It was the Actresses Who Worked With Spanish Film Director, Screenwriter and Author Pedro Almodovar Who Made This Widow Finally Cry

It is actually just now two years, two months, and three days since my husband died and I became a widow.

You learn a lot becoming a widow, and it really helps to have friends who are widows. I learned not to do anything immediately. I learned not to close my joint bank accounts as if checks made out to my husband arrived, I would never be able to cash them.  It seemed a few did arrive during the two years the widows advised they would.

Most importantly, I learned something I should have shared a long time ago. When one’s spouse dies suddenly, like a heart attack, it takes the widow or widower a much longer time in grieving, a much longer time to begin to move forward. Someone like me, whose husband had pancreatic cancer for five years and two months before it finally killed him, takes much less time to grieve after the death. In a way, it makes sense. There is an expiration date coming. It may not be a specific expiration date, but there is a definitive end somewhere in the immediate future. In the ups and downs of fighting a fatal illness, there are several times where I thought my husband would die. I guess I grieved and grieved numerous times. When he died, I felt I could move forward faster than those widows and widowers faced with shock.

Now two years, two months and three days after my husband’s death, I sit here in tears over an article in the New York Times Sunday Film Section, May 4, 2025, “Pedro Almodovar And His Stars,” by Carlos Aguilar, who interviewed nine of actresses who have worked with him. Aguilar described Almovodar as “a master of passionate, cinematic liaisons, often starring defiant women in love,” upon Pedro Almodovar’s recent accomplishment, winning Lincoln Center’s highest honor, the Chaplin award.

Pedro Almovodar is the most prestigious and award-winning Spanish film director, screenwriter and author. My husband and I saw every one of Pedro Almovodar’s movies.  We had love of theater and foreign films in common, both having graduated from Boston University, where theater and foreign films were a significant part of our college experience.

Yes, that brought back a lot of wonderful memories. Married life is full of so many ups and downs but something special you have in common just brings back all of the ups.

Penelope Cruz, one of his most frequent stars, was the one who caused the onset of the tears. She said that Almovodar’s films “pay homage to all women.”

I always told my husband that I respected him most for being able to be married to a judge. I knew it was very difficult. So many occasions when we were in a place, he was addressed as the judge because it was an assumption, of course, that the man was the judge. He was always so gracious, and proudly would point out that his wife was the judge. It is hard to be a professional man, a tax lawyer himself, to be perceived as the second. In groups, the judge was fawned over and sought out. We both understood why, but sometimes that is very hard to take, and I appreciated him most during those events, a necessary frequent in my position as an elected official.

Like Pedro Almovodar, my husband had no problem paying homage to the women in his life, to his wife, his two professional daughters, his professional daughter-in-law, his professional sister, and his activist mother.

Maybe that’s why we shared a love of all of Pedro Almodovar’s movies. We must’ve known that about Pedro Almodovar and the recurring themes in his movies, but I cannot recall seeing it in print before.

Describing Almodovar’s heroines in his award winning movies, one of the actresses, Rossy de Palma, interviewed stated, “There’s “no karmic sense of deserving whatever happened to you….No matter how traumatic the events that occurred are, you have the ability to rise up from the ashes like a phoenix and say, “Well, what do we do with what’s left?“ There may be tragicomedy, like in life itself, but there’s no victimhood.”

This widow’s tears flowed freely.

I am always learning new things in this life. Being a widow, it is a new stage bringing new ups and downs.

I am learning that bittersweet memories can bring a fresh round of grief to even one who thought that was past. . . even experiencing, among the tears,

Joy,

Mema