DEAR ABBY: I lost my wife of 20 years four months ago after a prolonged illness. I retired at 62 and became her primary caretaker. The job of caretaker is endless and stressful, and yet rewarding. A female friend of many years (“Dinah”) came to the memorial. I grieved, attended Grief Share and read articles about grief. I experience grief every day and will for my whole life.
Recently, Dinah and I began spending time together, including worship. For clarification, we have never been intimate and won’t be until our wedding night (if that ever happens). The difficulty is how my late wife’s family have reacted. They are becoming more and more distant. I don’t feel I’m doing anything wrong. Others have said, “You should wait for at least a year.” My financial planner and I spoke about not making any major financial decisions for a while, but what is this “one year” thing? — READY IN TENNESSEE
DEAR READY: The “one year thing” is the same as the suggestion your financial planner offered. The reasoning is that after one loses a spouse, the widower is often emotionally vulnerable. Out of loneliness, some have made hasty decisions in their romantic lives that they later regret. While it isn’t wrong that you are dating, your former in-laws may be upset that you started so soon after your wife’s death and regard it as “disrespectful” to her memory. What they may not have taken into account is that your grieving started while you were taking care of your wife rather than after her death.
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