When I married a widower, I made space for his late wife's legacy

This First Person column is the experience of the author Christy Ann Conlin, who married a widower and now finds that her life is enriched by his late wife's legacy. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

This story is about the relationship I have with the ghost of my predecessor, my husband Andy Brown's first wife, Meg Sircom. Meg died of breast cancer at age 43, when her children were two and five. I have become second mother to these two boys, who have no memory of their first mother.

This is not a literal ghost story, but the story of developing a relationship with Meg's memory from the stories I've heard and our shared family.

What I didn't expect is that I would also form a relationship with Meg, who has become something of an invisible friend to me. I've gained a sense of her from family stories and from spending time with her sisters in the places Meg loved.

Over a decade ago, I was a single parent of a five-year-old child, living hand-to-mouth on a dead end street in a small town in Nova Scotia. Struggling to glue my life back together, I was known as the strange feminist lady who came home to have an illegitimate baby.

I was clinically depressed and struggling with an anxiety disorder. My life was a bag of broken pieces. I had lost my sense of self and purpose.

Then I met Andy on a blind date set up by friends. Andy, a widower, was single parenting two young boys in Wolfville, N.S., with some help from his large loving family of eccentric in-laws. It was a miracle we met.

I lived an hour away from Andy. We were living parallel lives, breathlessly spinning in the exhausting gerbil wheel of single parenting, working full time, and looking after many elderly family members. I couldn't afford a babysitter and had no social life. Andy ran a publishing company by himself, worked seven days a week and often travelled. I was immersed in caregiving of young and old, and the grind of my precarious work life. Without our wise friends and the blind date, our paths would not have crossed. 

Eventually we married. The children shared our vows. There is not a day that I am not grateful for those friends and that magic date.

We all live in a big yellow house overlooking a pond. It's the house Andy bought with Meg just before she died of breast cancer. This is where we began weaving our families together. 

One of Meg's abandoned dreams was creating a garden by the old stone wall. When I first moved in, I found purple irises growing. This was the first time I had a sense of Meg's presence. Meg had also planted a few tiny lilacs which are now huge bushes. 

Along with the house came my inherited in-laws: Meg's three sisters — Libby, Kate and Gill — and her mother, Hilary. They all live nearby. We've become close. Meg was the third born of four sisters who were close in both childhood and adulthood. 

They were bonded by a love of joyous living in the present, without residing in the past. They grieved Meg's illness and death like a Greek tragedy and then moved forward into life with precious memories in their hearts. 

Meg's favourite photo of herself was of her tree planting in northern British Columbia, long before she was a mother. I've framed this photo of Meg and put it on the shelf with all our family photos, so she'll be there for the children too.

While I am different from Meg, I have the same deep love for nature, adventure, family, music and the literary arts. Meg's desire for the boys to be raised with these values has blended perfectly with my own approach to parenting. 

I was smashed in the middle of two brothers, so I had always longed for sisters. We've created joyful times together, especially by the ocean at Crosstrees, the Sircom family cottage on the South Shore. 

At a gathering to celebrate Granny's birthday at Crosstrees, Granny stood on the deck with Libby, Kate and Gill. Granny gave a toast. Her voice broke. She composed herself and continued, "and to those no longer with us." Kate extended her arm, as though clasping the shoulder of Meg, the sister who had died, whose untimely death had opened up the space for me.

Granny looked at me as I stood holding my camera. In her face was a deep love, that I'd come into their lives and become second mother to the boys; that my son, my brothers and aunts, were all a marvellous extension of this rambling family.

I could see the depth of Granny's sorrow for her daughter who had died young, the entwining of gratitude and heartache for all she had lost, and all she had gained. 

I have framed this photograph with Kate's arm embracing an empty space. The only two people not visible in the photo are Meg…and me. It's an accidental selfie, so to speak. 

We are not there and yet we are both there. Meg's spirit is gently woven into the luminous fabric of that summer evening. And me, behind the camera, part of the family, and yet in a liminal space between two times.

It's a sacred responsibility to be the second mother to children whose first mother died. Our history is a creation story more than one of origin, the tale of my "hybrid" family, the children and in-laws I inherited.

My family journey is an affirmation of the beauty and worthiness in life and relationships which are salvaged and repurposed. 

What I've learned from Meg is that even when we die, a part of us remains here, defined by our love and relationships, the memories we have left with people, and the stories our loved ones tell of us.

About the producer

Christy Ann Conlin is a writer, broadcaster and mixed media artist. Her writing has been published in numerous publications including Guernica, Brick, Geist and The Globe and Mail. She co-created and produced the national summer radio show, CBC Fear Itself, with producer Kent Hoffman. Conlin's short fiction has been long listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the American Short Fiction Prize. Watermark, her short story collection, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award. She lives in seaside Nova Scotia with her sprawling hybrid family and their cat, Orangie-Orange. Christy Ann's latest novel is The Speed of Mercy.

This documentary was produced with Kent Hoffman.