Hey everyone,
My fiancee's dad was gravely ill since this past November. He passed on Tuesday the 27th. It's been a long difficult road for everone involved including my future mother in law and her three children. We spent every day in the ICU since he got sick. We live, eat and breathe his illness and now his passing. Christmas and New Year's have passed and I have neglected my own family and my work too. Now that he has passed the Hindu religion requires 13 days of mourning and praying every night. I feel like I am going crazy. I told my fiancee today that I was not going tonight and staying home to rest. His mother wants us to be at her side 24 hours a day. She calls our apartment and my fiancee runs out the door either with or without me. I am trying to be there for my fiancee but feel completely comsumed by this. I feel like I need a break. Am I a bad person? My fiancee and I are not even speaking now. Our relationship was not solid even before this crisis. We always fought a lot about his family. Please help.
This is a bad time in his family's life. As his FIANCEE, you are certainly not required to participate, but if you take your relationship seriously, you might want to take this seriously as well. By the way, are you Hindu as well?
Well, if you hope to have a happy marriage with this man, you must sign on to his cultural beliefs. Hinduism is a far cry from Catholicism, and they do things VERY differently. A Hindu co-worker of mine took a whole month off work when his father died to return to India to settle his affairs and mourn with his family, so 13 days sounds not so bad. I also think that women in the Hindu culture are very dependent on their menfolk (husbands and sons), so your widowed mother-in-law will probably be looking to her son and family for care and attention in the future. If that is not something you are interested in, you might want to reconsider. When you marry a man, you marry his ENTIRE FAMILY, living and dead, and you better like each and every one of them!!!
