Widowhood is often a very traumatizing experience not only for widows themselves but also for the daughters of widows.
From losing property to experiencing physical and psychological abuse in the hands of in-laws, the experiences of widows and their children show that until marriage is not seen as the apex of a woman’s life, then the loss of it even via death would always herald problems.
In our latest listicle, Urban Woman Magazine asked some widows and daughters of widows to share how Widowhood and the loss of spouses and fathers changed the trajectory of their lives.
Read their responses below.
EBE
My mum was two years younger than my current age when my father died. It is mind-boggling to me how she survived with two small children.
I’d still cite my father’s death as the singularly most important event that changed the trajectory of my life till this day. Everything changed.
Lost my father, we moved to a different part of the country, his family tried to take us from our mother, and this wasn’t even in good conscience because I’ve seen how fatherless children in that family are treated. My father wasn’t a rich man, but they took it all, including the clothes my parents had had sewn together.
They didn’t care about our welfare, yet my mother would take us to visit them every December for a few days. Their interest in us was not more than we should follow them to the village for Christmas. As soon as I could, I told my mother I didn’t want to see them anymore.
It’s been almost a dozen years since I made that decision. They’re dead to me. They’re lowkey a big part of why I’m never having a traditional wedding, because my mother, ever the pacifist, will invite them ‘so that they will not say she was impregnated by the ground’.
I’m paraphrasing Wana Udobang’s poem, Family Portrait.
VU
So I’m not a widow or the daughter of one. But I have two aunties who lost their husbands and had two completely different trajectories in life.
My first aunty had two boys with her husband and they were around 13 and 16 when her husband died. I was still young but I remember my mum having to take them in after her husband’s people chased them out of their house. (Her husband was the first son and was rich).
That’s how I watched my aunty fade, she was grieving and had to take care of her boys too. Eventually she moved back to the village with my grandma while her boys stayed with us till they finished secondary school and then moved back.
She worked at my grandma’s shop and from time to time would receive support from her siblings. Then she lost her youngest son and I don’t think she could ever recover because she just fell sick, she died about three years ago.
For my second aunty, it was the same story. Her husband died, she had two sons but they were just kids. The eldest was 3 and the youngest wasn’t even 1 yet.
All she had left was the car and that’s what this woman used to do cab in Benin to feed her family. Then they came and took that one from her too.
She ended up working in a cement shop. I’ve never seen anyone that hustled like that woman did. When I came to write Post UTME, I stayed with her in Benin. It was a small two bedroom but she had done that.
Now she’s a mass cement supplier, her boys are abroad and she’s dating again. She built her own house and is even a landlady.
I swear that woman inspires me.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.