When Jackie DeVita discovered she was dying of brain cancer, she made a shocking request: she took off her wedding ring and asked her unmarried sister, Colleen, to wear it, move into her home, and take her place as wife to her husband, Richard, and mother to her three children. Jackie wanted to be certain that continuity would remain in her family after she passed on.
“I remember being in the hallway a year and a half into her illness, and she took off her wedding band, this band,” Colleen told MSNBC, “that Richard had given her, and she handed it to me, and I refused it. And she said: ‘I want you to have this. I want to know that this is the three of us. Don’t ever leave my kids.’”
While Colleen swore she would take care of the children forever, she had no interest in marrying her dying sister’s husband. But as time went on, Richard and Colleen were united as Jackie’s caretakers and they grew close.
Jackie’s funeral was in June 2008. Richard and Colleen flew to visit family in July.
“Coming back on the plane, I don’t know what caused me to get up from my seat — I am terrified of flying — and I remember just going over to him and leaning on him, and at that moment, all that anxiety and stress that was within me for three years just kind of let go,” Colleen said. “I feel like it was God’s way of saying, ‘Be at peace, just let it go.’”
She says she was left thinking she was in the right place. The decision to marry was simply the next step.”
So, three months after the funeral Colleen and Richard were married and Colleen moved into the large ranch home her sister once lived in.
Colleen says she wasn’t in love with Richard, but that she does love him now. Today in the U.S marriages like the DeVitas are uncommon, though in other societies, people have been urged or even required to marry their dead spouse’s sibling. Still, it’s a strange tale, something out of Greek mythology or a Shakespearean tragedy—thought it seems this ending turned out somewhat happier, or at least more peaceful, than say, Hamlet, or Anne and Mary Boleyn’s life.
Could you take over the life of a dead loved one? Do you think it took courage and strength to do what Colleen did? Or was she merely making herself comfortable in a life she could never have had without her sister’s last wish?
Words By: Nina Boutsikaris
Image By: Stephen Beadles
