Saturday, June 6, 2009

My Mother Is Barely Dead, Father Wants To Remarry


Dear Agatha,


I am a married 38-years-old, who is worried about the decision of my father to remarry well into his 60s, and this, barely three years after my mother died.

My father’s new bride is in her 40s, with children from a previous marriage.

My father is a chronic womaniser, a reason I don’t agree with him. He didn’t just acquire his predilection for philandering, or after the death of my mother. Rather, it is something my siblings and I grew up to know about him.

Though caring, his womanising is legendary, to the extent that his antics with women were brought close to us, the children.

My mother used to cry about the situation; but endured this habit for our sakes, which is why I still can’t understand why she died when she did. She died at the time she ought to be enjoying the fruits of her patience and endurance with a man who obviously lacks respect for her feelings.

Now, he wants to bring a strange woman into the house, someone who could be after his money, or looking for someone to foist the burden of her life on. Although I have not met the woman, I am not interested in doing so. I found it difficult to understand why my father needs a woman at his age, when he has cooks and servants to do his bidding.

Had he been more disciplined, perhaps, my mother would still have been alive, enjoying the dividends of her marital life. So, why should my father now share his life with another woman, whom I suspect may have been in his life all these while?

I need your help. A lot of his friends think I am being unreasonable in my oppositions to his desire remarry, but how can I accept another woman in my mother’s place?

Agatha, how can I forget that it should have been my mother enjoying by my father’s side? And how do I get him to stop this woman from bringing her children into my father’s house or benefiting from his resources? I am of the opinion that everything he has belongs to us, and that this woman must not be allowed to enjoy from the labour of another person. What do you think?

Olajide.


Dear Olajide,

You sound very selfish and unreasonable. Being married yourself, you, more than anyone else, should understand the essence of having someone special to share your life with.

Even though your father started out with your mother and may have made all the mistakes in the world, your mother loved him enough to have put up with him and his excesses.

She must have derived a lot of happiness from their wedlock to choose to make the choice she made. Not even for the sake of the children would a woman endure abject pains and humiliations.

If her years with your father were that terrible, do you think she would have put up with him for almost 35 years, given the fact that you are now 38, three years after she died?

Do you think your mother would be happy wherever she is that your father is lonely and helpless in the hands of all the women he is in contact with? Which would be best for you all, having another wife to care for him or being left to the devices of his numerous girlfriends?

Your father may have made all the mistakes in the world, but he is at an age where he direly needs the companionship of a woman. You and your siblings are all probably out of his nest, growing your own families. He is alone and lonely. No matter how much you try, the void created by the death of your mother can never be filled; only the love of another woman can prolong his life and help him get over the pains of losing someone he shared the best part of his life with.

That he is re-marrying doesn’t mean he has forgotten your mother or would this woman, who is soon to become your stepmother, ever be able to erase the memories of your mother from his heart. Your mother’s place in his life and heart can never be voided. Remember that your mother is his first love, and would remain so until he dies.

His choice to marry this woman must have been influenced by some special qualities similar to that of your late mother. If he is indeed a legendary womaniser as you have described him, I am not sure he would have waited for three years before contemplating marriage again.

That you have not met this woman shows that she may be a recent development, and not one of the many women who may have graced his bed while your mother was alive. Waiting for three years shows that the exit of your mother must have affected him more than you all give him credit for.

Before this woman was your mother, she was his friend, confidant and wife. The impact of her death won’t affect you as deeply as it is affecting him. You lost a mother but you now have a family to help you get over her memories. He has nobody you, the children, are busy with your families, careers and individual lives, to bother with his own feelings and welfare.

Surely, you cannot deny an old man his right to happiness and peace on account of bitterness on your path?

Yes, you have every right to be angry or hate the woman who is coming to share part of his life now, but fairness demands you give her a chance to prove herself.

That she is divorced doesn’t make her a gold-digger who is after your father’s wealth. It is a general assumption that may not apply in this case. It isn’t fair to label her before giving you and her chance to meet.

You may discover to your shame that she is a woman capable of taking care of her children without the help of your father. At any rate, the decision to help out with her children is your father’s, not yours.

That your father is soliciting the understanding of his children in this matter is because he loves and respects you all; otherwise, he doesn’t, because it is his life and happiness that is involved.

No servant can give him the type of care a woman he marries would give him. He isn’t stupid to have chosen to settle down with this woman among the many he has in his life. To have settled for her means he sees what you and your siblings are not seeing. He is an old man with solid experiences on his side.

You cannot love him more than he loves himself, and at his age, he has gone past the point of sentiments to the stage of cold reality. Only experience can make a man look beyond love to essentials.

Show him the same respect he has accorded you all, else, if he marries this woman without your supports, you all risk sending him to an early grave with your infightings and scheming.

If you are now accusing him of being responsible for the death of your mother, don’t let other people accuse you of being responsible for his death too.

On the issue of this woman’s children coming to live in your father’s house, it is something you cannot avoid, but remember, they have been staying somewhere before now, and might actually be reluctant to move from where they are.

To assume they would automatically move to your father’s house is pompous, because for all you know, their father may be richer than yours.

That this woman is divorced doesn’t make her a failure or gold-digger. Being married yourself, you must know that marriage is never a smooth journey and that some people get to a stage where the option left to them is divorce.

That your marriage is succeeding is a grace of God and not because you are doing something different from those who made the choice to end it all. Leave the choice of who your father shares his wealth with to him; after all, he is the one who made the money in the first place. Importantly, help pray your father into making the right decision. If he is happy, it would lessen the amount of emergency trips you have to make to his house or the worries you will do about his well-being. It would be the woman’s burden not yours anymore.

Besides, life can be very lonely when there is no one to share it with, which is why the church and society lend their support to remarriage, when there is a vacuum created by either death or wrong choice.

Good luck.