Member-only story
When a Widowed Parent Starts Dating Again
It’s great but also the weirdest thing ever
I have four parents.
My birth parents split up when I was pretty young. I remember them being married, but there’s a part of me that can’t quite believe it. They…aren’t a natural couple, shall we say.
Fortunately for everyone, they found much, much better matches after they divorced. Equally fortunately, everyone stayed cooperative and cordial during the split-up, joint child-rearing, and beyond. This cordiality grew into actual friendship and then deep affection over the decades. My stepdad and my stepmom raised me as much as my mom and dad did. When my now-husband and I were dating, and things became serious enough for me to introduce him to my parents, he remained a bit confused for a while about which parent was “real” and which was “step”. Because they’re all real, all four of them.
Well, I had four parents. But my mom died last summer. Now I have three parents. Three living parents.
It’s really hard to think of Mom in the past tense.
She and my stepdad were like swans: mated for life. They did everything together. They shared an email address and a Facebook account, and a lovely house with only one bathroom. They traveled the world together and took thousands of photos…
