My wife died and I was inundated with help – because I’m a man

It appeared on the doorstep, just days after the event – a delicious Shepherd’s pie, complete with hand-written serving instructions.  

A surprise and utterly welcome gift. After all, who wants to think about cooking when their wife has just died of cancer?   

It wasn’t an isolated event. Indeed, it quickly became a daily occurrence. Pies, stews, cakes and entire weeks of supplies showed up at my door.   

Then came the offers to clean, do the laundry, tidy, garden and even care for my 6-year-old daughter. Incredibly kind and generous gestures, the touching expression of a shared grief.   

I don’t know exactly when I started to think differently of this tsunami of aid, but after a few months, I realised I was feeling something beside the gratitude – a growing sense of unease too, not about the generosity of the givers but about some of the assumptions behind the giving.

Assumptions that made me feel uncomfortable at times.       

The offers of food, housework and childcare, as well as being generous, seemed to imply that now I was widowed, I wasn’t expected to be able to cater for myself at all; to cope, to function or adapt in any way to the new reality of being a single father.  

Doubtless, there are men who haven’t moved with the times and are completely unable to take care of the home and children, but I’d assumed that was largely a thing of the past.  

The most problematic assumption was around childcare. There were mutterings about ‘getting me help’ almost straight away and from several sources, which only made me more determined to refuse.  

There was a sense that, as a man, I was somehow genetically incapable or in some way lacking skills. The fact that I had a daughter rather than a son apparently made matters much worse. 

There were several instances where it was clearly implied; I can recall the particular look of pity from one mum, as if I was attempting to upend basic science, as she used the words ‘.. and of course, it’s extra hard for you because she’s a girl.’

Even after a couple of years, when I’d made, according to some, a reasonable success of bringing her up, the compliments that came my way still had something of a double edge. 

‘You’re doing really well’ was accompanied by a look that made clear the end of the sentence was ‘for a bloke.’   

I’ve never regarded myself as some progressive new kind of man. I just shared the child rearing with my late wife when she was alive, as we shared everything else 50/50, too.  

I also thought that I was the person best placed to bring my daughter up, after she died. It never occurred to me that the fact I was male might be some sort of drawback.   

This is not to deny the loss of her mum and the unique influence that she brought, or the fact that there were bound to be things my daughter would miss from not having her around. I am not being blasé or saying that I could seamlessly cover any gaps. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now.  

But the argument seemed to be based on the fairly ancient idea that I probably had little understanding of the fundamentals of the child-rearing business – that as a man, I probably didn’t really ‘get’ children, to the point where it would be better if someone else came in and showed me how.   

Socially, too, old-fashioned assumptions still seemed to prevail.  

It became clear after a while that what some folk thought I needed most was to be paired up with a nice new partner. To be fair, there were some positive aspects to this.

I felt very welcome wherever I went, the object of immediate sympathy and understanding, but I couldn’t get away from the fact that the reasons for my treatment still seemed rooted in an antiquated view of the sexes. I wasn’t in some remote, traditional enclave. I was in middle-class Norfolk.     

Interestingly, my current partner, herself a widow, didn’t have the same experience in the early years of her bereavement.  

She wasn’t invited out often, and felt viewed with some suspicion, particularly by other women. There wasn’t an upside for her elsewhere, either. While I found cakes on the doorstep and received offers for fresh laundry and childcare, she didn’t.

She didn’t receive job offers or free financial advice, which I did. She was, as a lot of widows are, simply expected to cope with everything.   

Despite years of progress in many aspects of bereavement, surprisingly old-fashioned values still rule the roost.  

Until those change, the whole business of bereavement for those who have lost a partner, and those who are offering consolation, is going to be that much more complicated and confusing.     

Practical support is always hugely welcome, but surely even better served by a recognition of the way that male and female roles, in the 21st century, are now far more intertwined.       

I am now in my early 60s and myself and my partner who I’m still with from those days, are empty nesters. The offers of support are a thing of the distant past but I’ll never forget them and will always be incredibly thankful for the generosity they represented.

I still hope however, that those in the future who are similarly bereaved will find a slightly different, more nuanced version of that help on offer.  

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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