Married?
I was at the hospital last week getting my blood drawn and the receptionist asked, "Marital status?" I paused for a moment and then answered, "Widowed."
Driving home, I pondered my response. Single, married, divorced or widowed? It's an interesting identity question. I have been all four. But now, I am not married, but I am not exactly unmarried. The choices seem insufficient and incomplete.
Widowed or divorced implies a connection to someone, even though the other person isn't there anymore. It's an acknowledgement of a bond, even though the other person in that union is either not alive or present. It's saying, I partook in a partnership, a family. But with single, who knows what that means. Has the person always been single? Are they newly single? Are they divorced? Are they widowed? Are they happily uncoupled? When I was divorced I think I responded "single" pretty quickly until I was partnered again, but not so with widowed.
Widowed tells others about the context of who I am, and why I am single. It implies single (because I haven't answered married/partnered) but reveals that I wasn't always single. I was joined. It is an abbreviation for, “I was married, but my husband died.” And as with divorce, it also tells others that I endured separation and grief, as well as (hopefully), great love and joy. Of course we experience those same things as “single” but the word itself does not convey that.
The thesaurus words for “single” include lone, solitary, isolated, separate, spinster (there’s a word!). I don’t feel any of those. I feel love from and to my family and friends. I cherish quiet down time. I love not losing sleep worrying if I am disturbing someone else with snores or nightly pees, or piles of books in my bed. I have turned into a George Booth cartoon with my bedtime routine of mouth guard, mouth tape, eye mask, ear plugs—all the glories of who I am now. I don’t feel “lone” and “isolated".” I feel connected—to the earth, water, and plants, to people and animals, to the divine, and to this wild, amazing world and all its imperfections, feeling horrors and beauty, and gratitude for breath every day.
Maybe there needs to be another option to “marital status”? How about happily uncoupled? Or connected? Or brimming? Or beyond that, why are we still asking that question? I don’t really know the point of it. I understand it on tax forms, because it effects the calculations, but on a health form? Why does it matter whether I am partnered or not and in what way? We are so much more than these words trying to identify us, and for what purpose? More helpful metrics might be, “Are you happy? Depressed? Frustrated? Fulfilled? Delighted?”
The next time I am asked what my marital status is I think I will simply reply, “I am me.”