I Won't Give Up on Being a Princess [#2 Matching Site Report]

My decision to register on a matching site wasn't just because of what I wrote about last time, but also because of lessons I've learned from my current environment and the people around me. For example, in Japan, I didn't personally know anyone who remarried in their later years, but here, it's not uncommon.

Joan, a woman from the UK who used to teach me English, married for the third time at age 74, just a few months after losing her second husband. Since I hadn't been in the US for long, I was genuinely shocked: remarried for the third time at 74?! Four years later, her third husband also passed away, yet she smiled and said she had no regrets about her decision, adding, "I'm glad I got to enjoy four years of married life."

It felt like Joan taught me that here, you don't have to worry about age or timing; if a compatible person appears, you just live together as a couple.

One male acquaintance lost his wife to breast cancer, but six months later, he remarried a younger woman with children and is taking on a second life. He said he couldn't bear the loneliness, and that his new wife and children were his saviors.

⬆ The same goes for Mary Ann, who appears here.

⬆ And Pat, who appears in this article. She is also a woman who has been married three times and experienced three bereavements. Just the other day, I asked her:

"Bereavement is truly painful, so how did you manage to get the courage to remarry so many times? Weren't you afraid of experiencing the pain of loss again?"

Then, she said:

"It really is painful. But since I'm alive, as long as I'm healthy in body and mind, I want to love and be loved. It's very simple, isn't it?"

I see, I thought, it's the same as Joan.

Living in a world like this, I think of my mother, who lives alone in Japan.

My mother was 71 when my father passed away, so she was younger than Joan or Pat, and she was healthy and beautiful. In fact, after losing my father, my mother was popular with men of her own age in the neighborhood (or so it seemed to me) and was treated very well, so I think she could have easily found a boyfriend if she had wanted to.

However, in Japan, she probably worried about what people would think, and there seemed to be a sense that "it's unseemly at her age."

Even though she was worn out by my selfish father while he was alive and constantly complained to me, her daughter, she continues to live with him even after his passing. After all, even though 13 years have passed since he died, her day begins with her greeting his Buddhist altar every morning with, "Good morning. Please take care of me today. *Ching*," followed by offering him breakfast (including eggs or salmon).

No matter what she buys, she offers it to my father at the altar before eating it herself, so to someone like me who has no religious faith, it's almost eerie. My mother wasn't religious to begin with, but since my father died, she has been living happily with the "father who moved into the Buddhist altar."

Of course, since that brings my mother peace of mind, it's not for me to say anything, but every time I return home and see her, I feel half-amused and half-sad. From my perspective, seeing people here who don't obsess over age and don't give up on love, it even looks like she is bound by a ghost even after her husband's death.

My husband, while he was alive, would look at my mother and smile bitterly, saying, "You can cherish memories, but you don't have to live with the dead." It's true, I have complicated feelings about my mother, who serves my father as if he were still alive. It might look like "beautiful marital love," but since we live in an era of longevity, as a daughter, I think she could have found someone to be with at the right time and enjoyed a different kind of life over these past 13 years.

A woman who has lost her husband is called a widow, but the meaning isn't just a woman who has lost her husband; it is said to contain a misogynistic nuance rooted in the patriarchal system, implying that she should have ended her life with her husband and that it is "shameful to be the only one still living." Watching my mother, I feel the influence of such old values, for better or worse.

Then again, at my mother's age, she might have learned that it's better not to have a "troublesome Showa-era old man" around... 😅

Because I have a mother like that, I have been a good wife and wise mother, serving my husband. I've never once had my husband make me coffee, and I've never once had him help me take out the trash, so while I'm still alive, I want to experience having someone bring coffee to my bed when I wake up. This is my second chance, and I'm going to find it! I'm aiming to be a princess!! 😁