I lost my husband, Aidan, five months ago in a car accident. We\u2019d been together for nearly a decade. I loved him more than words \u2014 he was my best friend, my partner in crime, my fellow weirdo, and most importantly: my biggest supporter in being childfree.Yes, childfree. Always have been, always will be. We had that talk on our third date. Neither of us wanted kids. Ever. Period. Full stop. But his mother \u2014 my delightful MIL, Miriam (64F) \u2014 has never accepted that. From the beginning, she would say things like,Oh, honey, you\u2019ll change your mind when the clock starts ticking.\u201d\u201cYou\u2019re not a real woman until you\u2019ve held your baby.\u201d\u201cAidan was born to be a father \u2014 he just doesn\u2019t know it yet.\u201dWe lived in Aidan\u2019s house \u2014 a beautiful old place he bought before we married. Technically, it was in his name, but he insisted I treat it like ours. He even said he planned to add me to the deed eventually. That never happened before he died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the funeral, Miriam basically moved in. She claimed she was grieving and couldn\u2019t be alone. I understood \u2014 I truly did. But that understanding quickly turned to horror.About a month after Aidan passed, she sat me down and said, \u201cIt\u2019s time you think about your responsibility to this family.\u201d I blinked. \u201cMy what?\u201d\u201cYou owe it to Aidan to carry on his legacy. He gave me a reproductive material sample last year. He knew how important grandchildren were to me. You can still have a child. Give me a piece of him back.\u201d I nearly dropped my tea.\u201cMiriam, I\u2019m not a walking uterus you can rent for nine months. I\u2019m a widow \u2014 your son\u2019s widow. I am not going to be your personal incubator for some twisted shrine baby.\u201d She stood up, red in the face.\u201cYou ungrateful woman. I took you in when you had nothing. I fed you. I comforted you. And now you want to erase my son like he never existed?\u201d \u201cI loved him,\u201d I said. \u201cBut loving him doesn\u2019t mean I have to become a single mother to a child I never wanted. You\u2019re not asking me to honor him \u2014 you\u2019re asking me to betray myself.\u201dThen came the bombshell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I lost my husband, Aidan, five months ago in a car accident. We\u2019d been together for nearly a decade. I loved him more than words \u2014 he… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":383,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36968,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36966\/revisions\/36968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}