Grief isn't like a passing breeze. It is like a darkness that settles over you, one that makes you feel lonely. And it spares no one.
Losing a loved one can be absolutely devastating. And it's not something many of us get over easily. No one can escape it, and that includes Dame Maggie Smith, an actress popularly known for her role as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey and Professor Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter.
Her second husband was truly the love of her life and when she lost him, she was flooded with loneliness. But for a long time, she never spoke about it. How does one explain the intensity of this emotion? Now though, the Dame has spoken out about it.
Maggie, 78, confessed that she was struggling to live without playwright Beverley Cross, whom she lost 15 years ago, according to NowtoLove. When she was asked about how she felt, especially whether she was lonely, Maggie said, "I don't know. It seems a bit pointless. Going on one's own and not having someone to share it with."
"Jane Birkin's mother Judy Campbell once said an extraordinary thing to me when her husband died; that it was a strange feeling you were not number one with anybody," she continued. "Everybody says it gets better, but I don't think it does. It gets different," she added.
She first met Beverley when she was just 18 years old. "Love at first sight" struck both of them and Beverley soon proposed to her. However, there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding him as he was still married.
He begged her to wait while the lengthy divorce proceedings took place, but he missed his chance as she met and married fellow actor Robert Stephens. Married in 1967 with two sons, the couple got divorced in 1975. But this was a second chance for both Maggie and Beverley. In 1976, the actress married him.
And they were happy until 1998, when Beverley passed away from an aneurysm. Since then, Maggie says she has still not been able to fill the "awful" and "deafening" void that he left behind, according to the Daily Mail. "It’s awful, but what do you do? After the busy-ness you are more alone, much more. A day that is absolutely crowded keeps your mind away from why you are alone but when it stops, that is the deafening silence," she mentioned.
And so to keep herself from breaking down, she continued to progress in her career. But when she was asked whether she would ever fall in love again, she had a straightforward answer to give - "Absolutely not. No way."
References:
https://jezebel.com/maggie-smith-on-her-husbands-death-and-deafening-silenc-1656831886
