The loss of a beloved partner, whether suddenly or after a long illness, can rip apart every aspect of your life.
Suddenly the team you had built is down to one and not only are you dealing with your own overwhelming grief but often trying to cope bringing up devastated children.
And, no matter how old you are when you’re bereaved, should that mean the end of your romantic life? Or, when you have loved so deeply, do you yearn for that again?
The desire to find solace and companionship is hardly surprising, but when it comes to moving on, many ask how soon is too soon?
It is a question many people have faced, including actor Damian Lewis who has gone public with a new relationship with singer Alison Mosshart - 14 months after his wife Helen McCrory’s shock death from cancer.
Damian, 51, has said that Helen, who died in April 2021, had joked about him having lots of girlfriends after she died - while campaigner Deborah James also told husband Sebastien to find love again before she passed away.
Widowers are more likely to move on than widows, with statistics showing that 29% of the former get into a new union within a decade compared to 7% of the latter.
But is it all that easy? Here, Lee Cripps and Anna Cripps-Clark, share their stories of finding love again after loss...
Lee’s story
It looks like a charming cartoon drawing of their happy family, Lee, wife Anna, the four children they have between them and their pet dog standing in front of their home in a human pyramid formation.
But if you look more closely at the picture, which was a wedding gift from Lee to Anna, you will see two robins perched on a window ledge, each with a letter on their breasts.
The tiny A and S represent the two members of the family who are sadly missing - Lee’s first wife Alex and Anna’s husband Steve. Both tragically lost to cancer.
Lee met Alex in 1996 while they were working in a local supermarket, and they quickly hit it off, becoming engaged after a year. They married in 2003.
“Alex was kind and helpful, and would always go the extra mile for people,” recalls Lee.
After Alex and Lee had twins Sophie and Lauren, both 11, marketing worker Alex threw herself into being a busy working mum. But their happy life family suddenly collapsed when Alex died from a cancerous brain tumour in January 2019 at the age of just 40.
The tangerine-sized tumour had been discovered in February 2014 and Alex had undergone several treatments including surgeries and chemotherapy. However, her decline towards the end was rapid, something Lee says was especially hard.
“Over Christmas 2018 there was a big change in her,” says 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 had collapsed. However, I tried to maintain a sense of normality for the children, sticking to a routine and carrying on working.”
Left alone with their daughters and struggling with his loss, Lee wanted to openly talk about Alex as he found that a helpful way to cope with the grief of losing her 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,” says Lee, who now lives with Anna near Reading.
And despite the fact they were both still grieving, they made a connection. “When I met Anna, it was clear we had a lot of similarities”, he says. “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.”
Lee didn’t see starting a new relationship as moving on, but rather as moving forward. In the later stages of Alex’s illness, she became emotionally detached and he says it felt as if he’d been grieving her for a longer period.
“However, I did have times I worried about starting a new relationship,” says 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 says.
After telling their children, Lee and Anna told other close family members. “Reactions on the whole were very positive,” says Lee. “Although Alex had never told me directly to move on after she died, I later found out she’d told my mum that she hoped I wouldn’t stay on my own.
“I am still close with Alex’s parents Tony and Irene too. They are very supportive and have taken Anna in.”
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 2020, Lee took Anna out for a meal at a local restaurant and proposed. The ring had two blue sapphires and two pink sapphires to represent Anna’s sons Daniel, 14, and Sam, 11, and Lee’s twins.
In February this year Lee and Anna tied the knot in front of 20 family and friends at a local registry office.
But Alex and Steve remain at the forefront of their minds. “We still talk about them both daily, and with the kids too.”
While people may criticise him for remarrying so soon after losing his first wife, Lee says you can’t predict the future - or tell your heart what to feel.
“One thing losing partners has told Anna and I is that tomorrow isn’t promised, so why should you go through life saying you can’t find happiness again?,” he says.
“You don’t have a finite amount of love to give. Loving a new person doesn’t change the love you have for your partner who died.”
Anna’s story
As he lay in his hospital bed, Steve Clark knew he had only a few days left and told his wife of ten years, Anna his final hopes and wishes - he wanted her to find a new partner after he’d gone.
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, causing devastating seizures and mobility problems.
His death crumbled Anna’s world and the first year without her husband was extremely tough.
“I was trying to deal with the grief of our sons Daniel and Sam as well as mine,” she says. “When the boys when to bed, I would write letters and diary entries to Steve to talk to him. It helped me get the cycling emotions I was feeling on paper.”
On the anniversary of Steve’s death, Anna, who works as a Head of School attended a support group and soon met Lee.
Sparks quickly flew and they began messaging each other regularly. 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 initially she felt guilty.
“I hadn’t been looking to meet anyone romantically,” says 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 to start with.
“It took a while to reconcile the fact that being with Lee was OK because Steve isn’t here anymore, and I am still young and I have a life to still live.
“I saw that Lee and I could help each other with our children and our grief too as he was in the same boat as me. I also felt Steve would have been at peace with it, as he’d told me to find somebody else.”
Anna and Lee met up with their kids, going on day trips 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 now 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,” says Anna. “That was the difficult thing, particularly with Daniel. He saw it as he wanted his dad back and didn’t want this other person in his life.
“Things improved slowly - I gave the boys time to talk about how they felt.”
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 says.
“I thought very carefully about what I was doing with Lee and talked to a lot of people about it. I came to the conclusion that it was my life and I just had to do what felt right.”
Anna says moving Lee and his daughters into her home during lockdown helped them become a happy unit.
“Living with each other helped, as the boys got to know Lee very well,” says Anna. “Daniel began to see that Lee was there to support him.”
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
