Off to Grande Prairie - Again

At some point in the next 24 hrs we will pile into the Avalanche and make our third pilgrimage up north to Grande Prairie in less than five months. Three funerals in five months. In many ways this is beginning to remind me of my childhood back in Dubuque. Around the time my Uncle Jimmy died back in 1972, there was a rash of deaths on my dad’s side of the family that had us attending wakes and funerals almost constantly, or so it seemed to me at the time. For a while, between my dad’s relatives dropping like flies and my mother’s nieces and nephews weddings, the only time I saw my extended family was in church or in a church basement after for dinner. Chicken, ham, and turkey and dressing sandwiches. Artery clogging side dishes. Homemade desserts brought in by the ladies of the various rosary societies. Food and death. Food and marriage. Linked eternally in my nine year old mind.

The only other spate of death I can remember in my life came the summer between my junior and senior year in college. All in July. My ten year old cousin died in a farm accident on the 4th. My great-uncle, Father John, one of the nastiest men I have ever know died in Texas mid-month. And Kyle died. I am fairly certain it was around the same time, but it’s been over twenty years now, so I am not totally sure. Kyle was my friend Sarah’s boyfriend’s roommate and friend at the Lambda Chi house. He was funny and very cute and a tad bit on the wild side. We ran into each other here and there over the course of my junior year. In bars or at parties. We flirted. We eyed each other and on occasion, we made out a bit. He was not interested in a girlfriend and I was not auditioning for the part - mostly because I might have gotten the job and I really didn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend at that point in my life. Despite my laments to the contrary, I did my best to keep relationships at bay. For a lot of reasons.

The last time I saw Kyle was one of the last nights of finals week. It was warm. People were running around from bar to this party and that. I kept my eye out for Kyle and eventually ran across him. It was awkward. The last time I’d seen him, I’d sorta blown him off to go running about with my friend, Leslie. Guys don’t like that when they are trying to put moves on you. Anyway, we left it as “see ya in August and we’ll see”.

I was twenty-one. You don’t think at that age that you won’t see someone again. That anything bad could happen. But, Kyle drowned that summer and there was no “see ya”. I remember that I cried when I found out. I was at home in Dubuque for my uncle’s funeral, and I was owly the whole rest of my stay. My mother especially found my behavior irksome. She had never understood my aversion to the social aspects of death - the visiting and the eating. I could have explained, I suppose, but I really didn’t share much of my life with her. I still don’t really.

I went back to school. I didn’t discuss it. I am sure no one knew about how I felt about Kyle or that we had tentatively reached out to each other a bit. It was just a school girl thing and I still think of that way.

I only thought about this because Rob had mentioned that this will be the fourth funeral up there for him, starting with Shelley’s back in August of 2006. It will Jordan’s fifth funeral overall as she lost a friend to suicide around the time her grandmother died in December. It seems unfair when these cycles catch us up, but it’s life, right? Just as there are cycles of happiness and joy, there are darker periods of sadness and grief.

So, we are off to Grande Prairie.

A Good Question

As we were driving back from the hospice last evening, Rob asked me how I could have been so upset with the grief counselor on Wednesday night for suggesting that I needed to go through her 10 week grief and loss workshop and then turn around and dig through such painful memories at the parents’ session at Pilgrim house. It was a good question and I needed a bit of time to work out the answer into words and sentences because though I could feel why, it was hard to articulate even to Rob - who knows the answer already.
But the answer, when it came, was quite simple. What was being proposed in the workshop was purposeless digging. Like taking a butter knife to excise an scar. What would be the point? I understand that introspection is a useful tool in getting to the root of problems one might be having in their daily lives but when no problems exist than it is little more than emotional navel gazing. The topics that come up at Pilgrim house aren’t scripted really and they usually grow out of our conversations about our children. That we are there at all is to help our kids learn to cope with and integrate what has happened in their lives.

The subject came around to the genetic legacy that Katy was left by her dad. She is a carrier of what killed him and this will have to be addressed and dealt with at some point in her teens and then again when she decides to have children or not. It could even end up effecting her physical in middle-age if she happens to fall in the unlucky 10% or carriers who end up with dorsal nerve damage, so this is something she will have to plan for - the possibility of eventual physical disability. I try not to dwell to much on this. It is the future and who knows what that holds really, but they are things that sit in the corners of my mind, out of sight but never truly forgotten.

Talking about that last night was good for me in the moment. There was another couple there who have lost children to a genetic illness. Are carriers themselves. Have been through the diagnoses and the doctors and hospitals and long, slow declines to death. I seldom meet people who really know what that feels like firsthand. It was like finding my first widow board. The MerryWidow, and feeling for the first time that I was not a freak. Grief and worry are lonely enough without that sense of being only.

Not so ironically, anymore, our evening was book-ended by death. Rob’s father-in-law has not been well and went into the hospital Sunday complaining of heart trouble. He’d been in all week and the doctors hadn’t been able to pin point a root cause although he did have heart issues. I got the first call from one of Rob’s nieces in the late afternoon. She hadn’t been able to reach either of the girls and wanted to let us know that things were deteriorating. She sounded very small and lost when she told me that her grandfather reminded her of the way her grandmother had been at the end back in December. I remember from all those months Will was in hospice that you come to know the signs of impending death. The way it sounds and looks. There is a feeling in the air even. I felt badly for her. No one should have to watch a loved one die and she was bedside at her second such loss in just a few months. At one point in the conversation at group, a widow who’d lost her husband suddenly in a car accident remarked that she felt that her despair over not having had a chance to say good-bye was small compared to what I and the other couple had gone through watching the death process. I remarked that I had always been envious of those were widowed through sudden death because I would give much to be able to erase the memories and purge what I know. I sat and saw and still didn’t get to say good-bye. Not really.

Shelley’s brother, Jay, called shortly after we’d gotten home last night to let us know that Frazier had died a few hours earlier. The doctors still weren’t sure of the cause, but it’s not uncommon for elderly widowed people to follow shortly after their spouses and I suspect this was the real root issue.

I didn’t know Frazier but for a few visits to Grande Prairie and the first time I had met him in the city here after Leona’s surgery in August. He was nice and friendly and didn’t have to be and I still appreciate that. He was always after us to come and stay at the farm. We didn’t and I am sorry about that a bit now. Rob was asked to give the eulogy and he asked me what exactly goes into one. I only know Catholic funeral mass really, and eulogies are always given by priests. They usually talk about the person in general terms as they often didn’t really know the person, but if they did they would tell stories to try and paint a mental image for the congregation. They would recall the things about the deceased that brought home way he or she was loved. And they would try to comfort with images of heaven and God. We don’t believe in heaven though and my views anyway on what/who God is or may be are still evolving.

In all likelihood Rob and the girls will go to Grande Prairie without Katy and I. I have mixed feelings about this. I think that the family will expect to see us as we went up for Uncle Raymond’s funeral in September and again fro Leona's in December. We are family. On the other hand, I have problems taking Katy to yet another funeral. It is the only reason we have ever gone up north and seen everyone. She is just five. Too knowledgeable in my opinion and maybe in need of more sheltering than she has gotten in the past. She will also plague her sisters with questions about the situation and how they are feeling. Farron bares up quite well and handles Katy and her curiosity without any visible effect but Jordan is far more fragile and I worry more about her. And Rob. I worry about Rob. He is the rock. The spoke in the family wheel. Both for Shelley’s family and for his own. Not to mention for me and our girls. Too many people lean on him and expect him to fix things and be there and hold up. He will need me because I am the only one who sees that he is not superman.

It would be nice if people would stop dying, but as I reminded Rob when he brought this up, we know too many old people. My own reprieve from death on a family level has stretched out to two years now and I wonder how much longer the luck will hold given the age and physical infirmities of my parents, aunts and uncles. Still, I was reminded in a letter from my cousin yesterday just how fickle death is when she mentioned that our great-aunt will be 100 years old on March 5th. No rhyme or reason but yet rhyme and reason.

Paying it Forward

My blogging friend, Marsha, wrote a wonder piece yesterday about the idea of “paying it forward”. She feels, as I do, that one of the things that should come out of life’s challenges and tragedies is a sense that a person should put what they’ve learned from their experiences to use in helping others who are going through similar situations. It is something I did as a teacher. My life, and the lives of my family, friend and acquaintances, were examples from which my students could learn. Part of life is searching for the meaning and higher truths - enlightening one’s self, but the other part is taking that light and sharing it with others. The others are mainly family and friends and those you are in closest connection to on a daily basis, but some of us, I feel, are called upon to reach farther afield. For a while, I felt that the widow board was where I was supposed to be. I took note of those widows farther out than myself who talked about being called upon to be “widow-mentors”. I don’t think I am mentor material, but I had things to share. I tried to go back to the board recently. But I don’t feel overly inspired to read posts or reach out there anymore. Part of it is a left over resentment at the way I was driven from there. but more has to do with the fact that I am more interested in promoting growth and forward momentum than the idea that grief is a “do whatever feels best” and can “take as long as it takes” attitude. I do not believe either and much of what I have read in recent studies on bereavement is contrary to what is promoted at the site.

I turned to blogging for myself initially and then as a way to share with others who might be experiencing transitions and on journeys of self-discovery. And I still like the idea of using the blog, and myself in the process, as an example. But, I was a teacher for twenty years, and I miss the face to face interaction and being able to see and talk with people. Writing and reading is good but the human component is distanced. The parents group at Pilgrim’s Hospice has proved a tiny outlet, but the process is so scripted and the grief is a one-size fits all as though everything about loss is equal, and like so much of life - there is no such thing as equal. Losing a parent as a child is different from a teen/young adult and much different from the experience of an adult who has a family of their own. They are not comparable experiences. Losing a spouse to death is not the same as divorcing one or being divorced. Losing a sibling is not the same as losing a life partner. Losing a child is the most horrendous grief of all but the age of the child and the circumstances of the death are factors. We like to ignore the reality that apples and oranges really are different types of fruit because we are afraid of marginalizing and even more afraid that someone may not like us - but how helpful is that really? So, the parents group has widowed people predominantly, a couple of parents who have lost small children and someone who lost a parent. Rob and I are by far the most “experienced” grievers in the group in terms of time out from the loss. It’s a 12 steppy thing. Aren’t they all? And it works on the premise that there should be a group facilitator prompting with open-ended topics or questions and that emotions and experiences of everyone present are going to be very similar. Even among younger widowed people are emotional responses and experiences can be quite dissimilar so you can imagine what a group of mixed grievers is like in terms of having a discussion rather than just one person venting and the next person do the same. It’s like parallel lines. After the last meeting I sent a email to the director suggesting tactfully, as I am capable of that, that we might break into smaller groups at different points so we can share with those whose experiences are most like our own. It is difficult to really articulate your thoughts and feelings when you are weighing them constantly in an effort not to make anyone feel bad. For example, the person who lost their parent, both Rob and I have a shocking lack of empathy for her and Rob has even lost a parent himself. I think it stems from the fact that we accept that as we age, so do our parents and as a matter of course, they will age, get sick perhaps, and die. It is a loss. It will/does effect one and there is grief, but it is part of life. Losing one’s spouse at a young age - not so on the scale of what is expected. Same goes for the death of a child. I just can’t muster the empathy for this person or the situation and so I am trying to participate in the group knowing that I need to keep this to myself. The director liked my idea and will put it to the group to decide tonight. At the hospice group, I feel more like I am “paying forward” though perhaps it is more “paying up” in the sense that someone helped me along at different points in my journey and now I am called upon to repay the debt via others.

In the spirit of helping then, I went to a planning session sponsored by the city last evening. There is a need for grief services in our little town and I thought I could at least input a bit, if not volunteer at some point. It turned out that the model for the group was predetermined and it was more of a finite workshop than an actual support group. The group of women who attended last evening were the same type of mixed fruit bowl you get at most grief groups that are sponsored by social service agencies. The need to separate people in a more constructive way is not universally acknowledged. I left the meeting when it became clear to me that they were not soliciting ideas as much as participants. I was even a bit insulted by the leader of the group who made the comment to me, and another widow of my vintage, that perhaps the reason we didn’t want to participate was that we were in denial and were stuffing or blocking our feelings. Today I can chuckle a bit about that. Me? Stuffing? She needs to read my blog. But the thing that irked me the most was the fact that she was yet another one of those time-line people (four years to all better now) who believe that if one works hard and grieves according to the rules as laid down, they will one day be ready to resume life and live again. Nonsense. Life does not stop and wait for us to by ready and interested. If you wait for perfect or nearly so to live, you won’t. Live. Life happens all the time and whether we feel like it or not, we are living. We can choose to not participate and let moments/opportunities go by - and many people do this for may different reasons - but I believe we can live and grieve and that this is normal and healthy. And, I have to confess that her snide aside about my being married already colored my opinion of her and her ideas a bit.

My dilemma then is how to go about giving back/paying forward. If we stay here in this area (a possibility now as Texas has become an “if”), there is the possibility of becoming a hospice volunteer at the Pilgrim house. and there is also the idea of writing articles and freelancing a bit in the area of grief.

If you are still with me after all this rambling, perhaps you have ideas or suggestions. I rarely hear from any of you aside from Marsha and Sally and TGLB - and of course my darling Rob, and that’s okay, but I’d like to know what thoughts there might be out there.

Oh, and my 10,000 blog view is fast approaching. If you happen to be the one to log on here and notice that you have tipped the counter to that big ole number - let me know it was you. ‘K?

What I did on My Vacation (from blogging)

I wrote. Mostly that is what I did. Poetry for the Poetry Federation of Canada’s all call for submissions for nine new anthologies. The titles of these anthologies have me a bit stumped because they came with no content direction what so ever. The poetry of birth. The poetry of seasons. The poetry of relationships. A wide berth for interpretation could mean just about anything. I chose the pedestrian path and took the titles literally, but alas, it turned out that I had missed the deadline (I think I got the email informing me about it a couple of days prior), so I ended up just picking the best three and sending them to the magazine sponsoring the anthologies.
I also polished another piece for The Daily Globe and Mail on the recent lice saga (which we appear to have recovered from – thank the lord/universe). I am struggling with a piece for Canadian Living magazine. 500 words on My Canada. I am not sure that any part of Canada is “mine” yet, but I don’t know that I can call any place I have ever been “mine” in the way that some people refer to homes or favorite haunts. I feel that the place I will call mine I have yet to step foot on.
I found out that one of my short stories didn’t make the cut for a rather avante garde literary magazine out of Calgary, so I turned around and submitted it to a Sci-fi/Fantasy mag here in Edmonton. Probably a better fit.
And finally, I began scouring my blog for a piece that I might enter in a memoir-writing contest. This in addition to attending a writer’s group meeting where another member supplied me with three more contests that are possibilities.
Oh, and I wrote my first cover letter. Next is the query.
And you know what I discovered about this? That it is fun. More fun than blogging and reading blogs and mindless message board voyeurism. Hmmmm. Rob started a blog the other day on his “net” history and conclusions he has come to concerning it. I still like blogging. It’s not the same as my writing for contests and submissions. It fulfills something different but I suspect that I will not be an everyday blogger once I start to get the hang of how this getting published thing really works. I still like reading blogs but I am down to a certain select few that I read consistently. I really need to start using the RSS.
One thing I did not do was return to my novel. By the rules, I should have begun my read through and second draft about a month ago, but the topic matter is so depressing. I find that even a fictional account of my widowhood too heavy for my soul at the moment. I also did not finish my cat lover story because I want to make it a part of my sci-fi short story series and haven’t found the bridge between what I started and where I want it to come out. Patience. Patience.
I did work on the links to my wordpress blog. I did finally get the ball rolling on getting all the beneficiary stuff changed on my existing pensions. I did find and semi-organize (they are all in one folder) my tax info for 2007.
And…..drum roll……..I got Rob to help me purge and organize the cabinets in the kitchen.
What?! That sounds like a non-important agenda item to you, dear readers? Au contraire, mes amis. The cabinets (like the refrigerator) have been harboring out of date (by years) foodstuffs and all manner of non-used and non-essential items that, if not taken care of now, will simply demand attention when the move to Texas is glaring us in the face or worse, will be waiting for us next summer when we are back to finish getting the house ready for sale.
I have been wanting to do this for a while, believe it or not, but the problem is that I am not always certain when my cleaning and purging help is needed, wanted and/or helpful because much of what there is doesn’t belong to me.
I tread a very delicate line when it comes to rearranging or packing away or pitching. I don’t want to push. I don’t want to dredge up memories or be the cause of hurt feelings where Shelley’s things are concerned. It’s hard for the girls to visit and see so much change. It’s hard for Rob to go through things all the time. And it’s hard for me because I am torn between wanting to help, protect and at the same time start carving out areas that reflect me. Shelley had a distinct décor style that is evident in the plants and wall hangings and color scheme and the way that all space is occupied by something. But for me, plants get dusty and the die when not watered and aren’t all that great for an asthmatic to have around. I like my walls sparse to totally bare. My favorite colors change too often to slap them on a wall, so I usually go with light colors that are barely colors at all. And I like room. I love room. Room to walk around or dance around or sit on the floor with newspapers or writing papers or books spread out all around me. It could just be my lazy Sagittarian side but stuff just invites dirt to settle on it and then it needs to be cleaned. Not much stuff equals way less cleaning. And, I like the freedom that space provides.
Rob and I talked about the cleaning and the impact of Shelley’s things on us both. He had worried about how I felt and honestly aside from one small teary breakdown this last summer, I haven’t been bothered. I worry more about the impact of change and paring down and giving away and tossing on him and the girls than I think about the impact on me. He reminded thought that what I see is a reflection of a lifestyle that he and Shelley were transitioning away from around the time she became ill and that had that not occurred at that time, things would be much different.
It was nice though to clean out spaces. I am beginning to like the downsizing and the lack of stuff. I think now about what I truly need in terms of the material to feel satisfied once we get to Houston, and I realize that it is not an extensive list.
So now it is Friday again. Katy has the day off because of the teacher convention and we are heading into Sherwood Park for the morning. First stop is Beaners, a hair salon for little girls. She was promised a visit during the lice escapade (of which the saga is far from over as a new lice alert pamphlet came home with her from school the other night). Then it’s off to the mall because she is growing like a weed and needs new tights and has Christmas money to spend. I need to browse the magazine rack at the Chapters and perhaps grab a chai at the Starbucks (okay, not perhaps – definitely). Afterwards I need to hit the gym and there is ballet today too.
Whew. A lot done and a bunch still do to do

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.

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.

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?

It's a Martyr Thing

It’s a bit past eight in the morning. Katy is still sleeping and I have the house to myself. If you have been following my in-law saga - now in it’s sixth day - you will remember that my sister-in-law and her teens are stranded here due to a car breakdown on New Year’s Eve day. Well, it’s a martyr thing. Last evening sis-in-law emerged from meek pity-seeking mode to reveal a more action oriented one. With it came a bit of snarkiness and the ridiculous idea that the best way for the car situation and her “imposing” issues to be solved would be to go into town with Rob this morning and have him drop her off. She and the teens (yes, she dragged them along) will spend the day on foot trying to find someone to fix their vehicle. And okay, it’s not a big town by any stretch of the imagination. You could probably walk from one end to the other in 30 minutes at a good clip. Crossing the highway to the shopping area isn’t too dangerous either. But the repair shops are not near each other and it would have been easier to have Rob drop of the keys at the OK Tire he originally towed the car to and had the owner call sis-in-law with a prognosis and estimate. Providing that he could get to it today. It’s the day after a holiday and Canadians are very serious about their holidays and time off in general. Add to that the rather severe worker shortage - skilled workers especially - and all I can envision is sis-in-law walking the length and breath of the Fort today with two recalcitrant children in tow and being basically told to come back tomorrow (or god forbid Friday). Did I mention that the sun is barely up here and it’s well below 0 celsius? With wind too.

The thing is that I have seen this. When sympathy doesn’t arrive and it becomes apparent that people expect you to do something more pro-active on your own behalf than simply bemoan your fate and play the widow card, half-baked plans like this are the result. Win. lose or draw, when they arrive back here later today they all will be cloaked heavily in the grievous air of martyr-hood, having been “forced” to spend the day tramping about on foot like poor relations because I didn’t want to spend my day playing taxi-cab. And this is what irritates me most of all. I will look like the bad person and in every re-telling of the tale, I will come out worse and worse.

I have been here before with Will’s mother. I was telling Rob last night, after I retreated to our bedroom to read and try to find Zen somewhere, that this whole affair was reminding me too much of the last month Will was in hospice two years ago. His mother had everyone tip-toeing around and letting her have her way in all things because of the sorry state of her life and overall appearance. Even I was expected to give precedence to her and it rankled. Still does. When I had eaten past my fill of being denied time alone with my husband, I asked that she not be around when I visited which only intensified the martyr act. Poor mother-in-law to have such a cruel and heartless woman for a daughter-in-law and she would being her litany of complaints against me never once hinting at the fact that our poor relationship might have been her doing. Rob reminded me that this is my house and I needn’t make myself scarce or stay out of his sister’s way to keep peace, but I reminded him that my being the wife of the dying man hadn’t made a difference two years ago either.

I have worked with kids in at-risk programs several times over the course of my teaching career. When you do this you end up doing a fair amount of counseling and my counselor friends were always telling me I should consider looking into the career full-time because I was good at it. I always shrugged the suggestions off because I am too problem-solving oriented and have only a limited amount of sympathy/empathy for those who refuse to see logic or help themselves even the tiniest bit. That, is what they told, is what made me good. Counseling is not consoling. It’s about helping people help themselves to the best of their ability. It’s not about aiding and abetting self-defeatism or feeding someone’s need to play the role of the cursed or downtrodden. I used to get in trouble on the widow board for doing the same thing. Offering solutions (and occasionally a kick in the pants) instead of tea and pity. I understand that someone fresh to a bad situation needs special consideration, but my mother-in-law was twenty some years into her widowed pity party and Rob’s sister is going on eight years herself. I don’t buy into the idea that grieving is the be-all end-all and should take as long as it takes. Both these women had/have children who they dragged/are dragging down with them. And they are not dumb. Or helpless -they just prefer that because playing the poor me thing will sucker enough people to keep them from having to do something themselves.

I might be pleasantly surprised by what walks in the door later today but the realist in me thinks I am closer to the mark with my original prediction. Let’s just hope in the meantime that the car is fixable and some mechanic has time for it today.

Speak Too Soon. Invite the Jinx.

I spoke of giving up blogging in my last post because I wonder what good it is doing me any more and what I could possibly have left to say that might interest anyone. It’s not as though I, or my life, is all that interesting. But just when I thought I didn’t need the cathartic outlet that is my blog at its essence, my sister-in-law shows up at our home - four days later than she originally planned and with intentions of staying for a week. Did I mention she dragged - literally - her seventeen and thirteen year old children with her? No? Well, she did.

I like Shannon. I do. She can carry on quite the conversation and is very polite (aka Canadian), but she is in her seventh year of widowhood and stuck beyond even the most generous standards of grieving. Many of our conversations have centered around grief even when they started out about something else. Being problem solvers, both Rob and I have countered her at every turn with solutions to her fixed position - which she claims to not be happy with by the way - but for every solution, she remains attached to the problem like velcro. It’s exhausting in a way that reminds me of my time on the widow board.

Today, I escaped to the gym and then after lunch (did I mention they sleep til lunch?) I absconded with Katy to the library and to shop for groceries. In my absence, she decided to drag the teens to the mega-mall that is about a 45 minute drive from here. Upon my return with my raccoon-eyed child (teens make noise that intrigues and keeps five year olds up way past bedtime), Rob assures me that we will never have company over the holidays ever again and while I am being mollified, his sister calls to let him know her car has died. The night she arrived, she told us that the vehicle had been leaking anti-freeze for some time but she just took care of this by constantly refilling it. So, the anti-freeze was gone and the car wouldn’t start. Rob bundled up and went to fetch them and tow the car back. It was 8:30 by the time we had supper. Katy was beyond tired and nephew and niece were still wearing the stunned looks that I imagine overtook them when they realized that coercing their mom to take them home before the weekend wasn’t in the cards anymore.

My sister-in-law has taken to her bed. Our guest bed. I haven’t seen her at all. Rob says she does this.

It was easy to deal with widows who refused to help themselves when they were on the other side of the ethernet. I hit the ignore button. Now I have one in my basement. God help me.

The Far Horizon where the Sidewalk Ends

A widow I don’t know personally, Alicia, but whose blog I follow wrote a piece today on the need people have to keep their heads down after a tragedy and simply put one foot in front of another for a while. I can’t say that I have ever felt that way myself. When they told me that Will was going to die and that the process could take years, I fixed my eye on the far horizon and seldom let it out of my sight because I wouldn’t have made it otherwise. If I had ducked my head and concentrated on my immediate circumstances only - watching my husband die - I wouldn’t have had the strength to do what needed to be done day after day or to plan for those events I knew where coming and had no one but me to do them. It wasn’t enough to know there was a horizon - a future. I needed to think about it and dream about it. Alicia’s sidewalk imagery reminded me of a poetry book that my sixth-graders of long ago loved so much

Where the Sidewalk Ends
 
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

But that’s not me. Measured and slow. It’s never been me. I am more like the line Yoda uses in his argument with Ben Kenobi about whether or not Luke should be formally trained as a Jedi.

This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph.

That’s me. Although I am more grounded in my present that I have been at any time of my life, I am still thinking about tomorrow, whether it’s next week or months or years from now. And I don’t see it as a bad thing or a running away thing. It’s just me. One of the many quirks that make me up and set me apart. Not far apart though. I am not the only one who looks forward to her future with anticipation, wondering how much of it I can actively shape and how much I will just have to accept (and if I can manage to muster up the grace to do so).

It’s not that I don’t feel there is a place for sidewalks or just breathing in and out. Sometimes it’s better to take the beaten path (or the poured one), but your toes will always be on the end of your feet. The horizon changes, especially when you aren’t watching it.

Bearing Witness

My widow friend, Andrea, in Texas recently posted a quote from a movie that sums up better than I have ever been able to what it is that goes missing from our lives when we lose our spouses.

”We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness'."

Shall We Dance, 2004

I had never really thought about it in just that way. Funny how sometimes just what you need to know or see or do will arrive via a movie or the daily horoscope in the daily newspaper. A song will come on the radio and something that a moment before was an insurmountable problem or an inscrutable dilemma melts away into clarity.

I have been puzzling in my head how to best remember Will on the second anniversary of his death this coming January 23rd and was not satisfied with any of the ideas I was coming up with thus far. I started a memorial page for him on FaceBook but realize now that this was not something that many people who knew him would ever see as I am the only uber-geek of the bunch. None of his friends or family would have much use for a social networking internet site. Try as I might, I have never been able to capture him in words to my own satisfaction though I have written about him, I have never painted his picture with a thousand words.

I’d thought about a memorial in the Des Moines paper where we lived, but again, no one who knew him would see it. Sadly, few of them read or keep abreast of the world outside the bubbles they live in. That may sound harsh, but it’s true. His best friend going back to childhood called my parents house the other day to find out my number because he and his family would be back in the Des Moines area for Christmas and wanted to drop a present by for Katy. He must have called the old number and discovered it was disconnected and thought we’d moved or something. I don’t know what he thought when my mother gave him my new cell with a funny area code but he called it and left a message. I gave it a bit of thought before returning the call. It was apparent he didn’t know I’d remarried and moved out of the country. I suppose this was mostly my fault for not calling to tell him last spring, but he’d pretty much dropped out of our lives after Will died. I heard from him once the May after when he called wanting to know where Will was buried. There was no “how are you?” “how is Katy?” just asked for the location and I haven’t heard from him since. I did see his wife and mother-in-law last Christmas. She called and asked if I could stop by to pick up a gift for Katy, which we did. During our little visit, I learned that Doug wasn’t handling Will’s death well at all and at the time couldn’t bear to talk about him. He kept the ball cap and the pool cue of Will’s I had given him hanging in the cab of his truck and no one was allowed to touch either. I felt at the time I heard this, and still do, that this was really no excuse for avoiding me or Katy, who is his goddaughter. Will wouldn’t have done that if the situation was reversed. I was/am a bit tired of his family and friends laying claim to grief for my husband as though it was some kind of contest.

I didn’t get a hold of Doug. I called him but his voice mail picked up. I gave the abbreviated version of the past year and haven’t heard back. I guess that tells me what I need to know.

Sometimes I feel that no one knew Will at all until I came along. His family. His friends. If it weren’t for me, who would bear witness to him in a true sense? I still haven’t figured out how best to do this however, but I have not quite another month to think on it. I think though that the way I have lived and moved forward, building a future is a best testament to him so far.

Leona, my Mother-In-Law

I’m probably not going to be telling you anything about Leona that you don’t already know. But I thought I might share a few of my memories of Leona with you.

For those of you who may not know me or perhaps don’t recognize me, my name is Rob. I am Leona’s son-in-law. I was married to Leona’s youngest daughter Shelley for just over 25 years until we lost her a year ago August.

When I first met Leona she was just a few years younger than I am now. That was when I first started dating Shelley. Leona was a bit dubious about me at first. After all, I was relatively new to the area. She didn’t know me and she didn’t know my family. And, if you might recall, she had a fairly low opinion of men in general at that time. At least, that’s how I remember it. Fraser was the exception, of course.

But, she allowed me to keep coming around. I hope it was because she thought her daughter had good judgement, but I’ll never know now, will I?

In those early days, Shelley and I spent a lot of time out at the Grant farm. We were pretty poor in those days and we could always be assured of a good meal at Leona and Fraser’s. I can remember many, many games of aggravation. Often played late into the night. Always “one more game” or “time for the rubber”. I’m sure most of you know the game, but for those that don’t it’s a game played with cards, a special board and marbles. It’s a game for four; two teams of two. And it’s almost always women versus the men. Now, I’m not saying that men are necessarily more skilled at the game than women, but it seemed like more often than not the men were victorious. Well, at least that’s the way I remember it when Fraser and I squared off with Shelley and Leona. That we men won a lot never sat well with Leona. Her dark eyes would be flashing and her sharp tongue would be lashing. Fraser and I would just sit back and smile. No point in riling her further. I remember getting the cold shoulder from Shelley on occasion after these matches and I imagine Fraser received similar treatment as well.

If you’ve ever been out to the Grant farm, then you’ll know that the kitchen and dining are one big room; the first room you come into once you’re through the porch. And the kitchen was Leona’s domain. She was an excellent cook and loved to feed a crowd. Shelley often joked about how Leona would get up to start clearing the table from one meal and, before we’d even had a chance to push ourselves away from the table, was asking us what we wanted for the next meal. I ate myself into agony at Leona’s table on more than one occasion I can tell you. I will certainly miss those home made buns, the lefthsa, crum ca-ca and the myriad of other dishes – simple or fancy – that Leona would whip up.

As I said, eventually Shelley and I married and I became part of the family. And somewhere in there, Leona found out that I was somewhat handy. It wasn’t long before I was being greeted at each visit with a list of things that needed fixing or building. I was always happy to help out with these assignments – even though the lists got longer as our visits became less frequent when we moved farther and farther away from here. I didn’t mind because the reward was always the smile and look of pure pleasure on her face when I had completed some repair or built something new. It was the least I could do in exchange for the meals she always put on for us.

Leona was already a grandmother by the time I entered the picture. Cory was a toddler and Keli arrived not long after Shelley and I started dating. Mine and Shelley’s two daughters, Farron and Jordan, were Leona’s next two grandkids. And did she adore her grandkids. We were fortunate in living fairly nearby as the kids grew up so they could visit and get to know their grandma as they did. Close life-long relationships were formed. Leona loved her grandkids; there wasn’t really anything she wouldn’t do for them. I know my own two girls have many, many fond memories of the times they spent at Grandma’s farm.

I’ve already talked about Leona’s prowess in the kitchen. Of course, being a farmer’s wife, she knew well what was needed when the men were working in the fields. And she never let them down, often times delivering food to the guys in the field when there wasn’t time to stop and come in to the house. And being a hostess didn’t stop there. It didn’t seem to matter what time of day or night a friend or a neighbour dropped by. Leona was always willing to feed you. And, if it was the middle of the night, she was willing to get up and have a drink or two with you as well.

Leona loved to have fun. You can see it in some of the pictures here on the slideshow. She laughed from deep in her belly. Head thrown back, guffawing out loud. I am sure there are many of you here who have seen this first hand, whether it was out camping, or down at the Rio Grande sports, at the Legion, at a dance, in a camp or in her own kitchen.

I remember the time she and Joyce came to visit us while we lived in Kansas. For a weekend, we all went over to Branson, Missouri to see a show (it was a Patsy Cline impersonator) and spend a day at Silver Dollar City. You wouldn’t believe the things those two old grandma’s did, the rides they went on. But they had a blast. And, of course, what trip to the US would be complete without some shopping? Leona, apparently, liked shoes. And she bought a lot of them. I don’t remember exactly what transpired as these two old grandma’s attempted to bring their booty back into Canada. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be the Canada Customs agent who decided to turn their van inside out just to make sure they weren’t smuggling whatever. I well remember those flashing eyes and sharp tongue!

She was quite the gal.

But there were some sad times too. I shall never forget that when Shelley and I needed help – when Shelley needed care – Leona was one of the first to arrive at our house. To do what she could. I can not even imagine what it must be like to lose a child and I hope I never have to find out. But, Leona was there. And when we lost Shelley, she was comforting me, supporting me. I won’t – can’t - ever forget that.

So, in closing these reveries of mine, I would just like to say that we could all learn something from Leona’s life. The things that were important to her – family, good friends, good food, good fun – these are simple things and I think that Leona helped show me that these are the most important things in life. Maybe it’s a little something that she can show you too.

Shelley's Mother

I met my husband’s mother-in-law for the first time in August. She had just had a Carotid Endarterectomy, the procedure to remove fatty plaque from neck arteries. She been having trouble speaking and her doctors came to the conclusion she’d had a stroke. My own dad had the same procedure in the fall of 2005 after a serious of TIA’s left him unable to use his left leg or speak clearly. The day we met she was obviously very tired and in pain, but she was very kind and welcoming to me and to my daughter. I can’t even begin to imagine what she was feeling, seeing me with Rob, but I am sure that it hurt - though she really didn’t let it show in my presence. At the time my thoughts were that Shelley had to have been an even more amazing person than I had originally suspected to have family who were so willing, and able, to put their own grief aside for Rob’s happiness. And I still think that to a degree though since meeting more of her extended family I have modified my thoughts a bit because hers seems like one of those families for whom closeness is a natural and a good thing. Not that they don’t have their moments, like all families do, but what I have seen and learned leads me to believe they are a pretty great group overall.

The last time I saw Leona was in September when the family gathered at her brother Raymond’s farm for the scattering of his ashes and for the internment of some of Shelley’s ashes under the tree in the front yard where she and Rob were married. Again, it had to have been an extremely tough day for her. And again she was wonderful. I am not sure I could have risen to meet such circumstances so well. Indeed I am sometimes very humbled by the grace and generosity with which my husband’s late wife’s family has demonstrated.

Not long ago, it was discovered that Leona had not had a stroke but was suffering from ALS and that the form of the illness that afflicted her was one of the aggressive types. Rob and the girls went up north yesterday to see her in the hospital because she had taken a turn for the worse over the last week and it was unlikely she would survive to see them at the Christmas visit that had been planned.

I didn’t go along, though I wanted desperately to do so. It is hard enough to be away from Rob under ordinary circumstances and much more so when I know that he needs me. And though I don’t push myself on either of the girls, because I am not their mother, it doesn’t keep me from worrying about them or hurting for them. But I had to make Katy the priority and stay behind. We agreed that she couldn’t be subject to another death from a close up perspective at this point in her life.

Rob called me this morning very early. He hadn’t been to bed. I had last heard from him a bit after midnight when he and the girls were leaving the hospital to head out to the farm to get some sleep. His tone made my arms ache to be around him. I could feel how much he needed to be supported through his voice. He told me that Leona’s laboured breathing was stirring up memories of Shelley’s last hours and I knew what he meant without further explanation. It takes very little to bring those last hours and minutes of Will’s to my mind. He told me that they had no sooner gotten to the farm then they were called back to the hospital because Leona had died. All I could do was tell him I was sorry and listen to him talk a bit. The only other thing would have been to take him in my arms and I wasn’t there to do that. He gave me the number he could be reached at and promised he was going to go straight to bed to sleep. For how long I don’t know and worry that it won’t be long enough. My husband is a rock that too many people lean on, me included and I worry.

Leona is with her daughter now, hopefully enjoying their reunion, and her suffering is over. But, like most people, I don’t understand why this has happened or timing of it. Fairness is once again called into question and I wonder if there is even such a thing or did humans simply make the concept up to express their frustration with the ways and whimsy of this universe?

Soon it will be two years

Last night as I was driving home from town after writing group, I finally realized why I have been having troubles with my stomach again. Troubles reminiscent of last fall and winter when nearly everything I put in the mouth resulted in pain that eventually got so bad I was living off soda crackers and Cream of Wheat. The doctors diagnosed a malfunctioning gallbladder and removed it last November and while that did wonders, it didn't quite rid me of the stomach pains that stress of just about any kind has caused me since I was a teen truthfully. Last year this time was a difficult time in terms of my grieving for my late husband. All the big anniversaries, the first, seem to fall in the last two months leading up to the anniversary of this death. I got through it, just it seems, and since I have seen steady improvement though by no means does this imply that life has always been easy or magically free of the grief or other problems that crop up simply because we are human and live in the real world as opposed to a TV sitcom where troubles manifest and are solved within a 30 minute time frame.

The realization I came to as I drove down the pitch black road to Josephburg that seemed to be running straight into the star dotted night sky on the horizon was that in about 8 weeks my first husband will have been dead for two years. Now, I hadn't forgotten when he died but I had gotten so caught up in my present and planning for the future and loving my husband and caring and worrying for our collective children that I hadn't really been emotionally aware of the significance of some of the anniversaries that have been flying by like so many fence posts on the roadside. It will be two years is what my stomach has been trying to tell me for the past month. Two years.

Rob asked me if it will always be this way. The heightened emotions. The sadness. I think so though I haven't any real examples of this from my own growing up among, what I realize now, was a helluvalot of widowed people. If any of them were laid out by grief periodically every year, I never realized it because they never let it show. I think of my father's mother who despite losing a baby, her husband when still in their sixties and her youngest son who was just 39 when he died, was someone who concentrated all her love and affection on those who meant the most to her and her warmth and friendliness was given freely to just about everyone else. Despite a brief bout with depression a few years after my uncle died, I can't think of an anniversary or holiday that she didn't see as an opportunity to celebrate those she lost and count herself lucky for the love she received and gave in return. And I know this couldn't have been as simply or easy as she made it seem. I know that because I know what I feel myself. Still, it's a better example to work towards in my opinion, and I think I can acknowledge without falling prostrate and rending my garments and smearing dirt upon my face.

The truth is that I love my life and as much as I loved Will, I am more engaged in my now than in my memories of that long ago time when he was well and loved me and we believed that the future was ours. It doesn't mean that it is easy. That anniversaries or holidays or my little girl's struggles with putting her half-remembered memories of her dad in context aren't sometimes hard to bear. It doesn't mean that I don't fell my husband's struggles with his own grief or that I don't worry and hurt for his girls when they struggle. It doesn't meant that new losses, because they are part of life, won't bring up old grief. It does mean that I recognize that there is ebb and flow and on-going negotiations and incorporating and dealing and sometimes tears and I am okay with that.

Soundtracking Your Life

My wife Ann wrote a blog piece a while back about music and its relationship to and description of her life at various points over the, well, course of her life. She called it "Soundtracking My Life". I guess I can relate. Certain music pieces are forever associated with certain events and times in my life too. Sometimes the times were such that listening to those tunes can be a bit painful. Other times, the tunes can call up happy memories.

A couple of fairly recent examples, if I may:

I had started listening to some Coldplay in the last months before Shelley died. A couple of the more oft listened-to tunes were "Green Eyes" and "Warning Sign"; while the lyrics did not exactly fit the situation, I came to relate those songs closely with Shelley. Although I did not really think I would lose her as I did, I think subconsciously I knew it was possible. I listened to those tunes - a lot - in the weeks after Shelley's passing. There were others that became my grieving tunes also: "Gone Away" by the Offspring, "Slipping Away" by Sum41, "Do You Realize?" by the Flaming Lips (thanks to Jordan for that one), "Heart Shaped Box" by Nirvana, "I Am Mine" by Pearl Jam (thanks to Cory for that one), and a few more from Sum41's "Chuck" album. I actually created a CD entitled "Rob's Melancholy Mix" with these tunes on them. Nowadays, I find it difficult to listen to any of these tunes plus a few others. Mostly because they can catapult me - emotionally - back to that time when Shelley was wasting away and eventually left me alone in this physical plane.

Tool. I had been aware of Tool...well, that Tool existed...since the '90's when my girls - first Farron and then Jordan - became fans. They had tried to "convert" me, but I resisted. At the time I didn't give Tool a chance to prove that the music had redeeming qualities. In spite of the ravings of my then-teenagers. Then came the first Thanksgiving we had following Shelley's passing. The three of us trekked up to my in-laws to spend Thanksgiving with Shelley's family. "10,000 Days" had come out a little before that time and one of the kids had brought along a copy. We were listening to Farron's CD's mostly on the long drive up to the Peace River country and eventually "10,000 Days" made its way into the rotation. The stereo system in the old Avalanche was "pretty good" (6 speaker Bose) and we cranked it up. I liked it. I bought myself a copy of "10,000 Days" and listened to it day in and day out. The CD went with me on my healing road trip through November last year and it got a lot play during that month. When I returned home I went on-line to Amazon.ca and ordered up the rest of the Tool CD releases plus all the releases of A Perfect Circle (Maynard James Keenan's other project).

A Perfect Circle. The girls recommended "Mer de Noms" but I found that I really liked "Thirteenth Step". I listened to that CD a lot in the early months of this year. The time I associate most with these tunes is the weekend I met Ann for the first time in person. That was in Idaho Falls, Idaho during a wintry February weekend. The CD was in the player and we listened to it during the times we drove around during that weekend. I mostly remember the drive out to Menan and back; we went out to Menan to visit my friends Tee and Dee. I wanted Tee, especially, to meet Ann.

And so as it happens I was listening to "Thirteenth Step" this afternoon and in an idle moment I was transported back to those first days with Ann. When we started to really get to know one another. And when we basked in the natural feeling of being together. And feeling that we somehow knew each other. A feeling of being comfortable.

And I was compelled to write it down.

On Writing a Novel

I am currently zipping through Stephen King’s book about writing called On Writing. There are two things that make this unusual. The first being that I am zipping through it. Reading anything longer than a news paper article is rare for me these days. If a story runs more than two pages in Oprah:The Magazine, I shudder and steel myself for mental exertion. The second reason my reading of King’s book is unusual is that I generally speaking don’t care how other writers go about the business of writing. Perhaps I should, but I don’t. I write. Sometimes I share it. I like positive feedback. I am annoyed by constructive criticism but once I get past the annoyed part I do take it to heart and use the constructive parts. The reason it annoys me though is because it is rarely information I didn’t already know. I know when my writing isn’t working and having it pointed out to me just makes me crankier than I probably already was. But, I am enjoying the King book. It isn’t really about the process as much as it is about his journey and we all have our own journeys to make as writers. I found what he had to say about the writing of Carrie to be particularly interesting. He said it wasn’t a story that he connected with and that it was hard to write, but he thought it taught him a lot. Among other things it taught him that a writer should quit just because a piece was difficult emotionally or imaginatively. “Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when all it feels like is that you’re managing to shovel shit from a sitting position.” - (p.78 of On Writing by Stephen King).

I kinda feel like that right now with my novel. It has changed direction and style and format to the point where I think I will need to start again. Not toss what I have, but start at the beginning and work my way through to what is passing as the end right now. That is 223 pages worth of reading and revising and thinking and being frustrated. Because I am.

Rob printed off a copy of it for me at his office at work because we don’t have the printer set up in our home office yet. I have been pestering him for a printer since September because I really don’t like having him print things for me at work. Not because I am one of those people who worries overly about things like using the employer’s office supplies for personal business, and I know this makes me a terrible person in some circles, The reason I don’t want Rob printing things is because he will read them, and they are not ready to be read until I say they are ready and even then they might need more work in my opinion. So Rob printed my mess of a novel and asked me where the story was going. Did I know what I wanted to say? Well no actually, thanks for asking. The thing is that I am coming around slowly to the idea that my story is not about Julie the widow but about Julie the woman who watched her husband die. It’s about me in more ways than I am comfortable with and about people I know like family, friends, the men I met online last year in my quest to date again. It’s about chaos. It’s about loneliness. It’s about pain. And it’s about how all these things go on out of sight while people appear to be managing and surviving.

Stephen King is got it about right.

1000 Days

It’s interesting the significance that people place on the dates and anniversaries of their deceased loved ones and on keeping track of the exact passage of time. A fellow widow blogger noted recently that she was approaching the 1000th day since her husband’s death. Out of curiosity I found a site that will calculate time elapsed between two dates, so I played with it a bit and discovered the following:

It’s been 654 days since my late husband died. That’s 1 year, 9 months and 16 days.
It’s been 807 days since he went into hospice or 2 years, 2 months and 16 days.
I had to put him in a nursing home on October 6th of 2004 which is 1189 days or 3 years, 3 months and 2 days ago.
1311 days ago I started taking him to daycare while I worked and he began to wear diapers full-time. That comes out to 3 years, 7 months and 2 days.
He finally succumbed to the full effect of his illness the same week we bought our first home together. That was the 4th of July weekend of 2003, 1588 days ago, which is 4 years 4 months and 4 days. He was a complete stranger to me from then on.
The last time we made love? 1629 days ago or 4 years 5 months and 15 days.
The day it was clear to me that he was ill, although it wasn’t obvious to anyone else and should have been. That was the day of his 10 year high school reunion on June 1, 2002. 1986 days or 5 years, 5 months and 7 days past.

And what does all this add up to, really? I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know why people count days and I don’t. I know why I remember these dates, and they certainly aren’t the only ones - just the highlights. They are significant to the demise of something I never thought would end as quickly as it did. Almost as quickly as it began. Each of these dates mark me in a way that no scar ever could, although they cut deep and the ache is never too far from my memory.

I am not sure that you honor a person’s memory by dwelling more on the time that they have been dead rather than the time that they spent living on this earth. Next week will mark what would have been my late husband’s 34th birthday and Rob suggested to Katy and I that we have a cake to celebrate. We didn’t celebrate his birthday last year. I didn’t even mention it to Katy at all. Maybe I should have because it doesn’t really matter how long he has been gone. What matters is that he lived.

Writing: The Problem with Digging Deep

Eric Clapton’s autobiography recently came out and it’s been praised widely for, among other things, its frankness. Mr. Clapton’s colorful past manages to be honest without injecting drama that isn’t there. But the chapter dealing with the death of his four year old son has a different tone than the rest of the book. There is a distance to the narrative that alarmed his publishers to the point that they asked him to consider rewriting it. He declined and explained that his child’s tragic accident was not something he could write any other way. That time and those circumstances were not places he could go emotionally anymore. He could talk about them. Sing the song he wrote for his boy. But to write the event from the perspective of the grieving father wasn’t possible. He just couldn’t do it.

In writing my novel I have discovered that while I can fictionalize much of the events surrounding my first husband’s illness and death and that I can write about the year that followed in a fashion, I can’t dive in to those emotions anymore. I am too far removed and just don’t want to. I wondered for a while if this was the denial I have been accused of in the past and decided it wasn’t. I am normal and what I am experiencing is normal. Grief doesn’t go anywhere really but you do reach a point where it is someplace you don’t go much, if at all. And that’s more than okay. It’s a good thing.

So, I am mining my past and my pain for the time being as I go back over the latter half of last year and when the book is finished, I won’t be revisiting that in my fiction again. I have other projects. Two of which I have already started actually. Still, “going there” as Gary Paulson would say, isn’t entirely without its redeeming factors because I think I am writing a pretty darn good book.

Time, Timing and the Healing of All Wounds

There are essentially two camps of thinking when it comes to re-partnering or finding love again after being widowed. The first camp is loud and belligerent in its conviction, believes that time must pass and grief work must be done and that all parties involved must be consulted beforehand. I don’t belong to that camp. I find them to be irritating and sheople-like. But then again, I don’t believe that time heals wounds or that such a thing as grief-work even exists (it sounds suspiciously like those “camps” that Dr. Phil holds, tapes and uses as filler when he can’t come up with real topics to discuss). I am also a firm believer in not allowing friends and family, who are merely appendages to your life really, to have say over the general direction my life. In-laws will get over you. Parents and siblings have lives of their own that should occupy them more. And children grow up and go out into the world to live lives that they won’t allow you to input to, so why do you owe them input into yours when they are essentially not mature enough, or self-less enough, to give meaningful input? The second camp, my camp, believes that love will come along again if you are open to the idea and living your life minus the drama of single twenty-somethings who read Cosmo for the man-snaring dress and sex tips and visit their tarot readers monthly to see if their bar-hopping is going to pan out. And the grief part? The idea, prevalent among first campers, that if you wallow in it hard enough and long enough it will diminish to a corner of your psyche where you can wall it off and pull it out only on anniversaries is the most simplistic thing I think I have ever heard. Grief is. And it continues to be. Forever. It diminishes, if you want to use that term, as you begin to reclaim your life and rebuild it. Nothing short of that works. Could that be the “grief-work” everyone talks about? Perhaps. But what does love have to do with it?

When I was single, and I was for forever and a day, it seemed to me that the more time I spent pondering my single state the more single I remained. It was only when I was busy living and moving forward that the opportunities to fall in love and have that love returned presented themselves. The same held true after my first husband died. And what love has to do with grieving is that it is made easier by being able to share the load with someone who cares about you in a more intimate manner than your children or your mother-in-law can. This is true of most everything in life.

I am not going to pretend that I didn’t think about falling in love and marrying again early. In fact I thought about it even before Will died. Ours was a Terry Schiavo-ish situation with him first suffering from a rapidly progressive dementia until within little more than a year, he couldn’t communicate or understand at all. At that point, I spent well over an additional year on my own before he died though the man I had married was long since gone. Though I can intellectually understand those with terminal situations who refused to contemplate the future before their spouses died. I don’t get that kind of denial personally. So, when I read things other widows have written about time lines and respect for one’s late spouse or the need to make your children the epicenter of your life until they are grown or “working” the misery as reasons to not date or begin relationships, I chalk this up to the fact that some people aren’t me.

There was a recent flare-up on the widow board caused by a poster’s plea for others to not casually toss about absolutes when replying to other people’s queries. I watched the thread for a day or so because I knew it would dissolve into the age-old debate between the daters and the not-daters. Everything widow eventually breaks down along those lines when the subject is moving on. A woman I have little patience with leapt upon this topic, as she always does, to criticize and shame those people who haven’t followed her example of simply living for her children and waiting for the day that she no longer misses her husband. I have always felt there was a story behind that and to my surprise, those who usually support her vitriol, openly or through their silence, chastised her to the point where she admitted that she was the hypocrite I suspected her to be, an early dater. Her relationship however didn’t work out and she is essentially carrying a torch for this man still. Not at all unlike what happens to the single and divorced in the world. We are not as unlike them as we like to think in this respect anyway. So much for the idea that waiting is the given though, and those who begin to feel again and act on those feelings are horrible people and bad examples.

Rob finds the finger-waggers as irritating as I do. Not because he worries about what people think. He doesn’t. But because it is disrespectful and presumptive of others to claim knowledge of his heart and mind simply because they share his widowed state. As he is fond of pointing out, widowhood does not make saints out of assholes generally, nor does it give any special ability to guide or give counsel to people who had social issues or issues at all to begin with. So, I resisted the urge to re-register and comment. Easily as it turns out but I couldn’t let it go enough not to blog on the topic because, personally, I feel that the vast majority of the bereaved are back out into the world sooner rather than later and it is those who cling to their grief via arbitrary timelines and “rules” and absolutes who are the ones who really need help. The rest of us are doing all right without them.

Bursting into Song

One of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a musical with all the characters bursting into song and dance like Singing in the Rain or West Side Story. I got to thinking about this when I came across a group on Faceback called “Why yes, I do just burst into song”. It reminded me too of when I was young and I would string together popular songs to tell stories in much the same way they do in the movie Moulin Rogue. I would imagine my characters singing songs to tell their stories alone or in duets. I was a very odd child. When I was older, and even now, I used songs to cheer myself up or onward, narrating my own life through tunes. If my life were a musical today the musical narrative would be comprised mainly of love songs. I caught the end of Faith Hill’s Breathe on the way to deep water aerobics tonight and it captured perfectly the way I feel about Rob. Sometimes these days, I am so happy that I almost feel guilty. However, it’s not as though I have forgotten. You never forget, but I am done letting those moments that crop up on occasion dominate or interfere with my life. There will always be memories and anniversaries and times of the year that prick at the underside of consciousness in an attempt to awaken the past.

I awoke the other morning shortly before the alarm from a dream about Will. I have gone from never dreaming about him to dreams where he is part of the white noise to the current state of affairs with him turning up on occasion and interrupting dreams already in progress. He is never who he was though. Not the man I fell in love with or married. He is the sick and demented version of Will. What he became after the disease took hold and had eaten away significant portions of the white matter that covered his brain. In these dreams he is like a child or a little old man. I can’t communicate with him in any meaningful way and I spend a great deal of time comforting and caring for him. In the latest dream, he begged me to just hold him as though he were a small child and I woke up from the dream in tears. Though there is something to the theory that dreams are your unconscious mind trying to tell you something important or the way your mind problem solves while you sleep, there isn’t much to this dream that needs deep analysis on my part. I have always wished that we could have known what was wrong sooner so that he and I could have had a chance to talk about his wishes and say goodbye, and I wish I could have been able to care for him instead of putting him in the nursing home. I also wish I had been able to take time off work to be with him those last months he spent in hospice. But I couldn’t and I can’t fix that now. And I also know that it’s October. The month that Will went into hospice; where he died two years ago this coming January.

Last year around this time, I began living most of the “firsts” that lay grieving people so low during that first year. Nearly everything important was packed into those last few months of the first year and it was very hard to cope with these events when I was also dealing with personal illness, raising a small child and working a full-time job. I did it though. Not well, and I would never counsel people to do what I was told to do, which was to wallow in my misery. I was fortunate that my innate tendency to question “authority” and my inner musical buoyed me up enough that I didn’t get stuck in that mode. I know there will be moments in the coming months that will bring up memories, good and bad, but isn’t that just part of life?

The trip we took back to my folks recently provided me with a chance to visit places from my childhood. The farm where my uncle and grandmother lived for instance. By chance the call of nature (yeah, I pee outdoors now like a Canadian) put me behind the car-shed, and as I walked back to the homestead from around the barn I paused for a moment to look up at the door to the loft. It was closed and the ground beneath was covered with ankle deep grass. It was just a over and month and 35 years ago that my uncle fell to his death from that loft after having a seizure. Later that same afternoon, we stopped at the cemetery where he is buried. The first person I was close to and really loved who died and left me. And it’s been thirty-five years. I can still feel that pain. Remember with clarity the last time I saw him. Regret that I never got the chance to say goodbye. People might argue - widows would argue vehemently - that it’s not the same as losing a spouse, but they are full of shit. Loss is loss. And who is anyone to say that one type is worse or more painful? It took years to get to a point where Jimmy’s death wasn’t part of me every day. It will take as much time or more to incorporate Will’s passing into my psyche as well. And there will be more dreams. And they are just dreams. But the musical that is my life is what I hear when I am awake and living and loving and laughing, and that is what counts.