young widowhood

A Friend’s Wife Has Died


nunhead cemetary

Image via Wikipedia

Mark was one of the first people I met when I joined the Des Moines Jaycees back December of 1997. He was one of the happiest, most optimistic people I have ever known. He always had a smile and a hug for you. His wife Leslie was also quite energetic though while Mark used smiles and charm to steer people, she was more like the little bulldozer that could. Still, they were one of the couples that Will and I often socialized with in our early days together and after we were married.

 

I think I have seen Mark twice since Will’s illness and death. The last time was at one of the first social functions I forced myself attend last year. He was still all smiles but there were no hugs. As cheery as he is, widows make everyone uncomfortable and I remember taking a bit of perverse pleasure in that because the only other time I saw him was with Leslie at Will’s visitation.

 

They were social friends. I shouldn’t have been angry about their desertion. Much closer friends and family were far more noticeable in their absence, but in the early days, you don’t see fine distinction through the red haze.

 

Mark found Leslie yesterday afternoon in their home. She had gone home from work with chest pains and when he called to check up on her, and gotten no answer, he went home to make sure she was all right.

 

She was just a few years younger than I am, I think. Her little boy is about two years older than my daughter. She was someone I knew who drove me a bit crazy on occasion and made poor Will completely nuts when they both served on the Jaycee board together and during the Haunted House the year Will was the chairman.

 

Mark is a widower now. A single father. And no matter how many family members and friends attend him for the next little while, he is alone.

Rehearsal


dance recital

Image by CR Artist via Flickr

My daughter has her first dance recital this Friday. I took her to the dress rehearsal at a nearby high school this evening. It is the kind of thing a normal parent does, reminding me once again that I am a normal parent and my daughter is a normal child. It’s is just circumstances that make me feel as though we are out of place. The fact is though that she and I were hardly the only two who came in a pair tonight. There were very few matched sets of parents in the auditorium watching the various groups struggle through the hurried up practices. It was mostly moms and daughters who smiled and laughed and shared this ritual, one of the many, that goes along with growing up.

 

Dee was so excited and crouched with her best friend, Riley, on the top step of the stage I felt a pang of guilt when I realized that this was something the two of them would not experience together again. They have known each other since they were babies. Best friends since they could walk. It brought tears to my eyes to watch them dance across the stage together and miss their cues because they were too busy comparing bug bites on their legs or giggling about something that is only funny if you are four…….and best friends. They hugged good-bye when their rehearsal was through. All smiles. They would see each other in the morning before school began and play together at recess. And I wondered what the scene might look like in a few weeks when good-bye would be longer than just the summer, and how I would deal with the tears that would come later this summer when Dee realizes the fall will bring a new school without familiar faces. Without her best friend, Riley.

 

Tonight was just a rehearsal. One of the many you have in life.

 

 

Sold


Sold it

Image by Mundoo via Flickr

Oprah hosted an episode recently that dealt with bereaved who weren’t able to get rid of their loved one’s things. The point that the experts made was that eventually closets need to be cleaned out and possessions are just “stuff” that needs to be given away or disposed of so one can “move on”. Someone on the YWBB posted about how they made it sound so very easy.

 

Of course it sounded easier on Oprah because, I would guess, not one of the people dispensing the advice had ever lost a spouse (or child). Anything is easy in theory.

 

I sold my house yesterday. It is the house Will and I bought together just weeks before he started to get very sick and less than two months before the doctors told us it was terminal. He only lived here a year and a half and suffered from dementia the entire time, so there really are no happy memories, but it is still a little sad. This is the house where Will and I had planned to raise Dee and a sibling. It represents all the dreams we had for the future. Our future. But that was not what was meant for him, or me, and all I can do now is hope that whatever it was he was supposed to do wherever he is, that he has as much love and happiness now as I do, and that someday our futures may cross again for a moment.

 

None of this is easy. And they are wrong when they call it “moving on”. You don’t do that really. You move forward because it is the only direction that time travels, and eventually you come to find that you are looking forward more than back and that there are things, people and places waiting for you up ahead. They won’t replace what you have lost, but they become new and special in their own right.

 

So, I have sold the house to a very nice young couple who were so excited at the mere thought of living here that they were nearly jumping up and down according to their realtor. That makes me happy.

 

I will see my new home in less than two weeks. I am not jumping up and down, mainly because I am too tired, but I am excited. Rob showed me the neighborhood on Google Earth the last time he was here. It already has a familiar feel to it. Enough that I already refer to it as home which has caused a bit of confusion.

 

Today Dee and I are going out to the cemetery to clean off Will’s headstone and place some flowers for Memorial Day. I am not sure when or if I will ever go back there. But like the house, it represents a path I am no longer on.