Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Further On Down The Road - 3/41

Terry I'm going to confess... I haven't read a single part of this story yet. But I wanted to start this FDK thread to tell you how excited I am about being able to start it soon. I loved The Road Taken and I totally let out a squee the other day when I saw that you had started posting the sequel.

So while this isn't official FDK, look for my voice in the crowd very soon. ^_^

~Jojo, who had to come and tell Terry how excited she was even if she is a slacker right now.

What? Hardly any FDK yet?! This is not to be borne.

Hmmm. That was unexpected. Don't know what to think about Clark's reaction, honestly. I really didn't get a very depressed vibe from him. Guilty and angsty, yes, and lots of unresolved issues. But contemplating suicide simply felt out of proportion to what he seemed to be feeling. It's natural to consider it in the first stages of violent grief, yes, but after seeing him starting to heal so well, it seemed out of place. A man looking forward to getting back to his city and his life cannot have thoughts of suicide. It was like it was a token thought or something. If that makes sense.

Mightily freaked out about Jonathan's reaction. The relationship between Lois and Jonathan has always been one of my favourite aspects of Lois and Clark, although the series never explored it to its full potential. So although I can quite understand Jon feeling that way, my heart broke for my girl (Lois) a little bit more.

This is really a chapter to stir up the waters, isn't it? An uncomfortable chapter, but one that adds to the build up of suspense. Really need to get to the next chapter!

Hi,

Great part! He needs help Dr. Friskin.


More ASAP, please.

MAF

PS
You should check my 'Signature'.

I have been thinking about this part since I read it.

One thing which is very striking about this fic so far is that it is a widowers' story. That is not surprising, given that Clark is a widower here. (He is a widower after Lana, not after Lois, or I wouldn't be reading the story.)

But like I said, it is very much a widowers' tale. In the previous part, Gary the widowed pastor figured prominently. In this part, Lana's father, Dennis Lang, is apparently a widower too. We were told absolutely nothing about his wife (or if we were, I missed it, sorry), but we were told that there is a woman who is there for him, consoling him. Her name is Virginia McCoy. So in some sense Dennis Lang has moved on, or he has taken steps in that direction anyway. Interestingly, so has the pastor. Not only is this a widowers' story, it is a story about widowers moving on.

Again that is appropriate. Clark is a young man, and we wouldn't want him to spend the rest of his possibly very long life just grieving.

However, one male character who figures prominently in this part is conspicuously not a widower. Jonathan. And it struck me, when I read this, how extremely rarely Jonathan has been widowed in LnC fanfic. There have been many alt-Clark stories where both Martha and Jonathan have been dead, of course, but extremely few stories where only Martha has been dead and Clark has had to take care of his widowed father and struggle with the question of whether or not to sell the farm. This made me wonder why there are very many more Lois deathfics than Martha deathfics. Perhaps that is because a Martha deathfic wouldn't be sufficiently nobly tragic, seen from Clark's point of view. A grown man can hardly rant and rave at the gods because his mom has died. At the same time, a Martha deathfic may be even more bleakly heartbreaking than a Lois deathfic. A widowed man can move on, which is pretty much the point of this fic, if I have understood it correctly. But a grown man who has lost his mother can never replace his mom with another woman who can be his beloved childhood caretaker. A mother is more irreplacable than a wife. Maybe that is why FoLCs tend to shy away from writing Martha deathfics, because Martha's death would hurt Clark (and the readers) more deeply than Lois's death would?

So a motherless man is motherless forever, but a widowed man can move on, as I said. Which set me thinking about what happens when a widowed man does start looking for other women.

I don't know many widowers at all, but let me tell you about one that I know. His name is Martin. I saw him a lot about twenty years ago, when he and his wife Agneta visited my parents very often.

Martin was five years younger than Agneta. He was and is slim, blond and boyish. Agneta was dark, with an understated elegance, and with sparkling, glittering dark grey eyes. She had the more prestigious job of them, because she was an anesthetist, and she made more money than Martin.

The two of them seemed very happy together. They were always smiling a lot. They loved to travel to exotic places together.

Martin and Agneta could not have children. They had already done some voluntary work in Poland, helping out at orphanages, and now they decided that they would try to adopt a child from a Polish orphanage. They soon set their hopes on two small brothers who had been abandoned by their parents, because the parents had too many children to feed anyway. The boys were only one and two years old when Martin and Agneta started the lengthy and emotionally and financially draining process of getting to adopt them. Finally, when the boys were three and four, Martin and Agneta could take them to their new home in Sweden.

Adopting children who are old enough to have begun to adopt a culture and a language that is different from your own is not problem-free. For example, Polish and Swedish are very different languages, much more so than Swedish and English, for example. Making these little boys happy and secure in Sweden was not easy, but Martin and Agneta were very happy in their new roles as parents.

Then, after only two years, catastrophe struck. Agneta was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had never smoked in her life, but she was an anesthetist, and she had breathed in a lot of that stuff that is used to anesthesize patients. Whatever the cause, she had cancer.

Agneta had one lung removed, and she recovered very well. For a little while she seemed healthy. But then her cancer returned, and this time the doctors were helpless to do anything for her.

Agneta died at forty-five. Martin was forty. Their little sons were six and seven.

You can imagine how horrible this must have been for the little boys. Being adopted, being aware that you don't have a "real" mother and father like other children, and always being behind on language and other things that other children seemed to know almost instinctively, took their toll on them. Agneta and Martin had taken the boys away from the country where they were born, and where people at least spoke the same language as them. And where there was, perhaps, at least a chance that their real parents would take them home again. And then, after only three years, Agneta died, leaving the boys motherless for the second time. I can only imagine their confusion, their loss, and, yes, their sense of guilt. Was it perhaps the boys' own fault that their mothers always left them? Disappeared from them?

Martin had to deal with his little boys' trauma as best he could, while at the same time he had to deal with his own crushing grief. Not only that, but Agneta had been an only child, and Martin had to try to comfort Agneta's eighty-five-year-old mother, too.

This happened about twenty years ago, and Martin is now in his early sixties. One of his boys is doing well, but the other one is having problems, and he is drinking far too much.

For himself, Martin has tried to move on. He is now on his fourth relationship since Agneta died. My general impression is that Martin is deeply needy, that he can't really face life without a woman by his side, but at the same time he seems to have lost his ability to build lasting relationships. I think that all his new women have been "bandages" that he has tried to wrap around his own bleeding heart. In the end, the women have been fed up and left him.

I have no idea how typical or untypical Martin is as a (young) widower, but I think it is true that all his "new women" have been second choices. They have been his crutches rather than the woman he truly loved. Martin had one soulmate, and that was Agneta.

Which leads me to wonder what things will be like for Lois and Clark in this fic, Terry. Will they get together romantically? Will they get married? That is hardly a given here. And even if they do, will Lois be more than Clark's second choice? Will she be more than the woman he married because his true soulmate has died?

Those are very interesting questions. I'm looking forward to the answers, Terry.

Ann

A heartwrenching chapter indeed and one I had to think about. I was surprised at Jonathan's reaction, how he brought the subject up to blame Lois (or at least that's what it seemed to me). It appeared a bit tactless, but I suppose it was one of those things that he simply couldn't help.

I also felt sorry for Clark (and once again, felt that a great tribute was paid to Lana--I really don't compare her to Lois at all, somehow it seems wrong for me to do so. Lois' status in Clark's life should have nothing to do with Lana. It's like apples and oranges for me. The compare and contrast reduces them both to mere satellites orbiting around Clark).

The suicide thing didn't seem melodramatic (as it usually tends to--in a bad way). It must be a heartbreaking thing to see one's days unfold without one's loved one. I don't blame him for thinking about it. I don't blame him for "leaving his options open" if anything because in such a state of helplessness (I can't bring my loved one back), it symbolizes some sort of control (I can chose not to go on without my loved one).

Lots of ground to cover before they heal.

alcyone

I like this story. I TRY to refrain my self from reading stories before they are finished, but this is a sequel and I have to know!

To address Ann's "rabbit trail", it sees to me that men get over or at least begin to move on much quicker than women after the death of their spouse. It blows my mind that you can be married to a woman for 50 years and 3 months later you're in another woman's bed. Saw that with two men. One did end up marrying his new girlfriend. The other says it just makes things too difficult for their kids when they die to have mine, yours, and ours things to be split up but are still together 8 years later. A third it was less than a year, though he did marry her first. But the women had all been widowed 5 or more years. Is this becasue women mourn a lost spouse longer or because there are just more widowed women than men and the men can have their pick? Stories of Clark missing his dead wife touch my heart, but facts like these makes me wonder how realistic it is.

OTH- a man losing his mother. Ann's right, the woman who raised you cannot be replaced as a wife can be. And I don't think I have ever seen a fic where Martha has died and Jonathan is the widower, though we often read fics where Jonathan has died.

Ah, the puzzles of life

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!