I would just agree. If he died before me then I would cremate him and dump his ashes on top of their graves.

Yes, but as a member of a family that’s lost a child in a very traaumatuc way, I get it. He doesn’t want to abandon them.

I really can’t imagine caring. I also don’t get why people still choose to be buried - so gross and morbid. Just get cremated and split the ashes among whoever wants some.

I’m divorced and still have a family plot. I get first billing. My ex’s younger wife can rot under me. I’m actually ok with this.

But when she dies I hope she has remarried and she has moved on. I can hope.

My FIL divorced his first wife (DH’s mom). They had 2 kids. He remarried, and was married to second wife 20+ years. I think she was the love of his life. She passed away after battling a long term, terminal illness. FIL remarried to wife #3. Wife #3 was previously married, and her first DH died of the same disease wife #2 died from. Her first DH had been previously married and had a child with his first wife. Neither second marriage produced children, and both second wives were great, involved stepmoms.

Before FIL and wife #3 married, they discussed and agreed that they both would be married with their previous spouses (wife #2 for FIL, and first husband for his wife #3). They both acknowledged that it doesn’t mean that they love each other less, but they wouldn’t even be married if the previous spouses hadn’t died from a cruel disease. They had both already purchased plots and made arrangements with the previous spouses.

My great grandmother was the second wife. Wife #1 didn’t have kids. She died young, my great grandmother was friends with her, and nursed her at the end. She wasn’t married long. My great grandparents were married for decades and had 4 kids. When he died, my great grandfather was buried next to his first wife. When their adult child died (while my great grandma was living) he was buried next to his dad, but with a space between for my great grandmother (in his hometown with no space for his wife). When she died, my great grandmother was buried between her son and her dh, and on the other side of her DH was his first wife.

Relationships are complex. When we die, we’re dead. I can’t imagine caring about what happens to my body when I’m not alive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hard for me to formulate an answer, because I just can't understand caring at all. When you're dead you're dead. Even if you believe in some sort of afterlife, your body is just a corpse. Burial itself seems odd to me. But I appreciate other people feel differently.

As you what it says about the relationship, I don't think too much. There is no right answer here. A second wife, assuming a widower, is not inherently any better or worse than a first wife, right? Or more loved? So either way someone this man was deeply in love with and shared a life with is "alone." If the second wife would be upset, why wouldn't the first? (Of course, that is absurd, but the whole premise is that feelings can somehow be hurt after death?)

This. All these people saying that wanting to be buried with his first wife means he never loved or valued his second wife -- well, doesn't wanting to be buried with his second wife mean he never loved or valued his first wife? Isn't that awful, too? If the first spouse died, especially if the first spouse and child both died, I would imagine that's a trauma and a grief that lingers. I wouldn't assume that my husband didn't ever really love me, or value me, or care about me, just because he wanted to be buried next to his first spouse, assuming she died and they didn't divorce.

It's different because that wife and child are already dead, he may always care for them but by choosing to be buried with them he's saying eff you to his second wife and the second set of kids, you guys really don't really matter to me, you were just fillers, these people are the ones I care about.

The thoguhtful thing to do would be as a few pps mentione is to make away to be buried beside both.