remarriage of widowed people

Sunny and Pleasantly Warm


The weather report on the Calgary newspaper site the other day was predicting “sunny and pleasantly warm” for the weekend here. The meteorologists on the local TV in Iowa don’t use terms like that. They will say “warm” or “mild” or “typical”, but nothing that evokes the images that “pleasantly warm” does. For instance, a glass of wine or two induces a “pleasantly warm” feeling as does slow kissing or the anticipation of it. It is “pleasantly warm” sitting in a sunshine filled room on a chilly winter day. As it turns out, the Calgary paper was correct. The weather here is warm and very pleasant. Different from Iowa due to the distinct lack of moisture in the air, but humidity is not something to be mourned in my opinion though it doesn’t seem to effect the mosquito population in the least. And as a quick aside, the mosquitoes in Alberta are not insignificant in size.

We arrived at the Edmonton Airport and crossed the border with minimum fanfare. Actually, no fanfare at all, it was rather routine. I guess, in the words of those so much wiser than myself at the widda board, I was being a bit of a drama queen about it all. Well, maybe not though given the total autonomy custom officials at the borders appear to wield. The recent TB fiasco certainly has highlighted the problem with granting discretionary powers to some people. A certain amount of one’s ability to make decisions independent of supervision is based upon a basic knowledge of the rules upon which decisions should be made, but a lot more of one’s discretion amounts to little more than common sense, a commodity in short supply regardless of the profession or innate intelligence.

To paraphrase both my daughter, Katy, and Rob’s younger daughter, Jordan, things look the same and different at the same time. The countryside is flat farmland for the most part. The trees are not like Iowa’s though. As Jordan observed, Iowa’s trees are wild and gnarled in shape. There is a uniformity to the wooded areas here, a symmetry to their shape even. Triangular or rounded, depending on the type and very, very green.

The house where we will live is nestled on a quiet street out in the “boonies”. It reminds me a little of Renesselar, Indiana, where my aunt and uncle lived back in the early 70’s. Except there are more houses. Still there is a feeling that nothing needs to be done soon, or even in the near future, that feels good though more than a bit alien to me.

Fort Saskatchewan is the nearest city. The main part has this old fashioned feel to it with older homes in leafy neighborhoods but as you head towards Edmonton it gives way to the typical sprawl of vegetation bare enclaves with clone homes and neighborhoods in progress with monstrous homes in various stages of completion.

The part of Edmonton that we spent time in Saturday is known as Old Strathcona. A city in its own right at one time it merged with the capital over time but still tries to maintain its own identity. We ate lunch at a vegetarian cafe, Cafe Mosaics. Although tiny and warm, but not in a pleasant way, the food was good and the clientele young and reminiscent of my college days. I am always a little surprised to see that very little about being that young seems to change. After lunch we took a walk to the Canadian version of Barnes and Noble to hit the Starbucks. An interesting thing I noted is though I saw a Starbucks nearly everywhere we went and sometimes more than one to a street, I was nothing but delighted. I am a chai addict. But, when I saw my first McDonald’s followed quickly by a Taco Bell, I was as disappointed as an anthropologist discovering that the natives she was studying have cable in their little grass huts. I guess we all have are little bits of corruption that we accept as normal simply because they have corrupted us.

I ran into more Canada speak. Washrooms. You should ask for the washroom if you need to use the restroom or bathroom. Or the W.C. Which lead me to wonder why such terms were chosen in the first place. The primary reasons for needing these facilities is not washing, resting or bathing, and you wouldn’t want to drink the water in there, but as Rob says, piss room or shit room are probably too vulgar to be standard parts of the language.

Even the dark clouds and on/off rain in the late afternoon couldn’t dampen the sunny and pleasantly warm feeling of the day. Maybe it is the newness or maybe just that we are finally here and able to all be together in a place with more permanence, but there is as much a homey feeling to this new life in this “new world” as anywhere I have ever been. Meteorologists in Calgary have a way with words, I think.

Fear of Flying


I am not afraid of the flying really. I am afraid of airports. They are too busy and too crowded and people are moving at unnaturally high speeds to get ….. essentially nowhere because though the airport itself seems to be in perpetual “hurry-up” mode, the airlines are not caught up in the same mad-dash whirl. Indeed they are on some time table known only to them. It’s like that episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk drinks the bad water and is sped up. He is able to move at such frightening speeds that the Enterprise crew appears to him to be standing still, and they can only hear the buzz as he passes by them. Passengers zip here and there dragging luggage behind them like small dogs, cutting people off as though they were in rush hour traffic on the freeway.

Between the check-in with its weary-eyed and palpably impatient staff and the TSA agents who treat you like special education students, the entire process seems geared to raising a person’s blood pressure as much as it possibly can before parking you at a gate to wait in the most uncomfortable chairs, if you are lucky enough to find one, for however long they please. Nothing at all about the flying experience is designed to put you at ease. The color of the terror threat rainbow is on a continual audible loop as are the reminders to attach your bags to your person to prevent them from sitting still too long and attracting suspicion (though as an aside, I have seen bags sitting unattended for lengthy periods of time every time I have been to an airport in the last three months and no one seemed in the least alarmed – except for the time in Idaho Falls and Rob and I were too busy ….uh…greeting each other to notice that my bag had been off-loaded.  The TSA guy had taken the bag off the carousel already.  “Anyone own this purple bag?”  Personally, I think the TSA guy was just jealous.)

Embarking is a tad stressful but mainly because it brings out the territorial natures in many people as they jockey for storage, leg room and armrests. Even though I know checking luggage is a gamble only slightly more reliable than a power ball ticket, it is worth it to avoid the seething hostility of the business class traveler. If you can’t be a bit more sanguine perhaps you need to look into a career change.

As for the flight itself, take-off is almost physically unpleasant but once up in air and level, it’s not so bad. My daughter has the same tendency to startle that I do, so I am a bit worried she will not take to flying well but she is very excited to see Rob, her big sisters and our new home. Hopefully the excitement will prevail.

I just want to be there and in Rob’s arms. I have mentioned before that as our physical separations get shorter my ability to endure them shortens as well. When you are ready to be with someone for what  “better be a damn long time” as Rob puts it, then you are ready right now.

Jusqu’a ce soir mon amour, jusqu’a ce soir.  Je t’aime.

Opinions



I ran into an old co-worker/friend today in the hallways of the high school were I teach. She is retired now but she still volunteers, working primarily with the work-study program placing kids in jobs and internships. I haven’t seen her since just before Will was diagnosed almost four years ago. She didn’t know that he had been ill or had died, which should speak volumes about the nature of our former relationship and to how much we have kept up. Since we do know people in common though I assumed that she did know, so when she asked what was new I told her about Rob and our plans. And of course, since she didn’t know, I had to back track a bit.

J. has always been the kind of person who interrupts you when you are having a conversation with her. The main reason is for clarification because she doesn’t hear well and for her to one  up you. Today’s conversation was typical of how I remember her. She was very upset, not about Will’s death as she barely reacted to that news at all, but about the fact that Rob and I met on the internet. This has upset, and continues to upset, people who basically don’t know either of us very well. Our family and friends have settled into acceptance and happiness for us but there are still incidents like today.

J. wanted to know if I had “checked” him out and knew for sure he was who he said he was. It amuses me a little when someone assumes that the people you met on the web are somehow more dangerous than the guy who lives next door. Just because you can see someone in the flesh, doesn’t make them safe. My next door neighbor all but stalked me last spring and summer after he discovered that my husband had died. It got so bad that I couldn’t even be out in my own yard to mow or play with my daughter without him watching my every move. He is an alcoholic and scares me frankly. But, apparently, I should fear him less as he is “real”. I won’t rehash my history with web-friends and message board communities, but was I less safe with the men I emailed while exploring the on-line dating than I was with the co-worker I barely knew who showed up at my late husband’s visitation and looked me over as though I were a snack while he was offering his condolences?

I was annoyed for a bit after running into J. At first I thought it was because she was critical of my relationship with Rob and the plans we have made. She has no right to question my judgement. We haven’t had more than a few brief encounters over the last fifteen years. Her basis for judgement is the 

twenty-eight year old I was when last we had any meaningful contact. I am a long ways way from that girl now. But, as I thought about it more I realized that what was truly upsetting me was that she hadn’t offered condolences about Will. She didn’t ask how he died or I was or how Katy was doing even. She was just worried about the fact that I was marrying some “stranger” from the Internet.

And that is what it comes down to in the end these days it seems. I am marrying again. A friend on the YWBB suggested that it might be a case of “all better now” in that obviously anyone who can love and marry again must be over their grief. Maybe. I know that people are certainly more comfortable with that idea than the reality that I will always carry the grief with me. No one wants to know that because who among us doesn’t lose a loved one at some point in our lives? Someone close whose death will sear and leave scars. They want to believe that tragedies have endings because how do you survive something that doesn’t have an endpoint? 

I think though what is also in play is the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to grieve. Those of us who adhere to arbitrary timelines, wear the emotional equivalent of sackcloth for all to see and admire are good little widowed people who obviously had true and beautiful love with our late spouses. And then there are the rest of us.

Rob got PM from a widow on the YWBB who is actually known for her rather harsh assessments of other people’s grief. She doesn’t post often but she is sometimes scolded for being too presumptive and  judgmental when she does. Which is ironic if you know the board at all.

At first he was going to just let it go, ignore it. Not something I would have done given the some of the things she presumed and implied, but he is not the type of  person to let other people’s opinions bother him. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen him ask for advice of anyone on the board. He reads. He tires to be supportive. He takes his problems to “real” people. But, this widow stepped over the line, and it was that which prompted him to reveal the PM. He had read a post earlier in the day where someone was telling a newbie (widow only a little ways out) that the board was a safe place to post your feelings and thoughts and experiences. It isn’t though. That is a near total lie. There isn’t a less safe place I can think of to reveal yourself. Rob only mentioned in passing that we were being married soon in response to someone new wondering if there is happiness again someday. He was just telling her there was and offering himself as an example. The widow who PM’d him made a rather nasty assumptions that his marriage must have been bad at the time of his wife’s death, and he must not have loved her much if he could marry me so soon. 

Those two sentences leapt out at me when I read the message. They were mean and calculated to be so. Typically that is not how many of the others at YWBB read it. They naturally jumped on our upcoming wedding and droned endlessly about the sacred nature of PM’s. I say this only because if they could read with understanding, and had properly read the two sentences I did, they would have seen what was wrong with that PM. It was condemnation couched in opinion. There is this odd belief that you can hide any nasty comment behind the veil of  “just my opinion” and therefore be unaccountable. Rob was right to call this widow out. 

Two different sides of the opinion coin today. I didn’t like either one. Or rather I didn’t like the tone and hadn’t much respect for the sources.