Real Life I married a man with less than a month to live
When her partner died, Amy Molloy considered the possibility of having his baby
At my wedding to my first husband in 2007, a rumour circulated I was pregnant. When a friend told me, I laughed out loud – the only other option was to cry. I wasn’t pregnant. I was a 23-year-old marrying a man who, according to doctors, had less than a month to live.
The idea was ridiculous and heartbreaking for multiple reasons. Our days were spent in an Oncology ward and, instead of foreplay, I kissed him
goodnight each evening, praying he would still be breathing the next morning.
Eoghan, then my fiancé, was diagnosed with malignant melanoma at 34 (I was 22), and we chose to freeze his sperm, knowing chemotherapy was likely to affect his fertility. Naively, we assumed we’d take the next step together. We were living in Dublin because he was Irish and wanted to start treatment close to his family.
My father had been paralysed from the waist down by Hodgkin lymphoma, a tumour wrapped around his spinal cord, when I was 17. I was the perfect partner for a cancer patient in many ways – unperturbed by medical jargon and educated in the side effects of treatment. I was also hopeful: my dad had made a miraculous recovery after a stem-cell transplant, so even stage 4 cancer didn’t seem like a death sentence.
On the rainy morning in November 2006, when I went with my husband to deposit his sperm, we made light of the experience. It was just one of the many surreal experiences we forced ourselves to face with black humour, alongside shaving his head, eating ice cream during chemo and the time another patient asked him: ‘Have you considered euthanasia?’ Fourteen months later, after I watched my husband fall into a coma and pass away, nothing seemed funny any more.
The laws behind donation
As I tried to cling on to a man I could no longer touch – refusing to change the bed sheets he’d slept in or throw away the last bag of sweets he had been eating – I remember going online late one night to ask: ‘Can I use my dead husband’s sperm?’
The answer was no. In the UK, where I was, by then, living (and also Ireland, where his sperm was still stored), the posthumous use of sperm is allowed only if the man has given written consent before his death. My husband’s decline was so fast, and we hadn’t even stopped to consider it.
A new study recently, claiming sperm donations from dead men should be allowed, caught my attention. According to the report, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, opt-in ‘post-death donations’ could be an ‘ethically permissible’ way of increasing supplies.
The proposal was that men should be allowed to donate sperm after death in the same way they donate organs. It would be extracted posthumously and anyone, not only their partner, could benefit from it. Doctors and ethicists suggested it could address the UK’S sperm-donor shortage.
My first thought was positive. I have seen the devastating effect of infertility on many people I love. But then I thought back to the grief-driven decisions
I made after becoming a widow. Would a loosening of the laws have given me much needed options, or only left me more vulnerable?
Easing the pain
Everyone’s situation is different. I was so young when I was widowed, I knew I had to look forward and, eventually, build a life with someone else. Yet, I did wonder if having a carbon copy of my first love might ease my aching loneliness.
As I stumbled through my 20s after losing Eoghan, there were moments I would have done anything to feel whole, and having his baby appeared a tempting sticking plaster. This is my concern. How many young widows might be fooled into thinking that procreation with a deceased partner is a quick-fix for heartbreak? And who would dare tell them they might regret it? When you are widowed, there is a grace period where you can act as selfishly, recklessly and illogically as you please.
After my husband died, I ended up marrying again swiftly, and got divorced shortly afterwards. My second husband was a kind man who got caught up in my grief. I would never have wanted a child to be part of that train wreck.
And even if my late husband had given written consent, I would still question the morality of going ahead with it. How could he have foreseen my emotional state and whether I’d be a good parent while grieving?
My mother raised another ethical question: would the dead man’s own parents get a say? With the birth of a child, there is an entire family tree to consider. I no longer have a close relationship with my late husband’s family.
How would they feel if their son conceived posthumously, with or without their knowledge? There’s also the psychological impact on the child, who would never know their father.
Even before they are old enough to comprehend loss, infants can pick up on the anxiety and distress of close adults, experts warn. Now that I’m happily married and a mother of two, I would do anything to shield my children from emotional pain.
I’m not saying extracting your deceased partner’s sperm to fulfil your dreams of starting a family shouldn’t be an option for some widows. I appreciate, that at 23, I was not in the same position as someone a decade older, who might not have as much time to start over, or a widow raising the offspring of their lost love who would like a sibling. Everyone’s circumstances are different.
But measures would need to be put in place: screening, counselling and a waiting period between death and insemination.
I have no regrets that our relationship didn’t produce a baby. Three years ago, aged 33, I remarried after meeting my current husband on a charity walk.
Although our wedding was full of joy, it still brought up memories of the day I had walked down the aisle towards a terminally ill man. The day before our wedding, I discovered I was pregnant. It felt like a message from the angel sitting on my shoulder: it was time to move forwards.
For me, starting a family has been healing. With two children and another on the way, I can look at their smiling faces and see only the future – not a ghost from the past.
✱ Amy Molloy is the author of
The World Is A Nice Place: How To Overcome Adversity Joyfully (£12.99,
Hay House) and How To Recycle Your Feelings: A Book About Reducing, Reusing And Recycling Your Emotions (£14, amymolloy.com.au)
‘I KNEW I HAD TO LOOK FORWARD’