widowdom

Taking a hoe this morning, (could find no spade but the ace,) I exhumed a toadess, perhaps a widow, living all by herself, in underground lodgings, as widows have done, and will do, again and again, till there is no such thing as widowdom in the world.

1854, Benj[amin] F[ranklin] Taylor, “Digging for a Subject”, in January and June: Being Out-Door Thinkings, and Fire-Side Musings. […], New York, N.Y.: Samuel Hueston, […], →OCLC, pages 50–51

To make her job easier in the future, she [Louise Barstead of Widowed Persons Services] has a simple and clear message to the now-married population of the world: “Prepare now for widowdom because you’ll either face it some day or you won’t be here.” Half of every married couple, unless death is simultaneous, will eventually enter the state of widowdom.

1981 January 30, Rhonda Tidrick, “Widow aids others in coping with death, getting on with life”, in Spokane Daily Chronicle, 95th year, number 113, Spokane, Wash., page 8

The story [of the film Rollover] begins with [Jane] Fonda’s socialite, ex-actress Lee Winters on the night of her widowdom.

1981 December 17, Susan Green, “If There’s a Moral Here, It Got Lost in Ticker Tape”, in The Burlington Free Press, 155th year, number 351, Burlington, Vt., pages 1D and 8D

She was too great a lady, in her late forties when we met and I in my sixites,^([sic]) I remote in the making of my Judgement and she remote in her piety, her widowdom, her misplaced loyalty wasted upon an object unworthy of it: her late husband, […]

1984, Sidney Alexander, “Macellum Corvarium”, in Nicodemus: The Roman Years of Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1534–1564, Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, →ISBN, page 18

A massive heart attack took his [her father’s] life, and in devastating sorrow, her mother sank away into a world far away from the harsh reality of her widowdom.

2001, Audry Colleen Browne, chapter 27, in Sins Against the Children, Lincoln, Neb.: Writers Club Press, iUniverse.com, Inc., →ISBN, page 239