Being in an abusive relationship isn’t just dangerous, it can be downright soul-destroying. While it’s nice in theory to say that someone in a situation like this should just leave, it’s rarely if ever that simple. Marsha Widener was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused by her late husband, Don Widener, for years, and after his death, she couldn’t have been happier to be rid of him for good.
- Marsha threw his ashes in the trash. Don was a garbage man when he was alive, taking trash from businesses to the local landfill. That’s why it was such sweet poetic justice for Marsha to take Don’s ashes and unceremoniously dump them into a trashcan that would end up being taken to that very same place.
- It must have been so cathartic! In a video posted to YouTube, Marsha addresses the camera as she holds the bag of Don’s ashes, saying, “I know you’re not going to understand why I’m doing this. … His family don’t want him, his brother doesn’t want him around, his kids don’t want him – actually, they want him to go in the gutter or the toilet.”
- By throwing his ashes away, she relinquished at least some of the harm caused by her abusive husband. “This is for all the pain and all the turmoil he has caused my children and myself and what he calls his parents. This is his goodbye,” Marsha says in the clip as she begins pouring the ashes into the trash. “This is for all the times he kicked me in the head – yup, he put my head through a window.”
- Adios, amigo!” After she stomps ashes that spilled onto the ground into the dirt, she finishes dumping the rest of the ashes into the trashcan and throws the bag in after it, proclaiming proudly, “Adios, amigo!” While nothing will give Marsha those years of her life back that Don took or help heal the pain her abusive husband caused her, hopefully this symbolic gesture gave her some sense of peace and she can begin to work on building a new life (hopefully with the help of family, friends, and a therapist).
