When her husband died, Gaynor Williams felt she had no one to turn to. Today, on International Widows’ Day, she speaks to Jenny Laue about the importance of support and how she got involved in her local self-help group.

BEING widowed when you’re a pensioner is seen as a fact of life, something we all, sooner or later, have to accept. Facing bereavement when you’ve still got young children to bring up is a different matter.

But it is much more common than most of us think and for a estimated 135,000 men and women in the UK under 50, this can be their reality. Just as it was for Gaynor Williams, from Darlington.

Gaynor was widowed in 2003 when she was only 45. Her husband, Ceri, was a fit and healthy 47-year-old when he was knocked off his bike by an elderly driver in a hit-and-run accident.

At that time, their three children were ten, 13 and 15.

She remembers the day in April six years ago as though it were yesterday. “I was at home with my kids when a policeman arrived at the door in the evening asking me if this was my husband’s bike. He said that Ceri was in hospital as he had been knocked off his bike, so I expected that he would have a few bumps and bruises, but that otherwise he would be all right,” says the former midwife. “When I arrived at Darlington Memorial Hospital, Ceri was still conscious, but it quickly became obvious that something wasn’t right because he was very agitated. He looked okay but inside, his head was bad.”

Ceri slipped into unconsciousness and was transferred to The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough, where it became clear that nothing could be done for him. On April 3, 2003, 11 days after the accident, Ceri died from his injuries after life-support machines were switched off.

“Because we both came from a medical background, we had talked about the issue of keeping people on life support, so I never had a moment’s doubt that that was the right decision,”

says Gaynor. “Even if he had regained consciousness, it wouldn’t have been him and he would have been severely disabled. It was a really hard decision, but I know that that was what he would have wanted.”

Gaynor suddenly found herself a silent statistic, a single parent through circumstances beyond her control.

Looking back now, the first 18 months were relatively easy, she says. She existed on autopilot, driven by a desire to make it all right for her three children. The difficult part was yet to come: rebuilding her life without Ceri.

“There is no other choice but to make a new life. You just have to do it. Your whole life is different because you’ve lost your hope and dreams and all the future plans you’ve made with your partner,” she says. “Sometimes you go through utter despair and hopelessness. The security has gone, all the shared planning, the companionship and the intimate conversations.

Suddenly, you’ve got to make all your family’s decisions yourself and that can be terrifying”

What Gaynor also found particularly hard to come to terms with was that there was no one she felt really understood what she was going through. She found being a widow lonely and isolating and after two years of struggling and coping on her own, she admitted that she needed some kind of help. Her counsellor later suggested she become a member of Widowed And Young (WAY), a charitable organisation, which runs self-help groups for young widows.

“Those were the best £15 membership fees I ever paid, although at first the thought of a self-help group for widows didn’t appeal to me at all,” she admits. “I thought a group like that would be a room full of miserable people, with everyone wearing black and crying, but it was not like that at all.”

Through WAY’s regular group meetings, Gaynor found other people who went or were going through exactly what she was experiencing and for the first time after Ceri’s death, she felt she was really understood.

“A lot of people don’t know what to say to you when they find out about your bereavement.

They almost avoid you because they feel awkward and are afraid you’re going to burst out crying. But in the group we can talk about our partners and if there are a few tears, so what?They’re okay too.”

WAY was founded in 1997 and now has about 1,600 members in the UK, 60 of them in the North-East. The North-East group covers an area which includes Northumberland, County Durham, and North Yorkshire. The group welcomes both men and women whose partners died before their 51st birthday, gay or straight, married or unmarried people, and those with or without children. Apart from local self-help groups, the charity also runs secure online messaging boards and chat rooms, which provide advice on anything from how to sort out your pension to how to track down a favourite recipe your partner used to make, or even how to look after guinea pigs.

GAYNOR, who now works as area co-ordinator for WAY together with her friend and colleague Debbie Knivett, is keen to point out that group meeting aren’t the only thing WAY does to support its members through difficult times.

“We have evenings out, walks, day trips to the seaside, coffee and lunch outings, Christmas parties or just little chats,” she says. “This year we got together for Red Nose Day to raise money for Comic Relief.

“We support our members on anniversaries and other difficult times by sending cards and generally looking out for each other. But most importantly, it’s not all about grieving. We have an incredible amount of fun too. In fact, we always say that if you’re wearing black, it’s got to be sparkly.”

■ For more information, call 0870-011-3450, log on to wayfoundation.org.uk or email info@wayfoundation.org.uk