"To Change or Not To Change?" That Is The Question.

Here's a newsflash: I am not a Tuschak. I was only a Tuschak by marriage and now, according to the ceremony verbiage itself, what with death having parted me and Tom, I am no longer "married" and therefore no longer a Tuschak.

A change is in the making.

I would like to be called by my maiden name: Davidge. Judy Davidge, that's who I am. The Tuschak can stay awhile on checks and my driver's license and social security deposits - those kinds of official documents - but eventually I'll make it legal and reclaim my family name.

I can't imagine doing anything else.

When we got married on September 4, 1965, women hadn't yet grasped the concept that they could BE married and still maintain their own identity. That seems ridiculous now but it was true then. It never entered my college-educated head that a choice even existed!?

I know I questioned it my heart. It didn't 'make sense' that at noon on a particular day I should have to forsake all that I had been and still was just because I got married!

I flashed back to the day of my sister's wedding; I remember being 12 or 13 and aghast that she was suddenly a Berry. Just like that, snap, her Davidgehood was erased and she was born fullblown as a whole other entity?

I thought not, then, and I think not that now.

And yet... I had to sign in at the Senior Center where I went to play bridge yesterday and I had every intention of writing "Judy Davidge" but when I put down the pen I had written "Judy Tuschak"!? It gave me pause. Why would I have done that
when my conscious intent was otherwise?

Did I secretly WANT to be a Tuschak? The answer to that question is, "No, I don't."
I want to be who I am and have always been, a Davidge of the First Order!

More than anything I think I wrote what I did because my brain and heart are still in 'disconnect', not accepting that Tom is gone and, ergo, that my marriage is over.

Taking back my maiden name is not a repudiation of my life as Tom's wife, Judy Tuschak; it's an affirmation that, like Popeye, "I yam what I yam!"

Over the years I've seen many friends and relatives face the death of a relationship - divorce - or the actual death of their spouse and make a different choice than I am making now. That is their decision, this is mine.

And while I'm at it this is as good a time as any to tell people that my wedding ring is now on my right hand not my left. My marriage is over and that painful fact has to be accepted. My head still screams, "Let it not be true!" but true it is.

On my ring finger, left hand, I'm wearing the three pearl ring Tom and my girls gave me for my birthday when I turned 50. It's a Family Ring and while my marriage is a thing of the past, family lives on so, to me, it seems apt.

Like it or lump it, The Widow Judy is moving forward.