Identity
Lauren Scheuer. That’s me. Though I’ve only been Lauren Scheuer legally since March of 2025. Socially since September 7th, 2024. I still haven’t changed the name on my passport, all my credit cards, many other legal documents. With Jason getting sick right after we returned from our honeymoon, the logistics of the name change were low on my list of priorities. The paperwork for completing my passport has been sitting on my desk since June, it only needed a recent photo, which I hadn’t gotten around to yet, and our world crashed and burned before I could.
I never thought twice about changing my name and taking Jason’s. For me, it was what I always planned. I took the name, for Jason. Proudly. Because he saw it as a sacrifice, a choice I was making. He never saw it as something I’d have to do because I married him. He wasn’t like that. The day I got my new drivers license I texted him and my mom in a group chat. His words back, “thank you Lauren”. He was proud, honored of the choice I made to change my name, he genuinely saw it as a sacrifice. Which is the reason I will carry it now.
Outside of Jason, I have no reason to carry this last name. I don’t identify much to it. It’s not a person I’ve been for years. I don’t have the extended family attached to me and that name who’ve poured love into me in the time I was with Jason. Being a daughter-in-law in the Scheuer family didn’t mean you were apart of the family, it meant you were stealing their son. You were not welcomed with open arms, there were never any comments about gaining a daughter, you were the reason they lost the ability to control their son. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy. Every holiday I would hear the comments that their sons never chose to come home, it was always the daughter’s family that got first dibs. Pointing blame at me for the fact Jason was choosing to spend holiday’s in Colorado, even though he hadn’t been home in years before I met him. It was nothing I ever imagined an extended family could or should be, but I married Jason anyways and never thought twice about carrying his name.
It’s a weird weight to carry the name now that he’s gone. He’s my only connection to it, and the only reason I’m proud of it. It’s a name that I only had for a short time before he left this world. Sometimes, I forget that I have it until I have to say it out loud. I am Mrs. Lauren Scheuer, the 31 year old widow. I wear the last name proudly, for Jason and only Jason.
