Monthly Archives: October 2009

Letters From Widowed Readers


I don’t get much feedback from widowed people on the grief-related articles and posts I write. There are times when my blog stats show an unusually high level of activity for the oldest posts or those that are specifically tagged young widow or death of a spouse. I get a lot of searches on dating and remarriage in general or specifically relating to widowhood. But no one comments and I never know who these readers are or what brought them to my blog.

Sometimes I get emails though and usually they detail the person’s loss and what they are currently experiencing. I always write back. I remember what it was like when I was the only young widowed person I knew. It’s very lonely and isolating. It’s a near constant out of body experience in some ways. At least it was for me.

Which is the point of this post. I only know widowhood and remarriage from my own point of view. I can only tell you how I felt, what I did and what the outcomes of my actions and beliefs were. There is a list of the most common touch-points where losing a spouse is concerned, but that’s all it is. A list. Not even carved in stone or handed to people by an ordained prophet.

Rob likes to half joke that most rules and laws are merely guidelines and that the thoughtful person is wise to remember that when applying or ignoring them. My years in the classroom back this idea up for the most part. Rules/laws are designed for people who don’t – for whatever reason – think before acting or speaking and for those who are heedless of the fact that the world is made up of a lot of other people whose existences should be credited and considered.

I received an email the other day from a widowed person who’d read my piece on DoubleX about remarriage. This person was recently widowed this past summer and found him/herself in a relationship now with an old friend. Not something anticipated or sought, it just happened.

Back on Ye Ole Widda Board there is a particularly annoying woman who rails against the notion that a relationship can simply happen without conscious effort on the part of two people – but since she is mostly full of her own self-importance, I will almost respectfully disagree. I know when I was a truly single girl, I hated being told that relationships come – not to those who wait, but to those who aren’t really paying any attention at all. I still don’t like to admit that for most people, this is true. All that’s required for a relationship to “just happen” is an openness to the idea and being in the right place at the right time. This widowed person was at a social gathering, struck up an old acquaintance and soon found there was more to be had. And that indeed does happen though I think that love is a place where two people land after the initial excitement and overall wonderlicious giddiness rather than someplace they fall.

This person wanted to know if there were others who’ve experienced the arrival of a new love on the heels of the loss of a spouse. And I assured him/her that it has happened. Some worked out. Some didn’t. The odds are the same for the widowed as the never widowed really. Being widowed young isn’t a special handicap, it’s just a different life experience than most people are handed these days.

I was telling Rob about the email and I admitted that I am not comfortable giving advice on the subject of falling in love again or remarrying. A shocking admission, especially to those who think they know me from the widda board days. Back then I was quick to defend those who dated and seriously recoupled, but not for the reasons people ascribed to me. And it really had nothing to do with my own situation or a belief that remarriage was the gold standard for healing. Grief isn’t healed. It’s incorporated into who you are. And if you believe that being partnered is important for you to be the best you can be then that is your truth. Why it would matter to anyone else is beyond me.

In my reply I mentioned that I felt that grieving and falling in love again were separate issues. One really has nothing to do with the other although like most things in life, they will affect each other on occasion.

I always think that making a new relationship a priority through communication – especially of expectations and needs – is crucial, but that is true regardless of circumstances. As is the fact that a person’s intimate relationships are not a matter of public debate nor should outside input be allowed unless specifically requested and then with the understanding that it might be completely disregarded.

And I was honest with this person about how hard it is to fall in love again. It is not for the flowers and paper hearts crowd because there is real work involved. Of course, anyone who thinks love’s basis is romance and chemistry should steer clear of it, in my opinion.

I am not wise. I have lived through a lot of things. Some experiences have made me a better person and some are simply events that have added to the body of who I am.

I pointed the reader in the direction of some blogs and the widda boards (with a cautionary note there because at Ye Ole Widda Board, early daters are routinely fileted – flayed? – by the Widda’s Who Protest Too Much) and wished him/her luck. Not because I think luck is needed. Relationships succeed or fail based on two people’s ability to parlay mutual attraction and interests past the biology that blinkers us all. No, I wished him/her luck because that’s what you do. Share your experiences and allow people to learn from their own.

Blogging For Money


I haven’t got the contract yet, but I am almost officially writing for money on an education blog that is in the launching stages at Care2. I found out about the opportunity via the SVM Network, which is where 50 Something Moms blog originates. One of the editors at Care2 was looking for teachers who were interested in writing about education issues and I raised my hand in a cyber-like way via email. A short exchange and a phone interview later, I was offered a job that pays per post – not a lot – but with opportunities to boost my bottom line via page views and comments.

The editor was a bit embarrassed about the pay, but as I have been blogging for little but personal gratification and the chance to get my name out, I was happy for any writing opportunity that wasn’t based on a barter system. I am not enamored at all of the way bloggers exchange posts for stuff/free product. A little too colonial for my tastes. However, I am aware that the practice of giving away content – as I do here on WordPress and for the SVM – drips of indentured servitude as well.  I try to view the time at Moms Speak Up and Care2 as internships. I was writing for publications. I had to interview and submit writing samples. I was not self-publishing.  They are valid mentions when discussing my experience as a writer.

“What would you write about if you were to blog for the site today,” she asked me.

“Reform,” I replied, going on to explain my background and how much of my career was more cutting edge than a person might expect for a middle school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa.

I might roll my eyes a bit when the next new great and wonderful thing in education is something I have seen under a different name twice already, but I am a firm believer in pushing the envelope and was nearly always one of the first early adopters of things that moved the profession and the level of my teaching forward. Next to current events and politics, there is nothing that works me up more than education reform. There is an editor at the Des Moines Register who will be glad I have my own forum now because perhaps I will leave hers alone.

This is a real job though. It’s not going to be just me spouting my opinion – although I will be opinionated because I can’t help it most of the time. I am going to need to read and fact check and find sources. I began my college career as  a journalism major, ironically, and now I am back around to the beginning. I am committed to one post a week. I have a one post minimum every two weeks at 50 Something still. There is the memoir, and NaNoWriMo, to contend with too. If there was doubt about my status as a writer, this puts it to rest. I am a writer and soon I will have a paycheck for the governments of Canada and The United States to fight over to prove it.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving!


Appropriately there is snow but the Canadian Christmas shopping season does not begin until the first weekend of December and their shopping orgy is actually the day after Christmas – Boxing Day.  Therefore, Thanksgiving is about food, family and whatever winter sport floats one’s boat.

Fare’s birthday fell on the holiday this year. She was born on the day too, 27 years ago.  Rob celebrated by eating lukewarm turkey at Shelley’s sister’s home while wife and baby did what new mothers and their less than patient newborns do in those first hours – wonder what the hell they have gotten themselves into.

Because the older girls are at the mercy of their jobs, we celebrated birthday and Thanksgiving Sunday evening. I spent most of the day Saturday and nearly all of Sunday in food preparation. Saturday was peeling, shredding and baking four mutant zucchini into bread. Fourteen loaves of it. Excuse me now while I pause to bask in my own awesomeness. (Pause) Truthfully, bread baking is far less time consuming than it sounds because a lot of the time is spent waiting for loaves to bake. Sunday I made the rolls, pumpkin pies and cooked the spaghetti squash in advance due to the fact that the turkey breast was going to tie up the oven for most of the afternoon.

Thanksgiving Menu

turkey breast and dressing

mashed taters and gravy

flakey rolls

zucchini and pumpkin bread

green beans

spaghetti squash

pumpkin pie

angel food cake and strawberries

I know. The essence of my awesomeness is blinding even in cyberspace. For someone late in life to the whole housewifey thing, I have adapted and conquered nicely.

In addition to whipping up a fab family meal, Rob and I also planned a vacation. A real one. One with just the merest hint of family as we will stop over at Rob’s mom’s place in the Okanagan on the way back

“Are you sure?” I asked. “This is supposed to be a vacation with no obligations to anyone.”

“Family is always an obligation,” he said. “You don’t want to stop, do you?

He had me there. I love my mother-in-law, but she stayed with us two weekends in a row in September and always has a job list for Rob whether we visit her or she stops here.

“We barely get there and she has chores for you. I end up cooking dinner, and there is the small matter of sometimes she is so happy to see us, she tipples a bit much.”

The drinking thing, I confess, is entirely a personal issue. I am uneasy around drinkers. A glass of wine with dinner now and again, I get. The need to drink daily or past the point of seeing straight? I am baffled and put off a bit. Some of this goes back to my dad and some of it is residual from the early days of Will’s illness when he leaned on alcohol as a way to cope with the symptoms the doctors dismissed. My personal preference is to never be in close quarters with the inebriated. That’s just me.

But we are heading to Victoria in November over Dee’s fall break week. The trip includes a stop in Jasper, one of my favorite mountain towns, a ferry ride from Vancouver to the island, days in a row of vacationing with the possibility of meeting Sally and her family, and the tantalizing lure of warmer than where we live.

A most happy day of thanks.