I’m sorry for being insensitive

I ’ VE had an excellent response to recent letters — especially last week’s from ‘Jane’, so heartbroken at the end of her long love affair that she planned an end to her life.

T here was heartfelt sympathy — but four women objected to this in my reply: ‘Jilted women have told me they think widows suffer less than the heartbroken ones whose once-beloved men have turned into torturers. It’s probably true.’

It didn’t occur to me then, but it was inevitable that sorrowing widows would write and let me know, in no uncertain terms, that this is (at best) wrong and (at worst) insulting to their grief. Abandoned wives and partners are entitled to feel t hat t hei r l oss is a bereavement. But it was hardly tactful of me to add, ‘it’s probably true’ — and for that I really do apologise.

I always learn something, even if you think I’m wrong. And I’m glad of the reminder to publicise www.way-up. co.uk, offering support to widows. Also remember the wonderful charity Cruse — www.cruse.org.uk.

M summed up a widow’s grief when she wrote: ‘As a widow of nearly seven years, I died when my beloved husband died. I will always be married to him and love him more than my life.

‘I know we will be together again one day, and I am so grateful for the miracle of meeting and marrying him in 1971 . . . The pain is with me every waking moment . . . A widow grieves and longs for a loving husband whom she has lost, but there is no ego involved (‘How can he do this to me?’) as when people are jilted.’

Then A — now re-married — made a good point: ‘If your ex is alive it does mean children have their father still on this earth and can hope for a relationship with him and for their own children to have a grandfather. Death leaves no hope for an improved outcome.’

But l ook, there i s no competition. No league table of grief. People suffer their various losses in different ways and what matters is we understand that fact and reach out to each other, as best we can.