What happened to your father after he became a widower?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It’s been a year since my mother died. I look at my father and try to predict what’s going to happen with his life, and I have absolutely no clue. No idea. He seems rudderless and could go in any direction.

Some background. My father was born in 1935 in small town , working-class Western Pennsylvania. You could describe him as “old-school.” However, he was abused as a child and is emotionally fragile, despite his macho demeanor. He was completely dependent on my mother, who did all the domestic chores and raising of the children. He doesn’t have a lot of friends or family for support. Despite her fighting liver cancer for 2 years, he was in complete denial about the possibility of her death and was totally unprepared.

A year later, and he seems convinced that keeping the house up is a full-time job. He goes grocery shopping everyday and has completely neglected his woodworking, which used to occupy most of his time. He talks vaguely about some “woman friend” of his that he spends time with “when he needs to hold a woman’s hand.” I don’t think he can stand to be alone. He still can’t mention my mother without bursting into tears and refuses to go to the widower support group that we have suggested for him.

I think, in another year, he could be dead or remarried or living back in PA. Any and all of these ideas seem possible or probable, depending on his mood. We aren’t close and he doesn’t share any feelings with me. So I’m wondering, how did your father fare? What were your predictions and how did your father surprise or disappoint you?

2

One of best friends just became a widower at 34. They had been together for 12 years. His wife, my friend as well, died very suddenly of a brain Anerism. When he called to tell me, he was very matter-of-factly about it.
He’s in the same situation as your father. His wife did all the bill paying, house chores, and taking care of their 5 year old. He was always aloof with money and time. But he’s since been Mr. Responsibility.
I’m quite proud of the fact that he’s taking it so well. He just keeps on chugging along and hasn’t lost any of his humor. But that also worries me. We are pretty close but I haven’t seen him really grieve yet. He’ll get depressed and thats about it. They had a great marriage and were perfect for each other.
I really expected him to be busting out crying all the time. He must do it when he’s alone or if at all. All of our buddies call him at least once a week to invite him to do things. The majority of the time he’ll decline and we know it, but its just to let him know we are there for him.

3

My mother died unexpectedly, during the early course of my father’s fatal illness.

He was rudderless too for a while, and it was really, really, really tough on him for well over a year. But about two years after my mother’s death, he did pick up a “girlfriend”. I really don’t know the extent of the relationship, because when I and the grandkids came around, he cleared his slate to be with us. Eventually his declining health made him drop out of the relationship. He died a little over 3 years after my mother did.

Had he been healthy, I expect he would have put together a decent relationship or two with someone. Neither I nor Mom would have begrudged him that.

But the first 18 months were very hard for him.

I am fortunate. My father was always capable of surprising me, but never disappointed me in any meaningful way.

4

When Mom died, Dad had already divorced her. His second wife gouged him bigtime in the divorce. The third wife, now his widow, is a wonderful woman, maybe even better for him than Mom was.

5

My father became a widower for the first time a little over 11 years ago, at age 69. He was miserable in his loneliness. He had been part of a large family living at home in his youth; in World War II, he went to Baltimore to build airplanes for the war (He was 4-F), and lived in a boarding house with several others. After the war, he returned to North Carolina, and lived in a boarding house. Me met my mother at work, and they married. He had never lived alone before in his life, and the loneliness wore on him. Our next-door neighbor (who had lived alone for several years) said he used to depress her, coming over and saying “I guess it’s just you and me, kid. Let’s go out to dinner.”

In the meantime, the church ladies kept coming after him — the attack of the casserole women. After he re-married, we found out from the florist that SHE had been sending ladies his way, too. I think he was being treated as fresh meat by the community. I think this scared the hell out of him — I just honestly couldn’t see my dad out on the dating scene.

One of his brothers ran into a woman that he had dated while he was working in Baltimore during WWII. (He was a machinist first class, she was a machinist second class.) He hooked them back up again. When I went home to visit at Christmas the following year, she was there to visit. When I went home for Easter, she was still there… you get the picture.

They ended up shacking up for several years; then they married about 4 years ago.

I had trouble seeing what he saw in her, as she was so diametrically different from my mother. We all did our best to like her. We were polite, and did our best to make her feel part of the family, although she frequently pissed us off when her selfishness hurt our dad. Though I didn’t like her, I was glad that she was there to provide him companionship, and keep him from being lonely.

I found it quite poignant when my sister overheard him saying to his brother who had recently lost his wife “There can be worse things than being lonely…” when the brother complained about the emptiness since losing his wife.

His second wife died just over a month ago. He seems to be bearing up fairly well. He keeps making reference to the process when he lost my mom over a decade ago, as if to prove to himself that this was something he has gone through before, and that if he made it then, he can do it again.

As of yet, I don’t think the attack of the casserole women has begun again yet. I’m sure it will, though, as the florist spreads the word about the eligible 80 year old fresh meat…

6

My dad had 6 kids, so he wasn’t such hot property on the dating scene. He just worked for a few years, dated a little a few years and then gave up. He seemed fairly content to be unmarried and unattached, but I don’t know for sure as he died himself a few years ago.

7

He re-connected with his old girlfriend. They had broken up in 1936.

8

My dad and mom had been boyfriend and girlfriend since they were 11. He swore up and down to my mom that he would never get remarried. She died of cancer and almost 7 months later to the day, he was re-married. Stepmom lived about 2 years, died of cancer, and he was remarried in about a year. Luckily, this wife seems to be healthy! :rolleyes:

9

My wife died at age 38 last July. July11, 2004 will be one year. She died of pneumonia leaving behind a husband of 21 years, and three children.

As of right now, I have no desire for a relationship. Sex would be nice, since even at being married for 21 years, we rairly failed to have sex at least 3 or 4 times a week.

Even if I were ready to date, my kids aren’t ready for that yet, and I respect that. (Their ages are 21, 18, and and 14, boy, girl, girl respectively)

The hardest part for me is feeling weird when I have to say the words ‘Mother-in-law’. I mean I guess she’s still my M-I-L, but it seems weird. Also It’s weird to say I’m not married when asked. People assume I’m divorced, and I don’t really want to get into it with them, but it’s weird too.

On the flip side, I’ve received ENORMOUS support from friends and family. My officiating association started a scholorship in her name for ball players going on to play in college.

Life could be worse. I’m, as always, the luckiest man on earth. I’ve been so blessed in so many other ways.

E3

10

I admire men who can hold it together and carry on alone after losing a wife. I think it shows true strength of character, a sincere respect for his late wife, and wisdom to know it will take a good deal of time to grieve and come out whole at the other end. i.e… not dependent, lonely and desperate. Unfortunately this rarely happens. Men will often remarry or at least have a girlfriend within a very short length of time.
[slight hijack]
Those of you whose fathers remarried relatively soon after your mother’s death, did you find it disrespectful in any way or were you pleased your father had found some happiness without a long mourning period? [/hijack]

11

Both my parents are still alive, but my grandpa became a widow. He hooked up with an old girlfriend, too, from the 30’s also, and they got married within a year of grandma’s death. He died within a year or so, though.
I really loved my grandma and I was in my late teens, so I wasn’t very mature about it. I was never rude to her, but she could probably tell I didn’t like her.
Seems like older men do best getting remarried quickly. After a lifetime of having a woman around, how could you go without??

12

My mother died relatively young, in her fifties. My dad was sort of shell-shocked for a while. There were worries among his (all adult) children about his drinking. Then he started getting close to a woman we all knew (old friend of the family). Eventually they married (about three years after my mother’s death). They’ve been married for twelve years now. Best thing that ever happened to him.

13

I’m sorry to hear about your mom. Your story is a lot like mine. My mom died six years ago this coming Monday. My parents were very close, and my mom did all the housework. My dad’s hobbies are drumming and recording movies, which he’s kept up with. He, too was a wreck the first year, as we all were. It does get better with time.

My father spends lots of time shopping and keeping the house in order, but he also walks at the mall every day (four miles, I think…). Your father needs to keep his health up. It’s important for his mental attitude as well has his physical well-being.

My dad and I are very close. We talk about my mom all the time. My sister and brother don’t discuss it with him at all. He still cries, but it’s not as frequent as it was.

Good luck to you. Time really does relieve some of the pain. There will always be an empty space, but the edges aren’t quite as jagged after a few years.

14

The first few months after my mother died, we thought my father would follow her. He was depressed, he pretty much never left the house, his walked turned into an elderly shuffle, even his complexion turned gray.

He sold the house they’d lived in for 20 years, and moved to Chicago, where he had family and friends. That gave him a chance to rebuild. He died ten years later. If anyone had told us in that first year that he would outlive my mother by ten years, stay reasonably healthy and die quickly, we would given them money to make it happen.

15

He was terribly lonely and wanted to die.

He was very ill with emphysema so every day that he lived was a struggle to breathe.

Mom was his strength and when she died from Lymphoma, he was lost. He stayed with us for another 16 months because he was worried how I would handle losing both of them so close together.

16

My dad nursed my mother through the last stages of her death from breast cancer. At the time, I thought he was having some trouble with his memory but assumed it was stress. It turned out that my mother had been covering for him for some time. I don’t know if it was Alzheimer’s or dementia or drinking or the result of a series of small strokes or all of the above.

After my mother’s death he was at loose ends for a while but seemed to be coping by continuing to attend Hospice meetings. At one of the Hospice meetings he meet a nice widow lady and the attraction was magical. They were like teenagers together and couldn’t keep their hands off each other (ages 80 and 83). (When I cleaned out his home, after his death, I found a bottle of Viagra in the medicine cabinet.) Mrs. H. moved in with my dad, but his condition continued to deteriorate until after 18 months, Mrs. H. moved out and his doctor advised me to get a court order to have him committed for observation. I finally found a nice nursing home for him where he lived for three more months until his heart gave out one evening after dinner.

Those were the worst years of my life!

17

Grandfather lost Grandma just days before their 51st wedding anniversary, after a long and distressing illness. At first, he seemed dazed and subdued (although he did remember to bring his footy tips to the funeral, just as my Aunt predicted). He continued in the daze for about six weeks, and then he just seemed to shake it off and move on. He said to me “She’s been dead for two years, she just wouldn’t lie down”. She had lost the ability to communicate with us nearly two years prior, and had been in a nursing home rather than at home all that time.

We were worried because once he didn’t have the nursing home to visit every day, he stopped seeing the other residents and their family members and so his life became very isolated. We encouraged him to go there to visit the people he’d befriended, but he refused and never set foot in the place again. “What for?” he’d say. “Bah!”.

Over time, there was some talk in the family about the fact that most of the elderly men in Grandfather’s neighbourhood had dropped off, and so it was just him and “the widders”. He never really spoke about talking to them, and I guess he probably didn’t bother. He’s not the most social man around. Odd behaviour during this time included burying Grandma’s ashes, wedding rings, death notice and watch in a box in the garden, with the spot marked by a garden gnome and going to great lengths to seal his backyard off so people couldn’t enter it unless he invited them in. This turned out to be quite a problem when he fell in the yard and broke his hip, as it took his rescuers an hour to break in.

After a couple of weeks in hospital, he announced that the steps around his house were going to be too much of a problem for him, and so he sold the home he’d owned for 45 years without a thought. While we were all saying goodbye to the home he’d raised his family in, he was only interested in the next step, moving into a unit in the retirement village up the other end of town. While there was a more even mixture of men and women there, I don’t belive he befriended a soul in that place in the four years he lived there. He doesn’t like wasting time talking to people, and can be quite abrupt. Odd behaviour during this phase included setting up a remote controlled doorbell that made a sound like a dog barking to terrorise the “widders” as they walked past, three years of magpie season being outwitted by one in the park, sticking cuphooks into most of the free surfaces of his unit to hang things from (damage to the laminate be hanged!), replacing the flowers in his garden with plastic ones (and repainted them when they faded) and selling dope (ok, he only did it once, and that’s only because he happened to find it where someone dropped it, and he didn’t so much sell it as exchange it for a six pack of light beer).

It’s now 6 years since Grandma died, and Grandfather’s health is deteriorating. He’s still as feisty as ever, but his mobility is extremely limited. He sold his unit and moved into a nursing home, and his days are filled matching wits with the dementia patients (he can’t understand what’s wrong with them, and he keeps trying to teach them to leave him alone. Luckily, after his physio therapist copped what was meant for the senile lady who kept coming in his room, he’s stopped throwing water at them). He’s never shown any interest in female companionship, but then again he tends to tell us to leave not long after we arrive because he’s not much for chatting. He still enjoys his football on the tellie, and recently got me to set up his VCR so he could tape things to watch later. He’s definately in the winding-down phase of his life now, but he is 86 years old, and he did enjoy good health and alertness well beyond what many people experience. He doesn’t mention Grandma but it’s not that he’s avoiding the subject, he just doesn’t believe in living in the past. Despite the fact that he loved her and spent 50 wonderful years with her, he’s not the type of man to spend his time in remembrance and reflection, preferring to live in the now.

18

My father became a widower when both were in their 70s, after my mother had suffered from Alzheimer’s for many years, and had been in a nursing home for the last few years. So he had been looking after both for some time, and her death was a release for us. Fifteen or so years on, he’s living on his own in an apartment, able to get across the road to the shops and a coffee shop using a walking frame, and has plenty of friends to keep an eye on him. So he’s coping fine – the only real problem is that his two children live a long way away, though two grandchildren live about 2 blocks away. I only hope I cope as well if I reach his age (though I do hope not to be a widower).

19

My mom died in 1993 after a long battle with cancer. Dad was in his mid-60s, and had retired a few years earlier to be with Mom while he could. During that time, she had helped him learn how to cook for himself and take care of the house, so he’d already gotten pretty self-sufficient by the time she died. (Though he did always let the mail pile up on the dining room table and wasn’t as scrupulous about the vacuuming as he might have been).

My brother and sister and I all lived pretty close by at that time, so we would see quite a lot of him, and Dad had always been very active in the church and with volunteer work, so he kept fairly busy. My older sister stepped in and oversaw the family gathering-type activities, and Dad kept up the tradition of renting a house at the shore for two weeks in the summer – my sister and my nephew and I would vacation with him.

About six months after Mom died, my sister and my dad and I were sitting around the dining room table after a Sunday dinner together and we started talking about ways that Dad could meet more people. He was always a great bridge player and I mentioned that I’d seen that a bridge club had opened up in a nearby shopping center. I’d even written down the phone number for him. He said, “I was thinking about joining that, but then I figured that the women I met there probably wouldn’t want to have sex with me.” Big-time floored moment there! Dad . . . sex . . . head exploding. My sister and I had to retire to the kitchen to recover ourselves! :slight_smile:

Around the same time, he had developed a bit of a crush on the female pastor at his church but he thought she was probably too young for him. I pointed out that since she was a grandma, the age difference might not be that big a deal, and anyway, if he didn’t feel she was too young for him he could at least give her the opportunity to decide for herself if he was too old for her, but it never went anywhere.

Finally, he started spending quite a lot of time with one of the widows at the church and they were married in 1997. My brother and sister-in-law feel a real antipathy toward her, but I’m very grateful that she’s in Dad’s life and I like her a lot as a person, too. She can be a bit overwhelming, but I just remember that she loves my Dad and he loves her, and it makes it pretty easy for me to love her, too. The only thing is that I have a sense that she doesn’t like to hear too much talk about my Mom (although I could be wrong about that), so I don’t feel so free to have conversations with my dad about her as I used to.

20

Well, my father got engaged a couple of months after my step-mother/sister’s mother passed away after a rather long and arduous battle with cancer. I wasn’t really surprised, quite honestly. She’d been sick for a number of years, and he’s the social type, anyway. I’m not sure disappointment’s the word, either. They’re both a good match, and I haven’t seen him this happy in quite some time. She treats my sister well, too, which makes me happy. That said, the most insight I’ve gotten into his emotional state came from one of those survey-emails, a few months back, so I don’t have overly much to go on.

So yeah. It’s been more than a year, now, and he’s getting married, again. I’m going to the wedding with Medeaschild, out in Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to it, too, as this is the first of his weddings I’ve been invited to.

All in all, I’d say it’s a good development.
bamf