How soon is too soon?

By all accounts Glenn McGrath is a lovely person and a great Australian, who has sadly experienced a recent, tragic loss – the death of his wife and the mother of his children, Jane McGrath, to Cancer.

Less than two years after this tragic event Glenn McGrath has now announced that he is ready to remarry. In that time he has grieved the death of his wife, been dating, moved in with his new girlfriend, become engaged, and is now planning a wedding.

Is it just me, or is that really QUICK?

Of course I believe that he deserves all the happiness in the world – as all of the politically-correct media have also been stating when making the announcement regarding Glenn’s upcoming nuptials to Sara Leonardi. I’m not a mean-hearted person! Am I jealous? Of course I am.

Putting that aside for a moment, this situation really bothers me for two particular reasons:

Reason 1:
Glenn McGrath’s children - who are no doubt still raw from the recent loss of their mother - have had a new woman quickly introduced and moved into their lives.

What is wrong with Glenn McGrath? Couldn’t he have actually spent some grieving time alone with his children before ‘moving on’ to dating and marriage? Especially when they are so young? It just seems wrong to me.

No-one expected such a charismatic, high-profile person to be without a partner in life forever. However, after setting up the McGrath Foundation, campaigning heavily on its behalf, and winning the hearts of Australians by being so devoted to the memory of his beloved wife, I believe that there will now be a lot of people scratching their heads in disbelief at this latest development.

Reason 2:
On behalf of all of the single 30-something women out there – and there are a lot of us – women who are well-educated, well-groomed and well-rounded individuals, I want to know why Glenn McGrath chose to date and marry a woman 12 years his junior, bypassing all the fabulous single women that are closer to his own age, who would have a lot more life experience in common with him? It’s such a cliché!

OK, maybe he didn’t ‘choose’ a 28-year old woman, maybe it just happened to work out that way. As a woman who is 37, tertiary qualified, never married, no children, having returned to Australia at the end of 2008 after living abroad for 10 years to hopefully find and settle down with a partner in my homeland, I have found it extremely disheartening, to find that there is a complete lack of single, heterosexual males my age.

So you might begin to see why such a great catch like Glenn McGrath announcing that he is marrying a woman who hasn’t even hit her 30s yet might upset me! I’m not delusional – I don’t think that I might have had a chance with him myself, but I reserve the right to be disappointed and to lament this lost opportunity on behalf of all of the single 30-something females.