I have been reading dear Basanti's travails.
Believe me it is the plight of 90% of fauji widows i.e. we don't know how to deal with a husband-less future.
Reason :-
Some husbands do not prepare their wife about the nitty-gritty of dealing with this eventuality. Those husbands who do want to prepare their wife, it is the wife who refuses to listen. The very thought of widowhood is horrifying. They want no part of this advice.
I plead guilty to being one of this category. About 6 months before the final Jerry seemed to have strong intuition that he was nearing the end. He assiduously started rearranging information into different files, and added a section "What to do" in each file. He found that my DOB was written wrongly. He visited Allahabad personally & got it corrected.
Then he got after my blood & insisted that I sit with him & understand what to do.
Like an idiot I was furious & refused to listen to him. Even after several fights I refused point blank to have any such discussion. I was mortified at the very thought of being left alone & was dead sure that I will go first.
But that is exactly what happened. I was devastated, totally confused & out of my mind. Only other widows know what this grief is like.
But I was also lucky.
My son being a fauji knew everything. Àfter about a month he sat with me & opened all the files prepared by J. He explained to me all the procedures. Took me to the banks & put the procedure for pension into motion. Bcoz of him the banks did everything quickly. He even got me an I Card from Zila Parishad which is proving very useful. Jerry had made all bank accounts "Joint Accounts". That helped immensely. My son liased with the bank & consolidated everything in my name. Electricity, telephone & gas
connection & other such things were transferred to my name.
Even then it took one month to do everything.
I just *could not* have done all that on my own.
*And friends all this when I am supposed to be cat's whiskers*.
What I have written above is for husbands.
*Please* please, put all your papers in order & *teach* your wife all that she will have to do even if you have to bind her hand & foot to familiarise her with what is what.
Make a list of "Action to be taken" & explain it to her. This, particularly if your son/daughter is not a fauji.
Jerry used to say, "Men almost always go before the women". In our gt2gs
I notice there are more single ladies than single men.
If that is the design drawn by nature, let's be prepared for it. I am a case study for lot of eventualities. Pl make suitable arrangements while there is still time.
Wish you all Good Luck !