Fathers-in-Law

Some very moving stories here.

My FiL was PoW in deepest Russia - possibly Siberia, but he never spoke about it - until 1948. They didn't get married till he got back and DH was born in 1950 when his mother was 38 and his father 43, his sister 2 years later.

FiL never spoke much at all, by all accounts he had been like that since he came back from Russia, but I think he was quite fond of me and of DS1.

His dementia was quite bad by the time DS3 was due. He never seemed to realise that we had a third son at all. My MiL was a tower of strength, coping with him and looking after DS1 & 2 whilst I was in hospital. She had been a trained nursery nurse, and loved babies, but in retrospect, it was quite selfish of us to expect her to look after them all as she was 77 at the time.

MiL was run over aged 81 when she popped out to the shops one day. FiL was bedridden by then, but he survived her by nearly a year.

My DH is a similar sort of FiL. He has known DiL1 for ages, as he taught at the same school that she and all our 3 boys went to. Like his father, he is not outwardly affectionate, but inside I can see he is bursting with pride and affection for the DGC and their mothers.

My F.i.L. was a man of few words and never really had much of a relationship with him. M.i.L. I quite liked . She was a hard worker and told it like it was. But neither of them had much of a relationship with our kids. Don't really know why. We did not live very near them, nor to my parents. Our choice!

My FIL was a lovely man. He had a wicked sense of humour and was so generous. There are many holidays we had when our children were small that we couldn't have afforded if he hadn't paid. My DH remembers as a child him literally giving him the food off his plate.
Sadly he died a few years ago and suffered from Alzheimer's. He was super relaxed with it and thankfully still retained his sense of humour till the end. My DH and I became his carers and we were only too happy to do it for such a humble, generous man.
He was really close to our DC and they adored him. We sure do miss him.

My 2nd husband dad I never met so I can't say much. He was much loved by my MiL and family. I am sure I would have got on with him. My 2nd Fil passed just as I met my 2nd husband. My 2nd MiL is lovely. Something that can't be said about the first one.

My ex deceased FiL I loved/love to bits. He was a good kind God fearing man who practiced his faith as a Christian should.

He knew what his son (the ex) was like and hated it. When I met my 2nd husband and we got engaged and on the morning we married he gave me his blessing from beyond the grave.

Before he passed a robin always appeared before someone died. After he passed a robin always appeared at times when I had his blessing. At times of the year you would not expect to see one too.

A truly wonderful man whom I still think about with much love and affection

I only knew my FiL for a few years, because he died of a stroke quite young. Husband's Mum also died very young, I never knew her.
He remarried eventually, but it didn't last long, and she left him. After which he was often at our house, brought me his washing, ate with us etc.
He was a cantankerous old so-and-so, and very chauvinistic. Better not to say any more.

Lovely Scottish FinL. Great fun (remember him dancing on a table at a party.) Unfortunately he was very ill for 10 years, but even on the day he died he was smiling and seemed so happy to see his family around him. Thank you for this post, lovely memories of such a lovely gentleman.

Mine was a nice enough chap but a bit snobbish. He was even-tempered, methodical and kindly, MIL is childlike, temperamental, domineering and rather silly - not very sophisticated. I often wonder what attracted them to each other - she was ten years younger and there were times when he pandered to her like a child. He did the traditional men's things - mowing the lawn, home/car maintenance, organising the finances.
When he passed away MIL had never written a cheque out, had no idea how to wire a plug, didn't even know what to do if all the lights went out. Not a very happy state of affairs really.

Blucat How sad for them that they have missed out on so much. My fil was an orphan of mixed nationality and never met his parents. He kept himself very much to himself and he and I were for ever strangers. He did not appear to bond with his sons, my dh's, children.

What a coincidence! Maggiemaybe.I am a Canadian but dad was British and spent war years in India in the RAF. Also a photographer! Perhaps they knew each other! My dad was a musician, and played in small groups while there. We have some very interesting photos from that time. his brother was also there I believe.

I never met my in-laws. My MIL died when my husband was just seventeen. His dad was never in the picture. I would have liked to have known them.

My FiL introduced me to my husband. Knew him for three years before I met my husband. My DiL's don't see my husband, their FiL,except for Christmas when one visits for an hour, one comes maybe every other year for 15mins, and the third doesn't visit Christmas or any other time. Very sad situation.

My fil was a very nice man, few old fashioned ideas but nice anyway. So was my mil too.

Wow the men seem miles ahead of the MILs.

My FiL opposed our marriage so vehemently that he and my DH nearly came to blows about it. He felt it would bring shame on the family for one of his sons to marry a white woman. (DH’s family are Asians from Uganda.) Two of his other three sons then married Englishwomen too!

Until we had kids, he used to walk out of a room if we walked in. Then he mellowed a bit, but he has always refused to visit our house. He had only been once, for half an hour, to pay his respects when my mum died. (He never met her - Mum only met my MiL once, when the latter came to see our new baby. MiL has visited us 3 times- once for each baby and once with FiL when Mum died.)

My in laws are in their 80s now and very frail. I used to feel resentful and often annoyed by their attitudes towards our family. Now I feel sorry for them, and find myself in the odd position of asking my husband to be patient with them. (He helps them as much as he can, but sometimes gets exasperated by their constant phone calls.) I’ve known them now for more than 40 years but still don’t feel I know them. It’s sad but you can’t force a relationship. I do feel that my girls missed out on a close and loving relationship with their granddad, as he never took a lot of interest or showed them affection, but that’s life.

Thank you all for these beautiful memories and tributes to these wonderful men. It's heartwarming and a nice change from the sadness in the news.

Mine can be great at times. He's genuinely there to help without any self gain behind his helping. But he is a different person when he's had a few and it does happen regularly. He becomes racist and a know it all. That's when I walk away because I can't handle that.

I also do not like the way he speaks to his wife. Like condescending.
Even though I don't get on with her, I still think he doesn't speak nicely to his wife and he should.

My FIL was a very straight talking no nonsense man who thought the world of his wife whom he'd met when she was 16. He was born in the US but his mother left her husband and brought him and his sister back to the UK when he was a baby - we never found out why as she would never talk about it when he was a child but it was a very brave thing to do back in the early 20's so there must have been a good reason. He grew up in the midlands and joined the army at 18 - was a tank commander, involved in the D-Day landings, the liberation of one of the concentration camps and then went on to serve in Korea. A year before he passed away my husband took him and met up with our adult sons at the tank museum in Bovington where he fascinated all those around him with explanations of how the displays really should be and where they'd got the parts in the wrong places as he had obviously been there and done that! When they went to lunch the staff wouldn't let them pay - they said it was such a privilege to have had a veteran in their company! He was not sentimental and sometimes drove my MIL mad especially when he dug up her flowerbeds to grow veg but he was a special person and we miss him as we do my own dad who was a wonderful FIL to my husband.

Unfortunately I didn't have the privilege as he died not long before our wedding. I did find him a very gentle, interesting and stimulating person in our short acquaintanceship.

I had the most wonderful FIL. He was a typical West of Scotland man, a thoroughly decent man, but not prone to showing affection. He had eight children and was definitely the "boss". His word was law.
However, for some reason he took to me and showed more affection and kindness to me than to either his children or my SILs.
When I wanted to go back to go back to teaching when my children were of school age, he encouraged me when my own mother told me it was a "lot of nonsense" and I should be at home for my children.
He offered to look after my children after school to allow me to do a post grad, even although it meant a fair walk and a bus journey. My own father, much older than my mother, never showed me any affection, but my FIL treated me like his own daughter. I, in return, loved him as a father. By enabling me to go back to work he allowed us to give our children a much more comfortable life, but most of all, saved my sanity, as I felt I had wasted my degree and felt my brain was turning to mush.

I only saw my in-laws every other weekend when H and I first met due to the distance between theirs and my parent'¥56s house (H and I both still living at home) H then moved to my town and we saw even less of them. He had never been a well man and was unable to work by then. He was very quiet, and I don't remember ever having a conversation with him. All I know about him is what H has told me. He died nearly 40 yrs ago a few years after H and I married.

My mother left my father and had a string of 'boyfriends' of varying types. One of them she stayed with for 14 years and he was the nicest man you could meet. He was kind, good, funny and never resented my sister and I but welcomed us into his family. He died this year and will be sadly missed.

He sounds like a lovely man and how nice of you to share it with us. However mine was a cad abit like Arthur Daley ducking and diving.

What a lovely thing to say about him. He sounds a very special man and you are very lucky to have him as your friend and father in law.

My MiL died just months after we married so FiL was left alone. The world around him had changed so much and he really didn't understand it. He was 39 before he became a father which was very old in those days.

He didn't have a bank account, wouldn't get into debt so wouldn't buy his council house. He trusted everyone which was often to his disadvantage e.g when the council sent someone to put insulation in his loft he let the 'nice young lad' take away his parents' dinner service which was so old it wasn't any use!

He didn't understand why my name was on the house deeds because "she won't work to pay off her half" but that wasn't nasty, it was just his understanding of the world.

He came to accept that he didn't understand us and loved his grandchildren to bits although I am not sure who was looking after who when they went to the shop to buy sweets! DS1 said that he stopped Grandad getting run over!

One day he told DH that I was making a very good job of bringing up the boys which upset DH a bit but it was probably true that I did all the parenting at that time.

He died in our house, had been poorly so DH brought him to stay with us and it was as simply as a light bulb going off, quick and painless for which we will always be grateful. We were expecting DS3 and were not sure how he felt about that but his neighbour told us he was over the moon.

He was difficult to understand but I loved him.

My father in law was a lovely old fashioned English gentleman who sacrificed a lot to care for his wife. The first time I visited he took me into the garden to show me how he was dealing with slugs! He loved to play board games with his grand children. He was always lovely to me ( so was my MiL who was very good at biting her tongue).