young widowhood

SoulMates: The Blessed Few


I was blog surfing among the widowed recently and came across a very touching, heartfelt post about soul mates. As my regular readers know, I don’t really believe in the concept. The idea there is just one perfect counterpart for us in all of existence as we suppose we know it just seems ridiculous especially in light of the fact that many people lose partners go on to happy and fulfilling relationships.

My great-grandfather lost his first wife in childbirth after ten years of marriage. He was crushed. He literally gave away their five children and wandered like a Hebrew for over twenty years. Never settled anywhere for long. Went into and fell out of numerous careers. Spent years on end so out of touch with his family that no one can say for sure where he was or what he was up to for at least half of the twenty years he spent on his own before meeting his second wife, my great-grandmother, and the mother of  his six youngest children. When she died of breast cancer not long after their 19 year old daughter also died of breast cancer, Granddaddy simply allowed himself to be shuffled between my grandfather and his remaining sisters*. Her death snuffed the spirit she’d rekindled with her love.

Who was Granddaddy Christie’s soul mate? Based on his reaction to the losses and my understanding of the term, I would have to say both women were. It flies in the Disney princess theory of soul mates so heavily marketed in our society, the notion that we have just the one shot. It defies the reality that many, many people never mate at all. The numbers of single people who have never married have never been higher and are increasing all the time. Is there a soul mate shortage, perhaps? Does the creator play favorites?**

The blogger, and one of the commenter’s, seemed to think that only a very select group of people are blessed with soulmates, leaving me to wonder what they think the rest of us have in terms of relationships. Are we simply filling voids with warm bodies? Settling? And does this mean that people who never marry at all are lesser beings in the eyes of whatever god they espouse? Is there an unworthiness factor in play?

Not wanting to pursue remarriage does not confer special status on one’s former union, nor  does it mean that, if one chose, one couldn’t find another mate who fits seamlessly – and I understand from experience the difficulties in play. It simply means that, for whatever reason, a person isn’t interested in a future that includes marrying again. It’s not mystical. Why the need to dress it up with soul mate mumbo jumbo? And by doing so make assumptions about other people’s relationships? Is it just the grief talking? Or a Queen Gertrude thing? Protesting too much because maybe the soul mate thing is just a Madison Avenue invention and it’s too hard to go there after a loss?

I am touchy where this topic is concerned. When this “soul mate” thing is bandied about, it feels like judgement. The same way the second class widow status conferred on remarried widowed people by so many of our small peer group is judgement. Either Will wasn’t my soul mate at all or Rob is me just settling, and it’s so much more complicated than that. And it doesn’t take me – the person I was or the person I have become – into account at all. I become a passive princess. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. Life assesses and assigns based on a mysterious set of criteria that have nothing to do with who I am.

And it also judges Rob and I in terms of our commitments to Shelley and Will, questioning them at best and nullifying them at worst.

I don’t think anyone means to denigrate other people’s choices or lives when they bring up the soul mate topic or go on about being unable to “replace” perfection. When one loses a mate, one wants to feel there was meaning and a point to the other’s life and that their union counted for something more. It’s natural to latch onto ideas like soul mates and heaven. It’s comforting. But the soul mates idea limits and denies and it seems like cold comfort, but that’s just my opinion.

 

*By this point the breach caused by his abandonment of his older children had been healed, in a large part due to intervention by Johanna, my great-grandmother. She made the effort to include them and saw to it that her children had unlimited contact with the children of her step-children (some of the older boys were actually older than Johanna and married with kids by then). Some of my dad’s best friends growing up and as a young man were his uncles’ children and grandchildren. Odd, I suppose, but this is my model and probably why I don’t find remarriage and blending as abhorrent as many seem to. Nothing is impossible where good parenting, respect and love are concerned.

**I actually think that he does. And if you believe in the “created in God’s image” thing, I wonder how he managed to pull off such a image of perfection because a perfect God couldn’t possible create imperfect beings. But then I also don’t believe that perfection was what he was going for.

Talking with My Mother


I got into the habit of calling my dad in the late afternoon during his last months. It was a good time of day to catch him awake and it helped me feel as though I was doing something because his insistence that I not come effectively blocked me from action. One thing I learned during Will’s illness and after his death was that movement was a good thing. It helped. It’s kind of like taking a walk after eating, helps speed the crap through.

Sometimes I still call in the afternoon though Mom doesn’t appreciate frequent base touching. She is a grouchy old woman that way. Nearing 80 and indignant about the changing of the guards as DNOS and I are now treating her more like our children than our mother in some ways.

Calling was a risk. I had spoken with DNOS over the weekend. She reads my blog and called me wanting to express thanks for my sticking up for her while still trying to remain as neutral as possible. In the course of our conversation, I got her side of the story and wasn’t surprised to learn that Mom had overstated a bit of certain points.

DNOS walks a tightrope that I am familiar with but I am too far away physically to be much more than an ear for her.

“Don’t talk to Mom about this anymore,” she asked me.

Which is where the risk comes in. Mom knows that I talk with DNOS and when things are tense between them, she will casually question me about what I might know. Since I am way done with secret keeping, I tell her.

She didn’t like it. 

It’s my opinion – which I expressed to both of them – that they need to talk. Air out feelings. Discuss expectations. And on Mom’s part, finally bury the roles she assigned us as teens and young adults and start seeing us for who we are now.

Mom is one of those people who can’t forget. In the heat of anything, she will dredge up incidents from long past that she has relied upon to define people and set the rules for the relationships she has. She did this with Dad all the time, and while she had good cause to be angry about the wasted years his drinking cost their marriage, it was pointless and time wasting in its own way once he was sober and in declining health. 

I told DNOS that I thought Mom was dealing with a lot of regret and that Dad’s approaching birthday and then the anniversary of his death this coming October were going to make interacting with her less than optimal for a while to come.

I reminded Mom of a time when I was about 10 months out when I simply went off on her over the phone and then refused to pick up her calls for several days. It was DNOS who finally convinced me to relent. It was a stupid thing. I had called to just vent about Dee. I was tired of being her sole caregiver. Not like that was anything new. I had always been a single mom because of the circumstances, but I was under pressure at work because the statute of limitations was up on sympathy for me there, I was struggling with my inability to eat without pain and first anniversaries loomed. Mom tried to compare her struggles as a young mother with my situation. I wasn’t having it. I was totally out of line. It really doesn’t matter how much you hurt, lashing out is wrong. There will always be people who don’t understand or whose experiences don’t mirror your own or your philosophies on dealing. Grown-ups deal. They do not throw tantrums or pick fights.

Mom didn’t remember that incident, but I went on to explain that she might be feeling as she does because she is grieving hard right now and that her perceptions of the gift card incident and the sale of Dad’s car might be colored by this.

Of course she fell back on trying to make me feel guilty.

“I guess I am just a bad person.”

I reassured her as best as I could and pressed the issue of the need to talk with DNOS and let it go.

“Shaping up to be a great visit for us in October,” Rob commented when I told him. 

The October visit has the earmarks of stress all over it, but I promised to attend a wedding in Des Moines and I have a best friend there who needs a shoulder, so we are going. I feel bad for Rob though. 

I expect this will hit another dramatic high or two before it plays itself out.

Remarriage: What Do The Kids Think?


There is a fascinating dialogue over at ye olde widda board right now dealing with remarriage and children. What’s fascinating is not the fact that the dissenters are invariably not remarried at present (or even interested in anything remotely heading in that direction like say, dating), but there are two camps of thought that butt heads regularly for the entertainment, more than the enlightenment, of others.

Camp Dissent believes that remarriage cannot take place without the full and unreserved blessings of one’s children – regardless of their age or agendas. This camp goes so far as to believe that any parent who doesn’t co-parent with their own kids shouldn’t have become parents at all. A child’s “happiness” is the measure of one’s parenting skills. Things like being smart, well-mannered and progressing towards full status independent adulthood are of lesser merit than a child who is pleased with life and his/her parents role in it. There is also a sub-set of this group that believe remarriage in general reeks of personal desperation and grief denial and that suffering – sometimes loudly – is the true mark of a good widowed person.

Camp Hitched is actually divided in their stance. Both believe that parents should be the ultimate decision makers in a family, but some believe that children’s discomfort with recoupling should be given full credence until they turn 18 – a magical watershed moment – while others believe that blending is a process that time, love and elbow grease can handle.

Like most charged discussions, this one quickly devolved into a dogpile on a single poster. Not that I feel much sympathy for the victim because she is someone who confines herself these days to posts on remarriage and never misses an opportunity to call out remarried widows as desperate settlers who don’t love their children, probably didn’t have good first marriages – hence their remarrying, and are just a divorce away from enlightenment, but the original topic of the thread – the tendency of extended family and friends to expect widows to stand still in time until they are ready to let go – got lost.

The one thing about marrying again I have discovered is that it highlights the disparities in the grief time-lines of all parties. Spouses and parents grieve daily. How can we not? Children are blessed with the gift of grieving in spurts – like they grow – but they are still in touch more often than extended family and friends who only have to confront loss occasionally. Family gatherings are excellent examples of occasional grief. Weddings, holidays and reunions highlight the absent sibling or auntie/uncle/grandparent who is little remembered on a daily basis because of distance and the tendency we all have to be caught up in the life we are living.

I have mentioned before that Rob’s in-laws have been wonderful. Though I hear about the difficulties they had and still sometimes have with his remarrying just short of the first year of Shelley’s death, they have been kind and welcoming to Dee and I. Shelley’s auntie, as an example, invited us to Christmas dinner that first year, and we have a standing offer of lodging whenever we are up towards Grande Prairie  or out Vancouver way from a couple of Shelley’s cousins. They have never let their grief get in the way of Rob’s journey or imposed their opinions about what he should or should not be doing in terms of the course he took.

Our kids have gone through various stages where our remarriage is concerned. The older girls expressed concern at the “haste” with which we moved from dating to engaged to married”, but they never acted out. They voiced their feelings to their Dad only and they listened respectfully to his answers and he in turn reassured them about their concerns. In the end, they were the generous and wonderful young women I have only ever known them to be. They trusted their Dad, which goes to show that laying a good foundation with your children as they are growing up is really that important.

Dee never had a father in the active sense, and she was very young when Rob came into her life. She took to him immediately but theirs is still a relationship in progress and we’ve had tense times as they’ve adjusted, as I have gotten used to co-parenting – something I never had the opportunity to do with Will.

How do I feel about needing my children’s permission to make decisions about my life? I don’t need permission. I’m an adult. An adult weighs the options, looks at possible and probable outcomes and does the deciding based on what is best long-term for all. That’s how my parents did it. That’s how, I believe, all grown-ups do things.

The kids are alright in our family because the adults are adults who think and consider and act as a unit. A family is not a democracy. It is the out-growth of a marriage.