Dear Abby: I lost my 20 -year -old wife four months ago after prolonged disease. I retired at 62 and I became his main goalkeeper. The goalkeeper’s work is endless and stressful, yet enriching. A friend of several years (“dinah”) came to the memorial. I afflicted, attended sorrow sharing and reading articles on sorrow. I feel sorrow every day and I will make my life.
Recently, Dinah and I started spending time together, including worship. For clarification, we have never been intimate and will not be before our wedding night (if that happens). The difficulty is how the family of my deceased wife reacted. They become more and more distant. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. Others said, “You should wait at least a year.” My financial planner and I spoke of not making major financial decisions for a while, but what is this “year” thing? – Ready in Tennessee
Dear loan: The “one year thing” is the same as the suggestion that your financial planner has proposed. The reasoning is that after having lost a spouse, the widower is often emotionally vulnerable. By loneliness, some have made hasty decisions in their romantic life which they regret later. Although it is not bad that you are released together, your old parents-in-law can be upset that you started so shortly after your wife’s death and that you consider him “disrespectful” in his memory. What they may not have taken into account is that your mourning started while you took care of your wife rather than after her death.
Dear Abby: My brother has been married for 25 years to “Gayle”, who was alienated and his family from everyone, including his own brothers and sisters, our brothers and sisters and the rest of our family. She limits when, where and with whom he can spend time.
Gayle almost always has an unpleasant or barb comment and chooses someone to fight with each family gathering. Rather than facing this, my family and the families of our brothers and sisters have moved away from ourselves, which is particularly sad because my brother and gayle have children of university age with whom we like to spend time.
Abby, something has happened recently that asked me if it is time for someone to intervene. My brother has an increasing number of false memories of things that have never happened in his life – especially those in which he was seriously injured by me. Please share some tips. – Miss my brother in New England
Dear missing: The subject of false memories is not a subject on which I am well informed enough to comment. I know, however, that they sometimes occur as people age. Your brother may feel symptoms of dementia and should be examined physically and neurologically by his doctor. Discuss this with the rest of your brothers and sisters in the hope that if you all suggest it to your brother’s wife and adult children, it could achieve her. But do not count on this if she worked throughout their marriage to isolate her with all of you.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact dear Abby to http://www.dearabby.com or Po Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
