My friend, who used to live in our ward, lost her husband and her only child, a toddler son to a drowning accident about a year ago. She's understandably had a very hard year. When they died, I was TBM and glad she had the gospel to comfort her. Now I can see how cruel the gospel is to widows, especially the young ones.

First of all, she was 30 when they died and is already sealed to her dead husband. She can go on, meet another man, get married, and maybe have kids. What she can't do is to ever be sealed to him. What if he's never been sealed to anyone? It's left her with a mess.

Over this year, I have watched her post the most heartbreaking anguish on her blog. She is suffering. Everyone who comments on the blog and her Facebook posts tells her what a woman of faith she is, and how strong, just keep reading scriptures, together forever, yada yada, yet, it's clear she's barely holding it together.

I've had to wonder if she's sick and tired of everyone telling her to be strong and faithful when she just wants to scream that she misses them, she's barely functioning, and mad at God for taking them away. Someone needs to tell her that it's ok to be angry and there's no good reason they were taken away. God didn't need them more. She needs them. It's chickenshit to say and think that God needed them. Shit just happens, faithful or sinner. Shit happens.

This morning she put this quote on FB and it angered me:



“The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss. That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude.”

― Joseph B. Wirthlin

It's bullshit to live for this. "The faithful" will be compensated. What is faithful? How can you be faithful enough? I'm sure she's done nothing but tried to be faithful since they died, and it's got to be exhausting to think of a life of this struggle. I think it's shit like this that doesn't let people heal. She's waiting to be compensated instead of recovering, and trying to find happiness. I'm so angry this morning.

Happy sabbath!

It gets in the way of the grief process, IMO. Because instead of accepting reality, you find a way to prolong this idea that things will be made right. That they'll change. That God will perform a miracle for you. :-(

Too bad her ward doesn't have a version of the young TSM who could take care of widows as well as [he tells us] he used to do ... she'd be pickin' and grinnin'if she just had 'Tommy' there to fall back on!

Religion seems to keep folks stuck in the "denial" stage since they aren't "really dead" just "in a better place".

I've known as few women in that position, where they lost their husbands very young in life. They then went on to re-marry and have kids with their new husbands. But everyone would talk about the new husbands with pity, stating that their own kids didn't even belong to them, but to the first husbands.

What a messed up piece of bullshit!

I found an article in some magazine (not lds magazine). It talked about a mother who had lost her young son and the mother kept trying to come to terms with why he had to die. She finally decided it was UNACCEPTABLE that he had died and in finally letting go of some purpose this had happened to her son, she came to terms with losing him.

I kept that article. I still have it in the back of my "gay" journal.

Some things in life are just unacceptable and to keep trying to paint them otherwise I believe doesn't allow the person to fully grieve.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/2013 11:08AM by cl2.

I could write a book on this topic—a worst seller I’m sure. My sister’s husband died when she was a TBM 37 year old. She found out, quickly, that she was a temple widow. As soon at a Mormon man found out she’d been sealed, she was put aside. Thankfully, she also found out that single Mormon men of that age were usually horrid. Even better, all the awful words that her ward members spouted helped her return to her leaving belief path—the one she’d been on before her husband’s cancer pulled them back to church.

My own tragic loss came after I’d quit believing all that Mormon b.s. My daughter’s death killed my squishy belief in a “force for good in the universe”. I became a stone-cold atheist. I’m so much better off for it. I go to a survivor group and I hear the pain that religious/God thinking causes. The first and worst is that God did this. God took that person. The next thought is why? What did they do? Many start to pine away for death, because their loved one is just a breath—their last breath—away. Dead isn’t really dead. If you’re good, God will fix this pain, fix everything. It’s sick.

I personally believe that to be a "through-and-through" hardcore Mormon, one has to strip himself/herself of all things human...anger, laughter, pleasure, peace, love, etc.

Mormonism as a belief system is not very kind to young widows. One thing that might help would be to allow women multiple sealings, the same as they allow for men.

My grandmother buried her first hubby and re-married before i was born.

i never called him 'grandfather'.

everyone called him by his first name, 'dan'...

what a buncha bullshit

That mindset that JW is propagating leads to authentic-ness suppression. The "faithful" person does not want to be seen as unfaithful even under such a tragic circumstance as that, so she will pretend and carry on while hurting. And if she expresses any real emotion about her pain, she will feel guilt for being weak, and expressing what is natural. It is really screwed up. I hate being reminded that people are under this oppressive emotional thumb voluntarily.

I'd say reach out to her as a friend, do lunch, dinner whatever and just get her to talk...If it's mormony stuff so be it. Don't talk any ex mormon stuff. Just get her to talk and maybe if you 2 make it a regular habit, you can slip in the exmormon stuff.

Sadly, she moved out of state after they died, otherwise I would.

call her on the phone then and have her vent

A similar situation started me on my journey out of the Church.... in the temple one day i had a conversation with a young lady aged 23,she had lost her husband in a road traffic accident,they were sealed......therefore she was distraught...how could she go on she said........who would marry her..........male members were looking for a wife to be sealed to them,i knew then that this church was'nt true,i am soory for this lovely young woman,but also grateful that i met her.

twojedis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> First of all, she was 30 when they died and is
> already sealed to her dead husband. She can go on,
> meet another man, get married, and maybe have
> kids. What she can't do is to ever be sealed to
> him. What if he's never been sealed to anyone?
> It's left her with a mess.
>
> Over this year, I have watched her post the most
> heartbreaking anguish on her blog. She is
> suffering. Everyone who comments on the blog and
> her Facebook posts tells her what a woman of faith
> she is, and how strong, just keep reading
> scriptures, together forever, yada yada, yet, it's
> clear she's barely holding it together.

And the "Brethren" say stuff like, "Polygamy is behind us, it's
not doctrinal, we gave up the practice over a century ago"
yadda yadda. Mormon women are victims of polygamy NOW, TODAY,
not just a hundred and fifty years ago but RIGHT NOW.

Wait, was polyandry ever officially denounced?

Polygamy hasn't (at least, in the hereafter), so..?

Or is it just a matter of wanting to keep the wifestealing bit swept under the rug?

schmendrick Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wait, was polyandry ever officially denounced?

polyandry was officially denounced in D&C 132. It's just that
JS and BY were a law unto themselves. Polygamy was "officially
denounced" while he was doing it.

twojedis, did this incident happen in the Tacoma WA area? If so, I remember this being in the news.

Yes, it did. It was the saddest funeral ever.

that means she wasn't worthy enough. She didn't grieve just right. She maybe experienced some of those normal human emotions that the Mormons frown upon.

Since human beings never completely forget tragedies like this, she will be forever haunted. It will be a double-haunting. Life is rough enough, without the Mormon church haunting and judging her for the rest of her life.

In my experience, having something "different" or "not on the program of the Mormon Plan" happen in one's life causes one to question. I'm sure this woman will quickly realize that there is no place in the Mormon church for an unmarried woman.

According to mormonism,my two kids belong to my first husband.

I married him when I was 18. Divorced hi when I was 20.(for damn good reasons!)

My 2 kids are from a marriage I had 10 years later to a nevermo.

My first husband doesn't even know my kids exist. How in the hell does any of this make sense?

My husband of 23 years, who helped me raise my kids, isn't sealed to me, my children, or his own child. How in the hell does any of this make sense?

twojedis, it's really good of you to see your friend's grief and be concerned for her. She is really hurting and, you're right, the church teachings/culture makes it worse.

It's so hard to know what to say or do. I read a story yesterday about a new book written by a woman who lost her husband, her two children and both parents in the 2004 Indonesia tsunami. People kept giving her copies of Man's Search for Meaning, written by a holocaust survivor. How bad is it when people compare your life to that?

Anyway, your friend's story brought that to mind. I don't know if the book would help her or not, but perhaps it would help you in relationship to your friend's story. (Not saying you need help empathising; I mean it might give insight.)

Here's a link to the story I read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/09/sonali-deraniyagala-wave-tsunami-interview

Also, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking recounts the year following her husband's death when she was also coping with the serious illness of her adult daughter (who died about a year after). It's a very moving account. (She didn't want to give away her husband's clothes because he'd need them when he came back, she kept telling herself.)

Nothing can take away the pain of course, but perhaps companionship with women who have been through similar experiences can help a little.