Why one widow says her husband's death made loneliness more manageable
Evie Wallace says loneliness of having an ill spouse can be harder to handle than loneliness of being alone
Evie Wallace says her husband Hugh was "an engineer to the core of his being." So much so, that Hugh even engineered his own death.
Hugh struggled with multiple sclerosis for 23 years before he died, gradually losing his ability to walk, see and eventually talk.
"Every day was a day of grieving," Evie says. "Every day he lost something."
Then, after more than two decades of chronic illness, Hugh was diagnosed with an aggressive form of small cell lung cancer.
"He had this vision that he would be put in a morphine-induced coma," says Evie. "And he said, 'I do not want to do that.'"
And so on April 19, 2016 Hugh became one of the first people in the province of Alberta to receive medical assistance in dying.
A different kind of loneliness
"He was still there but our connection was being interrupted by this horrible disease."
A lot of that had to do with being unable to enjoy the kinds of activities they once shared, Evie says.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think our lives would end up like this. So as our relationship evolved and he became more and more disabled, I often found myself lonely because I was missing a lot of the exciting things that we used to do."
Evie says that by the time Hugh chose to die, loneliness had already been her constant companion for years.
"By the time Hugh finally ended this horrible path that he was on, the loneliness wasn't as intense as when he was still sick," she says now.
That's partly thanks to some of Hugh's final words to Evie.
"Before he died he said to me very clearly, 'Evie, you have a lot of energy. Go use it. Don't piss it away.'"
Confronting loneliness through 'testosterone retail'
Determined to abide by Hugh's final wish for her, Evie set out to be less alone.
Suddenly, her loneliness had become something she could tackle. And she tackled it the same way many people do: by going online.
Evie says it's important to keep in mind that the last time she had dated, household computers didn't exist — let alone matchmaking sites.
"In the 60s you sat at the phone and you waited for someone to phone you and you hoped you didn't have a pimple when they phoned and asked you out," she explains.
This made creating an online profile and going on dates with perfect strangers a daunting prospect.
"I'm telling you, I was so anxious."
At first, Evie referred to her online dating as "testosterone retail," and said she had to do a lot of the talking.
"The men will wink at you… and I thought, 'Can't you write a sentence?'" she recalls. "I realized that as a woman I would have to be more aggressive."
In one early encounter, Evie says a date referred to himself as a "one woman man" — something that turned her off immediately. Another man showed her his fake teeth on their first date.
"I think we're more honest because you can't hide stuff with your picture," she says. "We're not pretty anymore."
When she's being honest, Evie says she never really intended to meet any one guy. "I thought this could be like a menu," she says. "I could have different people to do different things. But that's not how it worked out."
Someone to ski with
As it turns out, Evie did meet someone who she's been seeing for a year now. And she likes him enough that she's deleted her online dating profile.
She says a huge part of the appeal was finding a fellow skier, with whom she could enjoy one of the activities she'd missed most during Hugh's illness.
"I feel tremendous gratitude," she says. "I feel very blessed. And it's not about the bells and whistles going off… It's about comfort, and connection and feeling less lonely."
As much as she loves hitting the slopes with her new beau by her side, Evie says there's something else they have in common too.
"We're coming together because we've both lost something."
This story appears in the Out in the Open episode "The Lonely Road"