a letter at LCSC

I got this letter from a friend at the lung cancer support site, and I thought I would share some of it - enough hopefully to get the points across but not so much she would be identified by it, and then share my answer.


The deal is this--My Mama died a little under 2 months ago. She'd been married to my Daddy for 28 years. And they were SO in love right to the end.

But now... Dad is already doing the online dating thing, and has gone out on several dates, and is even starting to get a little serious with one lady in particular.

Quite honestly... It throws me for multiple loops. Just as I think I'm starting to be sort of ok with it, I spiral into just not being at all ok with it. I'm doing my best not to let on to Dad that I'm struggling with it so much. I try to be very nonchalant about it altogether. I hope this is the right thing to do. I want to be supportive of whatever he needs right now, but I have to work through a lot of feelings behind the scenes with this particular aspect.

It just feels so wrong to think of him with anybody else... Especially this soon. It feels really soon to me. I know my grief is still fresh. I still wake up some days with at least part of me not remembering that Mom is gone.

I'm not judging my Dad, and I would never want to tell him how to live his life. I just don't understand and it's hard for *ME* to process through. I get that it isn't about ME, but I still have to stumble through the feelings nonetheless...

And that's why I'm hoping you might have some perspective for me. Is this normal? I'm sure... there really is no normal, right? Do I need to be worried about it not being healthy for him? Can you help me understand where his motivations might lie? Loneliness? Missing Mom so much and cherishing what they had so much that he can't wait to get back into something similar? Something to fill the void? Someone to talk to that isn't his daughter? Someone to cuddle with (and possibly cuddle.... etc.)? All of that and more?

I don't know if having more perspective will help the way I feel or not. It might at least help me to cerebrally be logical about things even if emotionally I feel messy about them....


And now my reply:

I certainly have no idea what normal is. I know people say that you shouldn't get involved for a year. But that is a hit or miss proposition. I don't think there is a magic time to get involved or not.

I first knew I wanted to be dating six weeks after Becky died. I wasn't ready to date then, but I knew I wanted to someday. And I think it was and remains a tribute to Becky that I wanted to and now am dating. I loved being married, and I want those things back in my life again.

I started dating about four months after Becky died. In retrospect, it was too soon, though I do not regret it because I met and dated an amazing woman who is now one of my best friends. But in retrospect, I think it was at about ten months that I was actually ready to form a healthy relationship. Not that I did, just that I was ready to.

The day I am thinking of is the day I found out Becky had been awarded her doctorate from FSU. She died a couple of months before she was to have defended it, and it took a while for the rigamarole to get sorted out. And I went down to the church where we were married the next day - I was teaching a class at the university where we met at the time - and I went into the church. And I was talking out loud to Becky for the first time in many months, and I remember a sequence of thoughts. I remember saying, "You cannot hear me the way I need to be heard." And then I thought the next two: you cannot love me the way I need to be loved, and I cannot love you the way I need to love. And I think it was in that moment that I became aware of the transformation our love had undergone. I will love Becky for the rest of my days. But I cannot be in love with her anymore. I must have a physical presence in order to be in love, and so the love I have now is transformed, and it is different, and for me it was being aware of that transformation that was essential.

Now, all of that being said, there are tons of widows and widowers that get into relationships even earlier than I did. I ultimately don't think it is wise, and the reason is that for a couple of years after being widowed, we almost go through a whole new life cycle. We are very childish or at least childlike. In that everything and everyone is supposed to revolve around us and our pain. It is so total, and so consuming, that we cannot even fathom the world existing as it did. I remember driving to Becky's funeral and being angry that Walmart was open. I participated at a bulletin board like this one for young widows, and the one way I can always tell a really new widow is that selfishness. I don't mean that in a blaming way - I was there, too.

After a couple of months, the pain became less total, and parts of my personality began reemerging, and with a force that was very much like a second puberty. My sexuality emerged with even more thunder than when I was thirteen. It was much easier being celibate as a teenager because I didn't know what I was missing. After a decade of a healthy sex life, fifteen months ultimately of abstinence sucked and sucked bad. It caused me a lot of shame that I had to work through - the last several months of Becky's life, we didn't have a sex life, so to speak, and it was cool. And so it really shocked me when that part came up again. (Pun intended, lol)

And so now I guess I have entered a new adulthood, with a greater balance in my life - professionally, spiritually, sexually, and paternally. It is not easy, by any stretch, and there are days, especially a month ago today when Katie started school, that I miss Becky so much I physically ache. But those days are now relatively rare, and I spend most of my time and thoughts of Becky knowing what a blessing she has been and continues to be in my life.

The reason I talk about this process is that it seems to me really unlikely that someone we are compatible with a couple of months out will also be compatible two years out because of how drastic the changes are in our lives. And so I would encourage someone not to get into a serious relationship for several months if not a year or more. But at the same time, the realizations I came to after ten months might not have been possible for me until I had a few dating experiences. Maybe we have to get out there and make mistakes.

So the upshot is that it is normal, to some extent, to want to be in a relationship quickly. One of the things I experienced when Becky died, and this horrifies me still, is relief. She battled so hard; she struggled so much; she hurt so much. And it was a relief to not be fighting anymore, to not watch her in pain anymore. We stopped having sex about six months before she died, and it hurt her to have that happen. And so one of the things that happened is that I had to communicate my love for her in other ways. I had to communicate to her that she was still desirable while at the same time it was okay that we weren't sexually active anymore. And so every time I touched her arm or anything physical, it had to carry so much more meaning. I know that the first time I found myself kissing a woman after she died, it was so refreshing to be kissing and it be just affectionate and playful and fun and not have to carry such weight.

Maybe this is way more perspective than you ever wanted, but it is the first set of thoughts to jump out of my head, and I hope it helps in some way.