The grieving widow or widower knows generally what is expected, and other people have some idea of what they should say or do and how they, too, should behave. If you’re divorced and a former spouse dies, all those rules go out the window. Months after my husband’s death, I was on the opposite side of this thorny issue when a good friend of mine died. She had been an invalid for years. She and her husband had long been estranged, but due to health insurance and financial considerations, divorce simply wasn’t possible for either of them. I had listened sympathetically to my friend’s side of the story as her marriage disintegrated. At the time of her death, I was still angry with her husband and ready to blame him for abandoning her emotionally if not financially. Still, when she died, I couldn’t help remembering how I had felt the previous year, when I was the one looking for that missing sympathy card—the one that never came. Bearing that in mind, I straightened up and sent my friend’s estranged husband a card.
