When Peter Leith’s dad died, the family wanted to make sure their mum was still motivated to meet new people – safely. He tells how they went about it.
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After dad died, we tried to persuade Mum to ‘downsize’ and move into a village, but she would not have a bar of it and insisted on staying in the house that had been far too big for the two of them.
After a few months, my sister Sue suggested to me that we might try to get mum interested in making new men friends. The mum of a friend of Sue’s had met a very nice man through a seniors’ dating site and they now living happily together.
We started ‘working on mum’, who, at first, would not have a bar of it. When we pointed out that she and dad had loved line dancing and she missed it, she started to come around a bit.
Sue, who is very good with computers and mobile phones, started ‘shopping around’ the dating sites for older people. As she pointed out, mum would need our help and we could keep an eye on potential suitors.
To start with, Sue actually pretended to be mum and got to ‘chat’ with quite a few older, single men and I sometimes helped.
Once we had got down to three ‘possibles’, we started to talk to mum about them and helped her to email them. She began to enjoy chatting to her new-found men friends and even went onto Skype.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, mum and Richard have become ‘a couple’ and have begun living together, in mum’s house. Richard is talking of selling his house.
You hear stories about nasty men who take advantage of lonely widows and steal their money and even their house, and we are making sure that doesn’t happen to our mum.
Do you have a story or an observation for Peter? Send it to sunday@yourlifechoices.com.au and put ‘Sunday’ in the subject line.
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