Prospects for widowed homemaker

blackribbon

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There is a difference when your loved one dies when you are in the frame of mind that this is a possiblity and have started to plan for your potential death....and when it is a complete surprise and at an age when you don't expect it. We emptied my husbands 401K to live on when he was alive and fighting cancer...with the intention that he would live and be able to build it back up. He did once but not so lucky second time. No estate planning was done yet because he wasn't even 40 for most of his fight...and we were still taking care of kids that hadn't reach their teen years yet. He died 11 weeks after the diagnosis of the return of cancer. Considering his only symptoms were expected side effects of the treatments...there wasn't even time to think about it after we knew it came back. He was planning on living and the doctors were optomistic too.

My husband died without a will. For some reason he felt that if he had a will, he would die. I am not so sure how many 41 year old men actually have taken the time to pay for a will.

The churches are void of help for people like me. Money to help with little league fees and baseball bats isn't normally in the "widows fund" or even something they think about. Your mother was lucky enough to have grown children. I was still raising mine.
 
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ciaomamma

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Your mom is basically homeless? What is wrong with your home? I suspect that you spent a number of years living under her roof rent-free...too bad she didn't save all that money that she spend on your extras. Maybe she would have enough to actually buy a house of her own.

Nothing like letting our parents grow up to be treated like children and burdens....


I can see how you came to make that comment but I want to clarify I am not letting my mum be homeless, she has money, the problem is that they sold the family home and rented in another country when they retired she doesn't want to live in that country on her own and wants to return to her birth country but has no actual home to go back to so she's staying with relatives while she figures things out. Yes we offered for her to come to us and she will soon for a few months but we love on yet another country continent actually and she doesn't seem keen to emigrate yet SO no she's not roughing it under a bridge but for as much capital and savings as she has available my parents poor planning on practicality matters and financials means she is stuck in limbo.
 
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NOTWHATIWAS

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My spouse passed away ten years ago, leaving me ( a Mom struggling everyday w/the challenges of raising a daughter with Asperger's Autism, Bi-Polar Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).Who does God use? Someone, who herself is struggling w/ Bi-Polar disorder. There have been days when, like you (although are situations are different) I have asked "Why"? I have only been on this site a short time. When I started reading all the stories of others who have lost spouses, the circumstances, some young and some old, people so lonely and brokenhearted like me, all I've wanted to do is get you all in one big room, pray w/ you, assure you that there is someone who has thought about all of you for the past 24 hours and just wants you all to know that I am sincere when I say, " Stay in touch w/ me on this site and feel free to talk as much as you need to until it starts not hurting so much". Happily, we are blessed w/ one who has limitless grace and mercy for the asking and is more capable of doing this than any of us in our flawed, human condition. He is also the one who took tax collectors, fishermen, people from humble walks of life to use to Glorify himself. As broken as any of us feel right now, if all I can manage to do is just let you all on this site (from the one who feels He/She has "no reason to go on" to the Mother who can't see that "just warming the bleachers" at a ball game means so mucho her children)no matter where you are at this time, you are still here and God can use you. In fact, Jesus has told us that He is "not looking for the strong but the weak" to fulfill His plan. I'm so blessed and glad that I have found all of you after years of searching for a site exactly like this to share w/and hopefully encourage you. You have also blessed me more than you know. God bless you all today.
 
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akmom

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Oh BlackRibbon, when I first read these comments I was just looking for advice and I didn't even look to see who was writing it. Now that I went back, I see that so many of the posts were yours and in the last post I see some of your story, and I am so sorry for what you have gone through. I think about the possibility of widowhood often now, since my Dad's death, and I am just heartbroken for you for losing your spouse that you loved, and at a time in life where you still had so much responsibility, and apparently so little useful support around you. There was a young widow who worked for my dad when he was alive, who lost her husband unexpectedly when she was pregnant, and he got a team together to completely renovate her home for her. She too had no idea what she needed, but he was handy, so he had an idea of what kinds of things she would end up needing that a husband usually provides, and he raised the funds and got the volunteers and did it for her. Then he went to her home and mowed her lawn every month, and fixed up every single thing that needed repair for the next ten years. She said he was the only one who remembered her unique needs after a year. I sure wish more people would, but it's hard to think about that when you haven't lost someone and lived in that emptiness. You just kind of assume there's a support network. I know we've planned things much differently since my dad died. I mean, we all know it's a possibility but somehow, we assume it'll be okay until we witness first-hand all the ways in which is doesn't work out. But the emptiness... that's just something no one can fix or ameliorate. So I guess that is why we obsess over the material needs. It's all we CAN do.
 
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blackribbon

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Thank you. That was the most therapeutic post I have read in a long time. We all lie. It doesn't "get better", it just gets different. We lie because we have to believe it somehow is better or we lose the precious thing called "hope". I meet widows in the hospital now and I know how many feel the same way I do. I see it in their eyes. Sometimes we talk about it ... sometimes I can't because I wouldn't be able to pull myself together and take care of the rest of my patients and all my responsibilities on a shift. Almost eight years later and my son just now fell apart. He has a 4.0 in his freshman year of college and was about to finish EMT school so he had a part-time job to work his way through his ultimate goal which requires a master's degree. At least I have insurance again or I'd be trying to figure out how to pay the $20,000 in medical bills that we have racked up over the last month ... God's hand is with us though and he has lead us to some fabulous doctors. However, once again, I am finding that I am having to hold my family together when I really want to burst into tears and give up. This life sucks. And for anyone who feels like I have a bad attitude, just know I am the nurse who your grandmother/mother loves because I never make her feel like a burden when she is in the hospital and gives up my lunch hour to hear her fears at 2am when the family has gone home and she is lonely and afraid. All the while, I am missing my own kids' softball games and get to hear about the scores via text message since I can't talk on the phone at work.
 
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