Date #44 was one of very few widowers that I dated.

His wife had died in her early 40s, leaving behind three children. She’d been dead less than a year and this man had re-entered the dating world in hopes of healing his heavy heart. He talked about her through most of our lunch date. More than anything, I wanted to take his hand and tell him that he was blessed to have lost her through death rather than divorce. When someone dies, there’s loss, grief and mourning, but there are also happy memories, perhaps magnified in death beyond what they were in life.

When there’s a divorce, there’s still the horrific pain of loss, coupled with grief and mourning, but there’s also rejection, humiliation, and a severance of family ties. Each and every happy memory of the past is tainted and poisoned by the angry ex-spouse’s ugly words, coupled with your own self-doubt and self-recrimination. Divorce has all the sadness and loss that comes with the death of a partner, but with an extra heaping helping of rejection. When there’s a divorce in the family, there’s a conspicuous absence of supportive souls coming by to sit on your couch and hold your hand and wipe your tears. There are no thoughtful neighbors dropping by with their warm casseroles.

Recently, I had the good pleasure to meet someone who’d been a partner in two long-term marriages. She buried her first husband and divorced the second one.

“Rose, there’s no comparison,” she told me one day. “When they die, it’s over and you have the good memories and people are so kind and there’s help and support and there’s some grief but it’s not a hard thing to move beyond. When the marriage ends as the result of a divorce, it’s brutal and painful and there’s a hurt and a betrayal that doesn’t go away for years and years. When I hear widows and widowers going on and on about their loss, I just want to take them by the hand and tell them, ‘count your lucky stars that he didn’t divorce you.’”

Elizabeth Kubler Ross speaks of this in her remarkable book, Life Lessons.  She writes, “People who lose someone through divorce or separation will often say that they realize death is not the ultimate loss. Rather, it’s the separation from loved ones that is so difficult. Knowing about someone’s continued existence but being unable to share it with them may cause far more pain and make resolution far more difficult than permanent separation through death. With those who have died, however, we find new ways to share their existence as they live on in our hearts and memories.”

Old houses were built for another time and another way of life. And back in the day, the overwhelming majority of people died at home in their own beds. Next, they were sent off to the undertaker for embalming, and afterward, they went back “home” for the wake and the visitation.

In my own house, we learned that the owner’s first wife died soon after they moved into their “new” 1925-built home. The wake was held in the spacious living room, in front of the beautiful fireplace. This was not unusual for that time. Sometime in the early years of the 20th Century, wakes and visitation moved out of the home and into funeral parlors.

In the mid-1800s, many two-story homes were actually designed to accommodate the problem of moving a heavy coffin from the second floor (where the bedrooms were located) to the first floor.  Dignity in death is something the Victorians did very well. Because of this, the coffin was carried upstairs to the deceased, rather than the deceased being carried downstairs to the coffin. Logistically, this made things a little more difficult.

To accommodate this occasional need, the staircases in older houses were built with a coffin-width space between the railings on the staircase and the second-floor hallway.  Think of the staircase railing going up the stairs as point A, and the staircase railing on the landing as point B, and the staircase railing along the upper hallway as Point C.  Points A, B and C formed three of four sides of a rectangle (see picture below).

With ropes and a couple strong men, the coffin could easily be lowered over the railing and down to the first floor without trying to navigate the twists and turns and 24 steps of an old staircase.

I’ve included a picture of my own staircase until I can find a better picture of a real 19th Century house. My house has a “make-believe” niche that demonstrates the concept, but it is too narrow to be used for anything as wide as a coffin.  As soon as I can get into an older house, I’ll upload better pictures.

When I tour older houses, I love showing the homeowners this interesting feature of their intricate staircase balustrade. They’re always taken aback and always pleased to learn a little something more of their home’s history!

A view of my staircase from the first floor