"Anche Tu?"

When I first heard about the Widowed Village organization, I was excited about the opportunity to connect with other women of a similar age and passage of time since their husband’s death. I believe it’s so important that we support and encourage each other as we step forward in life after the death of our spouses.

The program offers to pair you up with likely email correspondents, and I eagerly awaited the assignment of mine. But when the addresses arrived, I sat in front of my computer and found myself at a loss as to how to begin. My husband has been gone almost seven years now. If they were in a similar time frame, then, like me, they are likely past the initial onslaught of grief and are well into the next stage of their lives. I didn’t think there was anything I could share that they hadn’t already discovered for themselves.

The question of what to say so stymied me that I couldn't move forward; I never reached out. Maybe they felt the same way, because I never heard from them, either. 

A couple of months passed. And then out of the blue, I got another email from Widowed Village with another name to contact.

It wasn't an accident. I know it was God encouraging me to take this step and connect. He knows I love letters, encouragement, and friends. Writing has always been good therapy for me. I could almost hear His voice saying, "Go on. Write to her. You can do this. Go on now...". 

In the end, He used two words to convince me: Anche tu?

To understand, you'd have to know that I love all things Italian. My dad came over from Italy when he was only 5 years old, and his family settled in the San Francisco area. I grew up listening to my Italian relatives speaking to each other constantly in their native tongue, eating Italian feasts in my Nonna's huge basement with lots of singing and drinking, talking and laughter. To my shame, I never picked up any of it - I never learned Italian as a child, I can't cook a pasta dish worth a noodle... all I remember is the love and joy, the warmth and deliciousness of it all. 

I'm making the effort to catch up now, lol. I’m trying to learn the language - a task that would've been so much easier if I'd had any desire to do it when I was growing up! But as part of my current learning experience, I watch Italian dramas on Netflix, in Italian, with English subtitles. It was while watching one of those that I heard a song that was a big hit in Italy called Fotoromanza by Gianna Nannini. I didn't get much out of the song except that every little stanza seemed to suggest a thought or action, and then ended with the words, "Anche tu?", which literally means, "You, too?" It was catchy, and the words, Anche tu started to echo in my mind.

And finally, I realized that that was what this writing connection… and this blog, for that matter…  could be all about... that we simply share situations we experience as widows, no matter how long we’ve been in that state, with the mindset that maybe what we are going through is something that another has experienced or felt in their journey, as well.

“Anche, tu?”  It could at least be a starting point.

And so that is what I did. I simply wrote about two things that had happened to me lately, the  first of which was my struggle with finding reliable contractors to complete home repair jobs, something my husband always used to take care of, now a task that’s fallen to me. And the other was my surprise at an unexpected wave of grief that overtook me on my way home from church last week; something I hadn’t experienced in such intensity since early on in my loss.

She responded in less than twenty-four hours, and our friendship journey has begun!

And it all started with simply sharing a heart, maybe a hard place… and a desire to help another who might be in the same space. That’s how I want to live my life going forward… anche tu?

 “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”

(1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV)

(Photo credit:Unsplash/CHUTTERSNAP)