Life after your life partner, am I morbid for thinking it thru?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The most difficult part of my father passing away was hearing from my mother that she had never considered this day would come. I asked her “what next” and she had no concept. This is a man who was having illness since I was a teenager (I was 39 when he passed) and she had never considered the probability that she would be the one left behind. I was horrified and vowed that I would never be caught flat footed like that.

I have thought thru what happens if my wife were to pass. Not 2 days later, but where I’d like to be 6 months later, after day to day life keeps moving forward. I think it’s a healthy but very difficult conversation to have with your self. You learn a lot about yourself, you learn what things you truly value that even if your entire life was upended, you would still continue and what things you could truly live without.

For me, for example, I would walk away from this house and get a small apartment both for cost savings and because I personally believe we have entirely too much stuff. 3-4 months after, I’m out of this house.

So 2 part question, do people actually think this thru or am I an outlier? Am I being too hard on my mother? And next, I found this to be a life affirming exercise, so much so that I want to tell my wife that if she hasn’t had this conversation, that she should consider it.

We are both late 40’s with some health issues but nothing exceptionally serious.

2

It’s not morbid at all. It’s just smart.

My father died three years ago this week. He was very wise, and ensured there was a plan and everyone was ready for it. It’s made my mother’s life a lot easier, and she’s doing very well, but that said my mother is quite healthy and athletic; she was in a good position to thrive on her own. She misses my Dad but in some ways it’s done her a lot of good.

My wife and I (she 41, me 46) probably need to plan this more, despite both being quite healthy. Of course, we’re very well insured, so financially we’d be fine. That tends to not be so true later in life; you quite rationally reduce your insurance.

3

I’m not married, but it seems a pretty good idea to me; to take a somewhat extreme example, I know I’m not the only one looking at my uncle and wondering how he would cope without my aunt, should she die or be incapacitated first.

He’s got very limited practical life skills; he can’t cook, has no idea how to do basic tasks like washing clothes or even washing up. He has diet-controlled diabetes, but she basically does all the management for that, even . It worked, for them (it’d drive me insane, but she’s not like me), when he was working full time, brought in the money, and she basically did everything else for him. Now, however, he’s retired, she’s limited in movement, and her mobility’s likely to get worse soon…

I keep wanting to ask what he intends to do when she can’t do everything for him, but I suspect his answer would be that he’d move in with his daughter, or at least that she’d look after him. Never mind that said daughter lives at the other end of town, has a job and two small children and is far less of a doormat than her mother.

4

Similar to the OP’s story, my father had his first heart attack when I was 12 and his last one just 20 years later. My mother was totally devastated. Nonetheless, she pulled herself together and within a year was dating again. My sister (the only one of us who was living nearby) commented that it was like having a teen-age daughter. And three years after my father died, she remarried. To my uncle actually whose wife died less than a year after my father.

As for the question, no I have not given it a thought. First, I do not expect to outlive her, since I have had heart disease for a long long time (heart attack nearly 53 years ago) and second, I can’t imagine it. I would doubtless sell the house and move to an apartment, but I would like to do that anyway, while my wife prefers staying here. Fortunately we have a snow clearance and lawn care and have recently found a home handyman.

5

It has always been an element of my financial planning, both of ours, actually, and I have a vague plan to move to a smaller place in an over 55 community close to work if I am the survivor, but nothing more firm than that.

6

No not morbid at all. It just makes sense.

I’ve thought about it in passing. My Wife has been an extreme athlete but probably won’t do that anymore (IronMan). House is paid for. And we have two dogs. No children.

The BIG deal would be trying to organize the ‘events’ that follow a death. I can generally pull myself together for things that must be done, and have my breakdowns when I can afford them. Sorry if that sounds cold, and can’t even say if it’s the truth.

I would not make any big changes to my life until I was sure I was over it. I would have no need to make any quick decisions. My Wife is in the same spot and I’m sure she will likely outlive me.

7

I gotta say, you have to be pretty healthy to even be able to truthfully state “I had a heart attack over half a century ago.”

8

Practical, not morbid. I would probably move out to where my kids all live, even though I dislike that part of the country, just because eventually someone would need to make decisions on my behalf.

9

My late wife put together a briefcase of all the important papers (birth certificates, insurance, deed to the house, etc.) since she expected to be the one to go first(barring accidents).

10

I don’t find it morbid at all, though I found for myself that very little of what I expected actually came true.

Being sure that everything can be in a good place financially is really important. Try not to lock down any other decisions (“it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the money to keep the house because I will want to move in with great-aunt Ethel anyway…”).

11

I’m actually going through the scenario the OP mentions right now.

My spouse had health problems when I first met him so I also knew that the odds favored me outliving him. Not only did I think about That Day, but we had also had conversations about end of life care, what to do with stuff, and so forth.

Yes, the planning and thinking did help. Some.

The biggest thing immediately after was knowing what to do in the immediate aftermath - how to access internet accounts, where information on bills are kept, life insurance information, deadlines for changing health insurance coverage, what things had be changed over to just my name first and which were not time critical. Both my physical and emotional health took a massive hit not only from his death but also the months leading up to it, which were one crisis after another. I had little energy, stamina, or focus and having a map of sorts did a lot to help me.

One thing I did immediately after the spouse’s death was speak to lawyer for about a half an hour about possible legal issues and pitfalls. That was time and money well spent and probably saved me a great deal of trouble and money down the line.

One thing I would definitely recommend is to get medical power of attorney and end-of-life instructions set up NOW, while both parties are healthy and of unquestionably sound mind. Don’t wait. Do it now. Especially if you think there is anyone on either side of the family that might challenge your authority to make decisions on behalf of your spouse and vice versa. You don’t want to be caught in a limbo where a decision needs to be made and no one can legally make it until the party concerned either recovers or dies.

As for the months after - I gave my self a year in which I would make no major decisions or life changes (unless, of course, I really, really had to do so). I find that doing so was good for me, as I had to rebuild my physical health and get used to be single again, I had a hundred little things I had to start doing again because now I do ALL the chores instead of being able to split them, and in general just allowing myself to recover. But that’s me. You might do well to downsize your living space in just a few months. What I do suggest is not locking yourself too tightly into a timeline for awhile afterward. Losing a spouse really does hit you hard, very hard. For months it was all I could do just to get up, get dressed, and go to work some days.

Things I’d recommend for the new widow(er):

  1. As I said, you’ve just had a terrible blow. Give yourself extra time for rest and to take care of yourself.

  2. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. Even if you don’t want to socialize do so. I joined a lunch club and the same crowd now has me going to their grief support group, too. Even when I wasn’t going through I made a point to get out of the house every day the first four months or so, even if I had nothing planned.

  3. Keep working - having a full time job did a LOT to keep me moving and putting one foot in front of the other. I had contact with people, it was 8 hours of relative normal in my life 5 days a week, and it keep the bills paid. I don’t know how folks who don’t have a job (retired) cope.

  4. Don’t be too hard on yourself about going through Stuff. Initially I’d be able to go through His Stuff for about 5-10 minutes before becoming a sobbing mess. Now, much less of a problem. It does get easier with time. If you set a time line to get it done and you find it overwhelming then re-set the timelines. On the other hand, if you find it cathartic and helpful to attack The Stuff have at it.

  5. Everyone grieves and recovers in their own way. Do what works for you. I got a lot support groups pushed on me at first, none of which suited me so I didn’t go to them (I found one that fit 10 months after his death). Some people start dating again immediately. Some wait. Some never do. This really is about YOU, do what works for you.

12

I have dealt with alot of death. What scares me more than anything is incapacitation more than death. My ILs were both very ill and had several rehabs in nursing homes. They both had dementia and when home had to have 24 hour help. Me and my SIL and one granddaughter did this for a year or so. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We finally hired full time live in help between nursing home stays. They had plenty of savings but it was gone by the time FIL died, we were trying to get financial help and selling land and property when MIL died.
They died practically destitute. They had preplanned their funerals, that was a plus. Some of the decisions we had to make for them was heartwrenching. I don’t want to have to do that for anyone.

13

My father had set my mother and I up pretty well financially before he passed so my mother didn’t have to suddenly rejoin the workforce. To this day I have no idea how much it was but it was enough to keep us afloat until I was in my early 20s when my mother returned to school to brush up on her bookkeeping skills. She went back to work FT while I was in college and did taxes on the side until maybe a year before her dementia diagnosis: She knew something was wrong when the computations no longer made any sense to her, so she retired.

She too had set up stuff at some point before the dementia between her will, her investments, and the house. The only thing she didn’t have was life insurance. She didn’t believe in it. I depleted my savings burying her. If we hadn’t already had a family plot with a space reserved for her I would’ve considered cremation.

I often think of what I’d do should something happen to my husband. I do know the very first thing would be to clean out the house and sell it because there’s no way I can pay the taxes and such on my salary alone.

14

I lived alone for about 10 years before I married, so I’m not worried about that. I know I can manage without a man. I’ve also thought that if my husband should die before I do, I doubt that I’d date or anything.

I’ve joked that I’m too old to train another guy, but really there’s a lot of truth in that joke. At my age, I have my routines and my preferences and all that. And, frankly, I don’t need to take on a partner with the inevitable old-age health issues. One thing I think I’d do, tho, is take more cruises. I enjoy them much more than my husband does, so we don’t go nearly as often as I’d like. I don’t think that’s morbid to consider - it’s just my practical side at work.

15

I knew I wouldn’t date. I said so on the dope! Yep. And then Asimovian happened. :smiley:

16

Well that just made me say ‘aww’ outloud!

17

I think that, for the most part, this isn’t something that people think about. But it should be. We make a lot of plans for things that probably won’t happen, but death is something that certainly will happen, sooner or later.

18

Interestingly, I was just having a conversation of this sort with my wife last night. :slight_smile: Not so much about us specifically, though I approached it from that vantage point. And I wasn’t thinking of a comprehensive life plan in case of that eventuality, but it was rather in the context of options for older singles.

My point was that suppose you had a very successful long term marriage, but now your spouse has passed away and you’re looking to marry again. Your odds are better marrying someone who similarly had a long-term happy marriage as opposed to someone who was never married or who had a short-term/unsuccessful marriage. Because the person who was already happily married for decades isn’t looking to find the love of their life. They’ve already had that. Now they’re just looking for some companionship and perhaps other practical considerations. But the person who has never had that history is looking for more. For them, this is “it”. So I think there is likely to be a serious mismatch of expectations from two people looking for very different things out of that relationship.

[My wife saw my point, but did find the conversation somewhat morbid. :)]

19

Three or four years ago my gf was very sick with what turned out to be Borreliosis (aka Lyme disease). On the fourth day of fever >103 I texted some friends to cancel plans, explaining that gf was very sick. Friend asked how sick she was, and I replied that I was going to begin dating just in case.

20

Not morbid at all.

BOTH my wife and I were widowed when our spouses died from brain tumors in their mid-40s. In my case, my wife was actually 8 years younger than I was, so we had never even considered that she would pass away before I did, and certainly not at the age of 44.

One result is that my (current) wife and I think a lot about what will happen when one of us passes. It has also given us a completely different outlook about “planning our golden years.” Many of our friends talk about what wonderful times they will have when they get to their full retirement age and can FINALLY do the things they have always wanted to do. We often suggest they not put off their dreams if they have any way of fulfilling them now.

Other posters have hit on the financial planning and preparation, so I’ll just second them. Make sure you have some central location for everything from accounts and passwords to what bills you pay and who you pay them to.