He Wants to Give My Daughter a Dead Woman’s Name
Please post me anonymously.
Two years ago, my mom introduced me to a handsome widower — the son of her friend from church. We got married. His wife passed away seven years ago. When we started dating, I accepted his past, his pain, and the invisible space a dead person can still take up in someone’s life.
We recently had a baby girl. Our daughter. But ever since she was born, something has been deeply bothering me. My husband is the only one who sees a strong resemblance between our baby and his late wife. He says it all the time. He studies her face, her expressions, like he’s searching for proof. I don’t see it. Not at all. But in his eyes, it’s so obvious it’s almost unsettling. Sometimes he whispers, “It’s unbelievable… it’s her.”
At first, I thought it was just emotions talking. But little by little, his behavior has become more intense. He calls our daughter by his late wife’s name. He talks about her in the present tense, like she’s still here. He has kept all her belongings untouched, her pictures still hanging on the walls. He even sprays her perfume in our bedroom — especially when we’re about to be intimate.
But my biggest issue is about our daughter’s name.
I thought he just wanted to give her the same first name. But no. He wants to give her his late wife’s exact full name. The entire name. And he also wants her to be baptized on his late wife’s birthday. To him, it’s a tribute. To me, it feels like calling the spirit of the dead onto my child.
It’s been four months since our daughter was born, and we still haven’t registered her birth because we can’t agree. Every conversation turns into a fight. I want our child to have her own identity. He seems to want to write the memory of a dead woman into the life of a newborn.
But what troubles me the most is this question that keeps haunting me:
Is this normal… or am I the strange one here?
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