Category Archives: Death of Fiancee

The Mary Mac Show | Preparing for Valentine’s Day

The Mary Mac Show Podcast

In Episode 62, we look at our feelings as Valentine’s Day approaches and how to help ourselves through this special, yet melancholy, day.

Before we experienced our special loved one’s death, Valentine’s Day may have been quite joyous or not even on our radar.

If our spouse, fiance, boyfriend or girlfriend made it a special day for us, we will remember it with a longing for that again and are sad that we won’t be enjoying that again this year and, perhaps, in the future with them.

But there is no reason why we can’t not only remember the wonderful experiences we had with them, but plan something special for yourself with other friends so we aren’t so alone on this day.

Decide what would bring you happiness and call friends to meet for coffee, a drink or a meal. Toast to them, share memories and even through the tears, remember all the love they gave you.

You have a lot of love to give. Start to think about whom you’d like to share that with.

Perhaps you’ll rescue a beautiful cat or dog to be your forever fur baby.

Maybe you’ll spend time with a neighbor who is just as alone as you are.

Whatever possibilities come to you, giving love is the most precious gift you can give anyone.

Additional Notes:

Treat yourself to our beautiful Heart of Gold “I Remember” mug. Something so special for your collection.

Heart of Gold "I Remember" Mug for those grieving the death of a loved one.

Remember, a portion of all proceeds help fund The Foundation for Grieving Children, Inc., the first national non-profit public charity which benefits children, teens, young adults after a loved one’s death which I established many years ago.

Crisis Hotlines with outstanding counselors who are standing by to listen to your pain and help you. Excellent way to release your pain today.

Arianna Opper, D.O. offers tapping videos and soothing meditations to help you. If you’d like to explore them, please go here.

And remember to sign up for my private list below, so we can always stay in touch. Since social media is no longer reliable, please complete the form below so I can connect with you via email.

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Much Love,

Mary Mac xoxo

Why Murder Never Goes Away

I can’t help but think about all the families affected today by the media reports that the Libya’s dictator, Moammar Gadhafi is dead.

All the families around the world whose lives were irreparably damaged by the commands and actions of this man will once again be thrown into the past revisiting horrific memories of sorrow and loss.

The closest to me, as fellow memories of survivors of homicide groups at the time, were the families of the Syracuse University students who were simply returning a few days before Christmas on Pan Am 103 in December, 1988. These young people had enjoyed a wonderful semester abroad and were coming home for the holiday season through New York’s JFK airport. But they never made it.

It took decades for these 270 victims’ families to get the cooperation of our own government to press for those responsible for the downing of this aircraft and it all led back to Gadhafi. And little justice was ever achieved.

Only months ago, the man supposedly responsible was released from prison because he was terminally ill. After all, we must be compassionate, now shouldn’t we?

As the news of Gadhafi’s death starts to move onto the airwaves, it will only be a few hours until the famous picture of the nose of Pan Am 103 will be up in all forms of media, thus bringing back the sad memories for these families.

I remember specifically one mother whose son was killed on Pan Am 103 and also a student at Syracuse University in upstate New York, telling me how every time she saw that picture of the plane’s nose, it pierced her heart. It brought all the pain and memories back again. It just never seemed to go away.

Well it’s been nearly 23 years since she and the other families both in the United States and those killed on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland have memorialized their loved ones.

Today, all that pain, all those memories will rush back in.

But I’d like to believe that instead, these US families and families all around the world who were affected by the orders of this ruthless killer, will finally feel some sense of justice, relief and satisfaction today, with the death of this vicious man.

Memorial Day 2011

In anticipation of Memorial Day this year, I did a little research to find out exactly how many families have paid the ultimate sacrifice of sending their loved ones off to war, never to return to them. I was amazed at the huge numbers of deaths, especially during World War I and II but had no idea the numbers were so high for the Civil War, especially since our population was nearly 1/3 of what it is today. Take a look at each war and the total American Fatalities for each.

American Revolutionary War 22,674
War of 1812 11,700
Mexican-American War 13,271
American Civil War (1860-1965) 618,000
Spanish-American War 5,385
Philippine-American War 4,196
World War I (1917-1918) 117,465
World War II (1941-1945) 418,500
Korean War (1950-1953) 36,516
Vietnam War 58,159
Gulf War (1991) 382
War on Terror (2001-present)
Afghanistan (2001-present) 1,413
Iraq (2003-present) 4,430

Total Military Deaths 1,312,091

Although many are unhappy with our presence in the middle east at this time, the number of casualties has been remarkable low considering we have been there for over a decade.

But to a spouse or child grieving that soldier’s death, they are the only one who matters in all these statistics. And it is their sacrifice I think about today. Their pain, their grief, their loss, their sorrow.

Each military family who has either lost a loved one or is grieving the loss of limbs, sustained head injuries, or life as they once knew it, are forever changed.

So today we remember them for their courage, their commitment, their sacrifice and thank them for all of it.

Fiancees Find Themselves Another Casualty Of War

As we honor the servicemen and woman who bravely defended our nation and its people, and gave the ultimate sacrifice, I am reminded of this article from several years ago which gave a very telling view of the disenfranchised grief a fiancee find themselves after their beloved was killed.

At Becky Reid’s flower shop, just across the bay from Mobile, Ala., the wedding season extends well into fall. In normal years, Becky is exuberant about business as she works late on Thursday and Friday nights twisting roses and lilies into bridal bouquets.

But this is not a normal year.

Her fiance, a gentle giant of an Alabama National Guardsman named Christopher M. Taylor, 25, was killed Feb. 16 by a bomb while on a convoy in Baghdad.

She quickly learned that the emotional trials and practical challenges of being a war victim’s survivor, without the official status of “widow,” placed her in a uniquely vulnerable group. But it’s the emotional struggles that hurt most.

Now, late on Thursday and Friday nights, Becky can be seen through the windows of her shop bending over her tables with a cell phone propped between her shoulder and her ear, chit-chatting with her friend Laura or her father while she crafts corsages and bouquets.

She desperately needs the distraction of a conversation to keep her heart from aching over what her hands are doing.

To chase off worries during the nine months Chris was in Iraq, she dreamed on nights like this about the floral arrangements she would make for their wedding. Now she’s making corsages for other brides, reminders of the nuptials she and Chris will never have.

“OK, so, I don’t want to sound like this Southern gal who’s telling you about losing the love of my life,” says Becky, 24. “I had the normal dating life — five years of fending off dirtballs and jerks. Then I finally met a man who knew how to treat me right and would help me on with my jacket at a restaurant, or help start my car. Well, he’s gone now. He’s not coming back from Iraq. Eight months later, I’m still devastated, but all my girlfriends are asking why I’m not dating yet.”

This is just one of many emotional challenges for fiancees or steady girlfriends of soldiers killed in Iraq, a generally ignored group of survivors. Because they fail to meet the Department of Defense’s technical requirements for next of kin, fiancees do not qualify for the generous death and insurance benefits awarded to immediate families.

The families of their fiances often reject them as financial threats or painful reminders of the son they lost. Girlfriends insist they should “get over it” by starting to date right away. Men consider the grieving fiancees uniquely vulnerable and lunge at them at parties or in bars.

“This is a group of survivors from military deaths who . . . fall through the cracks,” says Bonnie Carroll, an Air Force Reserve major who founded a nonprofit organization, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, after her husband was killed in an Army National Guard helicopter crash in 1992.

TAPS has created a national network of peer support mentors, hot lines and chat rooms that support families and friends affected by a military death, and has even persuaded Veterans Affairs to accept fiancees and other survivors for counseling and grief therapy.

“The Department of Defense is forced by its regulations to look at very fixed things,” Carroll says. “Who is legally authorized to receive benefits? Who is legally authorized to receive a body? Well, fiancees, siblings, even the parents of a married soldier just aren’t included in these legal definitions. But their problems can sometimes be just as great as the next of kin and they can take years to heal.”

There’s little doubt that the fiancees left behind by soldiers killed in action in Iraq already number in the hundreds. Morten Ender, a sociology professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, prepared a 1996 study of “nontraditional families” left behind by soldiers killed in action, and this summer he surveyed 1,000 servicemen in Iraq during a stint with a civil-affairs unit.

“It’s clear that at least 25 percent of active duty personnel are either engaged or have a strong attachment to a significant other,” Ender says. “In Iraq alone, we’re talking about 25,000 soldiers with a connection back home that’s very meaningful if they are injured, missing or killed. The results can be both emotionally and financially devastating, especially if it is, say, a woman back home relying on a soldier for financial support.”

TOGETHER THEN SEPARATE

Sara Patch, a dormitory manager at Connecticut College in New London, who lost her fiance in a Marine helicopter crash in 2001, grew closer to her fiance’s family after his death.
She is familiar with all of the social problems Becky Reid experienced and points out another problem that often occurs with military fiances. She and her fiance were planning to share the house he had bought in North Carolina just before he was killed, and she already had quit an earlier job at Smith College to join him there.

“I suddenly found myself homeless and unemployed, but I had a wonderful family to support me,” Patch says. “But what about the thousands of military dependents who don’t have that? The reality is that, today, after people are engaged they are already living together, [they’ve] bought a car and are already one. But if you’re not officially the widow after your partner is killed, no one really knows what you’re going through. There’s nothing for you.”

Patch also got in touch with TAPS and participated in its chat rooms. Now she is active in the organization and helped organize, and will run in, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington on Sunday to raise funds for the group.

Meanwhile, Becky Reid is still working late Thursday and Friday nights, crafting flowers into bridal bouquets. She still struggles with memories and regrets about Chris. Eight months after he was killed, she’s convinced she’ll never find someone else like him, and worries that she hasn’t progressed more with her grief. She feels lonely and misunderstood when her girlfriends goad her to start dating again.

But one thing has changed. Becky has started regular visits to a grief counselor at the Veteran Affairs center in Mobile, free consultations that were arranged through TAPS. Recently, she told her counselor that she was feeling low again, stalled in her grief. Should it take this long?

“My counselor told me that she lost her husband 13 years ago, and she’s still working on all the issues,” Reid said. “Do you know how great that felt? Somebody is telling me that I’m normal. I’m not all alone.”