Life

My Husband's Other Wife

She died, so I could find the man I love.

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

Boresha

By: Boresha | Mon, 01/17/2011 - 22:46

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By: Mark Lewis | Fri, 09/17/2010 - 06:29

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John

By: johmwine | Tue, 08/31/2010 - 10:31

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Good luck Guys.

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I am in complete agreement

By: Clairedamon | Mon, 08/16/2010 - 06:47

I am in complete agreement with the other comments on your beautiful love letter. Your daughter is so lucky that she has you, and also is given such a gift that event though she has never met Robin, that her own existence means so much to someone else. It's the little things that actually count in Love .

dating a widower

By: blitsch | Thu, 07/22/2010 - 14:28

I too am dating a man for a year now that lost his wife too soon. They were married for 9 years and very happy. I too agree that the fact that he is having trouble moving on completely makes me love him even more. He is a very caring and loving person. I too am trying to be patient with him and letting him take things in is own time. I hope that one day he can completely love me as he did her. We do talk about her and I did know her and she was a wonderful person, I to am not jealous just grateful for what we have now.

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!

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.

Touching one

By: vuvanhao | Thu, 07/16/2009 - 00:31

I had a good chance to meet this site, accidentially. At first, i could not figure out what it really was. Reading more carefully, the piece made my touched in my heart. Thank you so much for the piece.
Hope that i can recieve more valuable ones in the time to come.
All the best, author!

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.