REXBURG—Susan Balcom Walton recently released her new book “Lunch with the Widows: What I Learned About Living After My Husband Died.” It’s inspired by her own journey after the passing of her husband, Mark.
After losing her husband during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walton felt the need to connect with people. She lived hundreds of miles from family and was teaching at BYU-Idaho.
On the first Thanksgiving she experienced alone, she reached out to an old friend who was also widowed. She pulled out her best China for their Zoom dinner, where they laughed and talked as they ate.
“And it was so soul-satisfying that that night after it was over, I took out my little notebook and I thought, I have to do this more. And I began making a list of people I'd like to talk to,” Walton said.
Her book follows what she learned from those experiences, it includes her conversation with eight of those women in detail.
She learned that everyone experiences grief in different ways.
“You don't move on, you move forward,” Walton said.
Moving forward for Walton was to look for things that brought her joy earlier in her life. For example, she picked up racquetball again.
In her early days of being a widow, she spoke to widows in the five-to-seven-year range. It helped her to see what life a few years down the road could be. These experiences made the future something she could imagine.
Some advice she heard repeated in many of her conversations with widows is the need for connection, no matter how imperfect it might be.
“Every one of these women said to me that they would rather have someone try,” Walton said. “Reach out and try. Make that connection.”
One surprise chapter in her life was finding love again. She married a widower named George. She felt it was hard to imagine building a new relationship after losing Mark after 43 years. Her conversations with widows, who had similar experiences, helped her with this new experience in her life.
“It is quite simply its own unique entity. And what I think George and I have both found is that it is possible to move forward that way with joy and intent while not at all forgetting or holding in any less reverence the memories in the lifetime that you have with that person that you were married to for so long,” Walton said.
To read “Lunch with Widows: What I Learned About Living After My Husband Died,” you can order it online at Cedar Fort Publishing and Media Online or on Amazon.
The QR code on the book leads to Walton’s website, where you can connect with her.