How Soon is too Soon to Move On
…after the death of a spouse
One year? Five? A decade?
How long is long enough to grieve the loss of what you thought would be a lifetime love? To move on to another partner?
Social media consensus seems to agree that one year is fair enough, leaving me to wonder if someone who grieves the loss of their lover for 12 years loved deeper than the one who grieved for one year before getting into another relationship.
When I started watching Black Love docuseries a few years back, I met a couple named Roslyn and Ray Singleton, and something I soon learnt was Roslyn’s battle with brain cancer. Watching them, it was hard to believe because Roslyn was the picture of health. But she was indeed sick, and the videos Ray subsequently shared on Instagram made that abundantly clear.
Even then, no one really expected her to die because of how vibrant she’d been and how many times she’d beat cancer. Me and the thousands of people who were rooting for their love thought that if she’d beat cancer three times before, she could do it one more time. Unfortunately, she didn’t.
Only for the unthinkable to happen 9 months later.
Ray shared a bombshell of a picture on IG. He’d gotten boo’d up. And he didn’t even seem apologetic about finding love so soon after Roslyn’s death. People were livid! These were people who’d loved and nurtured Roslyn with him; people who’d God when’d because of his selfless love for her, who’d cried with him as he shared news of her passing.
They were displeased and made no effort to hide it.
It’s not even been up to a year.
Would you want your wife to move on and forget you like that?
Unfollowed!
Most people would’ve at least given it a year before going public.
It just seems too soon.
Throughout the comments, there was a palpable sense of disbelief that Ray could ever get over Roslyn, so this Ray who shared affection with another woman who was not Roslyn was an inconceivable Ray.
But Ray is human, and like some of the comments rightly pointed out, he deserves a full life without Roslyn, even if that means finding love in the arms of another woman.
Who determines how soon is too soon?
Until last year, I judged people (often men) who moved on so soon after the death of their spouse. I thought it was on brand that men would be so lacking in loyalty, and I loathed that they ‘found love’ so soon after the passing of the people they once claimed to love.
In my mind, that pattern only confirmed what I thought I always knew: that men love superficially. But I was wrong.
I was convicted while watching the video of another man who got engaged 2 years after the demise of his first wife (whom he was married to for some 8 years). Unfairly, I assumed that he had moved on too quickly and had gotten married to the new woman because he was looking for a replacement mother for his four kids. As if to confirm my premature conclusion, I started scouring his social media pages.
It’s one of the best worst things I’ve ever done because it led me to a video he made with his then-fiancée that shifted my perspective forever. And he helped me recognize the implication of ‘till death do us part’.
Till death, not a minute longer
Because we have socialized grief to look a certain way, we do not know what to do with anything that doesn't look like it.
The grief we know and acknowledge is the one that wears a long face.
It is black, bleak, and devastating.
And it lasts a really long time.
I believe a lot of it is subconscious, but we want people to perform their grief. It certainly helps to feel sorry for them — maybe even feel their pain. However, when they’re carrying on with life as usual, we find it hard to believe their sadness, and we judge them for deigning to exist contentedly in a world that is now without their loved one.
Perhaps we feel sorry for the dead and expect that the physical appearance of our sadness will help them (the dead) feel less sorry for themselves. And perhaps we imagine that the bereaved's sadness helps the dead come to terms with their death, which shows how little of death’s finality we truly understand.
While it’s a hard truth to come to terms with, death, really, is the end of the marriage vow — with the exception of a divorce. Otherwise, doe-eyed lovers would pledge an undying commitment to each other at the altar, i.e., “even in death, I choose you.”
Be that as it may, traditional vows release the bereaved of all obligation to their spouse once they pass, not a second longer, a month longer or a year. Of course, courtesy demands that there be a moment of mourning, even if not for the dead, for the people who loved them. Even so, mourning should never be a prison for the living.
When we resist people from moving on after their spouses have passed, no matter how early we judge it to be, we bind them to a contract they did not sign.
Bereaved spouses should be able to love again, and it’s not our place to tell them when they can.
As I write this, I am forced to consider a scenario where I pass before my husband. While I hope (and expect) to live well into my old age, I realize that if that were ever to happen, releasing him to love again would be my final act of love to him because in death, I cannot give him the fulfillment he desires from reciprocated love.
Then again, Ray’s developing love story post-Roslyn has got me thinking about the people who love bereaved spouses after their loss and if I can be that person at all.
In the final scene of Love Again where Mira and Rob decided to give what they had a chance, she told him matter-of-factly that she would always love John (her fiancé who was tragically killed in an accident). That didn’t deter Rob, and I thought how selfless it was of him to love someone whose heart he would always share with another.
As I follow Ray’s developing love story, I cannot but wonder about the lovely new woman in his life, the backlash she’s facing for loving him, and how much of their love will be overshadowed by a woman she possibly never knew.
Like many Ray-Ros shippers, I wish Roslyn had lived longer, but in the absence of that, the people she left behind — including her husband — deserve to pour the love they can no longer give her into someone else. Likewise, the new woman in Ray’s life deserves to love her man without his former love casting a shadow on the beautiful love story that’s unfolding in her life.
At the end of the day, there are no easy answers for how to grief, when to move on from loss, or how to love a heart that'll always love someone who is no more. But there is a truth of which we cannot deny: that it is foolish to put a pause to life because of the dead.
We can love and honor the deceased with the life we live after them.
