I am sure you, at one time or another, you have caught yourself just before you called someone else by your spouse’s name.  To make matters worse perhaps you even used the pet name that gave both of you such pleasure.  The first time this happened to me I just about dropped through the floor.

Collette and I had a very long friendship with Alice and Rome.   Rome died a few years before Collette.  Alice I and continued our friendship and saw each other at family gatherings now and then. 

One Christmas Alice invited me to her home for an evening with her children and their spouses and their children.  It was a great evening and in the middle of it I called across the room to Alice but I used the name “Cadet” my pet name for Collette..  Of course I was a bit flustered about what I had just said and wondered if anyone else had noticed.  Alice simply got up, walked over, sat down beside me and said, “What did you say, Rome?”  I knew then that everything was just fine.

Alice died a few years ago and when I think of her I remember her kindness to me at that Christmas gathering. 

It wasn’t long after Claire and I were married that we began to call each other by our loved ones’ names.  We have laughed about this and of course we mean no disrespect.  It is, to us, a gentle reminder that our loved ones are still a part of our lives.  Claire does not have any difficulty answering to the names “Collette” or even “Cadet” and I have no problem in answering to “John” - after all it’s my name

So don’t worry, we all do it at one time or another.  Your bereaved friends will understand and help you through such a time. 

What is very interesting to me is that while the people who have remarried take using a loved one’s name in their stride many of their friends do not.  I guess it is the old story, unless you have been there you can’t really be expected to understand.