Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Archives => Archived Topics => Topic started by: Thirsty Duck on May 13, 2020, 04:20:24 PM
-
For those of you who connected with offwhitelily; I just saw on FB that she passed away yesterday. No other information that I can find; she was only 52. Her obituary notification is on the funeral home website, but nothing more. It's been a while since I last saw her in person, but in the early days we would meet for coffee and support each other. I will miss her sense of humour and spunk :(
-
Terrible news. I’m so sad to read this.
-
Thank you for letting us know ThirstyDuck. I had chatted with her on FB but had not for a while. So very very sad. :'(
-
I just heard from a mutual friend that she had been battling cancer for quite some time. So sad.
-
Oh no! Prayers for her family and all of you who were close to her. :'(
-
I saw that too. :'(
-
I'd been chatting with her for a bit, particularly prior to my choir trip to Dublin last fall. She had been undergoing chemo and radiation treatments for cancer for a while and was joking with me about her wig selection.
I saw the news this morning when I woke up....
Please keep her kids (1 D-13 and 1 S-11) and family close in their grieving....
-
I didn't know offwhitelilly very well but we had exchanged some offline messages, the last just a couple of months ago. I knew about her breast cancer but her last message, entirely in character, was a positive one. I felt so angry about hearing that she had died, really angry bc she was a splendid kind of human. Sassy, funny, full of love for her young teenage kids, creative, optimistic, tough minded and tender hearted. She refinished furniture, played the guitar and laughed a lot at the ridiculousness of MLC. I admired her very much.
But i think offwhitelilly would not want me to be angry. I think she would hope that her wider family will step up for her young teenage kids and that her textbook MLC man child of a h will do better. I think she would want those of you with kids to hug them close and laugh often. I think she would want every single one of us, including me, to punch our inner sense of victim on the nose every time it pops up. I think she would want us to know in our bones that each one of us can make a better life if we step further away from these broken people.....and that we matter enough to do that. And that a bit of sassy humour is a fine ingredient for life.
-
I too learned of this via FB and am devastated at the news
OWL was a fantastic example of an LBS moving forward with her life and her ability to step back and see MLC and her MLCer for what he was.
She wrote so eloquently and powerfully that I was moved to use some of her phrases and vocabulary with my H and boy did they work.
She will be much missed and I cannot imagine the anguish her children must be going through.
I think she would want every single one of us, including me, to punch our inner sense of victim on the nose every time it pops up.
Couldn't have put it better myself Treasur and this applies not to just MLC but everytime we feel victim or hard done by in life. I hope that all of us on here learn from her and all of us go back and look over her threads for she refused to play victim and she lived the life that she could with fortitude and grace.
RIP OWL - much love xx
-
offwhitelily passed away May 12, 2020.
She was 52.
UGH - this is so sad.
Did she have the big C?
-
Sad to hear of OWL's passing. So young to die.
-
I saw this today too - thanks UM for posting it on FB,
its so sad.
I am going to leave this thread here so people can post on here.
-
I have been in daily contact with her for the last couple of years. Since the pandemic started, we would send each other the funny memes and items to find some brevity in this current reality. No earth-shattering conversations just every day life stuff. She had a partial mastectomy a year or so ago and often joked about that and handled the chemo as best as one can. She was complaining of a high fever for the past couple weeks. With the current situations, she tried to get appointments and when she got one, the doctors wanted her to get some tests. One of the last conversations with her said that they were putting in a drain. She didn’t lead on about any severity of it. As of last week, she sent me a picture of her hospital room and classified it as “fancy” because it had free TV! That was the person I want to remember. She lived a life of many setbacks but never let anyone know that. One passing comment she made a little while back was if anything happened to her, she was concerned about her two children, because she wasn’t sure if her MLC H was able to handle them in his condition. I will continue praying that these children get the support and comfort they need at this difficult time! RIP to a special, sweet, funny and awesome person!
-
I'm so sorry to have to inform everyone that one of the members, offwhitelily, has passed away. :'(
She was a member since 2013 and had a great sense of humor. She dealed with her husband's MLC like a champ.
I met her through this forum 2 years ago and we have been in close contact ever since. We've never met in person, but had endless conversations on the phone and by chat. A beautiful soul, an amazing mother, a great friend and an awesome LBS/wife. Her h came home so fortunately she was still around to experience that. He has to take care of their two beautiful kids, so it's a good thing he exited the tunnel "in time".
I'm not sure if I did this correctly because I don't post much, but I thought this had to be told.
Sweet, sweet owl ... you've touched so many hearts on this forum and in rl. You will never be forgotten. Rest in peace. 'Till we meet again, my dear friend.
Love,
Flab
-
I have been meaning to make the time to update my thread on here for quite some time.I certainly never expected it would be the passing of one of the most remarkable women I never had the privilege of meeting in person that would finally prompt me to type.
Even though we knew she was battling a nasty form of cancer,it’s still such shock that she has gone.Off White Lily(whom Pumpkin and I always referred to as OWL,for her wisdom)and I connected soon after her arrival here on HS and have remained in contact ever since.We last touched base a few weeks ago after the Nova Scotia tragedy.She said her latest round of treatment was going well.But that was OWL for ya.Always positive in the face of adversity.No matter how extreme that adversity was.When I was actively mentoring here,I would often point mentees towards her thread as an example of how to stand,complete with exceptional wit and humour.OWL was a model for retaining a positive outlook;enforcing healthy boundaries;never losing sight of the big picture and most importantly,never losing your self-respect.OWL had much to teach me.She was the epitome of a lady who always knew what she was worth.Her H's MLC was certainly not going to rob her of that.Pumpkin and I used to joke with her that one day,when her H was well and fully healed from his MLC,we would all have to get together over some really good wine and swap crazy MLC stories.I truly believed that day would come.
I am struggling to wrap my head around this tragedy.Life can be so terribly unfair.Here was a lady with two beautiful children and a husband who seemed to making some consistent forward movement and then she gets hit with this dreadful diagnosis.She cared so very deeply about her kids.Always concerned with their well-being during her husbands crisis…..never her own.A totally selfless lady.Ceaselessly thinking of others before herself.Just one example…..OWL and myself shared a big love for Eurythmics/ Annie Lennox’s music.She knew how excited we were to be going to London to see Annie perform in early 2018.She received her diagnosis while we were on this vacation yet she purposely waited till the concert was over and we were headed back home before she let us know what was going on.This was OWL…this was who she was …she was more worried she would spoil our trip with the terrible news then with her own need to reach out for love and comfort.
My heart goes out to her family and especially her beloved children.
I am gonna miss her friendship.Time to to crack open a nice bottle of champagne and spin some Eurythmics vinyl to celebrate Off White Lily.I know she would have liked that.
-
RainbowGal,
What a beautiful tribute to her.
I wish I had known her.
-
What a loving tribute Rainbowgal, I envy you that you got to know her so well
I will be forever in her debt, as she unknowingly (at the time but I did tell her later) got me through the worst MLC xmas (2016). I remember I was utterly consumed with sadness and then I found her story and ended up reading all of her threads and laughing instead of crying at the antics of her H and his weird German OW.
I was willing her to have a happy ending and when I got to the end of her threads and her H was still in MLC, I asked on here if anyone knew what happened to her and to my delight she popped back here and gave us some updates and we then connected off the site.
She had the most gifted way of not only seeing the funny side of her H's MLC, but being able to write about it in the way she did, though I am sure there was obviously a lot of sadness behind the humour, she preferred to concentrate on the ridiculous and to build a loving stable life for her and her kids. She was not only gorgeous she was also a real classy strong kind funny loving selfless woman who, as you said Rainbowgal was the epitome of what an LBS should be, there were boundaries without bitterness.
What OWL did was help me to change my view of MLC and to look beyond the utter sadness shock and devastation to see the sometimes ridiculousness of it all, which in turn helped me to not take everything personally, she reminded me I was still the sane one, it was my MLC'er who had lost the plot! This helped me to start moving forward and to detach most of the time...….
Sadly I was never more than a 'facebook' friend
How I envy you Rainbowgal for knowing her so well in 'real life'
I was so sad to read she died, they say "The good die young"...….. and in OWL's case that surely is true but what a huge hole she will leave in this world and the lives of everyone who knew her and particularly her poor children who she adored.....
I don't post on here anymore but I had to come back and pay tribute to an amazing lady.....and thank her once again for sharing her story, her humour and outlook which started to change my views of MLC...………….
Offwhitelily you helped me more than you will ever know, certainly more than I told you and I will never ever forget you x
-
I only knew her through this site, but send sincere condolences to all of you who knew her much better than I.