When Your Spouse Loses A Parent
When my husband lost his father last week, I didn’t want to write about that part of our lives. It felt too sensitive. Too personal. Too…serious. And I didn’t think it was necessarily my story to tell. But as we talked about the blog and what would and wouldn’t be covered in it, my husband felt like this was part of our lives too. And, frankly, our life won’t always be good stuff. Or funny. And unfortunately, there will be times of grieving and loss. So now that I have been given the go ahead, I will share this experience from my perspective.
When my husband got “the call”, I knew by the sound of his voice that it was not going to be good news. He sat down next to me and just said, “My dad died.” He was in shock. His father had deteriorated in recent years, but I don’t think anyone expected this to come so soon. His eyes welled up. I didn’t know what to say or do really. As a wife, you want to swoop in and save the day. But all I could do was give him the biggest, tightest hug I could give and tell him how sorry I was, over and over again.
As I held him close, my eyes began to water. The man I loved more than anything was hurting and I couldn’t fix it. While I hadn’t spent much time with my father-in-law in recent years, he was still the man who helped create this amazing person that I married. And he was my kids’ Grandpa. The only one they had. We were planning to take the kids to visit him in Ohio over the summer and introduce him to our newest son who would be a few months old by then. We were both saddened that our visit would come too late.
My husband is not a man that easily shows emotion. He needs to be “the rock” of the family at all times. And he has been. But I wanted him to know that sometimes, it’s all right to let me be the one that he can lean on. He spent the next couple of days processing the mixed emotions he was feeling and I tried to give him the space he needed. I didn’t want to make him talk about it. Or stalk him with my own selfish need to get him to vent or cry it out. I had to remember that he had to handle it in his way. In his time. I told him I was there if he needed me and how much I loved him.
Over the next few days, he would drift in and out of the reality that his father was gone. But he still kept his stoic demeanor most of the time. He didn’t verbally express his feelings too much after the first day. But we held hands a lot. I think we hugged more in that short time than we had in a long time. The many “I love you’s” we uttered spoke volumes.
As we talked about the upcoming memorial service, we decided that due to the cost of flying 4 of us home to Ohio at the last minute, that I should stay in Texas with the kids. It broke my heart to know I wouldn’t be there during the most difficult time of my husband’s life. It didn’t seem right. The day he left, I wondered if I should have insisted we go anyway. Was I being a bad wife? I didn’t want him to go through this without me, but I knew that it was for the best in the long run.
Even though we were apart, he was getting the comfort of his family and friends. He stayed in the house he grew up in. With his brothers, mother and childhood friends, he could share in the memories I wasn’t apart of and can’t relate to. As much as I want to be all he needs, I accept that he gets different things from different people. I just wanted him to heal in whatever way he needed to.
While he was gone, I began to think of my own parents and the mixed bag of emotions I will have when I get “the call” one day. I’ll save that history for another time. But no matter what kind of parents you had, or how flawed they may be, or what your relationship was like, you still love them. No matter what. You still love them because they are the only parents you will ever have. You will grieve when they are gone. You will miss them for who they were and who you wished they were. And suddenly, any bad memories fade away and you start to remember only the good times.
Ohio was hit with a bad snowstorm last weekend and the service was postponed for a week. After several flight cancellations and an extra 2 days apart, my husband finally returned home to Texas. God, I missed him. I wanted to ask him a dozen questions about how he was doing. How he was feeling. Was he ok. But once again, I wanted him to grieve in his own way. Not mine. So I welcomed him home with all the love I could give him and just let him “be”.
I hope that I have handled this time of loss in the “right” way. The way that he needed. It will be something we will deal with for weeks and months to come, I’m sure. No matter what, we are in this life together. He has been my rock so many times before, carrying me through some pretty heavy stuff. I only hope I can be half as strong for him. It’s my turn to carry some of the load.
