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Widows/ers may have some associated confounding factors

I'm sorry to be off-topic but widows/ers just hurts my eyes. Why not use a more elegant alternative, widow(er)s? Even the uglier widow(s|ers) would be better.

Or the gender neutral, invariant noun: “widowen”

BTW, shouldn’t “widower” be the person who died and the survivor be called “widowee”?

That may seem reasonable but widower is a man whose spouse died. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/widower

“Etymology Middle English widewer, alteration of wedow widow, widower, from Old English wuduwa widower; akin to Old English wuduwe widow”

> Old English wuduwa

It's one of these more universal words of Indo-European origin: https://ids.clld.org/parameters/2-770#2/14.4/149.7

I'm sure there's a style guide out there that would suggest using "The widowed."

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