Parenthood intensifies grief from mom’s death and dad having a new girlfriend

Hi, Carolyn: I lost my mom to cancer in 2019, a little over a year after she was diagnosed and went through chemo and radiation. She was the most amazing mother, and we were incredibly close. I’ve since gotten married, and we have a baby (he looks so much like my mom, and this makes me so happy). I have a strained relationship with my father, going on for years, and he was still married to my mother at the time of her death.

He has been looking to date since maybe six months after my mom died. He has been oversharing his attempts to find a girlfriend since the beginning, and it’s been disturbing to hear. Ever since he found this girlfriend a couple of months ago, my dad seems completely uninterested in my son. He doesn’t ask for photos, doesn’t ask about milestones, doesn’t ask how we’re all doing.

My spouse, son and I are going back for about a week to the state where I grew up, mostly to celebrate my mom’s birthday in her favorite place, go to the cemetery and visit some old friends of mine. We’re going to stay with my father for a couple of nights so he can spend some time with my son, and I know he’s going to want to introduce his girlfriend to him (and me).

I can’t stop getting upset and resentful that my mom never got to meet her grandson and that his girlfriend will meet my son. My mom would have been the best grandma, and I’m just devastated she never got to be one. How do I approach this situation when everything about it upsets me?

Upset Answer: I’m going to give you my bona fides before I give my advice. My first children were born eight months after my mother died. She was 61 and energetic, so until she was diagnosed with ALS, I had reasonably envisioned her as a part of my life for a good 20 years more, or beyond. We were “incredibly close.”

Shortly after her death, my father — who loves my mother achingly to this day — fell in love again. So please know this comes from a place of sympathy: While your devastation makes a lot of sense to me, your cause-and-effect trail does not.

It is no one’s fault that your mother got cancer and died before she could be a wonderful grandmother to your child. There is ample room for grief and frustration and rage at the universe for its arbitrary cruelty — I’m right there with you — but it is absolutely, profoundly unfair to act out any of these feelings with your father or his girlfriend. Especially the girlfriend.

It’s also unfair to your son to introduce your emotional obstacles into his relationship with his grandfather and the grandmother figure (I hope) the girlfriend can be. Your dad might not be the grampiest grampa out there, but he’s what you’ve got, so accept and work within his limitations.

You’ll undermine yourself, too, if you yield to your angriest impulses here. Your mother’s death is an argument for nurturing your other family relationships, not hacking them out at the root.

As for your dad’s immersion first in dating and now in his new relationship, please consider an argument for compassion, or at least patience with him through this process. When one longtime spouse begins dating shortly after the other spouse dies, it’s common for their children to see that as a form of speaking ill of the dead — as if the deceased no longer matters to their living parent, and maybe never did. But it’s often the exact opposite: The widow(er)s from the happiest marriages often date quickly because they so badly miss the love and companionship that kept them warm for so long. What comes across to you as an insult to your mother’s memory may be the highest possible compliment.

Your “most amazing” mother, after all, loved and chose and married and stayed with your dad. So his grief could be driving his needy and outsize emotions since her death as much as your grief is driving yours.

None of these counterpoints I’ve offered will make your loss any less terrible. I’m merely pointing out that the proper target for your blame, rage and despair is not your dad, not even with all his complications — and it’s certainly not your dad’s girlfriend’s existence. It’s cancer. Cancer and the jerk universe that decided she was the one who’d get a cancer she couldn’t outlive.

Therefore, the most useful preparation for your upcoming trip is grief counseling. One on one, group, pastoral, whatever is available soonest and feels righ. Contact hospice providers and cancer support networks for recommendations, if needed. Your trauma was four years ago, but your child’s birth may have, understandably, renewed and deepened that loss.