grief

Resolutions


I have never had much use for New Year’s resolutions. They are usually lightweight and things that a person should be doing anyway or too big to just impose on a whim dictated by the calendar. But, this is an important year.

For me anyway.

I am not going to call them resolutions but goals that I need to work towards now that I am ending a year without Will and starting to seriously consider what shape my life should start to take.

I am at a crossroads with my career – which I hesitate to call it because I am not someone who has ever defined herself by her job. I have a job. It is one of the things that is required of you as a grown-up. I am lucky that I have nearly always enjoyed teaching but it simply funds my life, nothing more.

So, how can I be a crossroads?

I need to decide if it remains a job or becomes a career, I think.

Lately, I have been thinking that perhaps I will not remarry. My single years vastly outnumber my married ones and even my married years when boiled down to an active state of give/take between two people are just a bit more than an eyeblink. I wonder if I truly want to live with a man again and put in the time and effort, make the compromises.

But if I don’t, what fills up that time. My daughter?

Most certainly, but even though she insists she will live with me forever she won’t.

Friends? I have a few and am going to make it a priority to expand my horizons in the coming months.

Family? I think I have struck a happy balance there. I am not going to move home. My sisters are more than capable of taking care of our parents and I think it is time I stepped back from the role of family rock anyway.

So, I need to decide about the career. A career is a labor of love you happen to be paid for too. Is that what I want? I am going to think about it.

I mentioned broadening my circle of friends and that is also a goal for the year. I have acquired yet another babysitting prospect which seems more hopeful than prospects past. If she pans out then I am going to work to find activities to attend, and fun things to do that will help me break out and be a grown-up again.

Finally, I need to decide if I am living in the right place. Assess my compatibility with the area and its occupants. Have my realtor, Tanis, give me a good assessment of the house in case I decide to pull up stakes.

Goals. Things to work on. Positive and necessary. Nothing that requires superhuman willpower or club dues.

New Year’s Eve


I went out for dinner with two girlfriends tonight. Really nice place near my home. While we were waiting for our table my married friend struck up a conversation with a couple of guys at the bar who were watching the Bears/Packers game. She did this for me because she knows I would never even think to notice that there were unattached men in the room or that they were nice looking.

She also did it because she is not overly approving of the fact that the only men I currently talk to live in cyberspace.

One of them, upon hearing that I am a Packers fan, suggested that we buy each other rounds every time the team we were not rooting for scores. It was a sweetly transparent way to establish contact and pave the way to further interaction.

It was about then that the hostess came to seat us and we bid the gentlemen goodbye, but once we got to the table, Vicki suggested that we send them a round anyway. Sure, I agreed, but it made me uneasy.

My last live encounter with a man is still a pretty vivid disaster, and my latest attempt at online flirtation is not much less so.

They sent us drinks too. And they came to thank us and say goodnight before they left. Nice looking. I still notice. I don’t react.

The rest of the evening was nice. Fun even. We even planned another night out in a couple of weeks. Home before midnight though.

The last New Year’s I saw in was 2001. Wow. That was a long time ago. The last full year I had with Will before his illness claimed him and morphed him into a stranger.

I have been reading on the YWBB all these posts about how miserable everyone is being without their loved one on New Year’s and how no one has hope, or much hope, for the new year.

I can’t relate. I lived in limbo for years. One year was not a bit different from another and there was no hope of improvement. I am not in limbo anymore, but I am not really going anywhere either.

According to the astrological charts, 2007 is supposed to be a great year for me. Things are going to improve noticeably. It doesn’t say what, if any, effort will be required from me.

11 Months


Today is the anniversary of Will’s death 11 months ago. The first year is almost over.

In most ways I am ready for it to be over too. I am tired of the restrictions that being less than a year out from his death have placed on me because in some ways I was farther ahead of those widow/ers who are blind-sided by their spouse’s death.

In other ways I was just as vulnerable and unprepared.

I was talking with a widower friend who is farther out than I am about my aversion to the newly widowed women in my daughter’s children’s grief group. The hollow eyes and blank yet tragically mournful faces made me want to run from them. I wondered aloud if I had looked like that.

“Of course you did, honey,” he told me. “We all do.”

I guess. I must have. I know people avoided me who didn’t actually run.

Truthfully I remember very little about the day to day of the first 4 months. Partly because I was buried by a brutal schedule that was killing me as much as it was providing me with a template for surviving. Mainly though, I was not paying attention to anything out of sight. If it was not in my line of vision, it didn’t exist.

I remember events from that time out of order too. I couldn’t tell you what happened first or next or last. It just happened. Things just happened and I rolled or didn’t or was so deep inside myself that I didn’t notice or didn’t care if I happened to. Five months brought the beginning of the descent to a bottom that I alternated between snuggling into like a favorite blanket and clawing at like a cat in a sack.

Between 8 and 9 months the discontent and searching began and really haven’t ended. Except….except that the feeling that I should be getting ready for something, someone, someplace?

I am shedding. Possessions. Ideas. Beliefs. People. In the emptiness…..because I needed more emptiness….comes….well….people, though most of them are not real but virtual and virtually necessary in ways I can’t explain.

Possessions are not being replaced at the rate of loss which is encouraging. New ideas and beliefs are being explored with no promises. When I think about it “no promises” is the current running theme of my life. Not sure how good or bad that is.

I haven’t cried today.

Don’t have that impending meltdown feeling that the widowed come to know so intimately.

I do have that fight or flight chest pounding, constricted throat, short of breath feeling that is reminiscent of a panic attack.

In some ways, I would rather cry. And I hate to cry.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. A day of people.

I seek people out more these days but still wonder why I bothered when I am around them in large numbers. I still make them as uncomfortable as the newly widowed mothers make me.

Tomorrow night I will put out my daughter’s Santa presents….by myself. I anticipate tears. I think I will stop here. Christmas morning will take care of itself without any preconceiving on my part. Thirty days to go.