Babbling Botkin: "What If My Husband Dies?" - Part Four

I'm in a busy time again here in Michigan.  After a cold, wet spring, we are having a wave of produce come in all at once.  That means I'm in the middle of harvesting or sourcing crops, processing crops and dehydrating them all at once.  Plus, Spawn's started preschool this week.   I've been sewing tiny little masks for the preschool - early elementary crowd for his school when I'm not processing corn, tomatoes or green peppers.

I won't belabor the point - but if all of the SAHDs who should have much better sewing skills than I do were spending their free time sewing masks for families who don't have spare cash right now, they could be making a real difference in their community.  

We are three and a half minutes into Geoffrey Botkin' YouTube video "What If My Husband Dies?"  So far, we've learned that Botkin is uncomfortable with talking about death in the present but waxes poetic about how many more people died in the good old days.    The next quote treats us to a reaffirmation of how awkward Botkin becomes when discussing a currently living wife to a man with COPD during a respiratory virus who is concerned with the future of her four sons if her husband dies:

[00:03:36] We just things have changed now and we don't have these realistic discussions of the shortness and the brevity of life.   you know it's uh.....  What does the Bible call the (stutter) the silver thread can be broken.  The fleeting nature of life (laughs).  It really is fleeting for anybody.  Even in a modern day when our life expectancy is going from 70 to 75 to 80 to and beyond.  We still need to think about these things and talk about these things and so if you can do this it can make any horrible transition in life like widowhood a lot more manageable if it happens to you

 For anyone who has forgotten, the realistic discussions that Botkin misses consisted of taking children through cemeteries while pointing out graves that were the same age as the kid to make death terrifying and real.   Added bonus if you could share stories of mothers who died in childbirth or dads killed by festering wounds.

Botkin flubbed a Bible verse - which threw me a lot.  From a public speaking perspective, Botkin should know  to practice a direct quote until he can recite it smoothly or insert a paraphrase rather than stumbling around through a verse.  From a public relations perspective, isn't smoothly memorized Bible verses a major selling point of primitivist Bible believers?   

The verse Botkin was trying to bring up was Ecclesiastes 12:6-7   "Or ever the silver cord be loosened, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel be broken at the cistern. / Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."   

Or - as Catholics recognize a close paraphrase - "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust".   That's probably forbidden to a good Calvinist like Botkin, though.....

Fun fact: one of the main drivers of life expectancy increasing longer and longer is that so many fewer children die in infancy and early childhood.   I doubt Botkin recognizes the irony that the same medical advances that made it possible for him to be vital enough in his sixties to expect 10-20 more years of life are the same advances that reduced the number of children and young people who die.

Personally, I get irritated by people who catastrophize about my life.  Since Spawn was born, people occasionally respond to a discussion of his life history with "Oh, I couldn't deal with that!"  My completely straight-faced response is "Well, I suppose you could have given your kid up for adoption instead...." which shocks them.  The person is shocked by my reply because their initial response of being incapable is a form of superstition where the person hopes to avoid a bad outcome - not a well-thought out response.   

Botkin's throw-away description of a "horrible" transition to widowhood has the same feel to me.  All marriages end by divorce or death.  Because women tend to outlive men nowadays, many women have survived the death of their husband.   The painful part is the death of a loved one; surviving without that loved one is outcome of the painful event - not a separate horror.

I do wonder, though, if Botkin fears being a widower.   Victoria Botkin strikes me as a woman who would grieve the loss of her husband - and then continue on in her role as a homeschooling voice, conference presenter and grandmother smoothly enough.  Geoffrey Botkin, on the other hand, needs an audience - and his receptive family size is shrinking.  His sons have started their own lives through marriage or running a business.  This change means Geoffrey is revered - but not all-powerful anymore.   Botkin would still have his two daughters to listen to him - but as we've seen with Sarah and Grace Mally - a late marriage may well remove those audience members, too.  

Botkin's "horrible transition" speaks more to his fears than anything else.

Here's my new Botkin catchphrase:

[00:04:17]If you do lose your husband, go ahead and write to me for more specific advice and ideas, but for now let me give you three general concepts that will help you if you become a single mom with four boys.

Wow.




He really said that.   

Look, if the letter writer's (LW) husband dies, she's got a huge pile of urgent responsibilities.  
She has to tell her four sons that their father died.   She's got a visitation,  funeral, and internment to plan.  There are relatives to inform and issues of transportation to smooth.   There are grieving children to care for.   There are scads of financial entities who need to be notified of her husband's death.  The family still needs food, shelter, clothing and schooling.  The family needs money.   

She's got a massive heap of responsibilities to take care of - and she's grieving the loss of her husband which saps every bit of energy she has at the same time.  

You know what she doesn't have time for?

Writing Geoffrey Botkin for a follow-up list of ideas.    

In fact, only a complete idiot would think that a widowed mother of four would have time to email a random stranger who couldn't be bothered to send detailed plans prior to her husband's death for plans once he was dead.  

Dingbat.