for remarriage if they choose. These differences
may narrow as women with higher levels of education, job experience,
and financial resources age and become widows.3
Bereavement
experiences vary widely. Adjusting to widowhood usually involves
an initial period of shock and numbness, then a time when pressing
practical matters are a priority. Working through the grief process
may take two years or more, while redefining an individual and
social identity and settling into a new way of life often take
a few years longer.
1 Except where
noted, all figures are from Statistics Canada, The Daily, 14 October
1997, "1996 Census: Marital status, common-law unions and families";
and Catalogue no. 93F0022XDB96005, the Nation Series (1996 Census
data).
2 Martin
Matthews, A. Widowhood in later life (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991),
p. vii.
3 McPherson,
B.D. Aging as a social process. An introduction to individual
and population aging, third edition (Toronto: Harcourt Brace &
Company, Canada, 1998), p. 215.
  
A special thank
you to the people of:
Division
of Aging and Seniors,
Health Canada
Address locator: 1908A1 Ottawa, ON K1A 1B4
Tel.: 613-952-7606 Fax : 613-957-7627
E-mail: seniors@hc-sc.gc.ca
for
permission to reprint this article on www.thefuneraldirectory.com.
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