My widowed friend has got a new man
DEAR BEL,
ONE of my oldest friends lost her husband three years ago. I had known them for years and was very fond of him. She was the last person I expected to start a relationship, but to my amazement she has and is madly in love with a new man. She’s in her 70s, he’s a widower just a little older and very ‘suitable’: intelligent, charming and kind. But it feels so strange to hear about their holidays and see them out together — and now she has asked me and my husband to supper at her house. The thought of seeing the new man sitting in her late husband’s place at the table is hard to deal with. I know this is wrong. Do you have any thoughts?
SERENA
RATHER than call your feelings ‘ wrong’, I’d say they are entirely understandable.
Many of us have to face situations like this, especially as we become older. I felt like you when my late friend’s long-term partner found a new lady, about three years after her death. I had been so worried about him, grieving and unfit to be alone. Yet when he met a really lovely new woman, I flinched a little to see her in my old friend’s kitchen. Then felt guilty because I should have been rejoicing at his happiness.
These situations are at once complicated and simple. Sadness isn’t something you can just switch off; you’re perfectly entitled to miss the person who has gone and find it hard to adjust to change — even if the bereaved partner has. It’s important to recognise that he or she will almost certainly have endured regret, confusion and guilt in making the transition from sorrow to new happiness.
The grief for an old love is not forgotten, but carried forward within a big heart. Somebody who was happily married will often find a new romance relatively quickly, because they have learned the glorious habit of loving.
So please, take champagne to your friend’s house and realise that the man you miss is still there as he always was, but in spirit.
I’d like to think he is blessing the newfound happiness of the woman who never stopped being his wife, and never will — not even now her tears have dried.