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
Showing posts with label widowhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label widowhood. Show all posts
Friday, February 8, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, November 9, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Meanderings of Writer's Block
One of my favorite authors is a man named Gary Paulson. If you are a middle school teacher, you probably are quite familiar with his work. He is a phenomenal talent who writes accessible fiction that promotes thinking without being preachy. I was thinking about him the other day when I read yet another newspaper article about how brave the author of the Harry Potter series was to “out” one of her main characters. I was and still am unimpressed by her after the fact revelation. Had she written the character as a man who happened to be gay in addition to being the head master of a school for wizards that would have been worthy of praise. As it was, she opted for the cheap politically correct option of telling her readers she imagined that the character was gay as she wrote about him......not being gay. Not that it matters. Orientation is not the sole defining characteristic of any person and that should have been the point. It reminded me of Paulson because in his novel The Car, one of the man characters is a gay man. As readers we learn about this through yet another main character as he reveals the fact in passing during a conversation. Paulson never mentions the fact again in the course of the novel because it’s not relevant to the story, but he mentions it upfront and not as an aside in an interview later on. So why do I bring up Paulson at all? Was it to discuss the Rowlings revelation? No, actually I wanted to talk about his theory on writing. I may have mentioned it at some point in my blogging but it bears repeating. He feels that writers have to be willing to “go there” in other words, dig deep into the rubble pile that is the sum of all our bad experiences in life and be willing to put ourselves back in those circumstances and draw on the rawness to fuel artistic endeavors. And no, it’s not much more fun that it sounds. I know because I have been reading back through the first six months of my blogging from July through December of 2006. Not fun times. Although not as dark as times that preceded it in 2005 or 2004 or even earlier. When I truly think about, life has been a struggle since early spring of 2002. That’s when Will first began to be obviously not right in so many ways. That’s a long time to struggle. And sometimes I would like to forget about those times completely. Why not? There is no reason to go back there and agonize, second guess or berate myself. Except that those times made me who I am in the same way that my father’s alcoholism shaped me or my long, lonely single years laid the foundation I built upon when Will was sick and it was just me and Katy, just as examples. How do you integrate and use those lessons, for lack of a better word, and forget the circumstances at the same time. In retrospect, I am a lucky person because I know there are people who lives have been beset with far more tragedy than my own and for whom there never seems to be much, if any respite. Though most of these people are strong, resourceful and able to hang onto those wonders and joys of life that see them through and give them hope; no one is able to hold up the world day in and day out when it seems intent on rolling off their shoulders or becomes to heavy a burden alone. Those times when I felt that life was little more than an endless battle against the bad things; I hung onto the fact that I would be happy again. Even when I wasn’t sure if that was really true, I clung to it stubbornly and it saw me through to where I am now. Today I was reading one of the many widow blogs I peruse. It’s author, Alicia, called to mind the endurance that is necessary to sustain oneself when the forces beyond our control have us tightly boxed and seemingly in their grip. Her poem reminded me of the power within us all to dig within ourselves and express our need for strength and empathy and a glimpse of that elusive and lit tunnel exit sign.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Happy Halloween
It’s been a full day. Katy has been in her Dancing Princess costume since 10AM and as I type this Rob and Katy have been home once to get a bigger bad for her “collection taking” (and to drop off our cat who has followed them up and down the street playfully attacking swinging goody bags and trying to gain entry to our neighbors homes when they open their doors).
Katy’s new school is not like the one she attended back in Des Moines. My old school district was very careful with Halloween, as they were with all holidays. Never acknowledging by name. No parties. No costume parades. In fact, the city of Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs neutered the holiday long ago by refusing to allow it to be held on the 31st and changing its name. They referred to it as Beggar’s Night and with the exception of only one year in the twenty that I lived there, it was always held on the 30th for two hours. This was supposed to cut down on vandalism and maybe take some of the “satanic” taint away from it. I find it ironic that Halloween is thought to be a holiday of evil. It’s druid origins have more to do with acknowledgment of the departed than the calling up of demons, which is actually Christian nonsense anyway.
I volunteered to help out in Katy’s class again today. It was fun. The kids from all the grades gathered in the gym. We sang - okay, they sang - O Canada and then each class got to parade across the stage to show off their costumes. Katy’s teacher had an assortment of party stations waiting for them back in the room, and we helped the kids make Mardi Gras type masks and decorate those tiny “pumpkins” and make tracings of familiar Halloween images like bats and ghosts which they labeled themselves.
Katy was so impatient to get out a trick or treat tonight. She decided that Rob should take her because he couldn’t be trusted at home with the candy. Katy was sure he would eat most of it before anyone could come knocking for it. I don’t think he would have. Eaten all of it that is. Some would be a given though.
After they returned, we set out for the bookmobile as Wednesday night is library night. Rob, me, the little dancing princess and our cat tagging along. We probably made a very heart-warming sight and looked quite the nuclear perfect family. Little would anyone guess where we all were at just a year ago, though I don’t like to make those comparisons. I didn’t decorate this year because Rob isn’t ready for tombstones in the front yard, even if they aren’t real, but I was ready in a way. I listened jealously to my best friend describe the haunted house that our Jaycees friends build every fall to raise money for charities. Will and I fell in love while building one in the fall of 1998 and shared our first kiss in the shower scene I created. There amidst the splayed body in a tub full of blood with spooky music in the background and strobes blinking was were it all began for us. Couldn’t have been anymore romantic. And those memories are good ones. Decorating and remembering creations past feels okay these days. There are things that don’t come back. Priorities change and continue to evolve for some time after the loss of a loved one. It’s inevitable and probably not a bad thing at all. Some people go the whole of their lives without ever given a second thought to how they live their lives and in my opinion that doesn’t make them luckier than I am.
So, Happy Halloween, my friends.
Katy’s new school is not like the one she attended back in Des Moines. My old school district was very careful with Halloween, as they were with all holidays. Never acknowledging by name. No parties. No costume parades. In fact, the city of Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs neutered the holiday long ago by refusing to allow it to be held on the 31st and changing its name. They referred to it as Beggar’s Night and with the exception of only one year in the twenty that I lived there, it was always held on the 30th for two hours. This was supposed to cut down on vandalism and maybe take some of the “satanic” taint away from it. I find it ironic that Halloween is thought to be a holiday of evil. It’s druid origins have more to do with acknowledgment of the departed than the calling up of demons, which is actually Christian nonsense anyway.
I volunteered to help out in Katy’s class again today. It was fun. The kids from all the grades gathered in the gym. We sang - okay, they sang - O Canada and then each class got to parade across the stage to show off their costumes. Katy’s teacher had an assortment of party stations waiting for them back in the room, and we helped the kids make Mardi Gras type masks and decorate those tiny “pumpkins” and make tracings of familiar Halloween images like bats and ghosts which they labeled themselves.
Katy was so impatient to get out a trick or treat tonight. She decided that Rob should take her because he couldn’t be trusted at home with the candy. Katy was sure he would eat most of it before anyone could come knocking for it. I don’t think he would have. Eaten all of it that is. Some would be a given though.
After they returned, we set out for the bookmobile as Wednesday night is library night. Rob, me, the little dancing princess and our cat tagging along. We probably made a very heart-warming sight and looked quite the nuclear perfect family. Little would anyone guess where we all were at just a year ago, though I don’t like to make those comparisons. I didn’t decorate this year because Rob isn’t ready for tombstones in the front yard, even if they aren’t real, but I was ready in a way. I listened jealously to my best friend describe the haunted house that our Jaycees friends build every fall to raise money for charities. Will and I fell in love while building one in the fall of 1998 and shared our first kiss in the shower scene I created. There amidst the splayed body in a tub full of blood with spooky music in the background and strobes blinking was were it all began for us. Couldn’t have been anymore romantic. And those memories are good ones. Decorating and remembering creations past feels okay these days. There are things that don’t come back. Priorities change and continue to evolve for some time after the loss of a loved one. It’s inevitable and probably not a bad thing at all. Some people go the whole of their lives without ever given a second thought to how they live their lives and in my opinion that doesn’t make them luckier than I am.
So, Happy Halloween, my friends.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Expectations
Got an email from my oldest friend today. Not old in the chronological sense, but from the years we have known each other sense. She and I go all the way back to the fifth grade and The Church of the Resurrection Grade School. That’s thirty plus years now. Aside from family, I don’t think I go back farther with anyone else. Despite a few breaks in contact here and there over the decades, she could probably tell anyone who was interested in just how much, or not, I have changed over time. She was inquiring about our recent 25th high school reunion, which she missed, and to fill me in on her mother’s recent surgery. It seems her mother needed knee replacement and was under the impression that replacing a major joint was on par with most day surgeries. In, out and home to be all comfy snug as a drugged up bug for a day or two and then back to one’s normal routine. Alas, it was not the case. Apparently one cannot receive a new knee and go to the gym the next day and begin abusing it in spin class or on the treadmill. There is the whole pesky recuperation thing to deal with first. For my friend’s mother this means purchasing a walker, acquiring a toilet seat heightener and being eligible for a short term handicap parking sticker. I knew without her having to tell me that her mother would be horrified at the prospect of any one of those things, but all at once probably sent her over the edge. I know this because even though I haven’t seen either of her parents in many years, I have parents of my own who reject anything that hints at the fact that they might not be as young as say, my friend and I are. Which is not that young by the way.
She marveled at the differences in expectations patients can have about procedures like knee replacement. Being a doctor, she has seen these expectations run the gamut from Monty Python crowd of “It’s just a flesh wound” to those who believe there is never a good reason not to be put completely under. Expectations. And pity the poor doctor, or teacher or barista at the nearest Starbucks who can’t live up to them.
One of the reasons I was glad that immigration forced me to prematurely retire from teaching was the unrealistic expectations that were being forced on me by superiors and lawmakers and the media. A job that once beckoned me through the school days an hour or more before my students, and most of my colleagues, arrived every morning has been sucked dry of its joy the ridiculous notion that schools should be run like businesses and that educating children was no different from putting together appliances. I am sure the same could be said of medicine and the damage that has been done there by insurance companies who feel their true purpose is to enrich shareholders. Expectations. One of those eye of the beholder things, eh?
As a widowed women I found a veritable rule book of expectations I was expected to adhere to with the conviction of the newly reborn. One of my favorites was the one year rule. The widowed are expected to put off any major decisions until the first anniversary of their spouse’s death has been duly mourned for all to see. and maybe hand them certificate suitable for framing afterwards. Who knows. It sounded a bit iffy to me. Put off? What does that mean exactly? I had a master’s degree to finish. I was actually in the middle of my thesis when Will died and was preparing for my final seminar class that coming July. Selling my house perhaps? I wasn’t in dire need of that but if I had been, would it have been better to wait a year and hope a foreclosure wasn’t the result? I did reach the conclusion it was time to start looking at other career possibilities, but I was going to stick with teaching until I had things lined up. Would waiting a year to start planning my move have given me more clarity or simply thrown cold water on my momentum?
Expectations are about reality but sometimes reality bites a bit too hard to be given all that much credence. If my father hadn’t the lofty expectations he did after his strokes and being diagnosed with plumonary fibrois, he would be dead already. Expectations might inconvenience and cause us to shake are heads a bit in wonder, but in the end they are subjective thing. Better to be a square peg than one of the numerous round holes.
She marveled at the differences in expectations patients can have about procedures like knee replacement. Being a doctor, she has seen these expectations run the gamut from Monty Python crowd of “It’s just a flesh wound” to those who believe there is never a good reason not to be put completely under. Expectations. And pity the poor doctor, or teacher or barista at the nearest Starbucks who can’t live up to them.
One of the reasons I was glad that immigration forced me to prematurely retire from teaching was the unrealistic expectations that were being forced on me by superiors and lawmakers and the media. A job that once beckoned me through the school days an hour or more before my students, and most of my colleagues, arrived every morning has been sucked dry of its joy the ridiculous notion that schools should be run like businesses and that educating children was no different from putting together appliances. I am sure the same could be said of medicine and the damage that has been done there by insurance companies who feel their true purpose is to enrich shareholders. Expectations. One of those eye of the beholder things, eh?
As a widowed women I found a veritable rule book of expectations I was expected to adhere to with the conviction of the newly reborn. One of my favorites was the one year rule. The widowed are expected to put off any major decisions until the first anniversary of their spouse’s death has been duly mourned for all to see. and maybe hand them certificate suitable for framing afterwards. Who knows. It sounded a bit iffy to me. Put off? What does that mean exactly? I had a master’s degree to finish. I was actually in the middle of my thesis when Will died and was preparing for my final seminar class that coming July. Selling my house perhaps? I wasn’t in dire need of that but if I had been, would it have been better to wait a year and hope a foreclosure wasn’t the result? I did reach the conclusion it was time to start looking at other career possibilities, but I was going to stick with teaching until I had things lined up. Would waiting a year to start planning my move have given me more clarity or simply thrown cold water on my momentum?
Expectations are about reality but sometimes reality bites a bit too hard to be given all that much credence. If my father hadn’t the lofty expectations he did after his strokes and being diagnosed with plumonary fibrois, he would be dead already. Expectations might inconvenience and cause us to shake are heads a bit in wonder, but in the end they are subjective thing. Better to be a square peg than one of the numerous round holes.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
A Random Thought about Writing and the Widowed
We are heading back to the states tomorrow for a short visit. Per usual there is too much to still be done and probably only just enough time to do it and nothing more. I can’t figure out how my life went from being empty, open spaces to this crammed full existence that still feels as though I need more minutes at the end of every day. It seems as though it shouldn’t have as simple as falling in love with Rob and moving here to be with him, but in more ways than can be imagined, it was just that.
Which brings me to a thought. Rob and I have been talking a bit about writing. About his promise to write about Shelley’s ordeal with melanoma and the difficulty that presents in terms of digging up the past and the occupying pain, but also in terms of how does one take such a sprawling topic and pare it down to an accessible essence? The path that leads some of us to widowhood is winding and long, and there is so much more to it than just the symptoms of the disease and the doctor’s visits and the treatments. The emotional side is as vast as an ocean and twice as deep. So, what to save and what to toss? In school I would teach my students to identify the audience and make their content match the needs of their readers or listeners. I am not sure if that applies in this case. But, it’s Rob’s story to tell and knowing him I imagine that he will stick to the facts and approach it from a logical “what would someone need to know” stance. It makes sense.
He got me thinking about my own story, which I am beyond weary of telling to the point where I don’t even want to hear other people’s stories. I don’t like sharing widowhood on the loss level anymore. Not that I ever enjoyed it, but there was a time when it made me feel less alone. Not as unique or novel. These days I prefer to share moving one stories. And it’s not about being positive or practical, it just is. Who I am now is a woman who was widowed. It happened. It sucked. It’s over? No, but it isn’t my now and hasn’t been for a very long time. If I were to write about my experiences, I would start with the beginning for this year and work through the beginnings of our relationship, Rob and I. There is so much out there on loss. On coping with loss. On surviving loss. On wallowing in it too. But, there is not much on moving on by people who have actually done it and not been overcome with buyer’s remorse once they got there. Beyond blogs and posts, the movies and books are a little to sugary-coated and belie the churning of emotions that nearly make you sick with fear, hesitation, second-guessing and more concern for the opinions of the world at large than for yourself.
When I think about it, my blog has been about moving on, and that is all that I have been willing to share really. The first blog was about loss and the frustration associated with jump-starting my idling life, but I shared that only belatedly, after most of it was written and past and it was no longer a true reflection of me.
I need to ponder this a while longer. I haven’t a deep need to write about myself beyond this blog right now. I am not sure how the world would benefit from another story about widows finding love again. It has the feel and the makings for a cheesy chick flick. Besides every widowed person I know talks about writing a book as though writing was a gift that came along with widowhood like the parting gifts game show contestant losers are sent away with at the end of a show.
Which brings me to a thought. Rob and I have been talking a bit about writing. About his promise to write about Shelley’s ordeal with melanoma and the difficulty that presents in terms of digging up the past and the occupying pain, but also in terms of how does one take such a sprawling topic and pare it down to an accessible essence? The path that leads some of us to widowhood is winding and long, and there is so much more to it than just the symptoms of the disease and the doctor’s visits and the treatments. The emotional side is as vast as an ocean and twice as deep. So, what to save and what to toss? In school I would teach my students to identify the audience and make their content match the needs of their readers or listeners. I am not sure if that applies in this case. But, it’s Rob’s story to tell and knowing him I imagine that he will stick to the facts and approach it from a logical “what would someone need to know” stance. It makes sense.
He got me thinking about my own story, which I am beyond weary of telling to the point where I don’t even want to hear other people’s stories. I don’t like sharing widowhood on the loss level anymore. Not that I ever enjoyed it, but there was a time when it made me feel less alone. Not as unique or novel. These days I prefer to share moving one stories. And it’s not about being positive or practical, it just is. Who I am now is a woman who was widowed. It happened. It sucked. It’s over? No, but it isn’t my now and hasn’t been for a very long time. If I were to write about my experiences, I would start with the beginning for this year and work through the beginnings of our relationship, Rob and I. There is so much out there on loss. On coping with loss. On surviving loss. On wallowing in it too. But, there is not much on moving on by people who have actually done it and not been overcome with buyer’s remorse once they got there. Beyond blogs and posts, the movies and books are a little to sugary-coated and belie the churning of emotions that nearly make you sick with fear, hesitation, second-guessing and more concern for the opinions of the world at large than for yourself.
When I think about it, my blog has been about moving on, and that is all that I have been willing to share really. The first blog was about loss and the frustration associated with jump-starting my idling life, but I shared that only belatedly, after most of it was written and past and it was no longer a true reflection of me.
I need to ponder this a while longer. I haven’t a deep need to write about myself beyond this blog right now. I am not sure how the world would benefit from another story about widows finding love again. It has the feel and the makings for a cheesy chick flick. Besides every widowed person I know talks about writing a book as though writing was a gift that came along with widowhood like the parting gifts game show contestant losers are sent away with at the end of a show.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Going to the Movies
Going to see a movie, even watching dvd's at home, is always a hit and miss affair. I think it is safe to say that Rob and I haven't managed to find a film yet without references big and small about death and grieving. Last night's movie was in keeping with the trend. Despite the fact that we were running late from dinner, we decided to catch the new Naomi Watts and Viggio Mortenson flick titled, Eastern Promises. About ten or fifteen minutes had passed by the time we walked in and found seats on the left wall. The theater wasn't very crowded but we found ourselves sitting behind and in front of couples. Not an awful view despite the lack of stadium seating, but I did hear the woman behind us make a disgusted sound when Rob sat down in front of her and then proceeded to quickly peel off his pullover. Some people don't deal with the "public"aspect of cinema very well. The simple truth is if you want to view a movie without the inconveince of other viewers possible spoiling your pristine cinematic experience, stay home and wait for the DVD.
The Mortenson character in the film was a Russian named Nikolai who worked as a driver for the Russian mafia based in the city of London. The first scene we took in was of this character being called upon to dispose of a body. To say that there were grisly and violent scenes in the movie would be understating quite a bit. There were only a few deaths, but they were graphic. I am not exactly more squeamish since the death of my first husband. But once you have actually watched someone die, the "Hollywood" take will never seem quite as realistic no matter how well done because you know that it's not real. The actor got up when the director yelled "Cut" and went home to family or out to dinner with friends. It can never be as real as real is.
Naomi Watts played a midwife in the story who gets involved with the mafia, Nikolai, after the death of a 14 year old Ukranian prostitute. The girl had jut given birth and it stirs up memories for Anna (Watts) because she has recently miscarried her own baby. Between the grief and the murdering, it was a good movie. The acting was wonderful and it was visually interesting. The story was well told.
After the movie, we sat and watched the credits, listening to the soundtrack too because we like to collect soundtracks that are particularly well done. As the credits rolled it came to a dedication to the production unit manager, Lisa Parker, a 40 year old Irish woman who had died suddenly this past June. The woman behind us had been babblingly loudly to her companion during this time. Mostly about nothing and it occurred to me that perhaps she and the gentleman she was with were on a date. Maybe even a first or second date because women have a tendency to talk far too much in early dating situations out of nervousness. It's only later when you know a man well and are sure of him that you can let the quiet be quiet. The dedication rolls on and the women reads the dates of birth and death and does the math to come up with Parker's age, which she announces too. Then makes some inane comment about what might have happened. It wasn't what was said but the conversational tone that struck me and told me that this women had never lost anyone. If she had, it wouldn't have been a matter for trivia or simply filling spaces in the air.
We got up to leave after the screen went black. The woman and her companion were still seated and she made sure to give Rob a dirty look. Of course he didn't notice. If this woman knew my husband at all she would have saved the effort. Rob pays no attention to strangers because the things they have to say or the "looks" they might throw at him aren't of interest to him. It's one of the the things I love abou him, the fact that he doesn't let random people get to him. I noted her look. I also noted that she was my age but trying to look younger with heavy make-up and dyed blonde hair styled to the point of being wind-resistant. She was jowly and her belly rolled over the waistband of her too tight pants. I don't know what my look said to her. I think I smiled.
Among the widowed there is a small sub-set which treat grief as something you can "self-help" your way out of with a bit of effort. They refer to this as "griefwork" and certainly there is wisdom is the early months and through the first year and a bit to let yourself be sad and mourn all the losses that come with losing a mate, but I reject the idea that the intensity of grief is something that will consume years - two and three and four - at a time until a person can hope to rebuild and reclaim. At some point, in the second year, normality, and the need for this, take over and grieving becomes intermittment and usually triggered by the memories that the randomness of our lives throws at us. But, it's not long-lasting or crippling and not reason to schedule an intervention for yourself. Like last night's movie showed me, again, that I will never look at some things in the same way.
The Mortenson character in the film was a Russian named Nikolai who worked as a driver for the Russian mafia based in the city of London. The first scene we took in was of this character being called upon to dispose of a body. To say that there were grisly and violent scenes in the movie would be understating quite a bit. There were only a few deaths, but they were graphic. I am not exactly more squeamish since the death of my first husband. But once you have actually watched someone die, the "Hollywood" take will never seem quite as realistic no matter how well done because you know that it's not real. The actor got up when the director yelled "Cut" and went home to family or out to dinner with friends. It can never be as real as real is.
Naomi Watts played a midwife in the story who gets involved with the mafia, Nikolai, after the death of a 14 year old Ukranian prostitute. The girl had jut given birth and it stirs up memories for Anna (Watts) because she has recently miscarried her own baby. Between the grief and the murdering, it was a good movie. The acting was wonderful and it was visually interesting. The story was well told.
After the movie, we sat and watched the credits, listening to the soundtrack too because we like to collect soundtracks that are particularly well done. As the credits rolled it came to a dedication to the production unit manager, Lisa Parker, a 40 year old Irish woman who had died suddenly this past June. The woman behind us had been babblingly loudly to her companion during this time. Mostly about nothing and it occurred to me that perhaps she and the gentleman she was with were on a date. Maybe even a first or second date because women have a tendency to talk far too much in early dating situations out of nervousness. It's only later when you know a man well and are sure of him that you can let the quiet be quiet. The dedication rolls on and the women reads the dates of birth and death and does the math to come up with Parker's age, which she announces too. Then makes some inane comment about what might have happened. It wasn't what was said but the conversational tone that struck me and told me that this women had never lost anyone. If she had, it wouldn't have been a matter for trivia or simply filling spaces in the air.
We got up to leave after the screen went black. The woman and her companion were still seated and she made sure to give Rob a dirty look. Of course he didn't notice. If this woman knew my husband at all she would have saved the effort. Rob pays no attention to strangers because the things they have to say or the "looks" they might throw at him aren't of interest to him. It's one of the the things I love abou him, the fact that he doesn't let random people get to him. I noted her look. I also noted that she was my age but trying to look younger with heavy make-up and dyed blonde hair styled to the point of being wind-resistant. She was jowly and her belly rolled over the waistband of her too tight pants. I don't know what my look said to her. I think I smiled.
Among the widowed there is a small sub-set which treat grief as something you can "self-help" your way out of with a bit of effort. They refer to this as "griefwork" and certainly there is wisdom is the early months and through the first year and a bit to let yourself be sad and mourn all the losses that come with losing a mate, but I reject the idea that the intensity of grief is something that will consume years - two and three and four - at a time until a person can hope to rebuild and reclaim. At some point, in the second year, normality, and the need for this, take over and grieving becomes intermittment and usually triggered by the memories that the randomness of our lives throws at us. But, it's not long-lasting or crippling and not reason to schedule an intervention for yourself. Like last night's movie showed me, again, that I will never look at some things in the same way.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Chapter 43 and 2/3
Today marks the 201st entry on my original version of this blog (see link below). I began blogging on Tuesday, March 13th of this year, just a few days before Rob arrived from Alberta for our trip to Devil’s Den in Arkansas. Just six day before he asked me to marry him. In some ways this blog has been a chronicle of the next chapter of my life.
Some widowed people mark the chapters of their lives in terms of significant others. Following that example my life didn’t begin until I was 34 and met and married Will, and my life stopped with his physical death in January of 2006, not to begin again until December when Rob came into my world. Personally, I find the idea of my life being so insignificant that it isn’t worth a mention unless I am mated to be a tad insulting though I can understand why people who have always been with someone would feel this way.
If my life were a book, it would have covered many pages through a variety of chapters of which Will and Rob are characters woven into the richness of the text. More significant than most of the other characters but not sole standouts in a desolate landscape passing for a life.
Three months from yesterday I will be 44 years old, and in many ways I feel quite new to all this life stuff. Who knows how many chapters I will write between now and then.
Some widowed people mark the chapters of their lives in terms of significant others. Following that example my life didn’t begin until I was 34 and met and married Will, and my life stopped with his physical death in January of 2006, not to begin again until December when Rob came into my world. Personally, I find the idea of my life being so insignificant that it isn’t worth a mention unless I am mated to be a tad insulting though I can understand why people who have always been with someone would feel this way.
If my life were a book, it would have covered many pages through a variety of chapters of which Will and Rob are characters woven into the richness of the text. More significant than most of the other characters but not sole standouts in a desolate landscape passing for a life.
Three months from yesterday I will be 44 years old, and in many ways I feel quite new to all this life stuff. Who knows how many chapters I will write between now and then.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Better to Have Loved and Lost
Cliches about lost love never go out of fashion but they sure don't fit all situations. I am continually amazed at the idea that some widowed people hang onto that somehow the death of their spouses is on par with divorce or separation or even the break-up of a romance.
Many of us are offered the dubious comfort of envy. Friends, relations, and even near-strangers, remind us that our marriages and the time we had with our lost loved ones is more than most people ever have the slightest chance to experience over the course of entire life-times it seems. Though not even a cold comfort, it is true. We were lucky and loved. What puzzles me is the idea that we "lost" at love. We didn't. We were loved. We are in all likelihood still loved, truly and deeply, though it might be hard to reach those feelings when anger and pain and the feeling of being cheated are all we allow ourselves to feel at first, and in the cases of some - for a long, long time. But we are not losers. We didn't end our relationships in front of a judge or discover one day after months, or years, that our inattention to each other had starved the emotions that once fanned desire. What we are is what remains of love after one of the pair is claimed by his or her mortality. It's not pretty, nor does it feel good, but it is not losing. Nor is it consolation. It is what it is but leave the bitterness to those who are the co-authors of their love's demise.
We chosen few have no reason to hang our heads or linger in bitterness. We are better for having loved, and being loved in return through all the heights and lulls that we know our soul enriching when others see them as valueless. I know that I gained more from the short time with my late husband than I will ever be able to explain. The love, as well as the pain and sorrow, separates me from those who are true losers at love. I gave my all. So did he. We played through to the true end. What more could anyone hope for?
Many of us are offered the dubious comfort of envy. Friends, relations, and even near-strangers, remind us that our marriages and the time we had with our lost loved ones is more than most people ever have the slightest chance to experience over the course of entire life-times it seems. Though not even a cold comfort, it is true. We were lucky and loved. What puzzles me is the idea that we "lost" at love. We didn't. We were loved. We are in all likelihood still loved, truly and deeply, though it might be hard to reach those feelings when anger and pain and the feeling of being cheated are all we allow ourselves to feel at first, and in the cases of some - for a long, long time. But we are not losers. We didn't end our relationships in front of a judge or discover one day after months, or years, that our inattention to each other had starved the emotions that once fanned desire. What we are is what remains of love after one of the pair is claimed by his or her mortality. It's not pretty, nor does it feel good, but it is not losing. Nor is it consolation. It is what it is but leave the bitterness to those who are the co-authors of their love's demise.
We chosen few have no reason to hang our heads or linger in bitterness. We are better for having loved, and being loved in return through all the heights and lulls that we know our soul enriching when others see them as valueless. I know that I gained more from the short time with my late husband than I will ever be able to explain. The love, as well as the pain and sorrow, separates me from those who are true losers at love. I gave my all. So did he. We played through to the true end. What more could anyone hope for?
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Moving On
I am hardly an expert but I do know a thing or two more than I would like about endings and beginnings and about moving on. I spent a good deal of time closing up the rooms in the dreams of the future my late husband and I imagined together in what seems now to be a long ago time but in reality is just a mere five years past. During his long illness, there were many endings. Most too painful to recount. There is a time for remembering loss and there comes a day when the laundry list of hurts isn't a useful exercise anymore and I have reached that point. Ironically there were as many beginnings during times of tragedy and loss, and there is even growth. I changed job sites and age levels in my teaching career. Began and finished a masters program. Made new friends. Set new goals, among them a decision to change locale and careers in the short term future. It's interesting the chain reactions decisions of all shapes and sizes have on the course of a person's life. Some people are blown far afield by unexpected circumstances and their reactions to them. Some are brought to a dead stop, letting currents take them and waves sweep them under. Some keep moving, re-plotting their courses as the conditions warrant until they find themselves on stable ground again. My plans changed course over the course of my late husband's illness and in the aftermath of his death and again when I met my now husband, Rob. In a strange way, Rob has always seemed a natural progression, a given, in a new beginning we seemed destined to share, so despite the rather momentous hurdles of leaving family, friends, home, job and country, it's been in some ways the easiest of my transitions from then to now.
Being a widow I have the dubious pleasure to know many others. Male and female. Much older than I am and some young enough to be my sons or daughters. We have endings in common. That's true. But a small portion of us share beginnings too. Some are triumphs and some are not. There is one gentlemen I know of through a message board for young widowed I frequent from time to time. He has taken to posting emails he receives from an organization called GriefShare, which tries to help bereaved people work through their losses. Recently he posted the following message:
What It Means to Move On
Moving on does not mean . . .
• you forget the person.
• you never feel the pain of your loss.
• you believe that life is fair.
Moving on does mean . . .
• you experience a lessening of the pain.
• you can treasure your best memories of the person who has died.
• you can realistically accept the different aspects of your loss.
• you can form new relationships, try new things.
Moving on also means . . .
• you grow in grace and in your walk with God.
• you accept your loss and forgive others.
• you understand that both joy and loss are a part of life.
• you believe that God is good, even when life isn't.
My husband loathes the saying "moving on" like many widowed he prefers "moving forward", and I try to use the term in deference to him though to me it is a bit of a semantics thing. In many ways beginnings do mean moving on as opposed to forward because it is not about momentum or trajectory as much as it is about putting certain dreams, hopes and deep feelings away in much the same way you pack up mementos from your children's lives or souvenirs from a trip. My mother has a cedar chest in the basement of my childhood home that is crammed with tiny clothes, blankets, report cards and such that belonged, and were important, to her and to each of us kids in times now long past. I seldom think about the old rag doll I named CeeDee that lies there wrapped, I think, in the remnants of my sister Kate's baby blanket. I know that it sounds like apples and oranges, comparing the inevitable of growing up to the loss of one's spouse, but they are not as different as you think. As my mother has been annoyingly fond of pointing out to me over the years, everything is a growth experience. Because I look as though I have achieved adulthood doesn't necessary mean I learned all there is to learn. I haven't achieved the enlightenment of Sidharrtha. Possibly because I haven't the time to sit under a tree until it smacks me on the head like gravity struck Newton. But in a way, widowhood has been my apple. We learn from everything and everyone in our lives, with luck, and at some point we move on from them - willing or not. It's not about forgetting or minimizing. Time moves and sweeps us along in its wake, but its different from just being pushed forward. Moving on implies that we have packed up those things from our old lives that are important and special in our own cedar chests, loaded them on the truck and once arrived, carefully put them away.
I have a habit of choosing my mottoes from the lyrics of songs. One of my favorites was written by group called Semi Sonic. The song is entitled "Closing Time". It uses the idea of a pub closing down in the wee hours as a metaphor for moving on and out into the big wide world. The song on the whole has a rather positive message but the line I truly love is "Closing time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end." There is so much truth in that one simple expression. So much faith as well because I know many people who see endings as endings and nothing more, and even though I can see their side of it, I find that kind of thinking short-sighted. The reason being that endings and beginnings, as Shakespeare once put it are "neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so." Funny that I should find a line from Hamlet inspiring because there are few plays I dislike more than that dirge, but it is true.
Being a widow I have the dubious pleasure to know many others. Male and female. Much older than I am and some young enough to be my sons or daughters. We have endings in common. That's true. But a small portion of us share beginnings too. Some are triumphs and some are not. There is one gentlemen I know of through a message board for young widowed I frequent from time to time. He has taken to posting emails he receives from an organization called GriefShare, which tries to help bereaved people work through their losses. Recently he posted the following message:
What It Means to Move On
Moving on does not mean . . .
• you forget the person.
• you never feel the pain of your loss.
• you believe that life is fair.
Moving on does mean . . .
• you experience a lessening of the pain.
• you can treasure your best memories of the person who has died.
• you can realistically accept the different aspects of your loss.
• you can form new relationships, try new things.
Moving on also means . . .
• you grow in grace and in your walk with God.
• you accept your loss and forgive others.
• you understand that both joy and loss are a part of life.
• you believe that God is good, even when life isn't.
My husband loathes the saying "moving on" like many widowed he prefers "moving forward", and I try to use the term in deference to him though to me it is a bit of a semantics thing. In many ways beginnings do mean moving on as opposed to forward because it is not about momentum or trajectory as much as it is about putting certain dreams, hopes and deep feelings away in much the same way you pack up mementos from your children's lives or souvenirs from a trip. My mother has a cedar chest in the basement of my childhood home that is crammed with tiny clothes, blankets, report cards and such that belonged, and were important, to her and to each of us kids in times now long past. I seldom think about the old rag doll I named CeeDee that lies there wrapped, I think, in the remnants of my sister Kate's baby blanket. I know that it sounds like apples and oranges, comparing the inevitable of growing up to the loss of one's spouse, but they are not as different as you think. As my mother has been annoyingly fond of pointing out to me over the years, everything is a growth experience. Because I look as though I have achieved adulthood doesn't necessary mean I learned all there is to learn. I haven't achieved the enlightenment of Sidharrtha. Possibly because I haven't the time to sit under a tree until it smacks me on the head like gravity struck Newton. But in a way, widowhood has been my apple. We learn from everything and everyone in our lives, with luck, and at some point we move on from them - willing or not. It's not about forgetting or minimizing. Time moves and sweeps us along in its wake, but its different from just being pushed forward. Moving on implies that we have packed up those things from our old lives that are important and special in our own cedar chests, loaded them on the truck and once arrived, carefully put them away.
I have a habit of choosing my mottoes from the lyrics of songs. One of my favorites was written by group called Semi Sonic. The song is entitled "Closing Time". It uses the idea of a pub closing down in the wee hours as a metaphor for moving on and out into the big wide world. The song on the whole has a rather positive message but the line I truly love is "Closing time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end." There is so much truth in that one simple expression. So much faith as well because I know many people who see endings as endings and nothing more, and even though I can see their side of it, I find that kind of thinking short-sighted. The reason being that endings and beginnings, as Shakespeare once put it are "neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so." Funny that I should find a line from Hamlet inspiring because there are few plays I dislike more than that dirge, but it is true.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Shredding Life
I have spent the better part of today going through stacks of papers, trying to decide what should be kept, what can be recycled, and what needs to be shredded. I think that shredding as an activity ranks right up there with monthly faculty meetings and cleaning the bathroom. Mind-numbing and faintly disgusting. But, until modern life becomes the truly paperless utopia it secretly deludes itself that it already is, sorting, storing and shredding are just one of several downsides to be an adult. Not a grown-up, mind you, but an adult. Adult is a term that recognizes the number of years spent living and breathing (and for some of us those years were spent breathing more than living) but to be grown-up means to have come to terms with the downs as well as the ups of attaining the age of legality. And, I think, acting accordingly.
Having exhausted the shredder, which now sits idly as I wait for it to cool down, I am left to ponder how the room consuming piles I had this morning have, being lessened, managed to take on an even more unkempt appearance. A lesson to be learned about organization is that it is always more chaotic before order is restored. In my case, this isn’t quite true. My ideas about order could unhinge even the most bohemian soul, but it (mostly) works for me.
My Facebook profile of late has stated that “Ann is currently attempting to force organization on her life.” This is only partly true. There is order, of sorts and even routine. It just still seems that some days I am not making headway though where I think I am going is a mystery. I am where I want to be, but, and this should be unsurprising, I am still the same haphazard person I was before baby and dying husband supposedly infected me with disorganization. Who knew? Well, I did. I like to imagine that I cleaned more often and had all my important papers sorted, labeled and safely stored. I really didn’t clean but once a week and since it was just me, it was pretty easy, and I have always filed horizontally. Even at school. I remember one time when I was teaching eighth grade Language Arts, a student came in at the beginning of class and remarked upon how wonderful it was to be able to see the top of my desk. And she was one of my nice students. I am order challenged, then and now. Still I somehow retain the fantasy of clean and put away.
Shredding is like cleaning toilets though and on a scale of one to ten, it is a two when it comes to increasing efficiency and aiding the quest for order. It’s dusty, dull and intermediary because even when you have finished shredding, you still have shreds with which to deal. It is a task that forces you to actually read and assess the worth of the items Many of the papers concerned medical issues of my late husband’s and paperwork that was generated by his stay in the nursing home and then hospice. Lots of application copies and consent forms. Nothing heart rendering but there comes a time when you wonder where the end of the paper trail is. Though some people refer to the process of downsizing official files about their loved ones’ illnesses and/or deaths as “shredding their lives” for me, my life is and was more than a stack of wood pulp. Rendering them confetti doesn’t signify literally or even metaphorically a loss of my past. Memories are not that easily gotten rid off. I suppose for some their is a finality to getting rid of old papers (or clothing or anything tangible really) but most stuff is just stuff. In my personal frame of reference there are only a few items that hold meaning to deep to allow them be destroyed or cast away.
Still, even minus drama the kind of burrowing in today’s efforts entailed is taxing. In the end though, it is better to divest oneself of the literal baggage of the past, good and bad, on a more regular basis then we do. It is an exercise in growth as well as space saving.
Having exhausted the shredder, which now sits idly as I wait for it to cool down, I am left to ponder how the room consuming piles I had this morning have, being lessened, managed to take on an even more unkempt appearance. A lesson to be learned about organization is that it is always more chaotic before order is restored. In my case, this isn’t quite true. My ideas about order could unhinge even the most bohemian soul, but it (mostly) works for me.
My Facebook profile of late has stated that “Ann is currently attempting to force organization on her life.” This is only partly true. There is order, of sorts and even routine. It just still seems that some days I am not making headway though where I think I am going is a mystery. I am where I want to be, but, and this should be unsurprising, I am still the same haphazard person I was before baby and dying husband supposedly infected me with disorganization. Who knew? Well, I did. I like to imagine that I cleaned more often and had all my important papers sorted, labeled and safely stored. I really didn’t clean but once a week and since it was just me, it was pretty easy, and I have always filed horizontally. Even at school. I remember one time when I was teaching eighth grade Language Arts, a student came in at the beginning of class and remarked upon how wonderful it was to be able to see the top of my desk. And she was one of my nice students. I am order challenged, then and now. Still I somehow retain the fantasy of clean and put away.
Shredding is like cleaning toilets though and on a scale of one to ten, it is a two when it comes to increasing efficiency and aiding the quest for order. It’s dusty, dull and intermediary because even when you have finished shredding, you still have shreds with which to deal. It is a task that forces you to actually read and assess the worth of the items Many of the papers concerned medical issues of my late husband’s and paperwork that was generated by his stay in the nursing home and then hospice. Lots of application copies and consent forms. Nothing heart rendering but there comes a time when you wonder where the end of the paper trail is. Though some people refer to the process of downsizing official files about their loved ones’ illnesses and/or deaths as “shredding their lives” for me, my life is and was more than a stack of wood pulp. Rendering them confetti doesn’t signify literally or even metaphorically a loss of my past. Memories are not that easily gotten rid off. I suppose for some their is a finality to getting rid of old papers (or clothing or anything tangible really) but most stuff is just stuff. In my personal frame of reference there are only a few items that hold meaning to deep to allow them be destroyed or cast away.
Still, even minus drama the kind of burrowing in today’s efforts entailed is taxing. In the end though, it is better to divest oneself of the literal baggage of the past, good and bad, on a more regular basis then we do. It is an exercise in growth as well as space saving.
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