Golorth

I find that all memorial services are triggering. I try to avoid them. And I can't sit through "Amazing Grace" at church; I have to physically leave the building so that I can't hear it. I'm nearly six years out, and that song will punch a tunnel into that grief well like no other. Throw in bagpipes? FOGGETABOUDIT!!

In now for the first time in a LONG time. Nobody there. :-(

I guess that I see myself as all of those things. I'm DW's husband, my in-laws' brother/son in-law, a Wid, and Sapphi's Squeeze. All of those things have made me who I am, and they can all peacefully co-exist within me. -G

I'll add my $.02 to this (though it's quite possible that I'm overstating its value by quite a bit). Sapphi and I lost our respective spouses within about six months of each other. We've been together about a year and a half now, and it's been fantastic. We each understand the other's grief-trigger meltdowns. She understands that I can't be around someone singing "Amazing Grace" because it was sung at DW's service. We each understand that we each will have "dark days" around the significant dates from our previous lives. We each understand that just because we each hold, and will *always* hold, a special place in our hearts for our previous spouse doesn't mean we love each other any less. Neither one of us sees the other's previous spouse as "competition" for affection. Someone else said it earlier, and it rings very true: Wids know what they're looking for in a relationship because, by and large, they *had* it with their spouse. In addition, they know what is truly important and what isn't. Sapphi and I love each other very much and understand each other in a way that, I think, would just not be possible with a non-Wid. -G

It just slays me that something that DW worked her whole life to accrue goes to the frigging government, of all people, if I remarry. It seems to me that that money rightfully belongs to her estate, and that it ought to be treated as such. Ugh.