There were many tributes paid to the Jersey aid worker Simon Boas when he died of throat cancer in July, aged 47. In writing and speaking about his terminal diagnosis with courage and humour, he was admired on the island and beyond. My mother-in-law, having spent years working with aid charities, lives on Jersey and knew Simon well.
So I listened with interest earlier this month to an item about him on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The host, Emma Barnett, had spoken to Simon days before he died. Now she was about to interview his widow. Or, as she referred to Aurelie Boas, ‘his wife’.
As editorial mistakes go, this may not seem especially grievous. It is certainly common. The Daily Telegraph fell into the same semantic trap with its headline: ‘The late Simon Boas garnered attention for his stoic, cheerful perspective on dying. His wife reflects on life without him.’
Yet there is more than pedantry at stake here. When a spouse dies, their marriage dies with them. A wife becomes a widow, a husband a widower. That may sound legalistic, even callous. But, as someone widowed in 2018, I think these apparently trivial slip-ups reveal something profound. They are stepping stones along a path that ultimately leads us towards the de facto abolition of widowhood.
Ignorance about death is growing. Conversations about it can be awkward, especially with the young. In 2021, a youthful civil servant rang me and asked to speak to my wife. I explained that she was dead and not to worry – I wasn’t offended. He then kept referring to my ‘ex-wife’ and sounded genuinely baffled when I suggested that he meant my ‘late wife’.
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