“Losing a partner in a same-gender relationship is every bit as devastating as losing a husband or wife: you may experience all the same feelings as the surviving partner of a marriage or other heterosexual partnership… but can you count on the same support if you are lesbian or gay?”
Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project leaflet (September 1988). Source: Wellcome Collectio

“My girlfriend and I were together for six years. When I arrived at her funeral her mother shouted at me, telling me that I had no right to be there. At the inquest of her suicide, they asked me if we had made love that day, and whether we had any ‘normal’ friends. My family told me that they were glad my partner was dead, and that perhaps I might now marry a good man and have his children. My mother even turned up at the door with a man, to fix me up on a date. At least work treated me well – I'm a teacher – they said I could take as long off as I wanted.”
 
“My boyfriend – he was my teacher – died. I have no support as not everyone knows that I am gay. I feel really guilty about the age difference, and my friends and family aren’t giving me any support.”
 
“My best friend has AIDS. I’ve already lost four friends in two years. I can’t cope. I don’t know whether I want to go on if everyone I love is dying.”

“My partner has cancer of the bones. This is probably her last weekend. She just wants to talk but I am terrified – I can’t even stay in the same room as her. My Catholic parents say that her cancer is a punishment for us being lesbians, and that we will burn in hell.”
 
“We didn’t make wills and I’m not allowed to attend the funeral.”
 
“I didn’t do enough.”
 
“I’m sorry – I’m crying – it’s so embarrassing.”
 
“It’s 13 months on and I feel I should be doing better by now.”
 
“It was a very good funeral – we had a gay vicar.”
 
“We’ve been together since we were 17.”
 
“The family took over the funeral.”
 
“I’m not eating.”
 
“The Church of Christ found out that I was gay, and now they want to get me out of the accommodation.”
 
“I’m a Spiritualist, but I don’t want him to come to me.”
 
“They left his coffin alone in the chapel – it felt like they were abandoning him.”
 
“I met him on holiday. He was killed in an accident on the way to the airport to come to see me. I have lost our future.”
 
“We lived in his house, but when he died, I had to give the keys back. We’d had a row and he changed his will, leaving it all to charity. I only have my disability pension now.”
 
“He died of AIDS in hospital. When I took him there he felt that I was sending him away but I just couldn’t manage on my own any more. He didn’t want to die – it wasn’t a blessed release.”
 
“My girlfriend died of breast cancer. I can’t speak of my loss to anyone.”
 
“He died by suicide. When he came out to his parents, his mother was fine but his homosexuality concerned his father. She’s managing all right with her grief but she can’t cope with his father’s unwillingness to talk about their son. He finally allowed her to put up a picture in the hall, but she’s not allowed to put one up in the living room. I think she’s dreading Christmas.”
 
“We had no wills and the relatives are threatening to come and take everything. I’ve hidden our valuables.”
 
“He was killed in a car crash. I’m angry – he was a stupid driver and his car went under a lorry.”
 
“He died of AIDS. He supported me when I lost my job. I as asked not to go to the funeral, even though we lived together for five years. I’m numb, and I think I’m going to lose my home.”
 
“He was a heroin addict. I feel I’m to blame for his death.”
 
“There was no will. It all went to his nephew.”
 
“The dog keeps looking up at the corner of the room. I’m not religious, but…”
 
“We’ve been together for 40 years since we left the forces. I can’t go on.”

Cave was taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1942, and was assigned to the construction of the Thai-Burma railway, not far from the renowned bridge over the River Kwai. He was then sent to Changi Prison in Singapore after a serious bout of malaria, where he stayed until the end of the war. He lost four stone – one third of his body weight – and was close to death from malnutrition. In Changi, an army medical officer gave him a copy of Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis, and this helped him to accept his sexuality. Cave was repatriated after the end of the war, in 1945.
​
Back in the UK, there was still a lot of discrimination against gay people. In 1954, Cave was asked to resign from his job as manager of Majestic Cinema in Wembley, London. When he refused, he was given the sack. Also in 1954, Cave met his partner, Bernard Williams. Williams had married his wife, June, to try to ‘overcome’ his sexuality. June understood, and the three became close friends, living together in Golders Green. Cave and Williams stayed together as lovers and gay rights campaigners until Williams’ death in 1994.
 
In 1971, Cave joined the Unitarian Church, and was key to them ordaining lesbians and gay men, blessing same sex relationships and advocating for LGBTQ+ human rights, even before legal recognition of same sex relationships. He created Intergroup, which brough together LGBTQ+ and straight Unitarians to promote acceptance and foster dialogue, one of the first groups of its type.

He campaigned for peace and reconciliation between Japanese soldiers and prisoners of war, and he attended the dedication of a Buddhist temple on the banks of the River Kwai as a symbol of this reconciliation.

Cave was one of the original committee members of the London Gay Switchboard (now Switchboard LGBT+) at its launch in 1974, and he remained answering phones until his death. Through the calls he took, he saw LGBTQ+ people who had lost their partners grieving without support and being excluded from funerals, losing inheritances and facing eviction from joint homes. To meet their support needs, he created the Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project. The project was the first of its kind to be established in the UK, and the first organisation with ‘gay’ in the title to gain charitable status in the UK (despite pushback from the Charity Commissioners to change the name).
 
Another of his campaigns was to get the Royal British Legion, the UK Government and the Armed Forces to acknowledge that LGBTQ+ people served in the Armed Forces and lost their lives. Not long before his death he spoke at OutRage!'s Queer Remembrance Day vigil at the Cenotaph, and laid a pink triangle (the symbol worn by LGBTQ+ prisoners in concentration camps) to honour the lives and deaths of LGBTQ+ people.
 
Sources:
The Yorkshire Unitarian Union
BBC: A gay soldier’s story
Obituary: Dudley Cave (Peter Tatchell)
Peter Tatchell on Dudley Cave (video)

Thank you to the amazing members of the WAY LGBTQIA+ group for their help in writing this piece.
 
Being widowed is one of the hardest things that people have to face. Being widowed as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community can make things even harder. I’d hoped that things had changed from the 1980s stories of LGBTQIA+ widows that I collected from the Switchboard archives, but the challenges are still there.
 
Coming out again… and again… and again…
Coming out is never is a one-time thing, but after someone dies there is even more coming out to a lot of new people, from hospital staff and paramedics through staff at registry offices and funeral directors to the people celebrating the funeral.
 
Are you a widow?
As far as the Widow’s Handbook is concerned, you are a widow if you have lost your partner, whether you are married, civil partnered or neither, and LGBTQIA+ or not. But legally, the wording does differ – if you were in a civil partnership, the wording will describe you as the surviving civil partner, not the widow.
 
Are you the husband/wife?
There’s a lot of explaining relationships after the death of an LGBTQIA+ partner. People on the other end of the sadmin process, such as banks, utilities and government bodies, can assume the gender/sexuality of both the widow and the person who has died, even when they have details of names, genders and relationships. From Joanna Sedley-Burke in an interview for the Widow’s Handbook for Pride 2023:
 
“When I went to register Paula's death, I was asked if I was her daughter or her mother. When I started the admin after her death, on the very first call when I said that I was a widow, the immediate response was 'when did your husband die?' I know that same sex marriage was relatively recent then, but it put another layer on something that was already hard.”
 
LGBTQIA+ partners, if not married or civil partnered, may not be informed of deaths, given invitations to inquests, told of autopsy results, allowed to register deaths, or allowed to organise (or even attend) the funeral.
 
Arranging a funeral
A Church of England funeral is available to anyone in their own parish, whether they were churchgoers or not. A funeral in a different denomination or in another religious building may depend on the willingness of individual religious leaders.
 
People say the oddest things
People say a whole raft of things they shouldn’t when faced with a widow, but being an LGBTQIA+ widow brings a whole other level of statements, from being told by a registrar ‘I’ve not registered one of you before’, through ‘are you even a man or a woman’ or ‘partner… do you mean business partner?’, to a colleague bursting out ‘but I didn’t even know that you were gay’.
 
Homophobia and biphobia can emerge – there can be assumptions that because people are queer they must have been promiscuous during their relationship, so being an LGBTQIA+ widow isn’t as big a deal as being a cis/straight widow. On being told that I was bisexual, an acquaintance in the pub assumed that must have been sleeping with women while I was married to Tim.