young widowhood

Clarity


 

Sometimes I wonder if I am too abstract and random (a neat trick for a concrete random by the way)  for others to follow when I try to explain my feelings about personal responsibility and owning one’s own life, or if perhaps most adults really do read on a 6th grade level. I actually hope it is the former because it’s too depressing to contemplate the latter. From an educator’s point of view. And from a selfish one. I really like communicating and sharing ideas and views via the written word and especially through the various sites and forums to which I belong. Still, there is the occasional misinterpretation and though sometimes I believe it is an intentional disconnect for the purpose of starting an argument, it’s usually just a case of lack of clarity. Maybe I should have used more or different examples. Perhaps I didn’t preface my words properly. I suppose that just because I know what I said, and my husband/editor has given it the thumbs up, doesn’t mean that anyone else will be able to decipher my decidedly non-mainstream thoughts on things, generally and specifically.

 

Of course there is the other problem of me on the page as opposed to me in person. I have a tendency, when I write informally, to write like I talk. Which, sans facial expression, eye contact, tone and voice inflection and body language (which gives me away most often though my husband has commented on my occasional ability to pull off a poker face) gets me in trouble. A lot. But I am going to suppose, for the moment, that perhaps it’s them and not me at all. Why? Because I suspect it is really.

 

I am not a mystery. My likes and dislikes and viewpoints on just about anything are not buried dead-center in a Sphinx-like tomb in the Valley of the Kings. I say pretty much what I think when I think it and never hide behind aliases or pseudonyms or non de plumes or whatever other term there might be for being cowardly when your opinions differ or make you “not one of us”. My shame, in my opinion and not the opinion of others who could probably list by the dozen things I should hang my head about, lies in not being articulate enough, or so it appears to me today, to simplify or explain my opinions to those who read them. 

 

And every single person is a Slim Shady lurkin

He could be workin at Burger King, spittin on your onion rings

Or in the parkin lot, circling

Screaming “I don’t give a fuck!”

with his windows down and his system up

So, will the real Shady please stand up?

And put one of those fingers on each hand up?

And be proud to be outta your mind and outta control

and one more time, loud as you can, how does it go?

An Interesting Way to Die



Two characters in a movie Rob and I were watching the other night were discussing how to kill off the main character in a book that one of them was writing. They were sitting out in the rain because the author was apparently the method version of a writer. She was soaked to the skin and her assistant remarked that she could end up with pneumonia to which the author replied,

“Pneumonia is an interesting way to die.”

It’s not though. I’ve had pneumonia. Twice. Once when I was eight and was sick for two solid weeks between my birthday and Christmas. The second time was in 1994 after I had spent Thanksgiving in Brooklyn visiting my oldest friend, whom I’d known since the fifth grade. And of course there was that second to the last weekend in January of 2006 when I spent nearly 72 hours watching my husband die from it. 

He had a genetic metabolic disorder called Adrenoleukodystroply. For years it had slowed and then finally stopped his body from producing an enzyme that it needed to metabolize long chain fatty acids. As the acids built up his immune system kicked into action to rid his body of what it perceived as a threat. Slowly at first and then faster and faster, his immune system began stripping nerve endings of their protective coating and scrubbing away the dura matter that protects the brain, allowing it to send and receive messages. When he began to have trouble swallowing as a result of the faulty connections, he would sometimes inhale food or water particles. Eventually this leads to what they call “aspiration pneumonia”. It’s not an interesting way to die. 

Is there an interesting way to die?

This last week I have been reading the blog account of another widow about the last days of her husband’s life. It is the third anniversary of his death today. I am not sure why I have felt the need to do this as she and I are not friends. In some ways I feel a kinship though. Her younger son is nearly the same age as my daughter. She feels, as I do about Will, that somehow she missed important signs that might have saved her husband’s life. Her story, and it’s hers now really not his at all, has pulled up pieces and scraps of memories that I had l stopped dwelling on. But it is not just her. Watching Rob brace himself for his first anniversary has been difficult and brought back those feelings of inadequacy because I really can’t help or make it better. The fall like feel in the air that comes more and more often, reminding me that school will start soon and I am not teaching this year. 

It’s frustrating. Not being able to read or watch a movie or listen to a song that doesn’t give me pause or stir the pot of memories, not all bad, but all connected just the same. I am not the same, and ironically this has made my square shape sharper and the round holes of widowhood that much narrower. 

At the end of the movie, the author has a change of heart and allows her character to live. She feels that someone who would be willing, as her character – a real person it turns out –  is to sacrifice himself for another is someone the world can’t afford to lose. But the real world, the one I live in, has let go of so many real people who given the chance probably would have done anything for those who loved them or even stepped in front of a bus to save a stranger. 

In the movies there are interesting ways to save people from dying too, but not in real life. In real life people just die, and some people mourn them for the rest of their lives and at the expense of their lives. 

And others just miss them. Terribly. Deeply. Forever.

First Contact



I wrote to Will’s mother over the weekend. She had sent a birthday card to Katy, and it was forwarded to our new address. Typically, the letter inside was addressed to my five year old but actually meant for me. The things she writes are calculated to induce guilt because she sees herself as the ultimate victim of Will’s illness and death. I can understand her discounting how everything has affected me, but she discounts completely how it has changed Katy and her life too. Katy is simply an accessory from her grandmother’s point of view. 

I knew the card was coming. I knew I was going to have to reply and finally clue her ,and the other in-laws, in about the changes in my life. What I wrote was fairly matter of fact, and I told them only what they needed to know about Rob, the move, and our life here, and that wasn’t much. I don’t know why I feel I need to protect us from them. But even Will’s father’s family seems tainted to me now. Though they could be selfish and indifferent, they were never cruel. I know what they say about marrying a person’s family, but I don’t believe that any tie to another person or group of people allows them free and easy access. People need to earn the right to be a part of your life. No one is exempt. I have a brother who I kept at arm’s length or better for many, many years because of his self-destructive behaviors, and I still give my youngest sister a wide berth because of her self-absorbed ways. 

I set the record straight with Will’s mother. She knew the boundaries already, I think, but now they are spelled out. I didn’t put them forth in anger, although I am still angry with her about the many incidents that took place those last three months and especially that last weekend. She knows she can write but is on notice about the appropriateness of the content. If she is writing to Katy then it needs to be the types of things grandmothers write to their little granddaughters and not veiled messages for me. I will not put up with the intermediaries she has used in the past to avoid having to speak or communicate with me directly. And, I included some photos of Katy. It was the right thing to do even if her grandmother has never done much more than use her as a prop in the elaborate drama that she prefers over living a real life.

I wish I could feel more empathy, or even pity, for the woman, but I don’t. Even Will had a hard time with that and his main reason for keeping contact amounted to not much more than guilt and obligation. Still, she was his mother and I will do this much for his sake. It’s really him that I owe this too.