Daughter enraged after dad keeps mom’s final wish secret for 18 years

A devastated widower sought solace from the Reddit community after fulfilling his deceased wife’s final wishes for their daughters, igniting a family dispute. The 49-year-old man recounted the emotional ordeal online, explaining how he carried out his wife’s distinctive request following her untimely death in a car crash eight years prior, which left him to raise their daughters, Maeve and Alex, alone.
On Reddit, his post read: “I (49M) was married to my wife for 20 years. I lost her in a car accident 8 years ago. We had two beautiful daughters together, Maeve (18 now, 10 when her mother passed) and Alex (16 now, 8 when her mother passed).
“I am very close with my daughters but they were both definitely mama’s girls. My wife was a magnetic woman. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind, and people were drawn to her.
“An important thing to know about my wife is that she had a passion for writing. She was unfortunately in a profession where she didn’t write much so, she did a lot on her own time. One of her favorite things to write was letters. She wanted people to know that she cared about them.
“After she had each of my daughters, she wrote them a letter. She wrote each within days after their births and wanted to give them away on their graduation days. She put them in the fire box in our basement to avoid losing or forgetting about them.
“She wrote the letters with the intention of giving them to our daughters herself 18 years later as a sort of time capsule type of thing. Both letters contained mostly words of wisdom and information about what was going on when they were born.
“Maeve graduated from high school today and I went to her room with the letter tonight. I let her cry on my shoulder as she read it and at first she seemed happy to have her something directly from her mother. However after she read it she turned to me looking surprisingly angry. She asked why I had waited so long to give it to her. She had so many rough moments and heartbreak in the last 8 years where all she wanted was her mother’s wisdom and I withheld the letter.
“I told her that I was just doing what her mother had said she wanted and Maeve shot back that her mother also hadn’t planned on being in the accident. Alex heard the shouting and came into the room and Maeve told her about the letter.
“Now they’re both upset and don’t want to talk to me. I feel so awful about this whole situation. I was raised by my single mother after my own dad took off so on one hand, I’ve always wanted to be the best father I can and I feel terrible that I withheld something that would’ve brought them comfort. On the other hand, my wife had very specific instructions about her intentions with the letters and I just wanted to follow through with that. So now I’m very conflicted…”
The man sought advice online about whether he was wrong to adhere to his late wife’s wishes. Netizens weighed in with their perspectives.
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One user commented: “Your wife wrote those letters with a specific intent and likely in a specific voice appropriate for the young woman your elder daughter is now, not the young children they both were eight years ago. There’s nothing wrong with honoring her wishes in this matter.”
They continued: “It’s understandable that your daughters are upset because this dredged up a lot of heavy emotions unexpectedly, but there’s absolutely no reason to assume that they would have understood or appreciated these letters when they were younger. Instead of comfort, any number of other emotions could have arisen, as is evident now. There’s simply no way you could have known how they would react.”
Another added: “This is a fragile, emotional situation! I have been writing in journals to my daughter since she was born, and plan on giving them to her when she turns 18. I’m sure if I passed, my husband would have also withheld them, thinking he was doing right by me the way he always has. You were just trying to honor your wife. I hope they can eventually forgive you because it’s not as if you did it to intentionally hurt them.”