The Barbie Coat

My mother made a little pink coat for my Barbie doll when I was about ten years old. She made dresses and pants too. I rescued them from a basement purging Mom conducted the summer before last. She sold many of our old Fisher-Price toys, collectors items that she could have made real money off of on eBay were she not a complete Luddite when it comes to the Internet. The clothes were in an old play suitcase that I used to us when we would take little trips. They were musty from years under the basement steps and Katy eyed them dubiously when I told her enthusiastically that they would fit her dolls. She clearly had reservations about allowing these smelly old rags anywhere near her dolls, forget about on them. But, I took them back to Des Moines with us and washed them a time or two and though a bit tattered, they served.

The dolls’ clothing was a mixture of regular size dolls and Barbie clothes. Some of the doll clothing was for baby dolls and some were made especially for the Crissy and Velvet dolls that my sister and I had gotten for Christmas one year. Do you remember those dolls? The ones with the I Dream of Jeannie knots on the tops of their heads that you could pull the pony tail out for long hair and wind back up inside them with a round knob on the back? My father didn’t understand why any of our dolls needed more clothing than what came on their backs, so my mother ended up finding patterns and buying material, snaps, buttons and ribbons to make doll clothing for us. If my father had known how much the materials cost or the amount of time Mom put into the creation of these tiny wardrobes, he might have just let her take us out to buy the extra clothing for which we were clamoring.

I was reminded of just how much went into each piece when one of the buttons came off the pink coat and needed to be sewn back on. Rob took the tiny pearl-like thing from Katy and immediately handed it off to me, pronouncing it to microscopic for him, and it was very, very small. The head of a pencil eraser is bigger than those buttons. As I worked on replacing and subsequently tightening up the hold on the other buttons, I marveled at what close and intricate work this was with a needle and thread and how skilled a seamstress one would have to be to cobble together such tiny garments on a sewing machine. My mom had a Singer machine in a stand alone desk that she could fold the sewer into before closing the lid atop it. It was rarely every put away when I was young. Mom sewed, it seemed to me, all the time. She made clothes for our dolls, us, and herself. I think there was even one point when darn near everything she wore, she had cut from a McCalls or Butterick pattern and sewed together herself.

The two (miserable) years I spent in 4H, I learned to sew as well, but I never loved it. I found it tedious and thought the clothing made me look frumpier than I knew I was. No one wore homemade clothing when I was 12, except for the halter tops that nearly every girl I knew, younger and older, were wearing but which I was not allowed. I don’t know if it was because I was wearing a bra by then (a training one but according to my parents - that counted) or because I was fat and neither of my parents could stomach the idea of my pudgy (not little - I was already 5’ 6”) self’s rolly flesh showing (and in case you think I might be putting thoughts into their heads, my younger sister was allowed to prance about the neighborhood in halters and bikini tops until we were both well into our high school years). But, I just didn’t see the point of sewing your own clothes unless you were good enough at it that no one could discern your homemade from the store bought. That is just a gift. Mom had it sort of but I didn’t and still don’t.

Mom got her sewing gene from her mother. My grandmother’s doll clothes and tiny quilts still survive and Katy has several of them today among her play things. She likes the blankets especially and I have to admit that I love the fact that they have survived and she is playing with them. Same goes for the Barbie ward robe and doll clothes. There are many kinds of heirlooms but the ones I like best are the things that a person uses and then passes to the next generation for their use too.

Being an Expert

Of all the experiences in the world that a person might covet for his/her resume being looked to as an expert on anything widowed is probably not one many would want. But, in the last few weeks I have begun to realize that I do know a lot of things about widowhood that other people - fresh or isolated in their grief - could use. Not benefit from mind you because I think you benefit or not from advice or resources or whatever depending on something inside you (it’s what you do with the time as it passes as Alicia reminded me the other day).

I had already decided to include a blog roll of all those blogs being written by widowed people I either know through the YWBB or their blog or learned of through blog links I found at various blogs. I have included it on my new WordPress site along with the links to a few message sites for the widowed. And I decided to do this for two reasons. First having to do with a woman I met at hospice group named Julie. She is just a year out this last weekend, having lost her husband in a car accident. She has two children in the expressive arts program with Katy though they are older. The first time I met her I was struck by the anger inside, but this last time I was able to talk with her at some length and realized that like me, she is just terribly isolated. She hasn’t anyone to share her feelings with who will understand what they are and where they come from. The second reason was an email I received yesterday from a fellow blogger at NaBloMo who had started reading me and found the link to my first blog at Spaces and requested access to it as it is no longer open to the public. When I denied it, she sent me an email explaining that her request was in order to help a good friend who’d lost her husband a year ago and had asked her if she knew of any blogs written by widows because she was feeling alone.

Feeling alone. The over-riding theme of being widowed young.

I wrote the woman back to give her the link to my new space, and some information about the widow bloggers I read and the sites I have/do visit. I didn’t allow her access to the Spaces site. That site is closed permanently and only I have access. When I first started writing here, I provided and active link to it but the animosity and curiosity at the YWBB surrounding Rob and I brought too many people here and to the Spaces site. It made me uncomfortable. My first blog is raw and confused and very in the moment. I never self-edited and used it more to think my way through things as they arose. While some people might relate, others could easily take things way out of the original context (because I often didn’t share that) and not realize that much more of what I was going through was actually being written on the YWBB through my posts (though oddly - out of 1600+ posts I only started about twenty and after the first anniversary of Will’s death I mainly posted to share concrete experiences with people and offer advice in the guise of what I learned and what I would do. When I did share my own thoughts - it only caused trouble, so I rarely did.). My posts at YWBB are gone. It’s a good thing too. Although I often got PM’s from people thanking me for things I posted (one woman overseas told me she cut and pasted my “Annie-isms” in a folder because she found them so useful), I don’t think much of what I wrote was original or profound or even helpful but on an individual scale.

So, for anyone who is reading to discover the hidden meaning in widowhood or the possibility of finding Zen within the experience, or anything else, I offer you The Widow Blogs. There are as many approaches to traversing grief as there are snowflakes. I have found many women, and a few men, out there who have much to share and say - and more eloquently than I.

-36.8C

I was up early this morning. Like quarter to three early. And though I tried to get back to sleep, it eluded me completely to the point that I woke Rob with all my tossing and when I decided to allow him to rest by retreating from our bedroom to the office downstairs for some mindless blog surfing - he wasn’t far behind because he can’t sleep if I am not there (he tried the pillow thing first but found it inferior - to my tossing and turning, I guess). So, why was I up? I have been sleeping really well, but between the yoga instructor who decided we need to “pop” our hip flexors yesterday and the fact that I had to drive into town uber early this morning to go to the hospital for labs (all that fun blood-work doctors like us old folk to do with increasing frequency once you hit that “old people” demographic) - my mind just couldn’t find a slow enough frequency for sleep.

Rob convinced me (or I convinced him) to head back to bed about 5:30 to try for another hour of sleep. The hospital lab opened at 7:30AM and I wanted to be there then to avoid waiting. Waiting be the common denominator of all things medical here in Canada. As it turned out, I didn’t get back to sleep until nearly 6 and then overslept, getting up finally at 7:20. I vaguely remember a dream that was mostly me crying but I don’t remember why and both things bothered me for a while as I hurriedly dressed and scampered out into the frigid air. There is something about deadly cold that implies hurry even when the air itself seems to hold you motionless and suspended in the moment. After much frustration, Rob had found the heater block plug and cable on my Equinox, which was undoubtedly built for Soccer moms in Texas, and I wrestled with the connection because the last thing Rob reminded me of as I left was to not forget to unplug the car before driving off. My vehicle only reluctantly gave up its warming charge and I nearly had to be frostbitten in the process. The interior wasn’t exactly warm but it wasn’t the outside either. Cold like this hurts. It stings the skin and slices the lungs. I tired to warm my bum up at least but the seat heater refused to stay engaged. Like the dvd player, it doesn’t work in icy temps (to be fair to the seat, the dvd player is a wuss at even warmer temperatures).

The plants were spewing heavily and the fog that wasn’t too think in our little hamlet was a curtain over the town. I guessed at the location of intersections and exits which isn’t too dangerous in the evening when the workers have gone back to Edmonton and the truck traffic has thinned but during what constitutes morning rush here is more than chancey. I couldn’t even see the hospital as I drove by trying to divine the entrance to the parking lot. A lucky guess and I found a near deserted lot. The front doors were closed due to the cold, so I was let in through the ambulance bay by a patient who was having a smoke, standing outside the door in his jammies and robe - tethered to an IV pole.

I survived the blood draw. The trick is not to look. But, I couldn’t pee into the cup. I hate when that happens. So now I have a cup of pee to deliver after I take Katy into school today and it will be another afternoon of hanging around in town because the school buses aren’t running again. Katy rather enjoys this because first of all, her class is unbelievably small. Seven kids yesterday and that was because three of the all day kids showed up. Today it will be just her afternoon group. On days when the buses don’t run, school is open but parents are allowed to decide whether or not to send their kids. A neat way to avoid having to make up missed school days at the end of the year. Of course the year here ends on June 28th. Not a bad thing because kids then begin the new school year after Labor Day and it makes more sense when the warm weather really only arrives with July. Canada Day is the second of July and I am pretty sure I was in long pants and sleeves that day.

Frosty weather is interesting up here. The trees are white with crystals and the wood beneath the siding cracks like trees. All night long I could here the the house popping in protest. The padding on my fingertips is tender from exposure and I have dry skin itch for the first time this winter. The forecast for the week puts us back up into the minus teens by the weekend which you wouldn’t think would be an improvement until its -40C with wind chills even lower. I am glad to have had the opportunity to experience a real Canadian winter in terms of cold but I would have settled for just the Northern Lights - which haven’t materialized as of yet.

A Clean Fridge is a Sign

The fridge back in Iowa was almost empty. I remember Rob being appalled at the lack of just about everything when he came to stay for the first time before our trip to Arkansas. The fridge in our home here was stuffed and mostly with items of questionable edibility. Vintage describes a lot of things and many of them were in our fridge. But today all that changed because a very affable Hindu repairman arrived at our home just before lunch and fixed our broken down refrigerator, scoffing at the very idea that his phone diagnosis was incorrect. By the time I returned home later that afternoon, not only was there a chilling freezer and fridge but a clean one. Really clean and not just empty as Rob had returned home from his only afternoon meeting (hand holding as he put it) to finish up the job he began yesterday. All foods and condiments and no longer identifiable were disposed of and all surfaces within scrubbed.

So now the fridge looks like the one back in Iowa but for the fact it is way cleaner. What could this mean? First, it means we don’t eat much by way of variety anymore. Allergy- induced semi-veganism has really limited the products purchased and consumed by all of us. Second, it means we are really moving. Really. No one cleans a nasty fridge without an intervention by the universe and when the move wasn’t seeming real enough for us, destiny stepped in. But, that is not all that a clean and newly repaired fridge means. It also means that I have a pretty great husband.

-28C

It’s freakin’ cold out today. The drifts are up to my knees. I have cat starving in the garage, a kid to take and pick up from school because buses aren’t running, and a car that isn’t happy about starting. Not to mention shoveling. And I shouldn’t mention that because when Rob reads that I shoveled, he will not be pleased. Shoveling, aside from being the man’s job, is fairly hazardous in this types of temps (and I am not talking wind child stuff but real minus degrees). I know this personally because the winter that my late husband was first sick I ended up with frostbite on several toes trying to keep up with the shoveling. It snowed quite a bit and was a colder winter than we’d had in a while. Will’s uncle was always telling me to leave the shoveling for him but then it would snow and he wouldn’t show up. So, I would leave Katy inside with Will (she was about eighteen months old and he was going blind and had dementia) and go out and shovel as fast as I could (two car drive but mercifully very little sidewalk). I’d be in and out checking up on them but not enough to save my toes. I had crappy boots though and no money for new ones as I was just paying the bills we had and feeding us without Will’s income.

Texas, I am told, doesn’t have winter like this and I know that is why many people head south for the winter or to live permanently. I bet they get ice though. Ice is worse than frigid temps and snow by a very long shot in my opinion. People in colder climates are barely able to navigate it with any amount of sense but down south there should just be a general ban on travel when ice comes.

But, I really miss my garage today. My attached two car garage. I’d never had one before and spent not quite four years with it and now I am feeling hooped not to have one.

WordPress, Cell Phone Novels and Me (again)

Okay, so because I haven’t joined nearly enough blog sites (MSN-Spaces, dot.mac, LiveJournal, Blogger, Blogher, NaBloMo) or have blogs enough, I went to WordPress the other day and started a whole new account and am rebuilding this site essentially at WordPress. A really neat function allowed me to transfer all the stuff at Blogger (which are the same posts as here) to WordPress. I called the site Anniegirl1138 which was my “handle” at the YWBB. In my first post there I explained the story behind the name too. While most people at the widow board tend to create monikers based on their loss, my name was all about me. What an selfish little thang I am, eh? But I saw being there as being about me anyway. Not Will. I was there to see if I was normal (found out that normal is a bit more relative than I had believed it to be) and to rant (as I had no outlet for it in my real time) and I wanted to find people who were coping, internalizing and moving on - which is what I was more than ready to do. Rob was teasing me a bit this morning about naming my site for myself as he is grappling with what to call his on site. I named this site Second Edition because it was the second blog after my Widowed:The Blog at MSN-Spaces, literal name and boring, but I like the idea of my blog being christened with my online persona.

WordPress is a bit more complicated and I am still playing with the free features before I upgrade (which I think I will have to do to get the cool stuff) but I think it will eventually be my permanent - and only - online home. I want to continue this blog there and also have a page for my writing and a page of resources for widowed people - just cause I want to help and I haven’t much of an outlet for that right now.

Cell phone novels are a big Japanese thing right now. I went to look at a couple of blog articles on them and wondered if I could do something like that myself. It made me wonder too if I could, or should, put some of my own fiction online. I used to write fanfic in the long ago. It was fun to get feedback and have an audience that was so immediate. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore in high school and I was writing a soap opera satire that all my friends (and even kids who weren’t my friends) were asking to read it. I couldn’t write fast enough. I love writing for people. How did I lose that? Why did I forget that? Oh, yeah - I was told I wasn’t quite good enough when I tried to go back and get into the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa. Now if that happened I would chalk it up to a problem with the source but then I was twenty-seven and very insecure.

Rob and I have talked more about the Texas move and my working and my writing. I am being silly to worry about what feminist society thinks about my role. Shouldn’t my role be whatever I choose for it to be? I choose to be a writer who does the stay at home stuff. Men are practically applauded for that but women are selling themselves short and up shit creek at the same time. As Rob has pointed out on many an occasion, who decided that career and all its material accouterments were the be and end all? If everyone let fear of failure or loss of status or society’s aversion to living a scaled -down material life get in the way of the pursuit of one’s true talents, interests and dreams what a real shit-hole this life would be.

Seven Months Ago

Rob and I were married seven months ago today. I find it interesting that we count the months. I was never much for month counting. Not when I was first married to Will or when I was pregnant with Katy (though the count is generally by weeks for that life event). I had to stop and count when people would inquire how old Katy was even. Consequently, I have never numbered my days as a widow. It was actually quite a relief to be beyond the first anniversary and able to just count in years. So, it’s interesting that I, Rob too, counts the months of our marriage. Perhaps it’s just that this time we are so fortunate to have seems to precious not to keep track of very minute of it. Maybe that is even part of what drives my blogging. I want this on the record, so to speak.

We are “celebrating” by taking our old sofa to the dump. Neither Rob nor I can bear to sit on it since the nephew and his lice lounged all over it. And, it isn’t coming with us to Texas anyway. Rob hasn’t been able to pawn it off on either of the older girls. So to the dump. Then it’s on to the mall for walking shoes. I finally talked Rob into starting a walking program with me on the two nights of the week that the gym offers child-minding. In between we need to make yet another library run, returning dvd’s, cd’s and finished books. I love that we are establishing library time as a family with Katy. When I was little, I loved our trips to the library. I want Katy to see the library (and bookstores) as fun and wonderful places full of adventure and a place to exercise one’s imagination. After that it will likely be dark and time to come home.

It’s staying light longer now. It was after five before dusk hit in earnest yesterday, but it’s still a short day in terms of daylight and sunlight isn’t plentiful yet. I will so miss the long sun days. I loved being able to watch the sunset at 10:30 or 11PM. The day we were married my mother was amazed to see the sun only just setting when back in Iowa it would have been dark for hours already.

We are planning a sauna for later and perhaps a movie. A comedy. We tried comedy last night, the Aniston flick about the family who were the real Robinson’s from The Graduate. We kept our widowed character steak alive as the dad in the story was widowed in his mid-thirties.. Rob assures me that widowhood is not a theme in tonight’s pick.

But it’s a beautiful day. Not quite 2C (mid-thirties for you American folk) and we are set to enjoy it as they are predicting our first brush with -30C on Monday and Tuesday. It’s a good day to hang out and be a family and remember it’s our anniversary.

What Has Happened to Me?

I have never had the housewife instinct that so many of my female friends seem to have. I wasn’t much of a cook which my bare cupboards and barely stocked fridge more that attested to. I didn’t sew or crochet or knit or do needlepoint. I am not crafty (I think a special gene is needed for that). I can’t decorate. (Colors? They coordinate?) I don’t have collections of anything (and I am sure that notebooks, pens and pencils don’t count - very sure). And grocery shopping was just another chore. But I have noticed things about myself lately that have gotten me to think I may have been hasty in my original, and long-standing, assessment of myself. The house is clean. And getting cleaner and more organized all the time. Laundry is not only done but folded and in drawers and closets. Supper is on the table when Rob gets home every night. And I have a routine that is suspiciously suburbanish. Breakfast. Writing. Gym. Taking Katy to school. Errands. Writing. After-school snack. Supper preparation. Family supper. Bathing, bedding and story-telling. Couple time. You see? I see. I am a housewife. I even have a uniform. Lululemon. (And I look really great in it too, if it is possible to be a housewife and attractive at the same time).

It all came together for me the other afternoon when I was grocery shopping at the Safeway, skinny chai in hand. As I strolled up and down the aisles, making this and that selection, I was actually planning the menu’s for the next two weeks. I was planning! About cooking!! Weeks in advance!!! And the worst thing is how effortless it was and how much I enjoyed being able to do this, as though it were some hard won skill or something and not just a “wife” thing. Just a wife thing? Just a mom thing? Just a woman thing? If I believed in feminism I could count myself a traitor to the movement for sure.

This is not a place I ever pictured myself. Staying at home and really liking it and even being kind of good at it. I was raised in a quasi-feminist way. Sure, women got the heavy lifting of household and family maintenance, but my parents never assumed that any of we girls would have the stay at home life that my mom enjoyed (okay, didn’t enjoy at all) when we kids were small. It was fast becoming a double income world when I was growing up back in the seventies and early eighties and we were raised to expect to share the income load. So, to find myself 26 years later playing Carol Brady - no, Carol had Alice - inhabiting the mother knows best role is a bit afield of where I expected to be.

When I came to Canada, I was hoping to be able to teach eventually to help out while I worked on my writing. In the beginning. But immigration enforced retirement shifted my thoughts to just working on the writing - for which I am told that I have a talent. Now the prospect of going back to live in the States for a time has me thinking about going back to the original plan and not with relish. I like writing. I even like the thought of doing what I am doing now - but in Texas (and having more time to really explore writing as a career because Katy will be in school full-time).

But, there is that tiny Gloria in the back of my head insisting (in a very condescending and irritating way) that I need to pull my own weight and that I am not making a worthwhile contribution if I am not bringing home a bit of bacon to spend, and that even if I am published - somewhere - by the time we leave Canada - it will never be a living like teaching was. What if something were to happen to Rob? That nasty helmet haired harpy shrieks. It’s happened before and look at all those women who blithely ignored the reality of male mortality. Have you taken note of where they are? Except that I was working and supposedly safe before, I think back at her. What about self-fulfillment? Because isn’t that what it supposedly comes down to according to the ERA party line? But I wasn’t really anymore. Even writing this blog fills me with more pride in myself and accomplishments as a writer than teaching did on my best days those last few years.

I decided to discuss this with Rob again as we drove into the city for the hospice grief group. I wanted to hear myself say out loud that I don’t want to teach. I want to just write. And I wanted to hear what he thought because he is the one who goes to a “real” job everyday and brings home “real bacon”. I can teach once we are back in the states and feel that I should from the fairness point of view. Rob pointed out, rightly, that the things I do are things that need to be done by someone. It’s not an empty contribution. He also feels that I haven’t been at writing long enough to know if I can make something out of it and that we won’t go wanting without a second paycheck. But I feel a bit guilty that I am being given this gift of pursuit of a dream and I have nothing like that to give him in return. I worry that if I don’t make a good career of writing I will disappoint Rob and worse, not be able to turn the table around and give him the same freedom to pursue what he loves in terms of work. I guess I am too impatient.

Interesting what the gift of just the pursuit of your dreams can do.

Acknowledging Days and Memories

Yesterday marked two years since my wife Ann’s first husband Will died. She admitted to wrestling with ideas on how to commemorate the date. Ultimately, she wrote a blog piece in tribute to Will, plus another one for the eve prior to the day.

We talked about “dates” and which ones should be celebrated and which ones she thinks could be treated with a “pass”. Most Hallmark dates fall into the “pass” category; Ann figures that we should devote more time to celebrating or marking dates that have some meaning to us. Ann’s example of this is Hallowe’en. Not because it’s a “calendar” holiday event, but because it was while working on a volunteer project Haunted House that she met and fell in love with Will.

I’m a little less inclined to mark days of any kind. Although Ann somehow got the idea that I’m a romantic, I’ve often felt a sense of obligation when it came to marking the “holidays”. I had to get gifts and flowers for Valentine’s Day because the calendar said it was February 14th and I thought it was “expected”. Of course, some days were never negotiable with Shelley. She was generally pretty adamant that we celebrate her birthday (and rightfully so); she was pretty big on Mother’s Day too. Not even my attempts to deflect her on that one with “Well, you’re not my mother; it’s up to the girls to get you something” really ever worked.

That’s not to say that I’m a cold and heartless wretch, either. Even though yesterday was Ann’s “sadiversary” or “remembrance” day, I found myself spiraling down throughout the day falling victim to a grief wave. Who knows why these waves crop up from time to time? Perhaps it was the heightened emotions around our house in the days leading up to yesterday. Or perhaps my memories were triggered by something. If you’ve read the news lately, you’ll know that Heath Ledger died this past week. I found myself listening to the soundtrack from “Brokeback Mountain” yesterday. Don’t know why, just happened upon it while listening to my iPod at work. Why is this significant? Because “Brokeback Mountain” was the last movie Shelley and I saw together in a sit down movie theatre. Not only was it an excellent picture, a good story with excellent acting by both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, but though the film was set in Wyoming (and to a lesser extent Texas), it was actually filmed on location in Alberta. In Kananaskis Country. One of “our” places. One of Shelley’s favourite places. Watching the mountains of Kananaskis on the big screen in 2005 reminded us of the week we spent camping and hiking around Little Elbow in the summer of 2003. Although we had my Mom along, we were still able to sneak off by ourselves for some alone time now and then. It was a memorable week.

I guess that Heath Ledger's death represents breaking of another link with the past. And so, thinking about that time, those memories, I was reduced to tears for a while last night.

But now, today, there’s a date to celebrate. In the now. For the future. It’s been one year since I penned a letter to Ann. A letter stating that I wanted to elevate our friendship to a higher level. I was afraid to send that letter. I didn’t want to overstep and risk losing our friendship. And yet, there was something about her. I had yet to meet her. Hell, I had yet to even lay eyes upon her. Yet, there was something about her………

We are meeting for lunch today. I think that flowers are in order, don’t you?

A Year Ago

We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, here and now without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
- Franklin Planner quote that Rob sent to me a year ago today


A year ago today I was at home having called in to work sick because of a sinus infection. I was sitting at my computer, as I am now, surfing the widow board and occasionally checking email (because I was an email junkie then). I hadn’t heard from Rob yet that day, as I was becoming accustomed to, so I checking mail rather often. When his mail for the day finally arrived it was curiously titled “A Difficult Letter” and I became a bit worried. I had been a wreck the last week leading up to the anniversary of Will’s death and in retrospect I think it had a lot of do with the fact that I was spending too much time at the YWBB and the volatile atmosphere and, frankly, negative approach to grieving was feeding some of my apprehensions. Consequently I leaned rather heavily on our friendship and was keeping Rob up quite late at night with our online chats. I was afraid when I saw the title of the email that he was going to tell me that he needed a little space for his own grief and maybe we should not communicate as much anymore. But as I read the letter I began to see that not only were my fears unfounded but the message was heading in the opposite direction. Not that it didn’t take 5 or 6 paragraphs for him to get to the point. He is nothing if not round about at times. But, when he did get to his main point it was this - he wanted to see if there was something more to our relationship than just the friendship that we’d already established.

I was stunned. I just sat there for a bit and read the letter (the parts that get to the point) over and over. And then - I called my best friend Vicki.

“What should I do?”
“Answer the letter.”

Vicki had, almost from the beginning of the correspondence Rob and I established, thought there was more to it than friendship even though I protested that it was not so. She would just smile knowingly and nod and totally dismiss me. She knew better. So I wrote my reply.

Subject:
Thank You. I'm breathing - raggedly - but breathing
Date:
Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:53:54 -0700
Ann,

Thank you. I don't know if you can imagine how hard this is for me.
Maybe you can.

I'm still a little shaky, really, but now today I am smiling - all the
way from my heart; something that hasn't happened in a while.

Thanks again.
Talk to you later.
Rob

----- Original Message -----
From: ann
To: rob
Sent: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:58:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Go ahead a breathe, okay

Rob,

Since you probably haven't done a single productive
thing all day, I decided I should send you a short
note now even though I haven't had a chance to really
think about your proposal in depth yet.

I like you too. And July is too far off, I agree.

Now, get some work done. We can talk later.

Ann (who is marveling at the long-winded way that
Virgos manage to arrive at their point)

And that was the day that changed my life - again. It’s funny but despite the fact that by this point I knew that Rob was everything I was looking for in man, I was looking for someone just like him and not at him at all.

From here we began to plan the spring break trip that we eventually become our sojourn to Devil’s Den in Arkansas which is where Rob proposed to me. We, of course, had already managed an face to face meeting in Idaho Falls which confirmed for us what we already knew - that we were meant to be together. And that’s an identity shaker. To realize that you are meant to be with someone who you wouldn’t have even met had your spouse not died. It takes faith in the universe to wrap your mind around that - not your heart though.

This probably seems an odd post coming just the day after two posts about my late husband. It’s not odd to me. It’s my life. The sad and the sweet. The past and the now - and the future. I have been loved and have loved in return. I am loved and return that love with all my heart and soul.

Two Years Ago

Will died of aspiration pneumonia, a complication brought on by x-ALD not long after 9:30 PM on a Monday. His favorite football team had won the AFC championship the day before and he wouldn’t get to see them win the Superbowl two weeks later. He loved to play pool and read Stephen King novels. He hated peas and loved chocolate chip ice cream. He was a fanatic about grilling and would drag the grill out of the shed on the coldest, snowiest day of the year to cook steak and veggies. He was a better friend than most of his friends deserved, gave the shirt of his back to most of them without asking for anything in return. He started his collection of states’ quarters for his daughter before she was even conceived - that’s how confident he was that he would be a father someday. He was a horrible handy-man but a great landscaper.

He never really knew his daughter, nor she him, but he loved her as much as he could before he forgot who she was. He spent the last two and a half years of his life cut off from everyone he loved and who loved him. He was just 32.

There is nothing else to say beyond - I loved him and he loved me.

Sexual Abstinence and Dr. King

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. - Rev. Dr. Martin Luthor King, Jr.

There is a a blogger at the Des Moines Register who has decided to fast one random day a week to show solidarity for the poor and oppressed people around the world, particularly those prisoners being held at Gitmo still.

My partner Megan Felt and I have decided to fast one day a week - abstaining from alcohol, caffeine, food, juice, prescriptions, sex, and all monetary purchases - to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed in the world and, more specifically, with the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other locations around the globe.
We're starting today, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but will randomly select a different day each week from here on out.  
Imagine if every American fasted and abstained from monetary purchases for one day every week.  We would lower our consumption rate by nearly 15 percent.  Imagine how those resources could be redistributed to better provide for the least among us.
Fasting one day a week isn't even all that hard either.  Yeah sure, it's going to be uncomfortable, but whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 
David Goodner - Young Adult Board at The Des Moines Register 1/21/08

Mr. Goodner is a twenty-six year old student at Iowa. Most of what he writes is political in nature and reflects his interests in making the world a better place through public debate, I think. It’s hard to tell. He’s a kid. Only a kid could believe that not having sex or taking his allergy medicine once a week would translate into a saved world. Well, alright, that’s not fair. He doesn’t think he can save the world by doing these things. He is trying to prove his compassion through a meaningless set of gestures. And that is a harsh assessment. And a fair one. But I think it’s probably something we have all been guilty of from time to time over the course of our lives. It’s easy to make small and relatively easy sacrifices. I can remember collecting change from middle school kids for the food bank. They would drop dimes and nickels and pennies into a jar or can and at the end of a week or two we’d have five or six dollars. It was ridiculous because half or more of these same kids came to school every day with that much on them, but only a few of them could think to donate a couple of dollars rather than a few coins or nothing at all. Going without a pop from the machine at the end of the day or not being able to buy junk food a la carte at lunch was too much sacrifice. Their chump change giving was enough to make them feel good.

What I found to be the most odd sacrifice was giving up sex for a day. Which leads a person to wonder just how often David and his partner have sex that giving it up for a day is a hardship. And just as an aside, isn’t it cute the way he refers to her as his “partner”. Such solidarity with same-sex couples is proof, I guess, of the seriousness with which we should take his other “solidarity” stances. But back to the sex. One day. That’s a sacrifice? He clearly has always had a partner because speaking as someone who went without sex for the duration of her first husband’s illness and quite a while longer after his death, I’d just as soon write the needy of the world a check.

Gestures are just that. If you want to help the poor, then really help them. Donate your time or your money or something that you bought mindlessly on your last cruise through Target. Volunteer. Join a cause and work for it. Sipping bottled water for a day? Walking across campus instead of driving a half mile to class? Skipping the snugglies with your honey? What is that? Really, what is that?

On the Eve of Two Years

My first husband Will will be dead two years tomorrow. Interestingly I had a visit from him today as I was heading to the grocery store.

I am a button pusher when it comes to the radio. I surf XM until I find something I like. I listen. And then if the next song is not something I care for or I am not in the mood to listen to - I begin my surfing all over again. After I dropped Katy off at school and was heading toward the Safeway, our song came on. It’s a song by Everlast that was playing constantly when Will and I were first dating and though it is not romantic in any sense of the word it dogged us so much that Will took to calling it “our song”. I have only heard it sporadically since he died, but whenever it has come on the radio it seems “sent” because it turns up at moments when I really need to hear from him. And that’s what is even more interesting because I didn’t think I really needed to hear from Will today. I had asked him to pop in and say hello in my dreams a few days ago as I am dreaming like crazy and to my mind - no purpose. But Will has declined command performances in my slumbering hours. He has shown up only once - as I remember him from before he was ill - and that was the night he died. And he didn’t speak to me. We didn’t interact at all. I just saw him packing up that old white boat of a car he drove when he was a teenager and then he hopped in and drove away. It was as clear a message as he could give me that it was time for each of us to move on. We had spent enough time in limbo. His only concessions to me have been a photograph of his urn that I can see his face on and the night he walked by my bed just before I fell asleep just about one year ago. Aside from that, he has used the radio. When he wants to remind me that he is still checking in and making sure all is well - it is Everlast, and when he wants me to remember that I am doing fine and he is proud of me - it is Jimmy Eats World. Considering how much time we spent driving around in his pick-up and listening to the radio, I think it is fitting that he chooses to contact me this way.

So, I sat in the parking lot and sang along with Everlast until the song was over and though in retrospect it makes me cry, at that moment I felt pretty good.

6AM

Went and bought an alarm clock for myself on Saturday because I wanted to start getting up before eight (or eight thirty) and try and re-establish a more work friendly routine before moving back to the States. I will never find a teaching job that lets me sleep in and for now I could use the extra time in the morning for writing and getting things in order for the initial move. I know that April/May isn’t exactly around the corner and that I made the move up here in less time (plus sold my house, car and gave away nearly all of my furniture to boot), but I would rather avoid the panicky feelings of deadlines looming like large scary monsters.

So, was I up with the sunshine? No. And just an FYI - the moon is still bright shiny and full at 6AM in northern Alberta. The reason for my spectacular failure was that I couldn’t fall asleep last night. It was probably one o’clock by the time I managed and even then it was another one of those dream filled sleeps that I am beginning to find aggravating as they are just non-sensical and exhausting.

Part of my trouble is that I don’t really wind down prior to going to bed. I am usually busy with something - writing or shredding or something too busy. Lately too I am stiff from hunching over the shredder or my daughter’s head. And finally, Wednesday will be two years since Will died. I haven’t any sense of how to commemorate it. The first one was just getting to and past it, but now that I have and the day isn’t as fraught with anxiety and dread - now what? His grave is back in Iowa. His friends fell out of touch long before he died. My own family will not remember and truthfully saw his passing as a blessing for me and although they are right on an intellectual level, the emotions don’t match up for me. His mother considers me a murderer for not intervening when the aspiration pneumonia set in that final weekend. Katy is too young to drag into this commemoration of loss thing. I think for now it is better to celebrate his birthday and remember the happier times of his life and not dwell on the illness and death. Since she is a carrier of the disease that killed him, she will have her whole adult life to consider that and the fallout as it will effect her and her children (should she choose to take that risk). So, I am a trifle bit alone in this remembering stuff and honestly - I don’t feel like it anyway. I look at pictures of him when he was well - no, he was never well - but when he was not visibly ill, and it’s hard to remember how I felt then. It’s like flipping through someone’s photo album. Would it be awful of me to just feel sad but more grateful that it’s all behind me now? Because you see, that is what is making me really sad. I am happy. Happier than I can ever remember being. I love Rob. I love our life. I am looking forward to the future and the plans we have made and the ones we are still formulating.

Getting up early is a practice thing. Just like everything else.

Shredding, Purging and Nits

Last night I started sorting the last of the boxes of papers and other crap that I stupidly lugged from Iowa to Canada. Rob says not to be hard on myself about it, but it’s hard not to when you spend an entire afternoon shredding receipts that predate your daughter’s birth and are sorting through old check duplicates from four years ago. This was all stuff I had more than enough time to handle even before Will died and I simply let it stack up. And why? Because I let my inertia take over and I listened to people when they told me that it was okay because of my circumstances. It wasn’t okay. It still isn’t. But, it’s done. I have sorted the wheat from the chaff and can now get on to the much less fun task of filing.

I am a horizontal filer by nature being a concrete random and all. Filing just doesn’t feel natural and sticking them away in drawers even less so. Worse is that I can’t find them at all once they are neatly put away. It’s as if file cabinets are kryptonite and once the papers are securely encased within them, I lose all sense of them. When they are scattered about or in plastic totes, I can hone in on nearly anything quite quickly. But filed papers disappear from my radar and I can be rifling through the exact folder I need and never find it at all.

Fortunately the ordeal was just depressing from a self-recriminating standpoint. Last night I found a lot of the paperwork from hospice, the funereal home and the autopsy that was performed on his brain and spinal cord by the university to which I donated his tissue so that researchers working on ALD can learn from him. I also found more of the cards that my MIL has sent sporadically since November of 2006, but I didn’t bother to read them again. Today’s fun was limited mainly to pictures, Katy’s school stuff, receipts and old billing statements. And of course my regrets that I wasn’t on top of the clutter the way I should have been. It seems to me sometimes that my now is forever running into or falling over piles of debris from my then. Perhaps life is this way anyway and it was just something I didn’t notice until now, but it is still cause for heavy sighs.

And finally, would a day around here be complete without nit-picking? I think not. We find the tiniest bug. Just one. It’s dead now. And two dozen nits - picked them suckers with a vengeance. Kate’s bedding is still being washed daily and all clothing worn by each of us is tossed in the wash basket regardless. Tuesday is the next shampoo treatment and then - knocking all wood within arm’s reach - perhaps we can get back to normal. Although I think our sofa will have to go since neither Rob nor I can bring ourselves to sit on it (his nephew was an inert mass there for his whole visit and interestingly Rob remembered that the boy confessed to a very recent short haircut after Rob wondered what had happened to the long hair that adorned his Facebook photos - my loathing for SIL continues).

The List

The latest Oprah has an article by widowed freelance writer who found her current husband and soul mate by making a list of 100 characteristics that she wanted in a mate. Okay, that’s a bit too succinct. She visited a psychic some time after her second husband died because she’s had no luck dating and wanted to know if she was meant to spend the remainder of her life alone or not. The psychic instructed her to make a details list - “down to his socks” - of what she was looking for in a soul mate. The woman went home and did just that - right down to the “gray socks”. I don’t think the psychic meant the sock color thing literally. She just wanted this woman to really put careful thought into her list of preferred attributes in a potential husband. It was her theory that the universe will give us what we want if it knows what that is. And I guess there is something to that. Many of us really don’t know what we want. We only seem to know what we don’t want and that is usually after we have something or someone who turns out to be wrong for us.

I know many people who subscribe to the “list” approach to dating and mating. I remember that Rob was all set to write up a list of his own and told me about it during one of our early IM chats. I think he got the idea from another widow he’d met via a melanoma group on the Internet which is where he learned about the YWBB and came to meet me. If I am remembering correctly I teased him a bit about making a list but pointed out in all seriousness that lists are good only as guides and that a person shouldn’t be so set on a specific criteria that they let a perfectly wonderful person get away from them. Rob never did get around to writing a list as it turned out. But I actually had a list. Well, not a written down list but just things I had thought about myself and where I was and who I had become.

I am not sure that the universe divines our thoughts as much as it is driven by plans that we all had a hand in drafting in the long, long ago. Perhaps what list making really does is help us remember what it is we’d decided and agreed to do and helps us get positioned properly.

There are those who don’t believe the universe cares one way or another about what we want or don’t want. I don’t believe in the theory of random chaos. There are no accidents. Willful missteps - okay. But I don’t believe that any of us can avoid our “destinies” for very long because we authored them.

My Wonderful Husband

As we were getting ready for bed last night, Rob remarked, “You know, I think you have a pretty wonderful husband.” And I agreed. And I should have been the one to say so in fact. So I will do it today.

All week Rob has been the rock in this lice business. He took over the laundry duty. He was there for both rounds of delousing shampoo. He nit-picked non-stop and with the patience of Job. In between he went to work, got our personal directive stuff written, took care of the car insurance issues for Jordan, and made time for us to have tea in the city before the lawyer’s appointment. He also generously went solo one evening so I could go to my writer’s group. He is more than wonderful. In my whole life I haven’t been able to lean on someone the way he lets me lean on him. It’s a sometimes frightening thing for someone like me who was so used to having to do everything for myself and not really having anyone I could count on in all manner of situations or crises.

Last year around this time, Rob was sitting up late into the night with me as I battled some pretty awful insomnia leading up to the first anniversary of Will’s death. We talked on the phone a bit but the bulk of our conversations were carried on IM. Hours at a time. He astounded me with his selfless concern for me and what I was feeling even when I knew that he was dealing with his own grief. He would send me funnies by email everyday to take me mind off things and make sure I smiled a bit in each 24-hr period. He is still the one who cares most if the corners of my mouth inch upward every day.

Although I am sure it seems as though I do nothing but talk about Rob, there are volumes more things that I kept to myself about him and our relationship. Things that are too TMI - even for me - and things that belong to us alone or memories that are just mine to have and hold. In the absence of these details, I hope I am still able to convey the depth of my love for him and the love that we share.

I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else or with anyone else other than here and with Rob. I can’t picture a future, near or far, without him in it. My favorite place to be is wherever he is and my chief project is our life together.

Nit Picking

As no critters were discovered during this morning’s hand delousing session, Miss Katy will be returning to school today with about four inches less of hair because I realized that we couldn’t avoid cutting some of it off. Her hairs is fine but think and curly. I felt terrible about that for some reason. But Katy is more than ready to be done with Rob and I hunched over her head picking through her hair practically strand by strand and dislodging nits with our fingernails because those little nit combs are useless on the fine hair that many children, ours included, have. The laundry is nearly caught up but we’ve decided that until Katy is louse and nit free, her bedding will have to be done daily.

We slept this morning. And then I slept in more because I awoke with a horrible headache behind my eyes. When I did get up my left eye was matted and a deep angry red color possibly as a result of my fingers being in Kate’s chemically treated hair so often over the last two days. I am very sensitive to that kind of thing. I have had to give up showering at the gym because the disinfectant they use on the showers sends me into days long hay fever attacks. I can’t even use the bottled spray to wipe down equipment as it is just a watered down version of the same disinfectant. Rob told me at breakfast - following a bug hunt and nit-picking session - that I slept horribly. Startling easily and talking a lot. I know I have been dreaming constantly the last week or so. Nightmares some but usually just those exhausting dreams about searching for someone or something and hiding and running from someone or something. Not totally unexpected with the second anniversary now less than a week away and with the added stress of the lice visitation and trying to sort papers for taxes (a world of confusion awaiting there) and shredding and storage - not to mention the whole gearing up for Texas thing. I am lucky to be sleeping at all. I will take crappy sleep or insomnia any day.

I told Rob that I am having a hard time find charitable feelings for his sister. You know, poor Widowed SIL - she has it so hard, so I guess I can let the little lice thing go. But he wondered why I was bothering to think about her at all. I should just be like him and forget about her. He’s right. If not for the lice, we’d have forgotten about her already. Lord knows that I don’t waste time or thought space on my own mired in inertia youngest sis. Some people like and need the kind of misery that goes along with victimhood - whatever its original source. I guess if that kind of thing didn’t have collateral damage it wouldn’t be so irritating. I just forgot the critical rule of being related to people like that - all visiting should be done on neutral territory and confined to the phone or Facebook as much as humanly possible.

So today is Jordan’s birthday. She wanted to meet us in the city at the Muttart to visit her mom’s memorial bench before supper out. But with lice and having a lawyer appointment in the afternoon to sign wills and directives and other cheery stuff and then needing to get back home in time to meet Katy’s school bus and the insurance adjustor who is coming to appraise the damage to the car that Jordan was driving in a fender bender last week - well - just another detail that we will have to manage and figure a way to work out. Things will fall into place. They always do.

Strathcona Writing Group

After a long day in the lice trenches, my darling husband insisted that I still head to Sherwood Park for my writing group meeting at the library. It turned out to be a welcome end to the day.

The Strathcona group is different from the Fort group. The Fort meetings are more structured. There is a presentation often times and someone leading the meeting. I took my turn last week and talked about publishing options and blogging. Strathcona has more writers who seem to be actively working on novels and we spend more time listening to each other’s work. They also self-publish with an anthology and organize writing workshops that are held at the library. I like both groups. I like the people and I take something from each experience.

Last evening I am afraid I monopolized a bit because I have been very busy writing since Christmas: poetry for an on-line magazine that was seeking submissions, another short story for my sci-fi story series, two pieces for a flash fiction contest, the start of my haiku’s for another e-zine and then finally a short based on a story Rob told me about Shelley. The group really likes my sci-fi series and I admit I am proud of it myself. Rob and Jordan have been reading pieces as I finish too. I think Jordan likes them a little more than Rob but it is the kind of subject matter that she finds more appealing than he does.

One of the comments I get from the Strathcona group often is that I have a strong voice as a writer and it lets me get away with breaking the sacred writing rules of fiction. Most notably the “show don’t tell” rule. Much as I love the compliment, it makes me wonder about this “voice”. Who I sound like that is so different from me and where does it come from? Being able to write is a gift, I know, but I still wonder about it.

In addition to my readings, Nathan read a poem that he’d written inspired by a Canadian Armed Forces recruiting commercial. Nathan is an interesting young man. He might be Farron’s age. He lives at home with his parents and his mother also attends are writing group. He has a limp which I am not sure if it is related to his short stature or not. He appears to be a little person but again it’s just an observation and not based on anything he has said. He’s very smart with a wicked sense of humor that I think Jordan might appreciate, but I am not in the match making business where my step-daughters are concerned. I think they are perfectly capable of meeting young men on their own. Match-making is a dangerous pastime anyway. After Nathan, Rebecca read her latest revision from a fantasy novel she is working on based on World of Warcraft characters she has created. I believe she is on her second revision. She is a very visual writing. She creates elaborate settings and is quite well versed in mythology. I love listening to her read. She has a Dutch - maybe - accent that really lends to the writing she is doing. Finally Heinz read a couple of his poems. He is an older German man who always seems to have very sad love poems to read. Makes me wonder what his story might be.

The first part of group was catching up and the last part of group was devoted to up-comings. There are workshops starting next month again and running into April. There are several that appeal to me but Rob doesn’t have the timeline for Texas yet and I don’t know when he will start traveling for work, so I am not committing to any but the first workshop on plot right now.

When I got home, I found two very tired lice warriors. One at the computer in the kitchen and the other barely awake upstairs after a trying bath and nit-picking sessions. Which reminds me that I have laundry still and hair to check. So far Rob and I are clean. Fingers crossed that we stay that way.

Lice

Well, my sis-in-law’s visit has turned out to the be gift that keeps on giving. Katy has lice. The irony abounds really because back in Des Moines Katy had a classmate who had lice, continually it seemed, for two years and despite her long curly hair, she never did get it. The reason for that of course is that lice isn’t that easy to catch. According to the health unit nurse I spoke with this morning (and my best friend in Iowa who is a nurse as well) it really takes head to head contact such as sharing pillows, bedding and hats. So, even though it is remotely possible that Katy could have picked up the offending insects at school or child-minding at the fitness center, the most likely suspect is Rob’s niece who slept up in Katy’s room on the trundle bed. Katy loves the trundle and played on it, building tents and such for days after. Also, it given the time span needed from contact to infestation (7 to 10 days), Rob’s niece fits the profile (the girl had her hands in her hair constantly -raking and rubbing). When Rob saw the title for today’s blog he said, “So you are just going to blame my niece for this then?” “Yep,” I replied. He just shook his head and laughed, “I hope my sister never finds and reads your blog. She’ll never speak to me again.” Ah, if it were only that easy to rid one’s life of drama-makers.

So, in addition to the hair-treating - mine too probably because I have long hair and Katy is in close contact with me - there are beds to be stripped and washed........again. Clothes to be washed. Stuffed things and dress-up clothes to be bagged. The cat, according to my best friend, should be dipped in a flea bath. (And the cat is becoming a saga onto herself anyway at this point. One more straw and Rob is going to reassemble his old shot-gun.) Rob volunteered to work from home today to help out. The last lice scare, which was the first time Katy’s daycare sent home a note, I stripped and quarantined stuffies while Will walked in circles - something he was wont to do because of the dementia - oblivious, unable to even give moral support. I commented yesterday on Alicia’s blog piece about how hard it is to be a single parent. I made the observation that even having a second adult around didn’t change things in some respects. But I didn’t mean with the heavy lifting, like today. Rob will help with the cleaning and head dousing. For me the emotional aspects of parenting have always been and continue to be the toughest thing. I just find it draining to be on call to another human being from infinity to beyond. Katy is very demanding and has been since moment one. She doesn’t make the demands on Rob or anyone else really that she does of mean in terms of needing my attention and needing me near. And I am a person who needs down time and to retreat into myself in order to maintain equilibrium. Perhaps because double parenting is so new to me I went into it with expectations that were too high. I really thought I would be magically altered and that the things about Katy - her clingyness and incessant questioning and her difficulty entertaining herself - wouldn’t bother me as much anymore or that Rob’s presence would abate this somewhat.

Rob and I talked about this last night. I told him that I just don’t find joy and fulfillment in the kinds of things that most mothers seem to. Sitting for 45 minutes in that nasty waiting room at her ballet school for instance is beyond boring, but their our moms their happily nattering away like it was an outing for them. Last spring we were visiting my folks and tagged along to a t-ball game of my 6 year old nephew, I was so bored. The coaches do their best to move those games along but it is still painfully slow. My sister though had a grand time with the other parents. Clearly this is social for her. Just thinking about years of this kind of thing to come doesn’t give me the same thrill that many parents seem to get. Rob’s late wife coached their girls even, but I was a basketball and a volleyball coach when I taught middle school. Did that for years, but only because they paid me. I couldn’t imagine doing it for any other reason. Coaching is thankless and the kids’ parents are maddening to deal with. My friend Meg literally sacrificed her free time for her three girls. Nothing superseded their activities, not even her own needs really. She was quite Buddha like in her contentment about it too. I sometimes think that years and years from now Katy will sit around with her friends and say this like, “I love my mom, but she just wasn’t quite cut out for motherhood.”

Mounds of lousy (maybe an exaggeration as we find just a few bugs and no nits yet on Katy) call me from the basement below. Rob should be back in the next little while with the shampoo and treatment stuff. Fun awaits.

The Zen of Gratitude

I have my first yoga class in about half an hour and have been killing a bit of time reading blogs, and yes - the widow board - and the theme of being grateful came up again. Sally’s little girl just turned four and she recounted the day and her birth story on her blog. She mentioned that she felt grateful for the time she was able to parent with her late husband because she realized that that is not always the case for some - like me for instance. And it’s funny how in the midst of those milestones and anniversaries of this and that which litter the landscape of everyone’s life that those of us who have experienced great loss and tragedy find that we have reason to be grateful. It’s that double-edged thing that in the beginning we fight and cut ourselves on frequently because we don’t want to acknowledge the fact that for the vast majority of us, things could be so much worse.

And what’s worse than losing your life partner? Well, I mentioned an old friend recently in another blog entry whose three year old son was murdered by her own husband just about six years ago. That - is worse. And I don’t think many of us would have to look to far afield to find family, friends or acquaintances whose lives you wouldn’t swap with for any amount of earthly or beyond reward. It gets back to that thing grief does with our focus and perspective. Luring us inward to the point where our eyes are permanently crossed from the intense navel-gazing and we find something personal in the most innocuous of setbacks. Grief whispers seductively in our ears, trying to convince us that we are the focal point of all that is unfair but try as it may it can’t truly compete with what we know, and that is that we are not the most unfortunate and put upon. And eventually (though for some this takes a very long time - if it ever happens at all) we have to admit that death is not personal and we have not been chosen from all others because everyone is touched sooner or later.

One of my goals for this year is to try to find that grateful Zen place that so many people seem to connect with so much more easily than I do. I cannot go through to much more of my life being unable to shake off other people’s perceptions of me and of life and its many events. There is always a reason to be grateful and to look beyond and to find joy.

Hockey Skates

I have been skating with an old pair of men’s figure skates I bought eleven years ago on sale at Target. I got them on a whim but ended up using them quite a bit those first two winters. There was an outdoor rink by the public library which was a 5 minute drive from where I was living. I used to head over there in the late afternoon when I got home from school and skate for an hour or so nearly everyday - especially that first winter. I skated by myself. I didn’t really know anyone who was interested in circling a frozen pond as the daylight hours dwindled away. I was at the point in my single life that I did pretty much whatever I felt inclined to and that meant that I very often was on my own, but I was used to it.

We started skating here as a family thing and because I thought it would be a nice skill for Katy to have. A child can’t possibly develop a healthy active lifestyle if it isn’t modeled for them and they can’t have favorite physical activities if they aren’t given a few to chose from at least. But the black skates just didn’t feel as right on my feet now that I am older and they are flatter from years more of running and wider, and tad bit longer, from childbearing, so Rob suggested that we get me a pair of hockey skates when they went on sale at Canadian Tire recently. I admit that I have been tempted by hockey style skates in the past. They look more comfortable. I have very flat feet. So flat that I avoid wearing anything but runners and hikers whenever I can. I don’t do sandals or flip-flops. Dress shoes of any kind are torture. Hockey skates are wider and have a large toe box than even male figure skates and they don’t constrict the ankle as high up, and I felt very comfortable in them from the first moment in the store.

On the ice, hockey skates are another matter. It feels for the first few moments as though you have never skated before because the figure skates have a longer blade that forces you to be more aware of where your foot is just to avoid catching one end or the other and face-planting on the ice. And they are fast. It’s like being freed from invisible restraints. Movement is so unrestricted by comparison. I felt at times as though I was barely skimming the ice surface which in fact I was technically as Rob tells me that when skating we are really not gliding on the ice at all but on the water that is melting beneath the skate’s blade.

The skating season lasts until April sometime and we may be gone by then, but I think the skates may make the cut for items that travel back to the states.

Optimistic Widow

My horoscope yesterday said that I would encounter many people who were looking at the down side of life and would do their best to turn me to the dark side. It reminded me that this is against my natural inclinations and that they would likely not succeed. I have not been buoyant like this my whole life though. Although I have always returned to the sunny-side, in the past it has taken me longer to rebound then it does these days. Which brings me to my current dilemma. How to give back without undoing my own progress or annoying others. And I have to admit the latter is the minor concern because I am really done apologizing for the road I have taken as a caregiver and a widow.

As we tooled around the city yesterday running errands, Rob and I discussed again the hospice group situation. He is in a place where he feels that he is not interested in adding any more widows to his acquaintance. I see his point. The newly widowed are draining because they dredge up all sorts of memories and emotions. Extra care must be taken when sharing with them to avoid making them feel as though they are grieving incorrectly or that encourages them to believe that grieving is an end in itself. On the other end there is the problem of widows close to or past your vintage who are mired by circumstances beyond their control, or by choice, and see you as a model of all that is *DGI about grieving and grief. I want to continue with the group. I think I have things to say and share that might be helpful as the woman who is leading the group is not a widow and their are things about grief that are specific to the loss. Perhaps Rob is right that this is not the time or place. We are finding our strides more and more and have a big move again and maybe not the energy to spare. What to do. What to do. Think on it and wait and see, I guess.

Personally, I am not sure why I feel like I need to give back anymore. My success with it so far has been decidedly mixed. Sandi, the founder of the WET grief group back in Iowa, thought I was pretty good at offering advice and empathy. She suggested that I think about starting a group of my own when I got to Canada (or maybe Texas now) but the idea is daunting. She is a very religious person which is why, I think, she was able to bring together such a diverse group of women without a lot of drama popping up. I am not sure that is me. My solution to diversity and drama when I was teaching was to simple suppress it like they did in the former Soviet Union. No drama allowed. And haven’t I given back enough? Another question to ponder.

Finally, reading sad posts on the YWBB (or flames) and blogs and listening to grief stories and experiences in group reminds me that I am not there anymore really and don’t want to be. I am somewhere else that is not back where I was before either and I don’t know how to explain to people who need to know the directions to this place how to get here. And on that completely incomprehensible note, I need to get dressed and on with my day as groceries need to be bought and a new pair of hockey skates need to be broken in later this afternoon. Priorities, people.



*DGI - Don’t Get Its is a derogatory term used to refer to the non-widowed when they make inadvertent statements about grief or timelines to the widowed. It is a reference to their insensitivity that is generally unwarranted.

Photographic Memories

Last night I went through the totes with pictures. When we moved up here I had just tossed them all, most in the original packaging from the photo shop, into two pink totes and I haven’t looked at them since. Not that I looked at them much before anyway. I haven’t been one to document my life on film. Most of the time the camera was put away unless it was a holiday or a special occasion of some sort. I vowed to changed that after Katy was born. I didn’t want her to be one of those people who had scant evidence that she was ever a child. But despite my best efforts the pictures never made it to a scrapbook or photo album and now that I have a digital camera and computer - I am even worse about getting pictures out and on display.

I made rather quick work of the totes. I was surprised that I could identify and date the pictures by lot as easily as I could as I still have a difficult time with time frames. One thing that was striking was the fact that as time went on Will’s presence in the photos diminished and then disappeared completely even though he was still alive. But maybe that is why. He was just alive in the physical sense and no more than that. I do remember that I deliberately stopped taking pictures of him when he went into the nursing home. I think there is just one photograph of him there that was taken at a holiday dinner they had for the residents and family in very early December. He would have been there about two months at the time and the social worker there took the picture and gave me a copy later. My memories of that time and place are awful enough without photos and Katy, thankfully, can’t remember him there at all. It probably wasn’t the worst that nursing homes had to offer but it was typical of what most of those places are. Understaffed and full of demented seniors who are in various types of restraints and drugged more insensible than they would have been anyway. Will, unfortunately, had to be quite quite medicated as he was aggressive and combative due to the areas of his brain that were under attack from his immune system. It wasn’t until the last six months or so when he had lost completely the ability to move that it was safe to take him off some of those medications. It’s odd that I should be thinking of this kind of thing right now because Rob and I are putting the finishing touches on our wills and personal directives and we have this list of “what ifs” to plow through and decide upon. I am pretty sure I would not want to live the way Will did those last two years even if I was suffering from dementia as severely as he was and didn’t know what was going on - or at least couldn’t remember it from one moment to the next. Sometimes life is not worth living and I think a lot of what passes for respect for the sanctity of life is just the cowardice of family to do the right thing or the selfishness in wanting to preserve someone in a horrible existence to put off their own grief.

But not everything in the photo totes was about Will. Believe it or not I had a longer life without him than with him. There were pictures of students and events that took place at the various schools I have taught at. There were tons of photos of my oldest nephew who I borrowed quite a bit during my single days. I found all the family history stuff that my cousin, Anne, and I had worked on. I have a fairly intricate family tree map that I used for my own writing and it reminded me of the stories that I wanted to write up at some point.

And I found cards. Why did I save all these cards? What is the purpose? Rob says not to be too hard on myself in that respect as everyone does this. He has nearly every important card ever given to him. I suppose he is right but I am not overly sentimental in this respect and whenever I pull out this stuffed shoe-box, I am more annoyed than pleased that it exists. Perhaps though I would be upset if it didn’t turn up from time to time and maybe I will be glad of these cards someday. And then there were the bereavement cards. I did nothing with this aside from take money out of them which sounds awful but I needed that money to pay for the lot and the burial. My aunt paid for the wake. I was so broke and still had about six months to go on my masters - with the accompanying bills and nearly a year before I would see the corresponding pay raise that I so desperately needed already. I verbally thanked everyone at the time of the wake but I know this doesn’t clear me with Miss Manners. At the time I wasn’t up to sending out written acknowledgment and as time went on I came to resent more and more the idea that this was expected. A death isn’t like a wedding or baby shower. It’s not a party and the cards are not gifts. And I found no comfort from them and still don’t. By and large they are from people who abandoned us for over two years and I didn’t, still don’t, see any good reason to thank them for throwing me a bone and showing up after Will was gone especially since I never heard or saw all but a handful of these people again. And these were people that had stuck with us anyway and I still tell them how much that meant to me.

Today all these photos are labeled and packed into two much small, and easier to pack for moving, photo boxes - ready for scanning onto my computer at some later date. The most immediate plan I have for them is to gather up pictures for Katy to create a book telling her story. I have read, and the hospice grief program confirmed, that it’s good for young children to have a photo book that tells the story of their lost parent. It helps them remember and facilitates their grieving process by giving them something concrete to thumb through and read and remember. Aside from that I am content to have them in some sort of order at last.

Now it’s on to the last two boxes of papers to be sorted and then filed or shredded. A widow at the hospice group asked me if it was okay to have not gone through her husband’s things. She is barely a year out and I told her that it was fine. For me though, at almost two years, it is not okay anymore. I can’t string this out over the remaining decade and I don’t see the sense in that anyway. The photos, papers and miscellaneous items left will not lose their power over me through my delay and may indeed gain grief momentum if I set it up as something arduous rather than something that is necessary and, in my experience, spiritually cleansing. I can’t protect myself from memories by hiding or ignoring things.

The Pilgrim's Hospice

There are no free-standing hospices in the Edmonton area. I was a bit surprised by this because there are three and a fourth under construction back in Des Moines. Hospice care is in home here. Rob’s late wife, Shelley, received hospice in the house where we live. The Pilgrim’s Hospice trains volunteers, offers limited day time respite and runs a variety of bereavement programs. One the programs they offer is a creative arts group for children between 3 and 18 years of age. They have the children split into three different age groups and they meet to discuss their losses and feelings through song and art projects. The program even offers day camps over the summer months when Canadians typically don’t have any type of programs for kids at all because they are quite serious about their vacationing and family time. This last November, Katy was having some difficulties again and Rob and I decided to look into options for her and came up with this program. We realize this is going to be an on-going process for her because her perception of her dad and his death will change as she grows and her ability to understand and process matures. It’s ironic. One of the things that adults envy about children in the grief process is their seeming ability to grieve in short bursts rather than carry it around morning, noon and night, but the downside is that they will be burdened with reprocessing their parent’s death at every milestone along the way to adulthood and beyond.

While the children gather for their program, the adults meet in another room to do roughly the same thing the kids are doing minus the singing and paints. I think I might like to discuss my grief journey over a coloring book though or while making cookies or learning to dance. Somehow that doesn’t seem as daunting. The group is mixed. We were not all widowed though about half were. Others had lost small children or their own parents or grandparents. As I listened to one person describe losing a parent and grandparent with such visible distress I thought back to the numerous posts on the widow board where other widows would rant rabidly about the fact that this kind of loss is not equal to the loss of a spouse. Even Rob mentioned later that he couldn’t work up too much empathy for the person, and truthfully I couldn’t either, but I did feel sad for this person who obviously needed this lost parent so much that it was debilitating for them. A person expects their parents to die before them but our level of dependence on them varies so much from one of us to the next that I can easily see how someone whose adult life was integrally wrapped up in a parent’s could be as bereft as someone who losses a spouse. It’s very sad in another kind of way. The parents who lost children are the only grief victims that widows seem to be accepting of and often allow to trump their own grief cards. Rightly so, in my opinion. I was reading a blog entry the other day by a young woman who tragically lost her little girl over the summer and I just sat and bawled as I did so. The thought of losing Katy seizes me from time to time and it freezes my soul. I have an old friend in Iowa who is observing the sixth anniversary of the loss of her three year old later this month. He was murdered by her now ex-husband. I marvel still at how she carried on and put her life back together. Whenever I felt sorry for myself while Will was sick or after he died, I thought about her and kicked myself in the butt to do better.

The widows in the group last night were not as far out as Rob or I. Not even a year. Sudden deaths and they were grappling with the acceptance. There is a huge difference - a gulf maybe - between sudden widows and those of us who knew or had an inkling that it was coming. We don’t tend to wrestle with disbelief as much as mourn for the lost time. Time lost to the illness. Time in the future that won’t be. It is hard to listen to fresh grief. To see it. There is that look in the eyes. A tenseness to their frames, almost a full body clench. One widow talked about still not being able to sleep. I didn’t realize myself just how much I needed sleep until I was able to sleep again like a normal person does. During the three years leading up to Will’s death, I lived and breathed sleep debt, getting by on as little as three or four hours a night at times. One or two late nights now and I am near collapse. My body simply refuses to let me run a debt of any kind now. Smart body. The anger too is palpable in the freshly minted. I recoil even more from it now than I did during my time on the widow board though I had my anger then too. Anger is exhausting. After the meeting I felt compelled to speak to one widow whose first year is up just a few days after the coming second anniversary for Will. She asked if it gets better. And the answer is not that simple. It gets better only in that it begins to change. I could tell she was disappointed by that. I didn’t tell her that it never goes away and that she will carry it in some form or another always. I think she assumed because I was there with Rob that I was all better now. Everyone thinks that. I am certainly happy again. I am building a life with Rob that I love and I am so wonderfully blessed by his love and by the new family he has brought Katy and I into, but it doesn’t change the past in anyway. It transforms our now and our future.

The woman who lead our group got into grief counseling after losing her tow youngest children at birth. She felt better by giving back and eventually back a counselor. It was an interesting thing that I can relate to. I always felt good being able to share with newer widowed people on the YWBB. I was sad and a little angry when I had to leave there, but I knew I had to give that up - at least in that setting - because of the personal attacks I had experienced at fingertips of a few widowed who did not see me as a good example or as being someone who had anything of import to say about grief and the journey we were all on. Granted, I could be pointed - though I saved that for those of my own or greater vintage, but last night I thought perhaps I had found a new outlet for my still abiding need to share my experience and journey. Something I am going to give much thought to in the coming months. I knew after Will died that I someday would give back in the hospice. I am not quite ready to volunteer in that setting though. I am still a bit too raw. Maybe this type of group setting is more my answer.

So Much to do

I have too much to do to be sitting here blogging. I am still plowing through laundry due to the week long visit from my sis-in-law. Her visit too stirred up unpleasant memories because like most widows who live and breathe it, all she wanted to do was talk about issues and irritations and grudges that surrounded her husband’s death. Unfortunate timing really with the nasty letter from my former mother-in-law arriving on the heels of SIL’s departure and with the 2nd anniversary of Will’s death a mere two weeks away. And about that, the only thing I can say is that I will be glad when it is behind me. My major emotional association with it right now is impatience and the very real sense that I am not like other widows because I don’t miss Will or pine for our life together. I like my here and now too much to look backwards and I resent the intrusion of the day and grief into my life.

So, my to-do list is overwhelming me and my want to do list calls seductively at every opportunity. Write poems for an on-line literary magazine or strip beds? Spend the afternoon writing a short story based on an idea I borrowed from Rob’s memory of Shelley? Or sort through boxes of papers for tax information? Banking? Or wiling away the time before my massage preparing for my writing group? You see my dilemma. I have a house to clean and purge and a novel that is screaming for revision. There are school districts to be researched for job possibilities. A resume and letters of reference to update. Certification issues to deal with and I begin to understand why women decide to remain at home longer than they need to. I was reading an interview in Newsweek with some author of a book for 40+ women on tricks for maintaining a youthful appearance for the sake of their careers mainly because its become such a sin in our society to be an older woman who isn’t playing delusional games with herself about what she looks like. With this looming, housewife looks better and better. Truthfully though, free-lance writing is what is attracting me most simply because I prefer writing to nearly all activities save spending time with Rob these days - and even he will tell you that when I am deep in a book or working on a piece that he has a hard to pulling me back to the now.

Lists. I need lists. And a little bit more ambition. And a household staff. Okay, that last part was a joke. I don’t have money enough to coerce anyone into doing some of the work that needs to be done. It is a good thing we have until June now to do it. I could never be ready by April.

I keep threatening - myself really- with cutting way back or quitting the blog thing all together. At least for a while. I have a lot to do this month. I may have to make good on that.

Texas

Rob got the okay on his transfer. The details have yet to be ironed out but it appears that I may be a Texan by summer. Moving back is not something I much considered when I came here to by with Rob and get married even though I knew that it was a possibility given his job. Now that it is a fact, I am a little sad. I will miss it here. Rob thinks that is a bit crazy (okay, a lot crazy) because we live in the midst of an industrial cluster-fuck on the prairie. And he is right. We went into the city last night and the refineries were spewing god only knows what into the frigid air. Fouls smells and water vapor laced with chemicals. Still, the heart of the city is a forest. A real forest that surrounds the river banks and bluffs. I was noticing the shelter belt around our little town yesterday too. You can’t even see the town for the trees. There was nothing like this back home in the States.

As a midwesterner my opinion of Texas on the whole is rather negative. I turned down teaching jobs there when I was right out of college because I couldn’t imagine living in such a redneck, backward thinking place (and I grew up in a basically lily white, near exclusively Catholic blue-collar town too). Perhaps it will not be the ultra-right wing, pious on the surface only place it portrays itself to be? It doesn’t matter because I will be living there for the next couple of years and I am going to make the very best use of the time.

So, now it is time to make lists and clean and sort and purge. It is also time to think about teaching again and to that end I have a bit of work to do as well. I am thinking that I may just want to sub instead of looking for full or even part time work. But we will see what comes up.

Stuff is Us

One thing I have discovered is that impending guests, whether they be overnight or just for the evening and moving are about the only things that really spur people to action when it comes to cleaning and purging. Christmas brought us multiple overnighters which meant that the main room in the basement had to be cleaned out to make space for another bed. Cleaning out lead to a pile of junk in our backyard which meant a trip to the city dump in Edmonton was now necessary. Because a trip into Edmonton takes time and gas, it made sense to also purge the garage a bit for anything else that might profit us with a good dumping off.

The Edmonton dump is located in a section of town near the river called Clover Bar. No doubt the first pioneers who came west found a verdant expanse that lead up to the water’s edge and entranced them with the smell of clover. I wonder what they would think of it today? It is no longer flat but a huge mini-mountain of refuse hidden by the packed mud and towers over what is left of the river bar. It’s just a guess but I am betting clover doesn’t grow there anymore. More people should have to haul their own waste away because it is an eye-opening experience that I find humbling and not in a good way. Visiting the dump, or the recycling center in town, has the same effect on me that purging and cleaning do. I feel ashamed and angry. Ashamed that I am such a materialistic consumer. Angry that I allowed myself and my life to be laden with crap that I don’t use and shouldn’t have bought in the first place.

I have right now four boxes in my office to sort. Two are photos. Two are full of papers that I was too overwhelmed to sort through before I moved. I wonder sometimes that if I had never met Rob would I be complacently tossing junk into my basement, waiting for the day that sorting through it would be easier? Sorting is never easy. Many things I simply gave away or thew away with little more than a quick glance back in June. There is a box of Will’s collectibles in the basement here that I couldn’t bring myself to pitch or sort and when I think about it all I can do is curse him out for acquiring stuff that has no value to anyone but him. And now I am stuck with it.

I was not much of a materialist before I met Will. My big weaknesses were jean and running shoes and books. Aside from that, I had few major possessions aside from my house, my car and my computer. I was and still am not much on kitchen gadgets, cutlery and cooking apparatus. I could live with just a sofa in my living room, a table and chairs and enough beds for those living with me. Matching accessories? Color coordinating? A rec room with paraphernalia? A decked out deck? These were Will’s ideas of the perfect home that he got from someone or somewhere. I used to think that he thought having these things made him like everyone else and he wanted that more than anything after the kind of upbringing he had, but maybe it was more than that. Aren’t we all raised to equate stuff, or material gain, with substance to one extent or another?

I was admiring my friend Char’s home the other day while we were having tea in her kitchen. The kids had just headed downstairs to play. We’d been out most of the afternoon on a nearby sliding hill and the remains of hot chocolate were still evident. Her home is on the large size as far as livable space goes but unlike many people I have known, hers is not cluttered. The walls are bare for the most part but for a few family pictures and a wall hanging or two. There is a single sectional in the living room off the kitchen. The kitchen has just a dining table. The bedrooms are beds and a dresser each. The family room in the basement has two small sofas facing each other and a tv. It’s simple. And it’s nice. It’s the way I would like to live myself. But right now there is still stuff to be dealt with. Will’s, Shelley’s. The girls - all three of them. I would love to pack up just our clothes and whatever toys we can limit Katy to and take just that to Texas. A bit unrealistic.

In our kitchen cabinets we have no fewer than three sets of dinnerware and a plethora of glassware and cups. Rob was telling his younger daughter recently that we were going to pack all of it away and just use the dinnerware I brought with me from Iowa. A cheap Correll set I got on sale at Kmart to replace the daily ware that Will and I had gotten as a wedding gift. Why? She wanted to know why we would give away perfectly usable stuff. Memories is only partially the answer. I bought the Kmart plate set because I couldn’t stand being reminded of Will every time I ate off a plate or drank from a cup. And I was reminded and not of the good things generally. It was a way to preserve the sweet and my sanity at the same time. But even more important now is that we don’t need a cabinet overflowing with plates and cups and glasses and bowls, and perhaps someone else could use these things. Someone without the resources to buy brand new or at all.

My daughter tends to hang onto everything. There are drawers in her room stuffed with school papers from two years ago. It is a pack rat tendency that is somewhat related to her age and part inheritance from her father. Children, I think, tend to need physical reminders of the past more than their parents do. But I know there are many adults who can’t part with their stuff anymore than Rob and my daughters can.

One of my goals, and this is not a resolution - those are far more mundane and flexible - is to become a minimalist and give up many of the things and trappings that have come to symbolize the middle and upper class lives of North Americans. My gadgets will have to have meaning. My computer obviously does and my iPod but I am seriously rethinking the cell phone - something I have never wanted and have regretted since Will gave me the first one seven years ago. Clothes will need to be purposeful and worn. Styles and trendiest will not be considered. Books can be purchased but should be borrowed first from the library. There is no need to own cd’s or dvd’s as long as one lives near a library too. Furniture should be for using and not decorating or filling up space. As long as we have family and friends to photograph, we haven’t any need of wall decorations. Though I haven’t completely fleshed this all out, someday I want to be able to pack and move without purging.

Will's Mother

Will’s mother was widowed at thirty-three. She chose a much different path to her now than I have chosen to mine. Nevertheless, she has had an impact on the way I view widowhood and grief and it could be said that I have gone the way I have because of her in some small way.

She has never been allowed much of a role in Katy’s life. Despite what she thinks, and tells people, Will and I made this decision together before Katy was even born. Had things turned out differently, she would be just as marginalized today as she in fact is. I remind myself of this when I things like today’s Christmas card arrive that Will knew her very well and though he loved her, he didn’t much approve of her choices past and present.

About eight months after Will died, his mother decided to resume contact with Katy - not me - Katy, who was four. She would send holiday cards and drop the occasional gift off at the door when we were not home. The cards were addressed to Katy and written to me. They were full of venom even though she had professed to have forgiven me for all I did to her during Will’s illness. It’s funny to me that for some people finding Jesus is often at the loss of civility, but that’s another post for another day perhaps.

I ignored her attempts. Katy refused to acknowledge having a second grandmother at that point (though she knew she did) as a result of things that happened during the hospice months, and I wasn’t going to push it. My mother-in-law knew what she had to do in order to gain entry into our lives and wasn’t about to. At this point I think I should point out that when she found out she was going to be a grandmother at last (we’d been trying for two and a half years and she blamed me for our lack of success), her first response was that now she could finally wear a t-shirt that said “grandma” just like all the other women her age that she knew. Katy, like Will before her, was to be an accessory.

Since no one in Will’s family ever called or stopped by or checked up on us in any way past the first two or so months after he died, I didn’t feel obligated to keep them up to date on our life, or my personal life. So, they didn’t know about Rob. When he appeared or when we got serious or the engagement or our plans to move Katy and I to Canada or our marriage. In fact it was mid-August or maybe even September already when I sent out letters informing them of our marriage and our location. Will’s oldest uncle and his aunt on his dad’s side were quite nice. Will’s mother? She didn’t take it very well. At least that is what I heard.

Today her Christmas card arrived. I had asked her not to send cards to Katy with messages intended for me anymore. Her card was just the message printed inside and her signature, and then out dropped a letter for me. It was as cruel as she could make it without directly violating her new-found faith in the Lord. The lord, as we all know, is big on form and light on intent. Her opening line was:

“I could bash you for what you have done to me and Will but I forgave you for all of that and I am at peace.”

Rob told me to just forget about it. Don’t let it have power. What she thinks I did to her is of little import to me. I know what kind of person she is and this is typical of that type of person, but that she implied that I did things to Will that hurt him is a bit harder to put aside. I know she is angry. She feels that life has cheated her time and again and never gives a thought to her part in the misery that defines her life now, but still. I feel often that I failed Will even when I know I didn’t and I hate that she can push this button. I will put this card and the letter away with the others. Katy can have them when she is old enough to read and understand them.