marriage issues

Lot’s Wife


Once, when I foolishly allowed Q&A from the dear readership, Sally asked me if I ever pondered a future where Will hadn’t died. Hadn’t been sick at all in fact.

Truthfully, I hadn’t and still don’t see the point of such an exercise though I know that it is a common one among widowed folk.

But I was talking with my BFF tonight, making plans for an upcoming trip down south and she mentioned that Will’s best friend, Wally and his wife Cherish were struggling to pay for their son’s funeral last month. I’d mentioned at the time that I planned to send a donation but there wasn’t a fund set up to send anything to, so I hadn’t done anything about it yet.

To be more honest, I discovered that shortly after the funeral Wally made a point of asking BFF’s husband to take him to visit Will’s grave and it peeved me a bit. Not that Wally made the visit. As I understand it, Wally stages regular pilgrimages to the cemetery to see Will. What grates is that he shows more devotion to the rock I buried Will under than to Will’s daughter – his goddaughter, who he hasn’t bothered to inquire about personally for the last three years.

Now that I have gotten that petty digression off my chest, there is a fund-raising effort underway to help with the expenses. Cherish contacted BFF’s husband and told them that the funeral home had given them 30 days to pay off the $12,000 they’d spent.

How they managed to rack up such a bill, BFF didn’t know. Having dealt with these funeral home people, I don’t have the same difficulty imagining it. I do, however, wonder why the funeral home extended any credit at all to a couple who’d recently declared bankruptcy for the second time.

Money is to be sent to BFF’s hubby and he will cash checks and turn it into a money order to send to Wally and Cherish – as their bank is no longer on good enough terms with them to allow for checks to be made out directly to them*.

I told Rob about the conversation later in the evening and admitted that if there was a hell – and I am certain that’s just a Catholic wives’ tale – I would burn in it for my thoughts about the whole situation.

“If Will was still alive,” I said, “I’d be up to my neck in the whole sordid affair trying to keep him from spending our money to bail them out.”

Rob just circled his arms around me, drew me close and said,

“Yeah, you are so going to hell.”

“Maybe not though,” I said. “He’d be 35. He could have outgrown that high school blind loyalty thing.”

“No,” Rob said, “he wouldn’t have.”

Damn, my husband is good. He knows me and he knows Will through me.

But he was right, I’d have spent the last month alternating between guilt and anger trying to reign in Will’s insane devotion to friendship regardless of reality.

Think not?

BFF regaled me with accounts of the funeral. Will’s buddies gathered to be pall bearers. They carpooled to the visitation and then headed off to the hotel where they proceeded to party all night like it was a high school reunion. Not one of them offered to help BFF’s hubby out when it came time to pay for the rooms nor did they offer any assistance to Wally and Cherish.

All but one or two of them have donated to the current fundraising effort. I guess it should go without saying that not one of them asked me if I needed help paying for Will’s visitation or burial. I did, but my aunt helped me out without even having to be asked. She wouldn’t even discuss my paying her back.

So, I guess Sally, I do sometimes play out current day scenarios with Will in them. Usually when something/one from the past disturbs my present. His friends get married or experience tragedy. His mother or aunt sends a card and asks for pictures that I sent already but just haven’t arrived there due to the paranoia at the border thing. When the past intrudes, I wonder what life would be like. Look like. What he would be like as a 36 year old man because I have nothing to base this on as he was 28 when he was diagnosed and effectively ceased to exist as the man I knew. It’s quite the gap to fill and my fiction instincts err on the side of the awful for some reason. I never imagine hearts, flowers and perfection like many widowed do.

*Or so she says. I know way more about their finances than I need to due to the fact that Cherish’s younger sister worked at the health club I went to back in Des Moines and her sister … had a big, indiscreet mouth. If my sister shared that much information about me with strangers, there would be consequences. Let’s just say that the whole story is fishy. Can a couple declare bankruptcy twice in four years?”

Traditional Marriage


Stumbled across this post at DoubleX yesterday. Group of young feminist bloggers trash talking marriage and all things wedding mostly, but what struck me about it was the focus on details. As if tossing bouquets and ugly bridesmaid dresses were the point of relationships and marriage at all.

“It’s details,” I complained to Rob. “Why do people get so bogged down in minutia of marriage that they miss the point of the relationship that marriage is supposed to be all about?”

“Everyone can’t be as enlightened as we are,” he replied.

I know I’ve beaten this horse before, but intimate relationships are built on communication and an understanding of expectations by both parties. Whether a woman keeps her maiden name, wears white or decides to stay home with babies is really beside the point. It’s like shaved legs.

Shaved legs?

I wrote a post for 50 Something a week or so back about the fact I don’t shave during the winter. It’s pointless, as no one sees my legs really and it’s itchy besides. In my post I stress that my hairy legs are just hairy legs. It’s a practical decision that in no way should be misconstrued as a feminist statement. Things are simple, and female, should take care to avoid “statement” status in the realm of feminism because they usually become so entangled in nonsense they end up undermining feminism’s real point – equality.

The same can be said of these ridiculous debates on the “tradition” of marriage. Marriage is just a formalizing of an ongoing intimate relationship. The trappings are details. That’s all. They reflect personal or religious tastes – for which there is no accounting.

Whether a couple goes Disney princess or jeans/t-shirt on a mountain top doesn’t matter as much as the journey that brought them there or the continuation of it after that moment has passed.

I am no less equal to my husband because I took his last name or wore white. Getting married in a church or on a river bank surrounded by mountains (and I’ve done both – in white) was a moment – shining and special, imo – in something that began earlier and will continue until one of us is gone.

I suppose it is important to define one’s self, but turning everything into a symbol or anti-symbol seems a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.

I Am Not an Evil Stepmother


At least, I don’t think I am evil. Or all that bad as a step-mother. And as a result, I take offense when I read stories where step-mothers are villanized or watch movies in which they are reduced to fairy tale stereo-types.

Being a step-parent is not something I ever considered. When I was single, I refused to date men with children from previous relationships because as a teacher I’d never encountered a blended family where the adults made even the slightest effort to be adults and parent cooperatively and it was the horror of that which compelled me to nix daddies as date material.*

Even as a widow, when I had almost nothing but men with children from whom to pick, I still didn’t give much thought to step-motherhood. Or step-fatherhood even. I was determined that Dee have a father who would love her like his own. There would be no “step” because I don’t buy into the notion that love can only blossom biologically where offspring are concerned.**

I don’t claim to have some magically family blending powers or secret recipe. Rob and I have always approached it as a united front and with the attitude that everyone around us will adjust if given time, love and attention, and things go well for us on this front.

Last night Dee and I watched the horrid A Cinderella Story with Hillary Duff and some boy-toy flavor of that particular moment. The story began with a little girl and her widowed father, who was just shy of utter perfection and loved by all. He marries, inexplicably and without much warning, a  woman who made me shudder before she said a single word. Name the stereo-typical affliction and she had it. Plain to homely face. Overweight. Shallow. Materialistic. The mothering skill set of a magpie*** And, of course, two mini-me’s.

Assuming that one can put set aside their disbelief at this point, or swallow the idea that remarriage – for a man anyway – spells certain doom by way of untimely death, then the rest of the movie makes sense.

But I kept coming back to the evil step-mother thing because I am not evil nor do I know any woman who is a real life step-mother who is.

The first blended family I encountered belonged to elementary school friends, Karla and Patty. They’d lost their mother and father respectively and their parents found each other and remarried when they were in the second grade. They were the second youngest with several much older siblings and a younger brother apiece. In all, there were about 10 or 11 children ranging from 6 to late teens. There were ups and downs, but they considered themselves a real family and their step-parents “real” parents.

Sam Baker wrote a post for The Guardian this last week about literary step-mothers which provoked an interesting give/take on DoubleX.

Since I am tired of the only comments I receive being spam, I would like to hear your opinions. I yield the floor.

* I knew many children who regarded their step-parents well and had warm relationships. It was the “grown-ups” and their issue that was my issue.

** People who do think this should be avoided as romantic prospects. jmo, but idiot thinking like that is simply the tip of an iceberg best left to some other intrepid soul.

*** Edie’s downstairs neighbors rescued a baby magpie last fall and are keeping it as a pet. (They are from B.C. – seriously people without sense where animals are concerned). They feed it raw hamburger.  Magpies have been known to carry off small kittens to feast on.