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Something in Common


I seldom buy The Edmonton Journal these days. I am a Globe and Mail girl. However this last weekend I was compelled not once but twice to grab it as I hustled in and out of the Safeway. The Saturday Edition featured the story of a young (very young) widower on the front page. His wife had been murdered by his brother and it inspired him to crusade on behalf of the victims’ rights movement which inadvertently has become the start of a promising political career. My friend, Marsha wrote a blog piece recently about finding the good in tragedy and this young man is a prime example of this idea. An idea that not everyone shares but I believe is true. Something good is meant to come from loss. Even it doesn’t then the lesson was lost and the tragedy is magnified. Lessons? Yeah, lessons. We weren’t put on this earth to accumulate stuff and make imaginary friends on Facebook. There is a higher purpose.

The Sunday Journal did not appear to have any widows hiding in it, but on the inside of the Culture Section there was an op-ed that first ran in the NYTimes by an author named Patty Dann. The piece detailed her relationship with another widower and how it went from the sharing of a mutual experience to friendship and love. He had written a review online about the novel she had written detailing her late husband’s illness and death. She sent him a note and they eventually became e-mail pals. The whole thing reminded me of Rob and I. How we’d started out on the e-mail and somehow what was just support and an opportunity to “talk” to a like-minded adult of the opposite sex subtly and suddenly became oh so much more. As often as I was told back then that it wasn’t possible to know something through their written words it’s nice to be validated by Ms. Dann’s story. Not that it surprises me. She and her husband to be are writers and Rob and I too. People who don’t know how to make themselves heard through the printed word or to hear someone in kind couldn’t be expected to understand how powerful a medium the writing is.

I am not sure why but I don’t relate to every widowed’s story. I understand the emotions because they are common to us as a group but the deaths themselves are so varied. The young man whose brother killed his wife had no warning. His brother was a drug addict with a mental illness who’d been released from jail on bond without any warning to his family despite his harassing them. That’s awful and too common but not something I can relate to. Just as I know that very, very few widowed can understand what it is like to care for a 29 year old man with dementia or be married to a non-responsive invalid you only see on weekends in the nursing home or hospice. I was widowed long before my late husband actually died and will never accept the idea that was so forcefully pushed at me that there is no such thing as anticipatory grief. It’s real. And I know that from ugly experience. So I find what similarites I can with others who lost spouses to long illnesses but know that I likely won’t find anyone who was emotionally and mentally cut off from their spouse for years prior to the end. One thing that draws me to some widowed people are tales of their loved one who changed mentally. Personalities flip-flopped by diseased brains. Ms. Dann’s husband had glioblastoma and lost his memory. My late husband’s memory was wiped clean by a neurodegneration caused by an inherited metabolic disorder called x-ALD. Her husband was terminal from day one. So was mine. It’s different when there is no hope. It just is.

She was luckier than me though. Most people with determined outcomes are. Her Willem understood what was wrong with him, and my Will never did. He was able to help her make final arrangements for himself. I had to do that alone, guessing at what he would have wanted as we’d never had a whole conversation about it. I dug through my memories for anything I thought might help. The only thing he did give me was the headstone. I knew that he wanted one and a place to put it. She got to make love with her Willem again and I did not. Will was uninterested in anything but pacing in circles and Mountain Dew, which he would have consumed non-stop had I not hid the cans. He didn’t know who I was. He called me “Babe” and called to our daughter as though she were a puppy  “SweetiePie. Here Sweetie Pie.”

Ms. Dann wrote a book about her experiences. It seems to be what widows do, if they have any inclination or ability (and even when they don’t have the latter at all). I honestly haven’t read anyone’s first-hand account of widowhood in book form even though I know that I need to write my own story and might benefit from seeing how others have done it. Or not. 

For now though, I have found a widow with whom I feel a bond. We fell in love again with men who wrote us e-mails.

The Lists of Fives (from Friday)


Tagging is one of those blog community things. Someone starts a list and then “tags” X number of fellow bloggers with the task of completing the list as it pertains to him or her. They in turn tag others. It’s somewhat like a chain letter, but there are no curses attached to it that I know of -aside from having to play. I was recently tagged by Ron, who tagged Rob as well. Interesting to me because I never get tagged by name. I am not one of the in-crowd in the blogger community a run in. Sigh. Sadly it seems that everything we know about interaction and other people, we learned in high school and we carry that mind-set with us into every activity we engage in as adults. Regardless, what is a blog without a good list now and then? This is a list of fives. No explanations are necessary. Anyone who wants to play can. You don’t have to wait for an invitation from me (and anyway I will just tag at random and according to whimsy at the end. I have no real idea who reads me and judging from my numbers of late I am losing audience ground (unless I post about Angelina or the newest media freak flavor). Perhaps if I had a consistent theme? I think I am a little to Sagittarian for that however.) If you have a blog, put your list there. If not, put it here in the comments and you are welcome to use my space either way.)

What I was doing 10 years ago – 1998

1) I had just gotten dumped by a guy I’d been dating about two months. He is, ironically, the reason I met my late husband and when I first saw Will this ex accused me of wanting to break up with him for Will. I should have right on the spot in retrospect. The ex was seriously stuck in his post small town high school days and had a creepy roommate who looked like the love child of Richard Nixon and Bob Hope.

2) I think I had my first date with Will this coming weekend. We went out for dinner and then to a bar up in Ankeny that was the current hang out for the Jaycee crowd we both were members of at the time.

3) I was teaching 8th grade Language Arts and Drama. It was the easiest year of teaching I’d had in a while. Small classes. Great location. Only one or two behaviorly demented children. A good year overall.

4) I discovered the Internet. Well, not literally. They finally hooked us up at school and I was one of the few teachers who had a computer station in my own room. It was awesome. I joined my first community – a soap opera site called Dragon’s Realm. I still pop in there on occasion to chat with its founder, Liz. An amazing person who lives in Arizona and dates a guitarist who once sold a song to Linda Rondstadt (who ruined it I am told). This cyber window into the larger world would prove a sanity/life saver at different points from then on. Ultimately, it lead me to where I am.

5) I was running 8 to 10 miles 5 or 6 days out of the week, kicking boxing and just began to lift weights in earnest. I was very toned and it was sweet. I loved my body then. Now I love it only occasionally but I think I may get back to the state of adoring my physical sense over the next few months. In the meantime, Rob adores it for me.

Five things on my to-do list today

1) Finish folding/putting away laundry from yesterday and probably a little light housekeeping besides as I spent most of yesterday writing. (edited to add: folding yes – housekeeping a resounding NO – but I did make pizza for supper. Evens out in the end.)

2) Take Katy to the Dr. Seuss activity at the library in Sherwood Park and have lunch at the mall afterwards. There is this place called Alberts that is a dump really, but she loves it. (edited to add: Dr Seuss was sold out:( so we went to Chapters and Katy played with the Thomas the Train set and then she had a scone with apple juice while I satisfied my chai addiction at the Starbucks. The Starbucks at Chapters in Sherwood Park Mall has the snarliest staff. The girl making the drinks looks as though she is plotting the mass murder of us all.)

3) Shop for hypoallergenic pillowcases. We’ve been using plastic garbage bags and double pillowcases but Katy is objecting to the noise and the resistance of the pillows to “fluff”.

4) Go to gym to lift weights on the way back from Sherwood Park if the child minding is still open. Otherwise I will have to skip today and go tomorrow morning. (edited to add: and I had a glorious yoga/stretching session).

5) Re-organize Katy’s room. I clean and she plays and somehow the floor never stays visible for long. (edited to add: so not done. That room is a sty I just close the door on.)

Snacks I enjoy

1) Plain crackers – unsalted tops.

2) Raisins

3) Organic toaster pastries. I had a serious Pop-Tart addiction when I met Rob and he heartily disapproved because they are basically poison, so I found a substitute in the health section of my supermarket from Nature’s Path, I think. Rob didn’t believe me until he saw them and he still thinks they are just a step away from junk but with my allergies they are about the only “treat” baked good I can eat. We don’t have them all the time as it is necessary to travel into the city to Planet Organic to get them and I don’t need them anyway.

4) Dried banana chips. I love dried fruit but it’s high in calories.

5) Soy cheddar cheese
. Soy is not all that great for a person, but I can’t do dairy too well or often and a girl has to have cheese sometimes, right?

Things I would do if I were a billionaire

1) Tell Rob to quit work. Not that I would need to nag or anything.

2) Set up trusts for the girls so they can explore life a bit. Go to school or start their own businesses. Travel while they are young. Just enough to allow for this but not so much that they would become Paris Hilton.

3) Finally settle on a couple of locations to live and travel between (my dream is to someday be able to fly between places without carrying any luggage but my computer bag). Lots of possibilities. Victoria Island or the Okanagan. Arkansas around Eureka Springs maybe. Even my hometown has areas of possibility. Rob works with a guy who recently quit to go work on a golf course. He and his wife just sold their house here and bought a new one on the edge of a course in Kimberly, B.C. Engineers, both of them. I can see us living somewhere close by to something he loves to do. Me? I write. It’s portable and as long as I have Internet access, I am good.

4) Take care of our parents. Mine are actually pretty well off financially but they are Depression Era people who won’t spend money on the help they need, but they would let me do that for them. Rob’s mom could use a trust fund though. The rest of our extended family is on their on. Sounds heartless but Rob and I are the oldest sibs and as such – relatively successful adults and our younger sibs, well, not so much. As a result there have been expectations which would undoubtedly esculate should “billionaire” (or big money in general) ever grace us. Just an upfront. NO.

5) Set up a foundation for charity donations and grants because there is no point in being that rich if you can’t help out people with great ideas and worthy causes (most of my relatives anyway don’t fall into either of the aforementioned categories). Probably money would go to Cancer and ADL research too. Personally, I believe that you shouldn’t die and leave too much to your children and none at all to other relatives. Live comfortably and give money away as much you can should be the motto.

Five of my bad habits

1) I have absolutely no tact.

2) I worry too much about my weight (hold over from my youth when I had “such a pretty face”).

3) When I am writing, I tune/zone completely out and lose track of time and the people around me.

4) I am very impatient.

5) When I miss something, I ask “What?” instead of saying, “Pardon me?”

Five places I have lived

1) Iowa – Dubuque, Iowa City, Des Moines, West Des Moines

2) Alberta, Canada

And that is it folks. I am very untraveled. Rob says I am sheltered but that is not true. I have not been sheltered from much in terms of emotional upheaval, and I have been places on trips but never had cause to pick up and move. After Will died, I made up my mind to leave Des Moines and Iowa but had a few things to take care of – debts and career switching – and before I got to far into that, I met Rob. Who says the universe doesn’t pay attention and look out for us? Just have to have your own eyes open and a bit of courage too.

Five jobs I’ve had

1) Checker at Bishop’s Buffet (actually I worked rolling silverware, making salads and desserts, busing tables and I did some book keeping too. Those people could just not keep me busy.)*

2) Housekeeping in Currier Dormitory in Iowa City* Now that was a disgusting job. The guys side had the most filthy bathrooms.

3) Dish room, salad bar/prep at same dorm’s cafeteria* There was good money in this and the hours were great. I learned the joy of a no weekend job for the first time and vowed to free myself from the tryanny of weekend work as a result.

4) Middle school Language Arts, geography, reading, media, drama and at-risk at all three grade levels at various times at locations

5) High school English, composition and dropout prevention – all grade levels at two different schools. High school book-ended my twenty-year career, one year at the start and two on the end.

* I worked at a taco place and a fast food chicken place called Sam the Chickenman too when I was in college. All my jobs before teaching convinced me that without a college degree a person spends their life at work that is soul sucking, pointless and of dubious use to mankind.

Five people I tagged

Just about everyone I know in the blogosphere has been claimed. I loved Pammy’s idea. If I could have anyone make a list here? I’m not much of a celebrity whore. Val Kilmer though? Just saw Kiss,Kiss Bang, Bang and loved it. Robert Downey Jr. too if I am going to dream. Mark Knopfler as his music is increasingly coming to represent the current soundtrack of my life. From Rob himself to the movies we watch together, Knopfler seems to be pop up in the oddest places. It might be fun to see Uncle Keith play tag but I am not sure that such social blog things are his gig (and it might be scary in that “omg why did I get on this ride?” kind of way). Frankly, tagging people is somewhat like back in grade school when you would stand and wait to get chosen for a team during gym – or worse, at recess. Recess was straight out of Lord of the Flies. Not a teacher in sight to save you. When it came to sports though, I was always picked first when I wasn’t actually a captain but in the realms of popularity that were based strictly on looks or how well you sucked up to the pretty people, I fared poorly. So as I mentioned at the beginning, play if you like – here or the at home version.

Overly Sensitive to Violence and Death as Entertainment


Rob and I watched the film, Babel, last night. It starred a very harried and old looking Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. I am pretty sure that Pitt’s wrinkles were his own but enhanced to make him appear emotionally worn and very tired. The plot isn’t clear on many points but Pitt and Blanchett were apparently on holiday in Morrocco following the death of one of their three young children. She is then shot while on a bus tour by whom officials by is a terrorist but turns out to be a pre-teen boy playing with a rifle. Meanwhile back home, the couple’s illegal Mexican nanny/housekeeper has decided to take their surviving two children to her son’s wedding in Mexico when the parents are late returning due to the shooting and she can’t find anyone she trusts to watch her charges. Now, I had a lot of questions while watching, not the least of which was why the scenes of the couple and the nanny and the children were constantly being interupted by the life of a sullen, grief-stricken deaf/mute Japanese teenage girl in Tokoyo. First why would you choose Morrocco as a holiday retreat after your child dies? And travel on a bus tour with cranky senior aged Europeans and Brits to boot? And why wouldn’t your sister-in-law rush in and take your kids after your wife has been shot? And why would an illegal take her employer’s kids to Mexico when you would think she’d realize that she was going to have one hell of a time getting them back over the border? And finally, why were all the teens in the film fixiated on sex? The Japanese girl practicially assaulted her dentist and then a policeman (though I didn’t see that part – more later on that), and the Morroccan boy was peeping at his willing older sister. 

I didn’t finish watching the film, which I know will drive Rob crazy. He looked up the synopis on Wikipedia to satisfy himself and show me that there was nothing to be upset about in the coming scenes. I told him I couldn’t watch anymore after the nanny and children are dumped in the desert in the middle of the night by her drunken nephew after an incident with U.S. Border Patrol. I was certain that something horrible was going to happen to the children and I just couldn’t bare to watch. Things like this always remind me of my own child and anxieties about her safety. “It’s just a movie” my husband reminded me but I am too raw still when it comes to possible death, even when it is just make believe. I don’t see this as entertainment although an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail assures me that it is now violence and not sex that is the number one entertainment draw.

So I didn’t finish the film and I am thinking that I will opt for comedy for the next while (though that isn’t always a safe bet as we watched Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang recently and it was dead people awash.) I wasn’t always this way but after watching my late husband die, and my fears about my loved ones in the wake, has made me quite squeamish. 

Rob thought the movie was dull and disjointed (disjointed passes for depth these days in cinema) but I got the point the filmmaker was trying to make – even though he did a very poor job of making it. I am okay with fake stuff. Like super hero movies. That’s not real. There are no superheroes. But movies that mimic reality, and it’s mostly the gross, horrible underside, I can no longer deal with. I don’t know if I ever will be able to again and am not sure that this is a bad thing.