Hi, y'all! New part will be up in minutes.
Jojo, thanks for the enthusiasm. Makes these old bones glow. I hope you like it, because your anticipation level is pretty high.
Hasini, thanks for the thoughtful comment. Remember that Jonathan felt towards Lana like he would towards his own daughter, and parents (even parents-in-law) aren't always reasonable about bad things which happen to their beloved kids. And about Clark's thoughts of suicide? They're more than just idle thoughts, but less than actual plans. If you're hurting with grief, you try to think of ways to alleviate that pain, even if you discard the plans later. Don't worry, Clark isn't going to suicide.
Maria, I don't want to make you upset! Clark was remembering Lana as less than perfect. He's realizing that maybe she wasn't as wonderful as he'd convinced himself that she was. And yes, I did read your signature. That's why I sent you the message about Lex Luthor. Hope you can stay with me on this story.
As usual, Ann, your feedback is both insightful and incisive. Dennis Lang isn't a widower (his wife left him for another man with more money), but Dennis's loss is doubled by Lana's death and her mother's rejection of him. One of the FOLCs on the board has or used to have a quote about divorce for a signature. It pointed out that divorce was often more devastating than the death of the spouse, because in a divorce the other party rejects you and chooses to live without you, the person that he or she promised to love forever.
And I didn't intend to make this a "widower's story," yet you're right when you point out that there are a lot of men trying to put their lives back together in this tale. My heart goes out to Martin, who lost his beloved Agneta, and I sympathize deeply over his wayward son. But you're assuming that Lana was Clark's true soulmate. That's not necessarily accurate, and some of the information about Lana in this chapter was intended to show the tiny cracks in their relationship. Could they have mended them? Because Lana's dead, we'll never know.
Alcyone, you're right, Clark has a lot of ground to cover before his healing is complete. I promise to make it as realistic and accurate to true life as possible, knowing that some readers might not want to travel that route. But I am unable to be Pollyanna where death has crashed the party. So I'm dragging all of you along with me further down this road.
rkn, thanks for reading, and let me repeat that this will NOT be an abandoned story. It's essentially finished, save for my excellent betas finding my mistakes and helping me fix them, so don't worry about me or the story disappearing (pending real life not clobbering me, of course). And I have never done research on or read much about the remarriage phenomonon, so I don't know if your observations and Ann's are typical of men and women in our cultures.
More soon!
