dating widowers

A Month from Today


Wedding Dress For Happy Couple in Love

Image by epSos.de via Flickr

On the morning of June 27th at just about this time in the morning, I will have been married for just a bit more than half a day. Rob and I remind ourselves often that time is too precious to wish away, but as I gear up for another week of separation I wish I owned a Toynbee Convector.

 

There is an old Ray Bradbury short story that I used to teach to my seventh graders back in the day. It is about a man who fakes a trip to the future in order to give the world hope of a better world to come. The faked proof he presents inspires people to go out and actually create the world he only imagined for them. I remind myself when I am feeling impatient and missing my love’s physical reassurance that what we are doing in our time apart is giving substance to our dreams.

 

You can’t build a future if you aren’t able to envision it in your mind’s eye.

 

 

Facing the Truth


Heaven

“He’s dead, Jim,” Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy (2227-?) chief medical officer on the starship, Enterprise

During the first year, when I was trapped by responsibilities I did as best I could to keep hopelessness at bay and anger to a minimum. But I longed to live life again. To be happy. To set goals and reach for them. To be out in the world and experience things again. Certainly I would have preferred to have had Will by my side, but that wasn’t the reality. He was gone, and I was still here.

Why do some of us see the world for the possibilities it holds for us as opposed to some sort of solitary confinement to be outlasted?

My husband’s dead. I don’t expect phone calls. He isn’t going to turn up in the kitchen one morning when I come down to get breakfast for my daughter. Although there are moments in the beginning when there is a Twilight Zone feel to this, I have a difficult time with widowed people who are further out than I am and still talking about grappling with the reality of their now. They talk about “diverting” themselves with projects and dating and getaways. How does one “divert” grief? It hangs on you like a too large coat, smothering you almost with its omnipresence. I guess what most annoys me about statements like these, and it is annoyance because I can’t empathizewith it  and it is for the rare one that I feel pity, is that they refer to life as a distraction. Living is a distraction? Reality is a time filler on the way to the grave?

Reunification seems to be the goal of many widowed people. While it is a nice thought, I am not so sure that it is the reality that awaits any of us when this life is over. I often have the feeling that Will is farther and farther away from me all the time, and that he is moving forward in much the same way that I have. A dear friend of Rob’s told him that he shouldn’t worry about the configurations of the next life in terms of our earth bound relations. The next plane is not bound by the rules that reign here. I don’t worry about it much myself, but I wonder how I could ever give Rob up. He is too precious and too much a part of me now.

A common question of the widowed is how do you make room in your heart to love another? There is a feeling that a broken heart is just not capable of being repaired to a point where this will be possible. The thing is, though, that your heart isn’t really broken. It still beats. It still feels and aches and has love to give. There is just no one to ease the ache or accept the love anymore. Fear is what holds us back from loving again at some point. Those who have trouble reconnecting with their ability to love and risk not being loved in return more than likely had difficulty with this before they married. I know that when I first tried to date I fell back into the bad relationship habits of my life before Will. It was as though I had forgotten everything I had learned from him and with him about relationships. It was only when I stepped back and acknowledged what I was doing and made an effort to put the lessons of my marriage into practice again that I found my footing and ultimately was able to build a relationship with Rob.

Often I hear widowed people say that though they are in a new relationship, or open to one, they will never love someone else as much as they loved their late spouse, or be loved as comparably. I just cringe. I love Rob as much as I ever loved Will, and I feel as loved as I have ever felt. Beyond that I can’t make any other comparisons. It is not possible and it’s not wise. “That was then and this is now.” Mark says that to Byron in the S.E. Hinton novel of the same now when he is asked why things can’t be the same between them. In the novel it is a rather cynical and very hard assessment of the reality experienced by these teen-aged characters. The two boys had survived hard childhoods and yet the severing of their near-familial relationship was one of the most difficult challenges either had faced yet. Life is hard sometimes, but reality must be acknowledged for what it is. Life is not static. It is ever changing, and it’s direction is only marginally ours to control.

I can’t imagine who I would be were it not for Will. I can’t imagine a future without Rob. My truths.

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Gone Fishing


Gone fishing

Image by thekeithhall via Flickr

With the weather only marginally cooperative, we embarked on a field trip this morning to a place called Wildwood Ranch. The first time I heard the name a song from my childhood immediately sprang to mind called Wildwood Weed. It was one of those 70’s novelty songs.

 

The wildwood flower grew wild on the farm,

And we never knowed what it was called.

 

When I mentioned the name of the ranch to Rob, he smiled and made a remark about this song too and then quoted the last verse,

 

Then they drove away,

We just smiled and waved…

Sittin’ there on that sack of seeds!

Interestingly I had been remembering the same lines. Children of the 70’s, literally in my case but not as much in his.

 

The ranch was located about 40 minutes or so south of the metro. The students would have the opportunity to fish, hike and ride horses. Kids are funny anyway, but it’s always interesting to watch their “real world” personas emerge on these trips. School is such an artificial , and in some cases adversarial, atmosphere. Take them out of the class. Talk to them as though they were your nieces or nephews, and you’ll be surprised at how much like kids they truly are. Wide-eyed and open.

 

The ranch was obviously some type of summer/weekend camp. There were cabins, a rec and dining hall, and areas that were set up to accommodate structured group activities. We broke the students into groups for fishing and riding. They were naturally most interested in the horseback riding. I don’t imagine that many of them had the opportunity to ride horses often or possibly ever. I have ridden twice in my life. Once on another field trip about fifteen years ago and then again on a Jaycee outing around the time that Will and I were first together which was at least eight years ago. Normally I would have been enthused at the prospect. I would like to learn to ride properly. Rob knows how to ride and it would be fun to be able to do something like this together and teach Katy as well. I am not sure about owning horses though and one of the camp’s owners made the comment that horses were nothing but walking vet bills and hay burners. Better to just “put a bullet in ’em” when they took sick than to waste the money on doctoring them.

 

Fishing was the first activity for the group to which I was assigned. I haven’t fished since high school, but baiting a hook is apparently one of those “just like riding a bike” deals. I baited, cast and hauled in a blue gill of almost edible proportions in less than five minutes. With shame though I must admit that I didn’t remove the fish from the hook myself. An older gentleman who volunteers at the the ranch assisted me, which turned out to be just as well as the fish decided to protest its treatment by peeing all over the front of the man’s shirt. For some reason it never occurred to me until that moment that fish do indeed pee and that all the world’s waterways are fish urinals. Gave me a moment or two of pause until I relegated that thought to the “best not think about it” bin in my brain.

 

I baited quite a few more hooks and gave a couple of my own homeroom students casting lessons before it was time to head for the horses. I had decided at this point not to ride. The last thing I needed was to be thrown from a horse and break something. I have major life events coming up and a cast on any part of me would be a hindrance right now. Watching the kids mount and ride within the corral reminded me that I am a small town girl and not a city girl at all. I may not have grown up on a farm but a farm has never been a field trip experience for me either. Many of my relatives on both sides of my family farmed. Going to the farm was a weekly thing for me as a kid whether it was my Uncle Jimmy’s or one of my mother’s two older brothers or my dad’s various family members. Even my limited camping experience put me in the advanced outdoors men class in comparison to the majority of students on the trip. And I am not as amused by this fact as others might be. Growing up without opportunities to be out of an urban environment is not a good thing in my opinion. There is something about city-dwelling and even the artificial outdoors of the suburbs that is mentally and spiritually unhealthy.

 

The kids were suspended between exhilaration and terror atop the horses. The boys in particular watched the animals with suspicion. Wariness is probably not the best thing when dealing with such a sensitive animal but awareness is. Rob told me the story of how he was thrown clear over the top of a horse only to land sitting up with the reins in hand on the ground in front of it. He had been leading another horse behind and it had apparently gotten too close to his mount. No one was thrown though.

 

After a completely inedible lunch of pig meat and junk food sealed in a plastic bag, some of the children decided to put their pond-faring skills to the test. The jaded public school teacher in me briefly blanched a bit at the thought of being named in a lawsuit should one of the canoes capsize but thought perhaps no one would think to look for me in Canada. So, I gave a Willy Wonka shrug and eye-roll as I gamely gave instructions from the safety of the dock and watched them disappear one by one around the tiny island at the far end of the water. I wondered briefly if anyone would try to land and explore while remembering an earlier conversation with another of the camp’s owners about the fact that the island was covered from one side to the other with poison ivy, but decided it was too late to issue a warning.

 

I nearly fell asleep on the bus ride back. I haven’t been getting enough sleep again but happily insomnia is no longer the issue. I couldn’t wait to get back to school where I knew Rob would be waiting to pick me up. It’s nice to have someone with whom you can share your work day. Even if you just went fishing.