When you marry a widower ...

pokey128

A similar thing happened to my after my mum died and I didn't deal with it well at all so I know where the son is coming from.

My mum died in 1995 (I was 15) and my dad remarried 2 years later and his new wife obviously moved in to our house. I moved away to uni just after that and by Christmas time the whole house had been redecorated and all the remained of my mum was a green vase in the redone bathroom (which is still there). I was devestated and it still upsets me now 15 years later.

These things need to be handled carefully no matter what the age of the child I think.

Hope it gets sorted though xx

paddy's_mum

Some very thought provoking points - for which I'm grateful to you all.

Primrose

One of the problems here, I think, is that all of us tend to think of our parents as people we totally "own", rather than being individuals who have a right to be themselves. Thus, it's easy to think that we have the right to have total control over our parents, or one parent, even after they have been bereaved, and it can feel like a betrayal that they are able to pick up the threads of their life and carry on.

This son obviously seems to have issues here. Either he can't let go and has never really completed the grieving process, or he has fears about his inheritance. The only way to sort this out is for the father to decide what he wants to do about the property long term, make a Will to that effect and then let it be known to everybody what is going to happen. He has a right to decide these things. It was never the son's property. The fact that the family used it in the past has nothing to do with legal tenure.

The father should point out to the son that the new wife has made a financial investment in the property, and that he and his wife don't interefere in the son's domestic affairs, so he shouldn't interfere in theirs.

Son obviously has happy memories of the house as it previously existed and it will be painful that things in it are being changed, but he has to accept that his father has a right to move on in his life, and perhaps he should stay away from it until he's managed to come to terms these issues for himself.

Errata

In the wife's shoes I would deal with any sneers, comments or mardy faces by either ignoring them completely or with the words "How dare you". The son may be grieving for his lost mother and lost past but that doesn't give him an excuse to lose his manners. AT 40 years of age he needs to get a grip.

floss2

belfastgirl23 wrote: »

... TBH going into the loft to clear it out seems a bit OTT to me - I understand redoing a kitchen, after all you're living and working in it - but this sounds a bit like removing all traces....

Not if it has become their home - TBH to have good insulation fitted would mean emptying the loft of everything, and if a second home has become a main residence one would assume that energy efficiencies like insulation have been addressed along with updating kitchen & bathroom facilities.

Counting_Pennies_2

I haven't had a chance to read the responses, but I would say it is quite insensitive not to expect a reaction. And the reaction is probably more extreme than if it had been dealt with more sensitively.

You are in a position where it is more than being a step mother coming in to a family home, you are the step mother, in the replacement role of someone who has died and been taken from these people. You are a substitute.

I am sorry to make it sound so harsh, but that is what the situation is on these folk. It must have been so harsh to have her taken away.

If when a decision is taken to marry a widower, it must be that the wife who has died is still part of his and his family's life. With that comes a huge need for sensitivity, and I think probably best for a new life in a new home.

If the home remains within the family, then I do think communication with the family, discussions, and requests for items to go to the family, including the old fashioned curtains, etc.

It has to be remembered, that when these items are stripped out, so too go the memories.

paddy's_mum

There was no choice whatever other than to empty the stuffed to the rafters and weight-compromised loft. The roof had been extensively damaged in a fire and what contents weren't smoke damaged got polished off by the firemen's hoses.

I swear on all I hold dear that if I had known what unhappiness the head-in-the-sand, rose-tinted, I'll-sort-it-out-tomorrow father and the bone-idle 'heir' had lined up for me, I'd have run a mile. I'm yet another woman who should have listened to her head and denied what the heart was asking for.

When I remember all the sheer physical slog I've done, the suffering I've endured and the loyalty I've displayed to my lovely but weak hubby, I could just weep. Hence my distress at yesterday's allegation in which the son chooses to sit idly by but condemn one aspect of me/my conduct while failing to recognise the many burdens which fell to my lot and which I discharged honourably.

I may have been a bit of a new broom but equally, I could ask why the son is putting his father into this position several years afterwards when that's all water under the bridge long ago. He was at liberty to have asked for and taken any amount of his mother's belongings but to do that would have involved him making much effort for a truck's worth of tat. It was easier to leave all the effort, expense and struggle to "the gold-digger".

I believe the son was expecting to inherit (there are no other close relatives of any kind) and used to joke that "when Dad drops off the twig.. " My advent changed all that and I think this has been the fount of much slander and relentless animosity!

This is far from the first argument there has been and before I've always tried to keep things civil for my husband's sake. Now it's the unrelenting hostility that has finally got to me and I just think I can't be bothered any longer to even try to understand what it is that I've done wrong, let alone try to put it right or apologise for it.

I think the son is being an absolute idiot and I just wonder what advantage he believes there to be in alienating me, causing a lot of upset and deep unhappiness to the father he says he loves...but there you go. Takes all sorts!

Thanks to you all for listening and offering your comments and advice.

coolcait

I suspect that this response is too late.

But, for what it's worth, I think that the following comments - even though they may have been shared only with us, and in a moment of anger and frustration - may well reflect feelings which others have picked up on in real life:

"remodelling the husband's house and bringing it into the 21st century"

"drag to the tip. An example? A large suitcase containing every birthday or Christmas card received since 1946!"

"no disrespect whatever in disposing, 7 years after her death, of the deceased's 39 years worth of bank paperwork; 27 boxes of old Woman's Realm; 394 bars of rock hard Avon soap; carrier bags full of free samples gone mildewed; shoeboxes full of Little Chef sauce and salt sachets and toothpicks ...."

"another woman's hoarded junk, clothes, battered 1950's furniture, moth-eaten crocheted blankets, beaten up rugs, mis-matched crockery etc ad nauseum" ("while her own nice things sit in storage for the duration of the second marriage?")

"the (literally!) shed loads of junk"

"the head-in-the-sand, rose-tinted, I'll-sort-it-out-tomorrow father and the bone-idle 'heir'"

"my lovely but weak hubby"

"I can't be bothered any longer to even try to understand what it is that I've done wrong"

"I think the son is being an absolute idiot"

All of the above quotes contain a lot of emotion. But little 'respect'. IMO.

"this is a family of hoarders" - or, maybe, a family which has an abundance of keepsakes of sentimental value. Families like that remember how that vase was chipped, and knows that the random pile of cloth squares in a box were painstakingly and lovingly clipped from the children's baby clothes - to be made into a memory quilt, one day, when time permitted. They remember mum, or gran, crocheting the blankets which they used to snuggle into while watching telly, or on a winter's night before central heating.

The kind of family which has kept the scabby old coffee table which used to be a pirate ship/castle/cave - depending on the game being played. A coffee table which might have seen a series of matched crockery sets dwindle into mismatched favourites.

Definitely the kind of family which keeps cards and letters, and the kid's drawings.

Precious memories, for the family involved. Knowing that the memories are safe, in their home of many years, can be a kind of comfort. Those are the kind of memories which are too precious for others to throw away without asking.

Maybe the keepsakes were damaged, as you say. However, it would have been a courtesy to the family to tell them that damage had occurred, and invite them to see if they felt anything could be salvaged - to be taken to their own homes.

Maybe the only outcome would have been further water damage from their tears. But they would have been given the opportunity to say their own farewells to the past.

The OP says that the son:

"is very hostile to any suggestion that his perception is both insensitive and flawed"

Maybe it's true that we see our own faults writ large in others.

Errata

For crying out loud. We're talking about a middle aged man here, behaving like a ten year old. What would he prefer, his dad to sit in the house like Miss bl00dy Havisham !
Life happens, but only to those people who live their lives, not to those for whom the past takes precedence over the present and the future.
Curtains being changed ? So flaming what - the women in my family changed their curtains, decor and etc ever five years; that's normal and probably normal for the dead wife in her primary residence.

Minxy_Bella

I've read this thread with interest and all I can say is that I would have stripped the house from top to bottom and removed every trace of the dead wife's photos and belongings.

Sorry.

We live in the present and if I'm married to him, it's going to be me and him, not me, him and the ghost of the dead wife.

The son is throwing his toys out of the pram for sure - if the stepmother can be arhsed to try and put things right, then great. But I reckon I'd be saying that he would no longer be welcome in MY home if he couldn't keep a civil tongue in his head.

I wonder what the dead wife would have done in the same position? I'd lay money on it that she would do exactly the same!

It's all very well showing respect to the dead, but what about showing respect to the living?