young widowhood

Better to Have Loved and Lost


Cliches about lost love never go out of fashion but they sure don’t fit all situations. I am continually amazed at the idea that some widowed people hang onto that somehow the death of their spouses is on par with divorce or separation or even the break-up of a romance.

Many of us are offered the dubious comfort of envy. Friends, relations, and even near-strangers, remind us that our marriages and the time we had with our lost loved ones is more than most people ever have the slightest chance to experience over the course of entire life-times it seems. Though not even a cold comfort, it is true. We were lucky and loved. What puzzles me is the idea that we “lost” at love. We didn’t. We were loved. We are in all likelihood still loved, truly and deeply, though it might be hard to reach those feelings when anger and pain and the feeling of being cheated are all we allow ourselves to feel at first, and in the cases of some – for a long, long time. But we are not losers. We didn’t end our relationships in front of a judge or discover one day after months, or years, that our inattention to each other had starved the emotions that once fanned desire. What we are is what remains of love after one of the pair is claimed by his or her mortality. It’s not pretty, nor does it feel good, but it is not losing. Nor is it consolation. It is what it is but leave the bitterness to those who are the co-authors of their love’s demise.

We chosen few have no reason to hang our heads or linger in bitterness. We are better for having loved, and being loved in return through all the heights and lulls that we know are soul enriching when others see them as valueless. I know that I gained more from the short time with my late husband than I will ever be able to explain. The love, as well as the pain and sorrow, separates me from those who are true losers at love. I gave my all. So did he. We played through to the true end. What more could anyone hope for?

Moving On


I am hardly an expert but I do know a thing or two more than I would like about endings and beginnings and about moving on. I spent a good deal of time closing up the rooms in the dreams of the future my late husband and I imagined together in what seems now to be a long ago time but in reality is just a mere five years past. During his long illness, there were many endings. Most too painful to recount. There is a time for remembering loss and there comes a day when the laundry list of hurts isn’t a useful exercise anymore and I have reached that point. Ironically there were as many beginnings during times of tragedy and loss, and there is even growth. I changed job sites and age levels in my teaching career. Began and finished a masters program. Made new friends. Set new goals, among them a decision to change locale and careers in the short term future. It’s interesting the chain reactions decisions of all shapes and sizes have on the course of a person’s life. Some people are blown far afield by unexpected circumstances and their reactions to them. Some are brought to a dead stop, letting currents take them and waves sweep them under. Some keep moving, re-plotting their courses as the conditions warrant until they find themselves on stable ground again. My plans changed course over the course of my late husband’s illness and in the aftermath of his death and again when I met my now husband, Rob. In a strange way, Rob has always seemed a natural progression, a given, in a new beginning we seemed destined to share, so despite the rather momentous hurdles of leaving family, friends, home, job and country, it’s been in some ways the easiest of my transitions from then to now.

Being a widow I have the dubious pleasure to know many others. Male and female. Much older than I am and some young enough to be my sons or daughters. We have endings in common. That’s true. But a small portion of us share beginnings too. Some are triumphs and some are not. There is one gentlemen I know of through a message board for young widowed I frequent from time to time. He has taken to posting emails he receives from an organization called GriefShare, which tries to help bereaved people work through their losses. Recently he posted the following message:

What It Means to Move On

Moving on does not mean . . .
• you forget the person.
• you never feel the pain of your loss.
• you believe that life is fair.

Moving on does mean . . .
• you experience a lessening of the pain.
• you can treasure your best memories of the person who has died.
• you can realistically accept the different aspects of your loss.
• you can form new relationships, try new things.

Moving on also means . . .
• you grow in grace and in your walk with God.
• you accept your loss and forgive others.
• you understand that both joy and loss are a part of life.
• you believe that God is good, even when life isn’t.

My husband loathes the saying “moving on” like many widowed he prefers “moving forward”, and I try to use the term in deference to him though to me it is a bit of a semantics thing. In many ways beginnings do mean moving on as opposed to forward because it is not about momentum or trajectory as much as it is about putting certain dreams, hopes and deep feelings away in much the same way you pack up mementos from your children’s lives or souvenirs from a trip. My mother has a cedar chest in the basement of my childhood home that is crammed with tiny clothes, blankets, report cards and such that belonged, and were important, to her and to each of us kids in times now long past. I seldom think about the old rag doll I named CeeDee that lies there wrapped, I think, in the remnants of my sister Kate’s baby blanket. I know that it sounds like apples and oranges, comparing the inevitable of growing up to the loss of one’s spouse, but they are not as different as you think. As my mother has been annoyingly fond of pointing out to me over the years, everything is a growth experience. Because I look as though I have achieved adulthood doesn’t necessary mean I learned all there is to learn. I haven’t achieved the enlightenment of Sidharrtha. Possibly because I haven’t the time to sit under a tree until it smacks me on the head like gravity struck Newton. But in a way, widowhood has been my apple. We learn from everything and everyone in our lives, with luck, and at some point we move on from them – willing or not. It’s not about forgetting or minimizing. Time moves and sweeps us along in its wake, but its different from just being pushed forward. Moving on implies that we have packed up those things from our old lives that are important and special in our own cedar chests, loaded them on the truck and once arrived, carefully put them away.

I have a habit of choosing my mottoes from the lyrics of songs. One of my favorites was written by group called Semi Sonic. The song is entitled “Closing Time”. It uses the idea of a pub closing down in the wee hours as a metaphor for moving on and out into the big wide world. The song on the whole has a rather positive message but the line I truly love is “Closing time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.” There is so much truth in that one simple expression. So much faith as well because I know many people who see endings as endings and nothing more, and even though I can see their side of it, I find that kind of thinking short-sighted. The reason being that endings and beginnings, as Shakespeare once put it are “neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” Funny that I should find a line from Hamlet inspiring because there are few plays I dislike more than that dirge, but it is true.

GhostBusters


John Edwards is a fraud. I recoil from that show of his in horror, watching that twenty questions act of his peel people of signs and information that he uses to convince them he can communicate with their deceased loved ones. He is about as physic as my daughter’s cat. Sylvia Browne is another charlatan who shouldn’t be pandered to by talk show divas or publishers. One gem that she vomited forth is particularly telling. She was asked if our loved ones think about us or worry about us after they are gone. Ms. Browne replied, “No, they are in heaven and they don’t care.” Aside from being utterly insensitve and as blunt as a board upside the head, anyone who has received signs or visits from those who have gone on knows that Slyvia is not a psychic either. Back in the days when I was trying so desperately to have a child, my best friend and I went to a Psychic Fair. I sat down with a couple of them. One used a regular playing deck of cards and the other a Tarot set, but they were both completely wrong. I have had more psychic moments than either of those women, but I am sure they are somewhere taking money from innocent people right now and giving them nothing but showy garbage in return.

Last night Rob’s oldest daughter, Farron, came out to the house for supper. Like her dad (and me too I admit) she was late. I don’t think any of us manage to be anywhere we say we are going to be on time anymore. It’s a rare occurrence when I am not walking in at the last minute when I am not outright just plain tardy. Supper was a bit rushed as I had my deep water exercise class, but Farron assured me she would still be around when I got back.

When I returned, Rob, Farron and myself sat in the living room and listened to Farron discuss her man woes. She is not quite twenty-five and as I remember that time myself, men woeful or joyful is just about the center of the universe as far as preoccupation of thoughts, time and energy go. Eventually though the topic turned to the house. Our house is haunted. Truly. Farron had just made a comment on how the dishwasher’s noises sounded ghost-like and Rob brought up my last spirit encounter.

I should run an aside here and explain that Rob didn’t tell me about the house and its “inhabitants” until quite a while after Katy and I moved in. Still, the first time we visited before moving up here, I had a feeling the house was haunted. I was a bit curious about the possibility because Rob’s late wife died here in the room down the hall which is now our joint office. I knew from my own experiences after Will died, and from a few Rob had told me about concerning Shelley, that spouses tend to hang out a bit for a while following their passing. Partly concern and maybe a little bit habit, it’s my feeling that they need to hang onto us as they adjust just as we need to hang onto them. That first weekend visit, I saw a figure standing in the corner of our bedroom when I awoke for no reason in the middle of the night and I had the distinct feeling that I was being watched the few times I went into the basement.

After we moved in the basement feelings persisted until I felt almost as I did when I was a young child being sent down to the freezer to retrieve some thing or other for my mother to prepare for dinner. I also saw the figure in our room again. Once right next to the side of the bed by Rob as he slept. The incidents came to a head in the middle of the night when Katy awoke, came to get me and when I took her back to her room she insisted that someone was standing on the other side of the room. This was not long after the “honey” incidents. Katy would come into the room wherever I was and ask me what I wanted. Of course, I hadn’t called for her but she would tell me that someone was calling “Honey” to her. The figure in her room was the last straw. Some otherworldly person could mess with me all they liked but had better leave my child alone. My late husband got quite the talking to by me in that instant and reminded that he had a child to look after and what was he going to do about this? Katy hasn’t had a ghostly experience since.

After that, Rob came clean about the house. The incidents dated back to when he, Shelley and the girls first moved in. Apparently the house had been moved from a spot in the city on the old prison grounds. Jordan, Rob’s younger daughter, was also a victim of the “honey” calls though the spirit actually called her by name. She also had told Farron that there were other creepy incidents in the basement. Mostly a feeling of being watched. My downstairs surveillance ended one day when I finally got angry and told whoever it was to just knock it off already. It wasn’t my last incident though. That was the one Rob wanted me to tell Farron about. I was sitting in the office, working on a blog piece about last wishes. It was right after our trip up to Beaverlodge for Uncle Raymond’s – Shelley’s uncle – memorial. Rob had decided to bring Shelley’s ashes along and place some under the tree in Raymond’s yard where the two of them had gotten married. It got me thinking about my last wishes and where I wanted to end up, but as I was finishing up I got stuck. I couldn’t figure out how to end the piece and toyed with the idea of writing a bit longer piece than I had originally intended when suddenly, someone shoved my chair from behind and I hit the desk. I took that as I sign that I was done and quickly wrote a few sentences and published. I should note here that my chair is a typical desk chair with wheels but I have a habit of sitting on one leg and letting the other dangle or rest on the tripod legs. I wasn’t moving or rocking. My feet weren’t even touching the floor and as far as I know, there aren’t any earthquakes in Alberta.

Rob’s experiences go back to before Shelley’s illness even. He would hear a tinny radio playing 1940’s type music. After Shelley died, he would hear voices as he was dropping off to sleep at night. Lots of voices. Like at a party. One night, he heard someone loudly call his full name. He has had experiences with Shelley too, as I have had with Will, but some of the things that have happened can’t be attributed to our late spouses.

Katy’s room is the one Farron used to sleep in. Farron related a tale of the attic door being open every night despite her repeated closings and of scratching sounds in the ceiling which she thought were rodents but Rob assured her wasn’t possible as he has never seen any of the telltale rodent signs in the attic space.

I personally believe there is a next and probably even an after the next place that we all travel to after our time here is done for the moment. I think that we probably spend eternity looping these places and existing in different forms but with essentially the same group of fellow travelers or “souls”. My knowledge of quantum physics is pretty limited, though it fascinates me, and I can’t explain in any concrete way they reason that some of us are able to “break” through the barriers between existences and some of us can’t, or maybe chose not to. What came first or what comes next is nothing to be afraid of anymore than you should fear getting older or any of the transitions that come along in this life. Change is just change to greater or lesser degrees. And, of course, it is inevitable.