When my husband passed away, it was sudden, to me it was terribly tragic, but it was of natural causes. I suspect that it should have been easier on me to have lost a husband, since we had not been married terribly long in the scheme of things. I was young, in the scheme of things, and could 'get on' with my life... but probably because I had been through more trauma than many people in my situation, I mourned a lot more than what I see most women do.
I say that I see most women in my situation... because I have met, over the past ten years, a lot of widows. Women my own age, women who have lost husbands that they were married to longer than I was, and men as well, classmates that have lost their wives, who have got on with it... this thing called life.
I was pretty shocked when my father-in-law told me to get on with it just a month after my husband passed away. The last thing I ever thought about was getting remarried, but maybe he was worried about the six year old son that had just lost his father. But for him, my son, it was not that easy either. He loved his dad so much, had been inseparable from him at times... and he didn't want a substitute either.
Many people get remarried after the loss of a spouse. I don't have statistics, but most of the people that I know that are widows or widowers, have remarried within two years. Soooo, I went hunting. I turned to the internet once again, this lovely instrument of information, to find out a little about remarriage.
Huffington Post has an article, " Forget-Me-Never: The Reality of Remarriage After Widowhood". written by Carol Brody Fleet. This intrigued me, I started reading it and had to go off on a hunt, because in the first paragraph, the article stated that a well-known actor confessed to thinking about his dead wife even though he was remarried... I confess, I don't follow the 'fan' magazines, I don' t watch the shows on television about celebrities, and I rarely care what is going on in Hollywood. So I had no idea to whom the article was referring.
Google is really a working tool... it took me one go at it to find Martin Short, but I found a whole lot more. Pierce Brosnan, who lost his first wife to cancer, and people like Jackie Kennedy, who's husband was President John Kennedy, she remarried Onasis, but she never forgot her first love...
So, this all brought me to another article in Huffington Post, "Why There Is No Such Thing AS 'Getting Over Your Spouse's Death... And What To Focus On Instead" By the same author as the first article mentioned, Carol Brody Fleet. She put it so much better than I could. People told her that she should just 'get over it'... She shares that if you are not over it yet... "There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with you!"
It is very hard to realize this when you have someone who should have loved your loved one just as much as you did...
How do you politely tell them that
One...
You aren't...
Two...
They shouldn't be...
Three...
You will in your own time...
Get over it, if not, it is really no other person's business how long it takes you to mourn.
I say that I see most women in my situation... because I have met, over the past ten years, a lot of widows. Women my own age, women who have lost husbands that they were married to longer than I was, and men as well, classmates that have lost their wives, who have got on with it... this thing called life.
I was pretty shocked when my father-in-law told me to get on with it just a month after my husband passed away. The last thing I ever thought about was getting remarried, but maybe he was worried about the six year old son that had just lost his father. But for him, my son, it was not that easy either. He loved his dad so much, had been inseparable from him at times... and he didn't want a substitute either.
Many people get remarried after the loss of a spouse. I don't have statistics, but most of the people that I know that are widows or widowers, have remarried within two years. Soooo, I went hunting. I turned to the internet once again, this lovely instrument of information, to find out a little about remarriage.
Huffington Post has an article, " Forget-Me-Never: The Reality of Remarriage After Widowhood". written by Carol Brody Fleet. This intrigued me, I started reading it and had to go off on a hunt, because in the first paragraph, the article stated that a well-known actor confessed to thinking about his dead wife even though he was remarried... I confess, I don't follow the 'fan' magazines, I don' t watch the shows on television about celebrities, and I rarely care what is going on in Hollywood. So I had no idea to whom the article was referring.
Google is really a working tool... it took me one go at it to find Martin Short, but I found a whole lot more. Pierce Brosnan, who lost his first wife to cancer, and people like Jackie Kennedy, who's husband was President John Kennedy, she remarried Onasis, but she never forgot her first love...
So, this all brought me to another article in Huffington Post, "Why There Is No Such Thing AS 'Getting Over Your Spouse's Death... And What To Focus On Instead" By the same author as the first article mentioned, Carol Brody Fleet. She put it so much better than I could. People told her that she should just 'get over it'... She shares that if you are not over it yet... "There is absolutely, positively nothing wrong with you!"
It is very hard to realize this when you have someone who should have loved your loved one just as much as you did...
How do you politely tell them that
One...
You aren't...
Two...
They shouldn't be...
Three...
You will in your own time...
Get over it, if not, it is really no other person's business how long it takes you to mourn.
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