Emily Yoffe on her husband’s first wife who died of cancer.

Shortly after my husband John and I were married, on a day he was at work and I was home moving my things into his house, I opened a cardboard box in the attic. It was filled with photos of his other married life, the one he’d had with his first wife, Robin Goldstein. She was 28 when they got married, and six months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband was nursing her at home when she died just after her 34th birthday. The box contained wedding photos, honeymoon photos, and random snapshots of parties and birthdays. As I excavated, I could chart her illness by her hair—a cycle of dark waves, then wigs and scarves. After I’d looked at them all I closed the box and cried for her, and for my guilty awareness that her death allowed me, five years later, to marry the man I loved.

When our daughter was born, one of the sweetest gifts we got was a tiny chair with her name painted on the back. It was from the Goldstein family. How final it must have felt to them to send this acknowledgement of John’s new life. Robin had wanted children, but her long illness and the brutal treatments made that impossible.

All of us exist because of a series of tragedies and flukes. I’m here because 80 years ago my grandfather’s wife, Ruth, died suddenly of the flu, leaving him a young widower with a toddler and an infant. (They say he had to be restrained from jumping into her grave.) Eventually he remarried to my grandmother, and my mother was born. My grandmother banished all traces of Ruth. Her sons had no contact with Ruth’s relatives, displayed no photos of her. It was if she never existed. At the end of my grandfather’s long life—he lived to be 95—his distant past became more present to him, and he began to tell stories about Ruth. My grandmother was more incredulous than angry. “Can you imagine?” she told me. “Do you know how long she’s been dead?”

Maybe when my husband and I get old, memories of his life with Robin will become even more vivid than our years together. If so, I hope I’ll welcome those memories. I’m grateful to Robin, not jealous (even if she left it to me to convince our joint husband that the laundry hamper was invented for a reason). I knew my husband for only four months before we got married. But I heard from others how protective, tender, and devoted he was to her. Because of their relationship, I knew that this was a man who could be trusted, who stayed, for better or worse. I also knew that it’s possible to have more than one love of your life. I am the love of his, and so was she.

Robin was born in Newark, N.J. in 1955. She was a striking, slender young woman with huge dark eyes. She started her career as a city reporter in a small New Jersey town, and both the cops and the mobsters she covered had crushes on her. When she reported on a trial of the Genovese family the judge threatened Robin with jail for protecting one of her sources, a mobster turned government witness, and her case became a test for a newly passed press shield law.

She was just as brave about her illness. After the first surgery, radiation, and chemo, it looked as if she’d be OK, as if the diagnosis might be just some ghastly glitch. But a year later the cancer came back, and for the next five years she endured everything the doctors threw at her, while convincing other people not to pity her.

Robin decided that for however long she had, she would make it a normal life. She kept working and traveling—there were many vacation photos in that box—and when the cancer spread to her bones, she went to the office on crutches. She had to stop when it got to her brain. In her final week, at the hospital, she still got excited about fixing up a radiation technologist she liked with a bachelor journalist friend.

Tags: cancer, marriage

Emily Yoffe is Slate's Dear Prudence and Human Guinea Pig (emilyyoffe@hotmail.com)

Comments

I just stumbled on this site,

By: dawnita7 | Mon, 08/17/2009 - 10:05

I just stumbled on this site, and this story brought tears to my eyes. I am the wife of a widower, and he has three kids from that marriage. She died at a very young age from breast cancer, and we have tried very hard to honor her memory and have her be a part of the children's life. I love how you put it - she died so that I could find the love of my life. That is how I feel as well.
Thank you for a beautiful tribute!

Emily, I have been a longtime

By: lindacoult | Mon, 08/10/2009 - 15:57

Emily, I have been a longtime fan of your pieces for slate, but never so touched as I was by this story. It is a credit to you that you have not followed in your Grandmother's testking HP2-E13 (justifiable) footsteps on this subject, and have lived this history so openly with your husband and daughter. What a beautiful piece, and a beautiful, testking 642-655 gracious philosophy of coexistance with your own family's past testking 642-973 and testking HP0-S14 along with testking 000-076.

A Widower's Perspective

By: greytgirl | Thu, 07/16/2009 - 12:01

My partner Bob is a widower and was moved by Emily's story and wanted me to share the following with you:

My story is John’s story. My wife of 42 years died from lung cancer 10 years ago, throwing me and my life into turmoil. A few good friends got me over the worst of it, but friendship couldn't fill the emptiness of no partner. It has been nine years since Patricia entered my life and it has been a struggle for both of us to figure out how to honor the past and build the future. I wrote a short book When Your Lover Dies about coping with a loved one’s death, and it contains a chapter titled “Loving Again.” My conclusions parallel those reached by John and Emily: Never, ever compare your former and present partners; recognize and cherish the past, the present, and the future and figure out how to let them reside together in harmony; revere your new partner for who she is and don’t expect a new version of your old one. I think you’ve done it right, John and Emily, as I think Patricia and I have. We are lucky indeed.

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All the best, author!

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I married a widower with two

By: Cynthia4400 | Fri, 06/26/2009 - 15:29

I married a widower with two kids five years ago and he liked to say that I was Mickey Mantle to his late wife's Joe Dimaggio. (When Dimaggio retired, Mantle took his place in center field and went on to his own unique and distinguished career.) I try not to ever feel bad that I'm one of two great loves of his life; rather just grateful that in my life I was able to find one.

This article had me in tears.

By: tshimer | Fri, 06/26/2009 - 13:19

This article had me in tears. My father was married and widowed with two children in the mid-1960's when he met and married my mom. I am very close with my half-sister, and I have marveled with her that if her mom had not died, I would never have been born. Now I have two children of my own, adding to the 'if' factor. My children and their auntie love each other very much, and it is due to the loss of one remarkable woman that (at least) three of us are here. It is bittersweet for my sister, and very sweet for me. Thanks for the opportunity to think about a nice lady that I never met, but who gave me life.

Kudos...

By: tarynwithat | Fri, 06/26/2009 - 10:42

...must be given to you husband, as well as to you, for his grace and wisdom in the handling of this particularly sensitive situation. I was in a similar one on the other end of the spectrum. My ex was not, apparently, emotionally or intellectually capable enough to refrain from unfavorable comparisons of me to his deceased wife, and was always sure to let it be known that I came in a poor second and always would. Unfortunately, he also extended that behaviour to include our daughters; his from their marriage and ours from ours. The favoritism continued to the day he relinquished our daughter for adoption to her loving and accepting stepfather, now her father in all but biology. One part of me wishes that he would have been as good a man as yours, but another part of me is thankful that he was not, as our divorce allowed me to find the true love of my life.

Thank you for writing this

By: GrantH | Thu, 06/25/2009 - 15:18

As a man who is living a similar pattern to John, I want to thank you for sharing this, so that I in turn can share it.

My first wife (she hated not being punctual, and so she would scream at being called "late" ), was a wonderful lady, dearly loved by our friends and family. She was a powerful and challenging person, who enriched my life in ways I am still discovering. Losing her to cancer complications was a multi-year struggle. Her death came not because she lacked heart, but because her body could not continue the fight. It's been two and a half years since she died, but I think of her (at least in passing) nearly every day.

I am now engaged to another strong woman. My family and my first wife's family think she is wonderful. She knows that she can't replace my first wife, and that no-one wants her to. But I know that she feels her predecessor's presence, and she respects our past without being controlled by it. I like to think that they have conversations, the two of them, laughing about me, and the dogs, and the similarities and differences of their lives with me. I love them both, but I live with the material one. The one is part of who I am; the other, who I am becoming.

All of which is a long way to say that your story reached me, and that it makes a difference. As Robt. Heinlein wrote "shared pain is lessened, and shared joy increases". Thank you (and all the other commentors) for sharing.

The other wife

By: eflaum | Wed, 06/24/2009 - 15:23

Thank you for this story.

My mother died of cancer when I was 19 and my siblings 16 and 10. My dad didn't know how to live without her. He muddled through for a couple of years but when he remarried I felt it was for the best.
My mother's loud and large family has always been a powerful presence in our lives and that did not change after my mother's death and father's remarriage. People began planning the family reunions my mother had always wanted, and my stepmother was quickly accepted and included. Today, my stepmother jokes that she has two mothers-in-law. She spends time with my siblings and me, and my mother's family, whether or not my father is there. My father guides and supports her sons with advice and financial aid the same way he does us. We are all one.

I am grateful that my family members are so loving and accepting of one another, and willing to embrace a larger idea of what it means to be a family.

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