young widowhood

Father’s Day


As we were preparing Rob’s carb-laden breakfast in bed tray this morning, Katy diligently prepared the card she’d picked out for him, a Transformer theme with Optimus Prime on the front that said “Transformer, unite.”, or something like that.

I had written out what she wanted to say on another piece of paper and she copied it proudly.

I love you Daddy.

I had checked with her first on whether it was to be “Daddy” or “Rob”. She mainly calls him Rob but there are more and more instances of her addressing him as Dad or Daddy and she mostly refers to him that way.

She wanted to go with daddy.

“I need to practice saying daddy,” she told me.

Interesting. A few months ago she’d resolved to call him “Poppi” like Dora the Explorer does with her father. That really went nowhere. Now it is dad and with Jordan living at home again for a while, I don’t doubt that her calling Rob dad all the time will speed up Katy’s processing a bit more.

People who know our story – Katy’s and mine – like family and close friends – are thrilled that she has a father. They don’t seem to think that I have pushed Will, Katy’s biological father, out of the picture by allowing her to form a father/daughter relationship with my new husband. They see it as a win-win. I have found love and contentment and Katy has a father who loves her.

Given my own state of being as an adopted child, I don’t understand the whole “biology” thing. I have talked about this before. The people who love and care for you are family. The people who raise you are your parents. Biology is not a guarantee and its worship in our society leads to the devaluing of families who fall outside the “norm”, leading children who don’t have biological ties to their parents feeling “less than”.

I remind Katy still from time to time – and she me – how lucky we are to have had first Will and now Rob in our lives. We talked a bit about Will today at lunch. He liked to cook and she found this very interesting. She hasn’t forgotten him and is unlikely to do so. Both Rob and I keep Will very much alive for her through the wall of photos she has in her bedroom and our willingness to discuss him.

She isn’t the least bit confused and her early conflict has faded into an acceptance that this is just how our lives are. Children are much more capable of an expansive heart and an open mind than we adults are, I think.

My Story


For a middle-aged, Midwestern school teacher, my life hasn’t been too cursedly interesting nor has it been soul crushingly difficult, but despite my cat-footed landing of late, I don’t think I could give it away on Craig’s List.

I wouldn’t want to in any case, and I am surprised by this because there have been numerous moments when my fairy godmother could have offered me nearly any other life, and I’d have leapt.

I’ve resisted the urge to tell my story for the past year or more because I wasn’t convinced it was mine to tell. I was a supporting actress. The best friend friend, size 12 and quick with a witty quip not the willowy romantic heroine. And I didn’t really think that the story was all that compelling or extraordinary.

What widow doesn’t fancy herself as an author and dream of righting the unthinkable with words?

But I have never believed that if I tell the tale often enough I will be okay with the outcome. A metaphorical wallowing is still wallowing, and it’s still pointless.

Finally, I was just worried, afraid maybe, that I couldn’t. Tell the story. Big and gutsy and ugly and sad and amazingly and, in a perverse way, a blessing. The disguised kind that my yoga instructor is always reminding us to be on the lookout for and be grateful when we recognize them.

I am not a flamboyant personality. Gray really is my favorite color. And if “gutsy” is code for “tactless” then run me up a flagpole, but I suspect that this isn’t so.

I am determined past the point of being branded a mule, and I am as reliable as the changing of the seasons.

At my core however I am Ella, sitting in the cinders of the kitchen flue and dreaming of far away places and people who live only inside my own imagination.

Until a little over a year ago, any dreams I dared to commit to the world came at a huge expense to me personally. Silver spoons were as unknown as glass slippers until the day I married a man who looked me straight in the eye hours after we exchanged vows next to a raging river surrounded by mountains and family and friends and said,

“You can be anything you want to be.”

This is my story.

Resistance is Futile


A writer I met through my blog mentioned in a conversation that her Yoga instructor was always reminding her to not resist (during a pose) but to give in to it.  Anyone who has taken a yoga class or practices it regularly will tell you that the more you resist relaxing into a pose, the harder and more painful that pose will be. I was thinking about this again during my Thursday yoga class. I have been practicing yoga since mid January now and am not a yogina by any means. Every class I am appalled to find yet another errant muscle that has been coasting along with minimal effort for far too long. My hamstrings being a perfect example of style without substance. As I attempted to coerce them into a response other than pain, I put my friend’s yoga instructor’s advice to work – again – and found that I could ease myself just a tad further into position.

“Quit resisting”

My friend uses that line, or something similar, on her children when they are rebelling against things that are good for them in the long run but not so much fun now. Reminds me a little of the Star Trek Next Gen line, “Resistance is futile” because often the things we fight hardest against are not evil Borg attempting to assimilate us, but change that is necessary due to altered circumstances in our lives.  Just the ordinary growth experiences that touch everyone’s lives sooner or later which sounds more innocent than they can sometimes be.

Ironically, during my time on the widow board I was given the very same advice that the yogina gave my friend. “Don’t resist.” Only in this instance it was grief I was being counseled to submit to. Good enough advice in the early months, but many widowed people don’t take it the next logical step which is not resisting your new reality. What they mean when advocating “non-resistance”  is surrender to the ever present undercurrent of sadness. Drowning really. No amount of sorrow however is going to change the fact that forward is the only direction in life. Time runs in one direction and does so with relentless disregard of whether or not a person is coming along willingly or being dragged like Lot’s Wife with both eyes on the past. 

I am going to close with a few passages from the Hip Tranquil Chick:

“while leading a retreat in costa rica last summer, we went to a popular butterfly garden and for the first time i saw a caterpiller emerge from its cocoon into a wet, wobbly butterfly. its next phase was to dry out its wings so it could fly. a truly remarkable sight.

since 1999 when tranquil space began, i have felt like a caterpiller on numerous occasions, struggling to dry my wings and fly. as we embark on this exciting new journey, i return to the image of the wet, wobbly butterfly. change is always scary, sexy, risky, and a constant state despite continual resistance to it.

in buddhism, the concept of impermanence is a gentle reminder that so much of suffering is brought on by resisting change. nothing is our lives is unchanging – our thoughts, emotions, work, relationships. so why the struggle and grasping for continual control? why do we stay in the cocoon?

in college i read that we regret more the things we don’t do than the things we do do. that statement serves as a gentle reminder every time i question emerging from a comfortable cocoon.”