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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My father did this when my mom unexpectedly passed away, and it ripped our family apart.  This was nearly 10 years ago, and it still brings up raw emotions from time to time.

The day of the funeral he started talking about finding a new wife, he was on online dating sites a week later, and proposing to women soon thereafter.  My niece (5 at the time) was watched almost daily by grandma and was devastated by her death.  When it came out that grandpa had been showing her pictures of women from the dating site and telling her that one of them would soon be her "new grandma", that was the final straw.  By around 4-5 months after our mom passed, he had moved a woman accross the country to live with him, and I think they got married at a justice of the peace a few months after that, before our mother's gravestone had even been put in place.  We pleaded, begged, for him to take it slower, to show some respect to our mother, but he was like a crazy man.  The woman also used his grief and our mother's memory to manipulate him along the way, going as far as to call the gravestone company as "his wife" and try to tell them that they needed to change the gravestone text that listed our mother as his loving wife.

The emotions that your husband is facing in this situation are not just simple grief.  He might not articulate it, but he, on behalf of his mom and her memory, is feeling that her honor is being betrayed.  That his father couldn't wait until she was cold in the ground to start bringing in some hussy to take her place.  That how could his father have truly loved his wife, if this is how he "honors" her memory.  Your husband is filled with anger, hurt, loss, and betrayal, and he is feeling like an honorable mourning of his mother has been taken away from the family.  He is filled with guilt over the rage is he probably feeling for his father, and he is grieving the loss of not only his mother, but his father as well.  He will not be able to move through the natural mourning processes with his family in the way he expected to: the first Thanksgiving without his mom, the first Christmas, his birthday, his kids birthdays.  Instead of pulling together as a family with that empty chair at the table and learning how to move on together, he is going to have an unwelcome intruder in that chair.  This family summer trip was probably going to be an important part of your husband's grieving process, and now that was taken away because his father just couldn't wait and show some respect to his dead wife.

Irrational or not, your husband is probably feeling all this and more.  Be there for him.  Agree with him.  Cry with him.  Don't criticize his father, but when he criticizes his father, agree with him, tell him how hurt and angry you also are.  Remember his mom with him.  Don't try to reason with him, or to justify a single thing his dad is doing.  Help him to do things to memorialize his mother (We put a Blessed Mother statue on our mother's grave because it was so lonely and forlorn without the gravestone that first year, especially since we felt our dad abandoned her memory).  Stand firm with him if he does not want his children to have anything to do with this woman.  Do not, under any circumstances, try to intervene and develop a relationship with his children and this woman in the interest of keeping peace.  Eventually, things will get better. his feelings will wane,  and it won't hurt so badly.  Good luck to both of you![/quote]

Holy crap. We have loved through the same experience! I wish this wasn't anonymous so we could chat.

OP, I will tell you to just support your DH. It is incredibly difficult and you just need to let him lead. Don't try to mediate or point out things where his father may be right. He can't handle that right now. [/quote]

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