13 Ways to Prepare for Widowhood

If you’re struggling with how to help a newly widowed friend, here are 10 suggestions.

1. Bring Food, but Coordinate with Others.
2. Come and Clean Her House.
3. Suggest Ways to Help Rather Than Ask.
4. Send a Card When You Don’t Know What to Say.
5. Talk About Your Friend’s Spouse.
6. Mark Your Calendar with Her Important Dates.

Here are 10 things a widow should know:

• Have someone set up a YouCaring or other crowdsourcing fund.
• Ask about health insurance.
• Call the Social Security office right away.
• Look in unexpected places for life insurance.
• Always ask, don’t assume—a lot of things are negotiable.

1. Have the what-if conversation about what you and your spouse envision for the funeral and burial or cremation.
2. Understand all aspects of the family finances.
3. Know your husband’s professional advisors; go with him to meetings with the accountant, attorney, banker, investment manager.

Here are the best things you could possibly say to someone who has been widowed:

1. I’m so very sorry.
2. I can only imagine how hard it is/how awful you feel.
3. I remember when…
4. I miss him/her too.
5. They’d be really proud of you.
6. You’re doing a great job.
7. Spend Sunday with us, we’d love to have you over.

8 things you should never say to a widow or widower

• “Time heals” “This is a common clanger!”
• “It could be worse…”
• “You’re still young – you’ll meet someone new”
• “Oh you’re still sad?
• “I know just how you feel.
• “He’s in a better place”
• “Now that you’re back on the market again…”
• “You’re not alone”

But if you’re looking for ways not to make life harder for someone grieving, do your best to avoid comments like these.

• “God must have needed a ___ in heaven”
• “I know how you feel—my mom died”
• “Time heals all wounds”
• “That’s what he would have wanted”
• Ask for comfort for your grief.

This phenomenon is often referred to as broken heart syndrome, the widowhood effect, or more technically, takotsubo cardiomyopathy. “Broken heart syndrome is a social condition that shows if your wife or husband dies, your mortality goes up and stays elevated for years. So you can almost ‘catch’ death from your spouse.

Read on to learn more about the qualified widow or widower filing status. Qualifying Widow (or Qualifying Widower) is a filing status that allows you to retain the benefits of the Married Filing Jointly status for two years after the year of your spouse’s death.

Prayer points for the widow

1. Father Lord I bless you for this exposition, let your name be exalted in the name of Jesus.
2. I pray that you comfort every widow out there in Jesus name.
3. See them through the journey of widowhood in Jesus name.
4. Grant them fortitude to bear the loss in Jesus name.

A Father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. But the Lord has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge. Psalm 146:9. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow.

James 1:27. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Deuteronomy 10:18

If a person’s spouse dies, the widow / widower is absolutely free to remarry. The apostle Paul allowed widows to remarry in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 and encouraged younger widows to remarry in 1 Timothy 5:14. Remarriage after the death of a spouse is absolutely allowed by God.

It is not a sin to continue to live with and have sex with a spouse who has committed adultery. When you sleep in bed with a person of the opposite sex, whether you have sex or not, you are opening yourself up to sin.

This article will discuss the widow in the Old Testament, her status, legal protection, admonitions against mistreatment of her, God’s compassion for her, and the symbolic use of the term.

Legally you are no longer married after the death of your spouse. A person who’s lost their spouse may have made a vow to stay “married” for the rest of their life even after their spouse dies.

The current law requires that the widow be unmarried in order to claim widow benefits, unless the marriage occurred after the widow attained age 60. That is, a widow who remarries before age 60 has no claim to the widow benefits (so long as the remarriage remains intact) and therefore faces a marriage penalty.

If you’re making a WillMaker will, your spouse has died, and you haven’t remarried, choose “I am not married” as your marital status. However, in the eyes of the law, your marriage ended when your spouse died. …

1. “My late spouse.” The technically-correct way to refer to a spouse who passed away is as your “late husband” or “late wife.” the term “late” is euphemistic, and it comes from an Old English phrase, “of late.” In the original Old English, “of late” refers to a person who was recently, but is not presently, alive.