- Sara Beth Berman is a 43-year-old Jewish educator in Brooklyn whose fiancé died when they were both 27.
- She remembers being "horrible" for a year after his death.
- People would tell her she was lucky she could still have children after he died.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Beth Berman. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Rafi and I met when we were both 22, working at a summer camp in Georgia. We quickly became friends, and after he moved to Manhattan, where I was living, a year later, we started dating.
I knew he had a genetic disorder, but I rarely saw the impact of it when we were dating. He had a habit of downplaying it. I think he was in deep denial about his condition. With no reason not to believe him, I assumed it was under control and didn't expect to lose him at a young age.
He mentioned getting married during a hospital stay
In 2007, we both moved to Jerusalem to study for a year. On my first day of classes, I had a phone call from Rafi to say he was heading to the emergency room. He told me what was happening, but said his bilingual friend was taking him, that I should stay in school because it was my first day of classes.
Once I got to the hospital, Rafi just kept saying it was no big deal — that he was fine. In 2008, we were back in the US, and he was in and out of the hospital a few times, with doctors trying to figure out what they were going to treat first.
During one of these hospital stays, he informally suggested we get married. Later, in May 2009, once out of the hospital, he made it official by asking me to be his wife.
I was looking forward to living the rest of my life with him. I booked a wedding venue and bought my dress.
He fell down the stairs and shortly after died
We moved into an Upper West Side apartment with another friend of ours in August 2009.
Shortly after, at a party we went to together, I told him I didn't think he should go up and down a flight of steep set of stairs to get to the party. He had recently broken his leg. He told me he was fine, but after the party, he tripped down the stairs and broke his shoulder and hip. We didn't realize it at the time, but the breaks were a sign his body was shutting down. There was no calcium left in his bones.
The next day, Rafi fell into a coma for a month before dying on September 29, 2009.
For months, I was an absolute disaster. I didn't sleep. I only ate doughnuts and drank Gatorade.
I remember seeing the leaves change through the fall and thinking how I and the rest of the world were continuing to move on, without him. I was horrible to everyone. I think people were afraid of me, and I sort of enjoyed that. I wanted them to be in pain because I was in pain.
My closest friends stuck in there with me, though, distracting me and helping me cancel plans for the wedding. The shop I bought my wedding dress from required me to come into the store with a death certificate in order to get a refund on the dress.
I didn't think I could love again
I had no concept of what life would be like without Rafi, and I couldn't think about loving again.
Very unhelpfully, people would tell me how lucky it was I hadn't married him or had any children. They said I would find someone else, and told me it was a good thing I was young — I could still have children with someone else.
What I needed was validation — for someone to tell me it was OK not to be OK. But I didn't know of anyone who had been a young widow like me.
A little after a year, I was brought into a group of women who had been through something similar — who had lost a boyfriend, fiancé, or spouse at a young age. This group was a big support to me. It was so useful to know there were other people like me and that they continued to exist even after.
Six years ago, I got married, and my husband and I now have a little girl together.
It hasn't been easy for my husband at times because I have a collection of rituals tied to Rafi. For example, we had to decide whether Rafi would live or die on Yom Kippur. So now, my religious practices on Yom Kippur are non-traditional. My husband and I find a balance between what's a regular Yom Kippur and my weird version of observance.
We have a memorial dinner for Rafi every year, which everyone enjoys because so many people who were friends with Rafi are also now very close with my husband and daughter.
When Rafi died, I couldn't see a way forward as a young widow, but in time, it got easier when I found my people — those who had an idea of what I was feeling. I made it through, even though it didn't feel like I ever would that first year after he died.
