TVScope:Life After Death, Channel 4, Thurs, March 15th, 9pm
The rain in this moving documentary was as relentless as the grief of the young widows, who were filmed over the course of one year. Most of those featured were in their 30s, when a heart attack, a brain haemorrhage and a motorbike accident, among other tragedies, wrested their spouses from them and their young families.
They were all too young for this sudden change of status from wife to widow and, for some, the scariest thought was of having to live for another 50 years without the loved one. Yet, over the year they were filmed, they did soldier on, although at times their visceral grief made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Sixteen months after the death of her husband, Gareth, Deborah still went around sniffing things with smells associated with him. She desolately looked for signs that he was still with her, including standing in the garage with his much loved tool box, and asking him out loud if he was there.
The widows had to cope not only with their own grief and shock but also the bewilderment of their children. Jack, whose father Nigel skidded to instant death on his motorbike, retreated to his room to "make a dad", combining photographs of Nigel with his clothes. He then sat and talked to this dad, while Ruth, his mother, tried to cope with the "Nigel-shaped hole" in her life.
In the aftermath of what had been for each of them a personal apocalypse, the widows had to cope with the emotional trauma of practicalities such as how and when to dispose of clothing and possessions. They also had to deal with not only the presumption by strangers that they were divorcees and available, but the experience of being propositioned by the husbands of women they knew.
Then there was the pressure to move on to make other people feel better, rather than, as Ruth put it, being the scary widow who had to be tip-toed around. The insensitivity of bureaucrats who sent letters addressed to the dead spouse with "deceased" in brackets after his name seemed like the final straw for some.
While harrowing, the women provided valuable insights which hopefully will result in increased sensitivity to those coping with sudden widowhood at a young age. For those viewers unfortunate enough to be in the same situation, the fact that the women were at different stages of their grieving was helpful.
Review by Oliver Travers, clinical psychologist