I haven't changed my name because I am embarrassed but what I have to say could make me easily recognised if anyone I know logs onto here. Oh and the new name means nothing it is just what is written on my wrist rest after everything else I tried was already being used - so where are you I'mHiding and Undercoverlady??
My mother died when I was really small, before I was a year old and my father did not cope like you are jmg - I am so in awe of you and think perhaps if my father had been somewhat like you my life could have been totally different and most certainly happier.
He foisted us onto our grandparents - his mother and father - he did not get on with my maternal grandparents (my grandmother seems a lot like your wife's mother) and visited us occasionally and finally when I was 3.5 years he met a woman he decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life with - so they got married and had their life together without us until my grandparents told them they had to take us when I was 6 - I look back now and am so cross it makes me cry - if my grandparents had not forced them would I still be there?? - Anyway life wasn't great, my stepmonster beat us - sometimes quite severley and sometimes my father joined in - when I questioned her about the beatings she said he wanted her to be strict so we did not walk over her ior she just completely denies it happened - but we were too scared to speak most of the time - walking would have been quite difficult!!
My maternal grandparents did not like this woman - with good reason and so we were stopped from seeing them, my paternal grandparents apparently did not like her either but I have only recently found this out - apparently most of the family were concerned about her treatment of us but it was always swept under the carpet - she went on to have 2 children although my father had insisted that he did not want anymore children and they were treated like royalty compared to us, still are.
It makes me so sad even thinking about this - I have wanted to email you and tell you - how it is to be a generation away from all the pain, guilt and anguish that comes with the death of someone - its a little different as my father was driving dangerously and without due care and attention when he crashed the car killing my mother and seriously injuring my sister but he carries around an awful lot of guilt (the police were already to charge him and apparently they would have had it not been for the fact that his wife was dead and one of his daughters was critical in hospital) - he is just not man enough to confront that and seek help - as myself and my sister have about our problems. Do you think though that your MIL carries guilt around with her and cannot come to terms with it - it makes you really angry inside and a bit warped from what I can see of my father - maybe she realises that her treatment of your wife and things that happened that she did not address caused her to take her life but she can't confront these and is shirking the blame onto you - my father blames my sister - she was 3 at the time - he says she was jumping around in the back of the car and he turned round to sort her out when the accident happened - he was at the time going 50 mph so he should have been looking frontwards rather than berating a small child and a 3 year old at that!! My father also has never done anything wrong in his life - never done anything too gerat other than ignore his children and make a shit load of money really but everything I have done is a dissappointment - great man huh!!
My maternal grandmother was a bit starnge too - my mother was not her favourite child - and she lead her a terrible life and I think one of the problems she had was her guilt - she hated my father with good reason to a degree and hated my stepmother too but I think my father stopping us seeing her did us more harm than good - I look back now and think I could have understood so much more about my mother if I had known some of her family - I actually think a lot of what my maternal grandmother went through was slight insanity after my mother was killed - her way of coping with the grief in a way - my grandfather had been and still was a manic depressive so his depression just got worse and she had to cope with this too.
Anyway I have been waffling for ages - but there are a few things that I have been trying to say - guilt and grief make us react very differently and strangly and I believe that your MIL is not trying to damage the children or scare them by saying she can hear them but maybe she just wants to be part of their lives all of the time (sort of replacing her daughter) and this is her way of doing it - sort of saying that she is always there.
With reagrds to your MIL rewriting history with regard to your late wife and her past and family - it is easy to do my father and my grandmother to a degree would never admit to a lot of things that went on - to them my mother was an angel and they wanted to remember her life being as easy and painless as possible - its easy to grieve for a beautiful angel who has had a great life than a normal human who has had shit and stuff to deal with and who makes you feel guilty or angry - and rewriting it all is easy cause they are no longer there to question what has gone on.
Another thing is I have never really spoken to anyone about my mother - no one who knew her really and I wish I had but I was so small when she died and I did not remember her - my father used to get upset and drag me to the crematorium to look at her plaque but it meant nothing to me - I was being made to grieve for someone I did not know and could not remember and it scarded me and angered my father because I did not show the requisite amount of grief that he expected, I have cousins who lost their father too and they both say that they actually felt guilty for not being as sad as they felt their mother wanted them to be - one was 1 month and the other 2 when he was killed. - I don;t know what I am trying to say here but I think make sure your kids know that they can speak to you about their mother that you will answer them truthfully but not to foist your grief onto them - nothing to do with your post the last point but it is something I have always thought I would say to someone who was in that position from my own experience.
Above all your MIL seems slightly unbalanced - maybe she was before hand and your wifes death exacerbated that - maybe she is not lucid enough to think what is best to tell a child?? I was always told that mummy was above me and could see me and was in heaven - I know it is crap now but it was a way of my grandparents telling me that I did have a mother but she wasn't here without mentioning the words 'she is dead' -easier for them and I am sure they thought for me at the time.
A lot of what she says also seems to be her generational stuff about children - we know you can't mould children and it does not do children any good to be seen and not heard but I am sure these are things that lots of people of her generation believe in.
As for her comments about single mothers - this is just plain silly - believe you have done a great job, you are doing a great job, getting out of bed everyday and being there for your children and just functioning must be so hard and to do it everyday alone - you are truely inspirational and great father - don't lose sight of that no matter what she says - at the end of the day you are doing a better job alone than MIL did with a husband and without what you have had put on you.
Sorry for going on and on - its hard to write something like ths and hard to put into words what has happened and the pain and everything bubbles to the surface with every word I write soit is probably no help to you at all and just a load of waffle but its just something that I wanted to say from my experience.