Looking back, Julia* never expected that ticking a box on a bank application would change the course of her life. But then again, she never expected to be widowed at age 31 with a three-week-old baby either. At age 27, Julia was living in London, England with her husband David, whom she had been with since she was 23. They had just purchased a home and they were in the process of getting a mortgage, and their mortgage broker suggested adding critical illness insurance, which would pay off the mortgage if either of them got sick. Julia’s husband decided to check the box and pay the nominal ongoing fee that came along with it.
“I remember how impressed this mortgage broker was,” Julia said. “She said ‘young people never tick this box. They just feel like nothing bad is going to happen to them - so that stands out as the first part of my story.”
Her story picks up a few years later, when the hypothetical they imagined in that conversation - what would happen if one of us got sick? - became a reality. In the summer of 2017 her husband wasn’t feeling well, and he was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. At the time, Julia was pregnant with their first child, and the diagnosis came as a shock. He was so young; such a healthy person. So Julia faced her new reality of caring for her husband while also navigating her first pregnancy. One thing that made it easier was that box they checked all those years ago: because they had critical illness insurance, their mortgage was paid off in full while he was still battling his illness.
Julia describes her husband as a very logical, pragmatic person. The kind of person who encouraged her to prioritize getting wills when they bought their first home, even though it never occurred to her. The kind of person who paid for critical illness insurance and life insurance in his twenties. The kind of person who, immediately after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, phoned his boss to find out what kind of workplace financial benefits he could leverage for his growing family. The kind of person who Julia believes passed away more peacefully with the knowledge that he had set his family up for success financially, and would be leaving that legacy for his wife and weeks-old infant son.
“In our final moments together, he was looking at our son, and I just knew he was ticking boxes in his head like ‘I did this for her, I did this, so she should be okay.’ I just know he was able to surrender more because he’d set me up the best he could,” Julia recalls. “He died peacefully, and I just know it’s because he’d organized everything he could organize.”
At 31 years old, Julia found herself breastfeeding her son while facing a new reality as a young widow. While her peers were planning vacations and bachelorette parties, she was handed a photocopied pamphlet that said “What do I do now?” that guided her through the logistical side of dealing with death, from funeral arrangements to death certificates to probate. During that time, she said the fact that her husband had a will reduced some of the decision fatigue, and minimized potential arguments that typically arise when someone passes away.
“Everything was made crystal clear…it was concrete that I was the beneficiary of everything with a young son on my own, and having this piece of paper already set me up with a confidence that made it easier to start what happens beyond the will,” Julia said. “I really saw for myself how much hassle it saved me not having to deal with something that could have been dealt with ahead of time, but wasn’t.”
Like most executors, Julia was taking on this role for the first time. She leaned on an accountant friend for support, but otherwise found herself navigating all of the details - big and small - required to wrap up a life, including notifying government bodies and scores of other paperwork. While tedious, these tasks often held emotional weight, like the first time Julia received a letter that referred to her husband as “the late” instead of someone who was in the here and now.
Two conversations in particular stand out to Julia from that time. In the first, she was interviewing financial advisors, and they all spoke about how rare it was to see someone her husband’s age who had put that level of forethought and pre-planning in place. “They were all baffled by the fact that a guy this young was that organized. They said they never see it,” Julia said. “That’s too bad that I was an exception. I was a good news story.”
This conversation, along with Julia’s experience acting as the executor for her husband’s estate, which she calls empowering and educational, made her more passionate about advocating for end-of-life planning. It also gave her a level of comfort with bringing this topic up to friends, family, and anyone who would listen. “That’s when I started really wanting to talk to people about it. And then I’d ask friends, ‘do you have a will? Do you have critical illness insurance?’” She’s now a staunch advocate for pre-planning, calling a will “the smartest money you can spend.” She recalls the barriers she and her husband faced when getting their first will - sitting in lawyer’s offices, paying hundreds of dollars, and listening to complex legal terms - and how many of those barriers have been removed through technology.
Having seen firsthand how crucial a will is to reduce burden on loved ones, Julia has since updated hers several times. She wants to pass on the same legacy of financial security to her son that her husband passed on to her, which has given her the gift of flexibility. Because of that, she considers herself to be lucky in the community of widows and widowers, many of whom are left with a financial mess to clean up.
“Even among widows and widowers, you feel bad if you almost feel like you got lucky. There is a bit of a divide, because the ones who didn’t have life insurance, their person didn’t have a will, are having a whole different kind of grieving experience,” she said. “I know how lucky I am. I feel really grateful for that. You feel like you don't want to brag about it, but you also want to be like, ‘let me be an example of why people should do these things.’”
The second conversation that sticks out in Julia’s memory was with her mother-in-law, who is also a widow. After being widowed, Julia said her mother-in-law would get up every morning and put makeup on, make plans, see friends, go on trips - she was living life, even though she had experienced this enormous loss. “She just said to me ‘sink or swim,” Julia said, adding that she realized she had to “make a choice to be without this person and happy, or without this person and unhappy.”
When speaking about her relationship with her husband, Julia sounds like the protagonist in a romantic comedy movie. She calls him her true love, saying they had a great marriage akin to a “fairy tale experience.” After her husband passed away, she felt it was taboo to be vocal about her desire to find that type of love again, or to find companionship to offset the loneliness that is inherent with losing your partner. She says there was judgment even at the thought of her dating again, with one friend’s husband asking “wouldn’t you want to wait a couple years?” after she brought up the subject of dating. She also felt that while widowers are portrayed in the media and in movies as handsome and eligible, like Jude Law in The Holiday, widows are often depicted or thought of as “an old, wrinkly, sad person wearing black. And can it be like - you’re still hot? And maybe you’re young?”
During COVID, Julia was in lockdown at her mother-in-law’s house, and she recalls texting with a widower friend about his new girlfriend, and how excited he was to be in the throes of an early relationship. Julia said that conversation “took the air out” of her, because it highlighted all the big and small moments in a relationship that she was missing out on - the phone calls about what to make for dinner that night, the quick kiss on your way out the door, the physical touch. After searching online, she found the term “widow’s fire” which is a desire for intimacy after loss. She knew she wasn’t the only one craving connection, so she launched a community, Widow’s Fire, devoted to helping widows and widowers around the world find love after loss. Now the Widow’s Fire community has thousands of members around the world, ranging from people in their 20s to people in their 70s, and while it focuses on human connection, it’s also become a resource for members on everything from finances to estate planning. While it’s a club no one asked to join, it’s similar to other lived experiences like becoming a parent or going through a divorce - her community of widows and widowers is the only group that truly understands the journey she’s been on.
So back to her mother-in-law’s ultimatum: sink or swim. Julia has decidedly chosen to swim towards joy, or as she describes it, a “fun, wacky life.” Her joy now comes from her son, who is now 6 years old, from her friends, from dance, and from her Widow’s Fire community. As someone who has seen firsthand that life is short, she says she embraces new experiences.
And through everything they do, she and her son feel the impact of her late husband’s legacy. “I see regularly what he’s done for me, because I’m raising a son on my own. And I’m explaining who this guy was to this child who never knew him,” she says, adding that she tells him how “your dad loved you so much, he didn’t want to leave, but he’s still looking after us.”
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*Last name withheld for privacy
