remarriage of widowed people

A Year Ago


We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its urgency, here and now without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
– Franklin Planner quote that Rob sent to me a year ago today

A year ago today I was at home having called in to work sick because of a sinus infection. I was sitting at my computer, as I am now, surfing the widow board and occasionally checking email (because I was an email junkie then). I hadn’t heard from Rob yet that day, as I was becoming accustomed to, so I checking mail rather often. When his mail for the day finally arrived it was curiously titled “A Difficult Letter” and I became a bit worried. I had been a wreck the last week leading up to the anniversary of Will’s death and in retrospect I think it had a lot of do with the fact that I was spending too much time at the YWBB and the volatile atmosphere and, frankly, negative approach to grieving was feeding some of my apprehensions. Consequently I leaned rather heavily on our friendship and was keeping Rob up quite late at night with our online chats. I was afraid when I saw the title of the email that he was going to tell me that he needed a little space for his own grief and maybe we should not communicate as much anymore. But as I read the letter I began to see that not only were my fears unfounded but the message was heading in the opposite direction. Not that it didn’t take 5 or 6 paragraphs for him to get to the point. He is nothing if not round about at times. But, when he did get to his main point it was this – he wanted to see if there was something more to our relationship than just the friendship that we’d already established.

I was stunned. I just sat there for a bit and read the letter (the parts that get to the point) over and over. And then – I called my best friend Vicki.

“What should I do?”
“Answer the letter.”

Vicki had, almost from the beginning of the correspondence Rob and I established, thought there was more to it than friendship even though I protested that it was not so. She would just smile knowingly and nod and totally dismiss me. She knew better. So I wrote my reply.

Subject:
Thank You. I’m breathing – raggedly – but breathing
Date:
Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:53:54 -0700
Ann,

Thank you. I don’t know if you can imagine how hard this is for me.
Maybe you can.

I’m still a little shaky, really, but now today I am smiling – all the
way from my heart; something that hasn’t happened in a while.

Thanks again.
Talk to you later.
Rob

—– Original Message —–
From: ann
To: rob
Sent: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:58:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Go ahead a breathe, okay

Rob,

Since you probably haven’t done a single productive
thing all day, I decided I should send you a short
note now even though I haven’t had a chance to really
think about your proposal in depth yet.

I like you too. And July is too far off, I agree.

Now, get some work done. We can talk later.

Ann (who is marveling at the long-winded way that
Virgos manage to arrive at their point)

And that was the day that changed my life – again. It’s funny but despite the fact that by this point I knew that Rob was everything I was looking for in man, I was looking for someone just like him and not at him at all.

From here we began to plan the spring break trip that we eventually become our sojourn to Devil’s Den in Arkansas which is where Rob proposed to me. We, of course, had already managed an face to face meeting in Idaho Falls which confirmed for us what we already knew – that we were meant to be together. And that’s an identity shaker. To realize that you are meant to be with someone who you wouldn’t have even met had your spouse not died. It takes faith in the universe to wrap your mind around that – not your heart though.

This probably seems an odd post coming just the day after two posts about my late husband. It’s not odd to me. It’s my life. The sad and the sweet. The past and the now – and the future. I have been loved and have loved in return. I am loved and return that love with all my heart and soul.

The List


The latest Oprah has an article by widowed freelance writer who found her current husband and soul mate by making a list of 100 characteristics that she wanted in a mate. Okay, that’s a bit too succinct. She visited a psychic some time after her second husband died because she’s had no luck dating and wanted to know if she was meant to spend the remainder of her life alone or not. The psychic instructed her to make a details list – “down to his socks” – of what she was looking for in a soul mate. The woman went home and did just that – right down to the “gray socks”. I don’t think the psychic meant the sock color thing literally. She just wanted this woman to really put careful thought into her list of preferred attributes in a potential husband. It was her theory that the universe will give us what we want if it knows what that is. And I guess there is something to that. Many of us really don’t know what we want. We only seem to know what we don’t want and that is usually after we have something or someone who turns out to be wrong for us.

I know many people who subscribe to the “list” approach to dating and mating. I remember that Rob was all set to write up a list of his own and told me about it during one of our early IM chats. I think he got the idea from another widow he’d met via a melanoma group on the Internet which is where he learned about the YWBB and came to meet me. If I am remembering correctly I teased him a bit about making a list but pointed out in all seriousness that lists are good only as guides and that a person shouldn’t be so set on a specific criteria that they let a perfectly wonderful person get away from them. Rob never did get around to writing a list as it turned out. But I actually had a list. Well, not a written down list but just things I had thought about myself and where I was and who I had become.

I am not sure that the universe divines our thoughts as much as it is driven by plans that we all had a hand in drafting in the long, long ago. Perhaps what list making really does is help us remember what it is we’d decided and agreed to do and helps us get positioned properly.

There are those who don’t believe the universe cares one way or another about what we want or don’t want. I don’t believe in the theory of random chaos. There are no accidents. Willful missteps – okay. But I don’t believe that any of us can avoid our “destinies” for very long because we authored them.

My Wonderful Husband


As we were getting ready for bed last night, Rob remarked, “You know, I think you have a pretty wonderful husband.” And I agreed. And I should have been the one to say so in fact. So I will do it today.

All week Rob has been the rock in this lice business. He took over the laundry duty. He was there for both rounds of delousing shampoo. He nit-picked non-stop and with the patience of Job. In between he went to work, got our personal directive stuff written, took care of the car insurance issues for Jordan, and made time for us to have tea in the city before the lawyer’s appointment. He also generously went solo one evening so I could go to my writer’s group. He is more than wonderful. In my whole life I haven’t been able to lean on someone the way he lets me lean on him. It’s a sometimes frightening thing for someone like me who was so used to having to do everything for myself and not really having anyone I could count on in all manner of situations or crises.

Last year around this time, Rob was sitting up late into the night with me as I battled some pretty awful insomnia leading up to the first anniversary of Will’s death. We talked on the phone a bit but the bulk of our conversations were carried on IM. Hours at a time. He astounded me with his selfless concern for me and what I was feeling even when I knew that he was dealing with his own grief. He would send me funnies by email everyday to take me mind off things and make sure I smiled a bit in each 24-hr period. He is still the one who cares most if the corners of my mouth inch upward every day.

Although I am sure it seems as though I do nothing but talk about Rob, there are volumes more things that I kept to myself about him and our relationship. Things that are too TMI – even for me – and things that belong to us alone or memories that are just mine to have and hold. In the absence of these details, I hope I am still able to convey the depth of my love for him and the love that we share.

I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else or with anyone else other than here and with Rob. I can’t picture a future, near or far, without him in it. My favorite place to be is wherever he is and my chief project is our life together.