Edmonds woman will share path of widowhood in her new book

It’s been nearly seven years, but Bridget Clawson is still learning to be a widow.

“I look back every now and then, and I can see how I have learned, grown, tried and failed … and tried again,” she writes in an excerpt from “The Widow Lessons.”

That’s the title of her book in progress — a project the Edmonds woman hopes not to tackle alone.

Clawson, who recently left her job as Snohomish County’s director of human resources, is drawing from her own journey on grief’s long road. Her husband, Ted Clawson, died of cancer in 2009.

“He was a good guy,” she said. “He was a cribbage player, a poet, and more than anything else a very good father and a very good friend to me.”

A longtime geologist who loved the outdoors, Ted Clawson had worked in the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma. He was part of the county’s road maintenance crew for the last 15 years of his career.

When her husband was stricken, Bridget Clawson was in her early 50s. Now 60, she aims to add the voices of other widows to the book she is writing. She would like to hear from local women about how they went on after the heartache of losing a lifetime partner.

“People gave me books and pamphlets,” she said. Nothing she read inspired her to create a life she wanted as she grieved for her husband of 34 years. With the wisdom of others, she plans to write the book she wishes someone had given her.

In the excerpt she shared, Clawson describes the day her life changed forever. Her husband had called her at work to arrange for a ride. He needed a biopsy. Something unusual was found during an MRI procedure done to find possible gallstones. “I will always look back on that day as a cruel and ordinary day when everything I loved was shattered irrevocably,” she writes.

It was February 2008 when they learned Ted Clawson had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Shortly after he died, her grief process took a daunting turn. “Within a month, I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” Clawson said.

Although still mourning, the rigors of her cancer treatment stalled her grief. “I spent a year in suspended animation,” she said. After her cancer battle was won, she said, “I slogged through a lot of emotions related to grief, in no particular order. I stayed stuck like that for a couple years.”

Her sister, whose 20-month-old child died years ago, suggested to Clawson that she write letters to her late husband. “I started writing, and it did help,” she said.

She recalls the futility of looking at an online dating site. “I was scrolling through all these pictures on Match.com,” she said. “Then I thought, ‘I’m not lonely — I’m lonely for a particular person. He’s not on here.’

“I don’t know what the future holds. I know I won’t be going on Match.com,” she said.

Her cancer was detected at an early stage, and Clawson said her health is fine. It was while seeing her oncology specialist that she reached out for help with grief. Filling out paperwork at the doctor’s office, she checked a box: “Are you feeling depressed?”

Through a referral, she learned she was experiencing complicated grief. Described by the Mayo Clinic as persistent complex bereavement disorder, it is intense and lingering. Normal grief often brings sorrow, numbness, anger and even guilt. It eases with time. With complex grief, Clawson said, “You’re stuck. You isolate yourself.”

Five years after her husband’s death, she was helped by a support group for widows and widowers. “There’s something about grief you don’t want to be relieved from. You owe it to the other person to always be in grief,” she said. “I had to let go of that.”

Clawson took charge, and went through a process of deciding what was most important in her life — “my children and grandchildren,” she said. “I wanted to be part of family life.”

She moved to Edmonds from the rural Arlington home she and her husband had shared. Now, she is close to her three grown children and six grandchildren, ages 2 to 9.

She walks the trails of Pine Ridge Park in Edmonds. Another chapter in her career is likely, but Clawson isn’t in a big hurry to get another job. She wants to publish her book and be a help to other widows.

This Valentine’s Day weekend, “I am baby-sitting for three of my grandchildren,” she said. Family life comes first.

“It took a long time to figure out how I wanted to live alone, and what was important to me,” Clawson said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Author wants to talk with widows

Bridget Clawson, whose husband died in 2009, is writing a book titled “The Widow Lessons.” She hopes to talk with other local women who have been widowed. Her book will focus on building a new life as well as the grief process. Contact her by email at: clawson4855@msn.com