The shock of losing a partner, no matter the circumstance, is a wound that never fully heals. However, Lee Cripps and Anna-Cripps-Clark fell in love having crossed paths at a bereavement group.
When a husband or wife passes away, the struggle of dealing with your own grief and often that of heartbroken children is overwhelming, but should that spark the end of your romantic life? Once the dust settles, the desire to seek companionship again is hardly surprising.
However, how soon is too soon? It is often a question many people have faced. Just 7 per cent of widows find solace within a decade compared with 29 per cent of widowers.
Lee and Anna share their stories with the Mirror about finding love again after loss...
Lee’s story
Lee met his wife Alex in 1996 while they were working in a supermarket. Quickly hitting it off, they became engaged after a year, before marrying in 2003.
“Alex was kind and helpful, and would always go the extra mile for people,” said Lee. Their life took a dramatic turn for the worst, though, in February 2014 when Alex was found to have a tangerine-sized tumour on her brain.
Having undergone several treatments including surgeries and chemotherapy, Alex died from a cancerous brain tumour in January 2019 at the age of just 40.
Leaving behind twins Sophie and Lauren, both 11, the void made a devastating impact, especially her rapid decline towards the end of her life. “Over Christmas 2018 there was a big change in her,” said Lee.
“She became weaker and there was a very fast decline, and she died around two weeks later. We weren’t expecting it to happen so soon, our world collapsed. However, I tried to maintain a sense of normality for the children, sticking to a routine and carrying on working.”
Left alone, Lee wanted to openly talk about Alex as he found that a helpful way to cope and the 43-year-old IT consultant joined a support group. Through that he met Anna, 47, four months after Alex’s death. She’d lost her husband Steve just over a year before.
“Losing a life partner is incredibly difficult, you wonder how you’ll get through it,” said Lee, who now lives with Anna near Reading. “When I met Anna, it was clear we had a lot of similarities”, he said. “We both had children of a similar age, lived nearby and had associations with some of the same places, and also had the shared experience of loss. At first, it was a friendship, but it blossomed into something more over the next few weeks.”
In the later stages of Alex’s illness, she became emotionally detached and he felt as if he’d been grieving her for a longer period. Lee didn’t see starting a new relationship as moving on, but rather moving forward.
“However, I did have times I worried about starting a new relationship,” said Lee. “I wondered if it was the right life change, and was especially concerned about how the girls might take it.”
But when Lee told Sophie and Lauren in July 2019, they were delighted. “The girls were very excited and accepting of the change,” he said.
When the first coronavirus lockdown was announced in March 2020, Lee moved into Anna’s home in Woodley, Berks, with his daughters. Then, in November, Lee took Anna out and proposed, before they tied the the knot in front of 20 family and friends at a local register office in February this year.
But Alex and Steve remain at the forefront of their minds. “We still talk about them both daily, and with the kids, too.”
Anna’s story
Steve Clark's final wish before passing away on his hospital bed was that he hoped his wife of a decade would find a new partner after he had died. It was a request she thought she could never grant.
“Steve told me I wasn’t good on my own, and said he didn’t want me to be alone for the rest of my life,” she recalls. “I told him I couldn’t do that, and I didn’t want another man.”
It was March 2018, and Steve, 48, was living out his final days after skin cancer had spread around his body. His death crumbled Anna’s world and the first year without her husband was extremely difficult.
“I was trying to deal with the grief of our sons Daniel and Sam as well as mine,” she says. “When the boys went to bed, I would write letters and diary entries to Steve to talk to him.”
On the anniversary of Steve’s death, Anna, who works as a Head of School attended a support group and soon met Lee. They began messaging each other regularly and a few weeks after the pair first met, Anna went for dinner with Lee and that night they kissed for the first time.
However, Anna admits that she felt guilty. “I hadn’t been looking to meet anyone romantically,” said Anna. “I had a lot of trouble with coming to terms with it and thinking, ‘is this right?’. I felt like I was cheating on Steve."
Anna and Lee met up with their kids as a group. Initially, the pair told the children they were just friends, but in July 2019 they sat down with them separately, saying they were a couple.
While Lee’s daughters took the news well, Daniel and Sam were upset. “With the boys, it seemed that having a new man around reminded them of their father,” said Anna.
Anna also had difficulties with some of Steve’s family. “From their perspective, it felt like I had forgotten Steve and no longer cared about him, but nothing could be further from the truth,” she added.
After Lee and Anna got engaged they bought a house together, moving to Charvil, Berkshire in October 2021. Anna also decided to keep Steve’s surname and add Lee’s after they married in February. She adds: “It was something important to Lee and I, it is about remembering past and present.”
She’s well aware there can still be a stigma around widowers and widows remarrying, however. “It’s a difficult concept for people to understand, but you can love two people at the same time,” she adds.
“I still talk about Steve and chat to him in my head - because I’m now married to Lee, it doesn’t mean I love Steve any less.”
For more information on Widowed and Young, see widowedandyoung.org.uk
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