Laura Mardovich, who lost former husband Ed on Sept. 11, gets married to family friend Robert Balemian at St. Patrick's Church in Huntington, L.I. - N.Y. Post: Mary McLoughlin Posted on 04/14/2002 1:03:20 AM PDT by alisasny
9/11 WIDOW REMARRIES
| Laura Mardovich, who lost former husband Ed on Sept. 11, gets married to family friend Robert Balemian at St. Patrick's Church in Huntington, L.I. - N.Y. Post: Mary McLoughlin |
Wearing white and beaming broadly, Laura Mardovich married family friend Robert Balemian Friday.
People exchange their wedding vows every day, but what is unusual about this marriage is that Laura is a Sept. 11 widow - perhaps the first to remarry.
The priest who pronounced Laura and Robert man and wife saw their union as an uplifting sign for a parish that lost 18 people in the terrorist attacks - a sign that Laura is moving on with her life.
But to some friends and relatives, seven months is a short time to grieve - and they are stunned by the marriage.
Their feelings are all the more intense because Laura, 41, and her first husband, Ed Mardovich, 42, had what by all accounts was a storybook union.
He was the president of the securities division of Euro Brokers, a thriving investment firm, and the couple and their four children lived in tony Lloyd Harbor on Long Island's North Shore.
"They were a dream couple with beautiful children," said Robert Nogrady, a longtime friend.
The night before the attacks, Laura and Ed celebrated their 16th anniversary at Alain Ducasse, the exclusive Manhattan restaurant.
Afterward, Laura recalled that for the first time she could remember, Ed seemed satisfied with his life.
"Nothing compares to that night we had," she said. "He just had that look, like, ‘Maybe I am kind of special.' We said we would remember that night when we're 80 years old."
But it was not to be.
The next morning Ed went to his office on the 84th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. When the first hijacked plane ripped into the WTC's north tower, Ed called Laura on his cell phone to say he was safe.
He never came home - one of 60 Euro Brokers employees to die on Sept. 11.
After Ed's death, Laura changed.
"You could tell she was moving on," Nogrady said.
She closed out the family's brokerage account without saying goodbye to Nogrady, who handled it.
"I was a little hurt," he said.
She didn't return calls from relatives, who interpreted this as meaning she didn't want reminders of the past.
And she began seeing Balemian, a family friend and a widower with a child.
The couple got married at St. Patrick's Church in Huntington and toasted their union at a reception at the Waldorf-Astoria. They left on their honeymoon yesterday.
The Rev. Steve Berbig, who performed the marriage ceremony, said it is common for widows and widowers to remarry quickly because they are used to being married.
"Widows remarrying is routine - but this was a little more special. It was uplifting and positive for everyone around.
"There was an understood silence of what happened before," but the wedding's focus was "the present and now," Berbig said.
"As a priest, I was so happy for this couple. It was a great personal experience for me. People were very happy for them."
One relative, however, was anything but happy. "I don't understand," she said. "I can see her wanting to go on with her life. I always wanted her to remarry, but I never thought she would do it this way."
There are four grieving children involved. They are hurting, and a new stepfather and their mother's preoccupation with him is NOT helping them cope, believe me.
Whatever makes them happy?
In these modern times, we have learned to never let anything come between us and self-indulgence.
I don't see this remarriage as a loss of values at all. There is no moral code being breached here. These are strangers, and you do not know their hearts... The judgment and assumptions YOU are willing to make about their integrity is beyond unfair.
Again, I don't see that she did anything wrong, except not follow arbitrary legalistic rules. People are different. For some people, 6 months is enough time. For others, 6 years is not long enough.
People who lose a spouse almost never think clearly until long after the loss.
And unless checked by the restraint imposed by social mores, grieving people will often be at the mercy of their own confusion and make a serious mistake.
The desire to find another mate as soon as possible after the death of a spouse is akin to being on the rebound after being rejected by a suitor (or, yuck, a lover).
It will do the children, relatives, friends, and society as a whole no good when this couple next will go through the further agony of divorce.
A wise man or woman would never get emotionally or legally entangled with a recent widow/widower or someone on the rebound.
The beauty of common mores is that there are never strangers among those who share the values of a strong society.
Actions are scripted within certain parameters formed through generations of trial-and-error.
Marriage is a pact between two people and the society in which they live.
When someone violates those values, they had better be prepared to justify their actions to other members of their society.
The onus is on them to explain their action to me and others who find their action unseemly.
Few would challenge a widow's need to re-create a stable home life for herself and four children (and this groom was a widower with a child) but what people don't like seeing is an attitude of "change partners and dance".
It's amazing how many people (especially men) are lost at their wives funerals but remarry so quickly that it makes the first spouse appear not only replacable but almost "disposable".
When people are widowed young with children they have different "housekeeping and homemaking" needs. We can only hope that this marriage is not just a rebound attempted in hopes of short-cutting the complete grieving process and ultimately, if a divorce ensues, creating MORE problems for the families than re-marriage is thought to solve.
As I said above, I lost my mother, and did not condemn her grieving husband for finding love again. Lesser souls may have, and caused unbelievable torment to the heart of a good man. Incidentally, my mother was not his first love to be taken from him. He had lost his first wife to cancer also. The man knew grief, and also the passing nature of joy.
Your philosophy as you have illustrated in your comments, does not make the world a better place, IMHO, which may be a flaw you want to consider, maybe not. But I don't need any lessons from you on how the grieving should behave. On this I have my own experience.
She found a family friend she knew well, who was a widower from the WTC attacks as well. Her kids needed a father figure-- good for her for picking one out.
To you nosy jerks judging her for what she did, take a hike. It's her life, and what she did was completely moral.
I have news for you -- that was a judgement you just pronounced.
Where is your source for that?
Death of a spouse is a very sobering event. We married a month after her divorce was final. She got a divorce in the judges chambers on a hospital gurney. This was 6 months after I buried my wife. Her marriage actually ended 18 months earlier from abandonment. A woman raising two kids on minimum wages in a house without water. The jerk pulled out the plumbing. But who suffered? The kids? They were due to her extended hospital stay on their way likely to a foster home. The threat had done been made by those keeping them. Yea a real fine place after mommy gets sick. My girlfriend? Likely on her way to a life in a nursing home. Good place for a young woman to be right? She had no family to help her. I had done formed a love bond to her. I knew in time we would marry and so did she.
Though we are not Catholic some Nuns counceled her in the hospital. They knew and understood well the situation. The kids at the time were with less than desirable persons caring for them. The day we married my wifes parents disowned her. Not that they ever actually care for her anyway. 4 lifes 4 futures hanging in the balance of a moral question.
Prayers were said and answers came fast very fast. So did truth. We married in a hospital chappel about 3 months into her 6 month hospital stay. The kids? I took them to live with me at my parents house till she got out of the hospital. I learned fast how to be a parent.
Now had I listened to others and not my convictions placed on me what would have happened? She would be in the nursing home she slaved in. The kids likely seperated and in foster care or worse with their dad.
But stop looking a negatives and look at what was intended. There is the key to it. When you asked Thy will be done be prepared to except it. She has a husband who loves her no matter what. Remember the vows in sickness and in health? Well neither of us enjoy health so that's no biggie. We've had some rough times sure but you either grow together and bond deeper through sharing your adversities or you split apart. That is true in any marriage not just this situation. The kids? They got to see what a loving family was supposed to be and now enjoy that for themselves. Abuse cycles were broken and lives changed all for the better. No it's not been easy and anything worth having never comes easy does it?
It's so very ironic to me the persons who were against our marriage were persons who never treated her right to begin with. 17 years in November and I would put our marriage as very secure and anchored. I see the good and realize sometimes it takes distance of time to understand why tragidies happen. I also understand to listen to the convictions of the spirit and to obey them.
May you never know the pain of being a widower with 4 children.
There but for the grace of God goes many of us ambrose.
Most of us are blessed to find love once in our lifetimes. If this woman managed to find it a second time, and the man is to be a good father to these chilren, then that's a good thing.
I pray I never know the pain this woman, and the rest of the Sept. 11th widowers knew that day. Who are you or I to criticize them remarrying?
Peace...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.