young widowhood

Hit Me Over the Head Already


It’s Valentine’s Day and Rob is busy rearranging in the latest round of purge and conquer. He likes to listen to music while he works. Loudly. That’s why the stereo speakers in the truck are Bose and he can’t wait until winter is over and he can reclaim it from me.*

He loaded the cd player with a collection of compilation discs and we spent the afternoon going about our business and shouting to each other when necessary.

As I was preparing dinner, “the song” came on. The Everlast song that pops up and reminds me of Will. But I don’t take it as a sign anymore. It’s just a song that had meaning once but has no relevance anymore. It was an interesting song to come up on Valentine’s and nothing more.

A couple of songs later however, Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You began to play. Will chose that song for our first dance at our wedding reception. It’s been a long, long time since I have thought about it, let alone heard it.

“Okay, okay,” I thought. “Happy Valentine’s to you too.”

On Sunday I had to zip over to The Park early because I had volunteered to man the table our writing foundation had at the Winter Art’s Fair. Rob continued his restructuring by attacking the bookcases. We have a lot of books between us.** When I got home, he’d accomplished a lot and in his typical meticulous fashion had even inspected and dusted every single book and shelf.

“I found this in one of your books,” he said as he handed me a folded sheet of notebook paper. “It looks like a letter you wrote a long time ago to your friend, Fran, but you never mailed it.

It was dated February 16th, and as soon as I read the first lines, I knew exactly what year:

Dear Fran,

Just a quick note to let you know that Will and I are engaged. He asked me (on one knee) last night. Even though we’d been talking about it for a while, I was still surprised.

Now the songs made sense. The year was 1999. This year marks a decade. A significant passage of time in the whole anniversary scheme of things.

Sometimes I really do need neon flashing signs.

 

 

*I drive the Avalanche in the winter. It’s the safer vehicle.

**And several duplicates because, ironically, both Will and Shelley were huge Stephen King fans.

Weed(s)- Why didn’t I Think of That?


I picked up the dvd of the first season of the Showtime hit, Weeds, with the every intention of watching it –  over two years ago. I think it was a day after Thanksgiving special at Target. I had a habit of snatching up dvd’s on sale back then and never even breaking the shrink wrap on them. Television and movies were never my escapes. I think the only time I used a tv show as a diversion it really wasn’t a diversion as much as a way to immerse myself in my own feelings being experiencing them through the characters. Distance and yet not so much at all. 

Rob pulled Weeds off the shelf recently, and we have been watching it a couple of episodes at a time. Each one is about 30 minutes which makes it perfect for nights we don’t want to invest in a feature length film, but still need to unwind a bit before sleep*.

The main character is a widowed pot dealer. Hence the title “weeds” as in illicit smokes and mourning attire. My first thought was,

“Damn, why didn’t I think of that?”

I was a public school teacher working with at-risk teenagers at the time of Will’s death. Those that weren’t active pot-heads were simply waiting for the ankle bracelets to come off so they could get back to it.

I had several students who came to the afternoon classes so stoned they could barely see. One boy was a freaking genius and his bloodshot glazed vision and slow-motion two finger typing did not keep him from completing the computer modules in a startling progression and eventually returning to regular course work with the “normal” children. But there was another young man who could barely speak English when he was under the influence, and it was his native tongue**. I finally had to sit him down – one day when he actually showed up straight – and inform him that there was no way he could possibly salvage the year unless he stopped coming to class stoned.

To his credit, he didn’t bother to deny his usage, but he wondered why he was failing when DeeJ could be just as high and be getting A’s and B’s.

It was then I had to point out the cold truth.

“Some people can go through school so stoned you wonder how they stand upright because they are just really, really smart. You are not one of those people.”

He didn’t comment but went back to work. Bless his little heart, he tried to do school without the enhancements, but he eventually was expelled for bringing drugs to school and “sharing” them.

Between the inhalers and the gang members I knew, I could have established quite the side business. I wouldn’t have been the first teacher to work two jobs during the school day. I knew people who ran construction businesses and managed rental properties in between (sometimes during once we got phones and Internet in our rooms) classes. One guy, a drama teacher, was so constantly on the phone with his bookie that some of his students who’d had me the year before would show up in my room after school to ask for help with homework he’d assigned them at the beginning of class without any instruction at all beyond,

“Just read the directions.”

He’s  a principal now. 

The Widow Nancy, who eventually will achieve drug lord status, is surrounded by a cast of interesting characters including her loser brother-in-law, Andy and her two sons – one of whom will eventually go into the “family” business.

Her friends are various degrees of off-center or just fuck’d-up. I especially love Doug, her accountant, played by Kevin Nealon and her dealer, a black woman in the “city” who is hilarious in her assessments of Nancy’s suburban white girl deficiencies as she struggles to adjust to her new reality. But the show’s themes are adult, so expect nudity, sex  – a whole lot of drug use – and really bad language.

The show doesn’t really go into how Nancy ended up dealing or how long exactly she’s been widowed. It does deal with her grief, and her kids’, but in a way that is actually quite real for a show with such an outlandish basis. She grieves in between. When she has time or when the moments hit – though sometimes you can see moments come up and her consciously pushing them away or aside for a while.

The comedy is dark. It can be uncomfortable and more so when you find yourself laughing at it.

There are only ten episodes in the first season. I wasn’t sure we would continue onto the next one, but Rob went ahead and ordered seasons two and three from Amazon the other day.***

It’s mindless, politically incorrect and probably soul-warping.  Forewarned is forearmed.

 

*Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Why aren’t they having sex? Seriously people, you live in the gutter. And who says we aren’t as well? Hmm.

** I taught plenty of non-English speaking stoners too, he just wasn’t one of them.

*** Considering how sporadically we’ve watched season one – took us nearly a month – it was actually cheaper to buy the discs outright than rent them from the local supplier of cheap audio/visual entertainment.

You Have My Sympathy


I pulled another sympathy card from the post box today. It was from a dear friend in Iowa and her husband who hadn’t been able to attend my dad’s funeral in October. There is no statute of limitations on condolence cards it seems. At my father’s wake this past October, for example, one of the cousins handed me a card and memorial for my late husband who died nearly three years ago. So my friend’s card was not late, merely unexpected and oddly enough, timely. Read Full Article