young widowhood

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.

Mary with Katy Grace, Meanwhile Jesus was locked in a Cabinet


There is a statue of the Blessed Mother in the cemetery where Will is buried. My daughter Katy is quite taken with it. We have to  visit Mary, and the statue of Jesus though she is not as enamored of it, every time we go. Earlier last week, she noticed that Mary was stepping on a snake. Crushing it really beneath her bare feet. When she asked me why I explained (correctly I hope) that the snake represented all the evil of the world and that Mary was stomping it out. Katy considered this for a few moments before remarking, “Poor snake.”

 

The child’s take on religion is always interesting and sometimes insightful. I remember when I was preparing to receive my first communion that I was terrified of chewing the host because I took the “became flesh” thing quite literally and was worried about what the outcome of “biting” Jesus might be. Consequently I was always having to stick a finger in my mouth to dislodge a dry stuck wafer.

 

My nephew, Luke referred to the priest as “the King” when he was younger because of the vestments that priests wear for mass, and so naturally the church became a castle. Katy began to point out “castles” as a result of her cousin’s influence, and she still calls stained glass windows “Jesus glass” wherever it is.

 

My sister and Luke attended the Saturday night mass with her brother and sister-in-law’s family this past weekend in Webster City. As many Catholic churches now do, there is a children’s nursery provided for parents with children too young to sit through a whole mass. My dad rolls his eyes when he hears about this. Even if there had been such a thing when we kids were young, he would never have availed himself of it. He can remember hours of church time, in Latin no less, and his old school ways wouldn’t have permitted such coddling of his children. Catholicism is learned on one’s knees primarily and over many hours.  Luke and his cousin, Noah,  decided to slip out of the nursery and explore the nearby hallways which led to the discovery of a cabinet with writing on it, and  Jesus locked inside. How they came to the conclusion that the son of God was trapped in a cabinet in the basement of a church in Iowa is open to speculation because even after listening to a rather breathless explanation from the two I am uncertain still, but  it will have  to remain a mystery as something in the cabinet (Jesus no doubt) began banging on the door to be let out sending the two boys running for the stairs to find their parents. Although my sister and Phil and Kim seemed amused by the incident, no one volunteered any further information about what might have actually happened or who, if anyone, went to investigate? 

 

While we were strolling through the cemetery after visiting Mary and posing for the photo-op, Katy noticed another grave with a smaller statue of Mary and another statue that she assumed was Jesus. We wandered over to investigate as I thought it might have been St. Joseph, Mary’s spouse, but it turned out to be St. Francis of Assisi (the birds give it away if you fail to recognize the Franciscan bowl haircut). I seldom think much about my knowledge of what amounts to trivia about Catholicism, but I did note my dear love’s bemused expression. Though his mother is Catholic, his father vetoed the idea of raising him or his siblings in any belief system. I find it interesting that nearly everyone who I know who have been raised in such a manner (and this is admittedly a small number) have turned out to be some of the kindest and most accepting people I have ever met.

 

Our brushes with Catholicism, or any “church”, remind me that I need to began consolidating my thoughts on the subject of the universe and its creator. Sigh, as if I didn’t have enough to do these days.

 

Don Williams State Park


Maquoketa Caves State Park

Image by Phil Roeder (lots of comments to catch up on) via Flickr

I love my sister’s in-laws. They are a large, friendly bunch who lay waste to every bad in-law joke you may have ever heard. BIL and his twin were actually high school classmates of mine, and I actually knew him before he and my sister even met.

 

BIL has six brothers. All but the youngest is married. All but two have children. When even a couple of them gather in one place with their families, you know they are there. The last time I saw them all together in one place was nearly 7 years ago when DNOS and BIL married. I remember at my parents house the next day while the grown-ups were outside watching the newlyweds unwrap gifts I walked into the kitchen to find a half-dozen or so of BIL’s nieces and nephews pretending to mix drinks using various concoctions of soda pop.

 

My sister is actually the “oldest” of the sister-in-law’s even though she was the last one of them to marry into the family. DNOS and BIL dated for about fifteen years. They got engaged The Christmas after Will and I got married. In fact, the first time we visited after our engagement BIL’s comment to Will was “Thanks a lot.” Even with the occasionally clash of personalities, I have always thought my sister to be extremely blessed as far as in-laws are concerned. Because Will was an only child and not really comfortable with either side of his family, I knew I wouldn’t have what DNOS did but I had high hopes for pleasant holidays and other such gatherings. I didn’t get that. As we circled the park today trailing after P’s wife K as she scouted about for a picnic site in what is essentially a campground, I had brief flashes of the Mathes family celebrations. A room ringed with people on folding chairs, eating off paper plated balanced precariously on their knees while engaged in the awkward small talk that periodically broke the silence. My sister has not always taken her in-laws in stride, but her observations of mine have made her more grateful for them than she already was.

 

My daughter loves to visit with her cousin’s cousins. She is just beginning to understand that she is not related to Uncle BIL’s family, but she stubbornly maintains that his youngest nephew is in fact just as much her cousin as N2, BIL and DNOS’s son, is. They are quite the trio. No is the oldest at six and a half, followed by N2 who is just six and then my Dee at not quite five. They ran themselves silly, played on the swings and argued over the camping chairs. No tried to convince the other two to play “runway model” on top of one of the picnic tables. N2 was game but Dee hung back and merely watched. I don’t think she knows what a model is and the look on her face indicated that she wasn’t quite certain that this was an activity for boys. My daughter is a bit archaic in her ideas about gender. As I watched I remarked to my sister that her husband would not have permitted a game like that to played for long. He is very archaic in his ideas about gender, but as the two boys sashayed up and down the table top, wiggling their bums like girls in a hip-hop video, everyone but Dee and I pretended not to notice.

 

After a dinner of grilled animal and assorted junk food of which Dee partook and I demurred politely, we said our good-byes. Real good-byes I realized when Dee pointed out to No that it was very unlikely he would ever see my Dee again. It’s interesting the people who are connected to your life, but who you have such a little bit of contact with over the course of it. I wonder if a person is richer or poorer for it?