I’ve struggled to come to terms with the ghost of my husband’s late wife
When author Caron McKinlay married a widower, she began constantly comparing herself to her perfect predecessor
My friends were so happy for me when I married Andy. He was eight years older than me (perhaps wiser, but I’d never admit that) and everyone said we were a wonderful match; I basked in their praise. I was divorced; Andy was a widower. This was our chance, finally, at a happily-everafter – but it became clear there were more than two of us in the relationship.
One day, driving to the beach, we were playing a silly game of “Name that tune”. It was Andy’s turn to guess the song, so I sang one of my favourites, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. But this time, he didn’t jump to guess in his usual exuberant manner and his silence confused me. Then I noticed his eyes were brimming with tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he was unable to reply and I thought his first wife must have loved that song too. But it was worse than that. My heart sank when he finally replied: “I chose that song for my wife’s funeral.” That was when I realised I would have to come to terms with the ghost of his late wife.
I mumbled some sort of apology, but asked myself whether I was really the person who ought to be saying sorry. It was a beautiful day. We were having such a lovely time. Why did she have to intrude?
It wasn’t the first time I had felt this way. He would often regale me with tales of their fancy dinner parties or hillwalking adventures. She had been a well-spoken vegetarian ballerina. I came from a council estate, was overweight and loved nothing more than a fish supper. As time went by, I felt more and more inadequate and unable to live up to the picture I had created of her and the perfect life they must have had together.
Andy, now 66, was a university professor and I was a head teacher. We first met through an online discussion board on education. Soon, we discovered we had the same perspectives and just as importantly, the same sense of humour. When we spoke for the first time on the phone, I adored his voice. Over time, the professional became personal. We were developing feelings for each other, and we agreed to meet.
He was everything I had ever dreamt of in a partner: courteous, loving and kind; the perfect gentleman – but with traces of his bad-boy Glasgow upbringing, which made me laugh. And his intelligence and sense of competition sparked a fire between us. One evening, well into the night, fuelled by a bottle or two of wine, we had an argument about something drawn from Andy’s work. The sociologist Harvey Sacks had said that when most people hear the phrase “The baby cried; the mummy picked it up”, they would assume that the woman involved was the baby’s mummy. I said that was obvious; Andy claimed there was nothing in the phrase to suggest that. Neither of us would give in. Amidst gales of laughter, at four in the morning, we agreed to disagree.
My first marriage ended badly and after my mother died, I moved away with my two young daughters. But throughout, I persevered in my teaching career, ending up as a head teacher in Merseyside. Many of my students came from underprivileged backgrounds and I was determined to see them succeed. That was the centre of my life. I was in my 50s and had given up on relationships after many online dating failures. I was happy with that decision and wasn’t looking for anything romantic. It was safer and less heartbreaking that way.
Part of what drew Andy and I together was shared grief. My father was dying and Andy had lost his wife to endometrial cancer. When we met, we talked openly about how the experiences had affected us. I felt an overwhelming sadness as he described his loss because, although the circumstances were different, I understood his pain. We spent many hours on the telephone just listening to each other cry.
Over a few months our relationship grew: we met, decided to retire, moved in together and eventually married. We had learnt through our recent losses that life that was too short for long drawn-out engagements. I relocated from Merseyside to Andy’s home in Edinburgh and we decided to enjoy the rest of our lives together.
As time passed, however, I felt I was sharing the house with someone else. There were no photos of his first wife anywhere but that just emphasised her presence. The décor reflected her taste, not mine. Chintzy wallpapers. Flowery curtains. A cold and forbidding diningroom that had not been used in years. We even slept in their marital bed (albeit with a different mattress). Pride of place in the extensive gardens were the roses she had planted. Roses had always been my favourite flower, but they couldn’t be now, as they were hers. I was beginning to feel suffocated by her presence.
Our previous married lives had been very different. I had left a husband consumed with a gambling addiction; Andy had lost someone he still loved, whom he had been married to for 30 years. She hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t dislike her. I wanted to support him in his warm memories of his late wife.
But when he told me one night that she had been his soulmate, I felt such pain, as if I was a consolation prize; second best. It was selfish, I know, feeling that way – she hadn’t done me any harm and she wasn’t even here – but I couldn’t talk myself out of feeling hurt.
I became obsessed with trying to find out what she was like and how different their relationship was to ours. I asked Andy’s friend and even the gardener about her. I knew Andy loved me, but did he love me just as much? Something had to change.
As we worked together through his grief, we both realised there were practical steps we could take. We set out on an ambitious programme of redecorating and modernising the house, spending time sharing our ideas on how we wanted it to look. It became a fun activity, engaging our competitive spirits as we argued about light fittings, furniture and soft furnishings. I can still remember his shocked expression at the idea of painting walls grey: “What? You mean like a battleship?” Gradually, it became our home, a place we would both be happy to spend the future.
At the same time, I was being warmly received by Andy’s friends and family, who welcomed me into their lives. The weight of the past seemed to ease
I wanted to support him in his warm memories, but I felt such pain, as if I was a consolation prize
It is all right to have loved someone in the past. We can have more than one soulmate
for both of us and I encouraged Andy to choose his favourite photograph of himself and his first wife. It is now displayed in our living room along with the rest of our family. She shouldn’t be hidden away like a secret that can’t be spoken about. She is a part of the person he is now. The man I love.
As time passed, we became caught up in the everyday business of our families and friends. We discovered that life is never really frozen in aspic. One of my daughters graduated, after Andy’s coaching, and became a social worker. The other became a qualified tutor and business owner in beauty therapy, with Andy supporting her studies. As our grandsons grew up, we both became proud and exhausted grandparents.
All of those experiences have drawn us closer together. And I realise now that I was wrong to fear the past, when the future has so much to offer us. If I could talk to my earlier self, four years ago, I would tell her: “It is all right to have loved someone else in the past. We can have more than one soulmate. What counts is celebrating the love and respect we have for each other.”
We are both busier than ever in our retirement and looking forward to what the future holds for us. And when time allows, I am planning my next steps as an author, with Andy by my side – though I was right about the baby and the mummy.