grief

Speak Too Soon. Invite the Jinx.


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

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

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

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

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

The Far Horizon where the Sidewalk Ends


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

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

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

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

Shel Silverstein

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

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

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

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

Bearing Witness


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

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

Shall We Dance, 2004

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

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

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

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

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