They buried her on a Saturday. His girlfriend even attended the burial. By Sunday, he was being advised to “be strong,” “start eating well,” and “not let himself go.” One week later, the jokes about “finding someone to help him around the house” had already begun. And before the one-year anniversary of her death, he was remarried.
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Let’s flip the coin or turn the tables, the expectations would shift drastically. She, the widow, would have been told to stay low, to cover her hair, cut her hair in some cultures to “respect the memory of her husband.” She even has a mourning uniform she’s required to wear for the next one year. Any sign of laughter, joy, or lipstick within the first year would have been labeled disrespectful. Remarrying? A taboo. Society would accuse her of having “moved on too fast,” or even having a hand in the death of her husband, even if she was only trying to move at all.
The first time he laughed again, people smiled and said, “He’s healing, he is a strong man.”
The first time she laughed again, people whispered, “She didn’t love him enough.”
That’s the world widows live in.
She had barely returned from burying her husband when someone advised her to “dress more modestly now.”
Her phone was silent, her home was full of watchers, not comforters.
Meanwhile, across the street, a widower received cooked meals and prospects of remarriage by the third week.
Death does not treat men and women differently. But society does.
And nowhere is that more obvious than in how we let widowers breathe and force widows to suffocate.
This isn’t just culture. This is imbalance dressed in the garment of tradition. And no, it isn’t love that compels the widower to remarry quickly. It is permission, social, spiritual, and systemic permission.
Our societies have always been generous to men in grief. His loneliness is urgent, his needs valid, his healing prioritized. The widow, on the other hand, is often asked to perform her grief, to wear her sorrow like a permanent badge. Her loneliness is seen as endurance. Her needs? A nuisance.
We wrap the widower in prayers and second chances. We wrap the widow in silence and suspicion.
Our foremothers were forced to stay back and “keep the home,” sometimes even denied inheritance or pushed into levirate marriages. Many spent decades nursing children and carrying the weight of legacies they didn’t choose. And even today, in urban cities with smart-phones and hashtags, women still hide their desires, their longing, their right to start over for fear of being labeled impatient, indecent, or insensitive.
Why does a man remarry after one year and earn congratulations while a woman remarrying after three is asked if she ever truly loved her husband?
Why do in-laws turn from mourners to moral police? Why do friends and church members become monitors of how she walks, who she talks to, and what time she gets home? Why does widowhood become a prison while widower-hood is a pathway to pity and promotion?
A society that makes it easier for men to grieve and start over, while forcing women to wallow and wither, is not preserving culture it is preserving cruelty
When a man loses his wife, people gather to comfort him. When a woman loses her husband, people gather to monitor her.
He is allowed to feel lonely, she is expected to feel grateful for ever having been loved.
His healing is a necessity. Hers is a scandal.
The widow is expected to cry in silence. The widower is allowed to laugh again in public with praise.
We grieve with him. We judge her.
Widowhood is not just loss it is surveillance, suspicion, and social sentencing.
Her ring becomes a shackle, his ring becomes a memory.
In the name of tradition, we have asked women to bury themselves beside their husbands while still breathing.
He’s ‘moving on.’ She’s ‘disgracing the family.
The funeral ends for the widower. But for the widow, it’s just beginning.
Let’s stop pretending this is culture. It’s not. It’s convenience.
Convenient for patriarchy.
Convenient for tradition that only controls women.
And it ends now, not because widows need our pity but because they deserve our respect.
A man’s grief is treated like a wound to be bandaged.
A woman’s grief is treated like a curse to be endured.
It’s time we buried these double standards and finally let women live after loss.
Grief should not come with a gender tag.
Healing should not come with shame.
Let’s build a world where women are not punished for surviving what almost killed them.
Let the widow live again proudly, fully.
The post While he moves on, she must mourn forever, by Stephanie Shaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.
