Missed Connections
SINCE MY WIFE DIED, IT’S BEEN HARD TO MAINTAIN TIES WITH HER FAMILY.
My spouse of nearly 40 years passed away last year. She had seven siblings and at least 30 nieces and nephews, and we had a nice relationship with them despite them being spread around the country. Everyone came to her funeral and was lovely and supportive. Since then, I’ve e-mailed or texted every few weeks, initially to pleasant but brief responses, and for the last few months, to no response at all. I feel frozen out and am hurt but understand that relationships run their course. I can’t think of anything I’ve done to offend them. My friends say to move on. Any suggestions?
Anonymous / Douglas
I am sorry for your loss, and for the additional compounded losses that you didn’t even know to prepare for. We’re not very good at grief and loss, culturally, despite all the practice we’ve had.
You’re going through something that a lot of people experienced during the first year of the pandemic: the abrupt end of a relationship infrastructure. Friendship isn’t the connection of two souls on an astral plane. We need ways of getting in touch with each other, and commonalities to talk about, and some kind of structure or schedule that keeps us in each other’s orbits when good intentions do not suffice. When offices shuttered and hobby groups went dormant, a lot of folks struggled to keep friendships intact. Your wife provided this infrastructure for your relationship with her family, and many of those relationships aren’t robust enough to survive without her.
“Many.” Possibly not all. When my preferred community theater suspended operations in 2020, I lost a raft of friendly acquaintances — and gained a handful of real friends. I’ve heard similar stories from other people. Right now, you’re speaking about your in-laws as if they were a monolith. You want to have a relationship with the family, but it isn’t working, so more specificity is in order. Why is it important to you to stay in contact with your in-laws? And who among them would you want to be friends with if they were not related to your wife?
It’s possible that you don’t really want to stay in touch with the family for their own sake, as much as you want some connection with your memories of your wife, and maybe for not everything to change so dang much all the time. That is a very human thing to want, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to get it. I doubt you did anything wrong or offensive — your in-laws are simply moving on in a different way than you are.
But if there’s any individual or nuclear family that you were close to, reach out to them. Not with generic wellwishes and seasonal greetings — such messages don’t start conversations, they only invite the other person to come up with something to say — but in a more open, particular, individual way. Change your focus from staying in touch with “the family” to connecting to people in the family. No guarantees, but there might be real relationships out there, if you dig for them. I wish you luck!