While dating my husband I was very respectful of the fact that his children had lost their mother and would be grieving for quite awhile.Even though the ones still at home loved me and we got along very well, I did not stay nights at his house. We had a long distance relationship for a little over a year. I would drive the three hours to him every Friday and drive home on Sunday. We stayed nights at a motel in the winter or camped in the summer.After a year of this he decided he would move out of "their" bedroom. He switched the office with the bedroom he was in and worked on it all week to surprise me. He did a wonderful job and I was surprised....and delighted. It was progress and we were "moving on".
I was nervous about what the kids would think. We had been dating for more than a year and they knew we stayed nights together....but they had never seen "turn in" for the night. It was not like they were little kids ( 14,16 and 18) and they seemed actually delighted to have me there.
We went to bed that night and for the first time we made love in his house ( what had been "their" house). Afterwards we laid together talking of our future and all of the things we would do together. He told me that he had never been in love before the way that he was with me. He said he and his late wife had been very young when they married and it had turned into a wonderful friendship and they were partners....but there had been no passion and "butterflies" the way it had been with me since the day we met.It was a wonderful night and full of thoughts of us and our new life together. I fell asleep happy and content with my head on his shoulder.
I woke in the night...the kind of waking up that is slow and confused. I could hear crying. My first thought was "why is *Bob* crying"??? As I became more awake I realized it was not him....it sounded like a woman crying. It was not just crying, it was a full out "sobbing". A heartfelt,heartbreaking sobbing.I laid and listened to it for what seemed like ten minutes, in reality in was probably just seconds...not even a minute. By the time I got my wits about me and sat up...it had stopped and the house was silent. What sleep I did get after that was restless.
I didnt want to bring it up to him the next day. Besides the fact that I didnt want him to think I was insane...I didnt want him to feel the guilt that would come with my telling him. I was quiet all day long. He and I had said from the day we decided to have this relationship, that we would not lie to each other or keep things from each other.He finally asked me for the tenth time "what was wrong". He seemed afraid and kept asking if I had decided after spending the night in "their" home, that I would not be able to live there eventually ( we were engaged). I finally told him the truth. That I had awoken in the night and heard a woman very clearly, woefully and heartbreakingly, sobbing. He told me then that his late wife has told him numerous times that she did not want him to be alone, that she wamted him to love again and be happy, and she hoped it would happen soon after she was gone. He then told me the one thing she said that bothered her terribly....was "the thought of him ever making love to another woman in "their" home", even though she knew that it would happen. She did not want him to give up the farm and move their children. She knew he was young and good looking and he would love again, she could except that easily....she just had a hard time thinking of him making love to another woman in what had been their only home since they married. He then cried( wich of course made me feel guilty for telling him what I had heard, even tho he insisted I should tell him what was bothering me). He said that he had hoped that she was happy were she was.That where she was there were no tears. He said he also knew that we could not let this stop us from moving forward with our life....that maybe I had been dreaming ( I know I was not, I was fully awake). We did move on but there was always a feeling that I cannot describe....like we were not alone. It was not her "ghost" as much as US letting thoughts of her intrude into our life. The day after we married( on our honeymoon) we were talking and I told him that it seemed as of late, he had relaxed in a way I could not describe. He seemed at peace. He then told me that shortly before our wedding he had, had a dream. In this dream the late wife was there and she was standing a bit away from him with a group of people. Although he could not see me, he knew I was close by to him. When he walked towards the late wife she insisted he stop. She said to him " I have my friends and I have to go with them...you dont belong with us, you belong with your wife and you have to leave now". He said she did not seem angry, unhappy or sad. He said she seemed resgned to the fact that this is the way that it is, and the way it should be. He said she smiled and said "good-bye" and turned and left with the people she was with. My husband said although he is not a highly religious ( a christian yes, in church every sunday..no) he felt as if she was leaving to go to a better place ( heaven) and that god had given her a chance to say good-bye and to put him at peace with the decisions he had made in life since she left. We then stopped discussing her....this was OUR honeymoon and I was not willing to make it about her ( and as life as the wife of a widower goes on....I do not feel selfish about those decisions..it is our life now and our time to shine together, it cannot be about her). I will admit that I had moments later when I got slightly angry...I felt as if he was saying he had "gotten her permission to love/marry/be with me". He pointed out that this happened a week before our wedding...and he was taking me as his wife without her "permission" and even had she appeared floating in a sheet and rattling chains and said he could not be with me...he would have married me anyways, because in his heart he knows our love is special and meant to be...considering that I, a city girl, had found him, a farmer, against all odds so far away from my home( think "green acres").
I will always wonder though about that night and the crying. Was I not fully awake?? Was it my sub-consious?? Was I worried about what she would think of us making love in "their" home without even realizing it?? I had a friend tell me recently that when a woman with younger children passes away, she had heard that for awhile she does not fully "leave". She stays to make sure her children are safe and cared for. I have had a few other instances, that are unexplainable that make me believe that she was still here, in this house. Two nights after she passed away my husband said he woke up in their room and when he looked up he saw the late wife standing by the bedroom door in her nightgown. By the time he blinked and stood up...she was gone. Anyone who knows my husband as well as I do, knows he is not a man given to flights of fancy....or was it grieve?? The first time I ever cooked in "her" kitchen ( the other most SACRED room in the home of a woman!!) I was standing at the stove cooking ( It was the first time...I had not wanted to because I felt uncomfortable with it, I know how I love my kitchen!!) and I thought to myself..."would she be mad I am cooking in her kitchen"??? and the cupboard doors above the stove flew open and all the stuff in them fell out onto the stove..breaking glass into all the skillets I was using. When my husband came in I was scraping the food into the garbage and I explained to him what had happened. He told me that would be almost impossible as those cupboard doors stick and they had not even been opened in god knows how long. We just dropped the subject...neither of us wanted to vocalize what we were thinking. Another time after we had married my then 15 year old step-son had gone out with friends. Myhusband and I went to bed and even tho I was trying to stay awake to make sure Derrick made it home safe..I fell asleep. What woke me up at mid-night ( well after the time he should have been home) was ( and no, I am not crazy...I happen to be a normal very well adjusted woman!!)the sound of a very loud,angry womans voice saying "WHERE IS DERRICK"??? Without even thinking about the "what and who" that had just happened I got up and ran to the kitchen to see the message light blinking on our phone...Derrick had been at a party and his friend got drunk and he was refusing to ride ho,e with him and needed us to pick him up. I called his cell and then went and got him. What I took from this was....my stepson is a gift to me. I was given the job of finishing raising him. I had been sad for so long because after my second child I could not have anymore, and I wanted them desparetly. I always said god knew " I was not done mothering and Derrick was not done needing a "mom" ( step-mom...I never try to replace his mother, I am content with who I do get to be in his life).I felt as if his mother scolded me that night. From the tone, I heard it was " how can you be sleeping and not know where he is?? Get up right now and find him. I trust you with this, but do it right". I never told my husband about what happened. I felt it was between her and I.
I am a normal woman. I live a normal life and do not see ghosts on a daily basis ( nor do I hear them!!) I did see something unexpalinable when I was fifteen, but up until this I had not seen( heard) anything else.
Most of anything else I can explain away...the cupboard was slightly open and I moved the wrong way and bounced it open. The voice I heard about Derrick was my own worry coming out in a weird unusaul way.
But....the sobbing the first night we made love in his house....no..I cant explain it. I heard it...I FELT it. It was not a wimper, but a full out sob. And to this day...it still bothers me.

This is going to be my record of what life is like being the wife of a widower.
I am a city girl who met and married a farmer and moved three hours from my home town, and my family and friends. This small town has only begun to accept me three years later. Everyone loved the late wife. My husband and her moved here shortly after they married and had six children....they lived here twenty five years together and everyone thinks of him and her as a couple still yet, even tho she is gone....and I am an interloper. Never mind the fact that he met and married me so soon, a fact that spawned rumours that he and I were "seeing" each other before she died. Throw in the fact that two of his sons hate and resent me and the whole town sympathizies with them...believing any story they tell about me. Two months before we married I was involved in a car accident. I had based all my hopes on the fact that after I moved here I would work in the slightly larger city close to us, and was sure I would make friends through work...two years later and I am still not able to return to work. making it impossible for me to make friends. So, I spend my days on the farm doing what I am able to do to help my husband.
When a woman meets and marries a widower she never dreams it will be such an emotional roller coaster for herself. How can you be jealous of a dead woman?? In the beggining you want to be there for your husband. You realize he needs to grieve in order for the two of you to get on with your new life together...what you do not realize is just how much the world glorifies the dead...everything they have ever done wrong is erased and they are perfect. They are put on a pedastal. How can you compete with an angel?? With a divorce the man gets rid of her stuff and eventually lets go...when a man is widowed he quite literally feels guilty for moving on and loving again and it sometimes comes out in a way that makes the new wife feel as if she can never measure up. With a divorce a man clears his house of her things, with a widower he see's no reason to do that...he didnt stop loving her, she died. So months or years later we still have to deal with things like her hair brush...hair still in it,in the bathroom. And you keep your mouth shut..you dont want to look petty towards a dead woman. People feel free to talk about her with you in the room. And until you finally get things straight between yourselves, so does the husband.
I wanted to be the perfect wife of a widower....support him and help him through his grieve. After a year and a half of hearing him talk about her, glorify her and try to keep her alive...I told him I was leaving him if he could not let go. I let him know how hard it is to fight the memory of an angel. A year and a half later we have moved mountains and have a wonderful marriage. I have bad days when he still will say something wrong that hurts me and I still put up with people constantly saying things as if to remind me...you will never be as special as she was. I have had to make "their" home into our home...he couldnt give up the farm he built up for 25 years. When I moved here there was not a corner of the house that did not have some "reminder" of her. That has changed and it is my home..my kitchen..and my husband. People still remind me constanly that this was her home first..."first"...a word youlearn to hate almost as much as the word "second"...wich is what and how the people who loved the late wife want you to feel alot of the time...second.
This blog is for me to vent how I feel when he or other people make me feel as if I have to dance in her shadow".