I have heard more than one widowed person lament that they feel like a teenager again sometimes. Usually in response to some dating dilemna or disappointed/thwarted romantic pursuit. Often though, I find mysef wondering if I have not actually started my life over at 17 again. There are days when the only thing I feel is too young, inexperienced and naive to be doing the things I am doing. I feel as though I am playing. Pretending. At work. With friends. Online. My family looks at me with expressions that echo my own bewilderment. Only my daughter still seems to recognize me but even she knows when I am faking it. Knows better than nearly anyone else. The thing I remember most about highschool was the increasing frustration and sense that I was being purposely held back. I wanted so to be older. Twenty-seven or Thirty. I wanted my life settled. I wanted to know who I was going to be. Because I knew I was not her yet. That is how I feel now. I want to know who I am going to be when this journey is done. Where I am going to be. And with who. It’s like looking out the front window into the fog. Past the tiny handprints, beyond the ornamental shrubs where the sidewalk becomes the easement which is swallowed by the misty thick air. That is where I am. The I am that I will be. A dimly perceived outline in a shadowy, but not necessarily dark, future place.
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Will’s mother was widowed at thirty-three. She chose a much different path to her now than I have chosen to mine. Nevertheless, she has had an impact on the way I view widowhood and grief and it could be said that I have gone the way I have because of her in some small way.
She has never been allowed much of a role in Katy’s life. Despite what she thinks, and tells people, Will and I made this decision together before Katy was even born. Had things turned out differently, she would be just as marginalized today as she in fact is. I remind myself of this when I things like today’s Christmas card arrive that Will knew her very well and though he loved her, he didn’t much approve of her choices past and present.
About eight months after Will died, his mother decided to resume contact with Katy – not me – Katy, who was four. She would send holiday cards and drop the occasional gift off at the door when we were not home. The cards were addressed to Katy and written to me. They were full of venom even though she had professed to have forgiven me for all I did to her during Will’s illness. It’s funny to me that for some people finding Jesus is often at the loss of civility, but that’s another post for another day perhaps.
I ignored her attempts. Katy refused to acknowledge having a second grandmother at that point (though she knew she did) as a result of things that happened during the hospice months, and I wasn’t going to push it. My mother-in-law knew what she had to do in order to gain entry into our lives and wasn’t about to. At this point I think I should point out that when she found out she was going to be a grandmother at last (we’d been trying for two and a half years and she blamed me for our lack of success), her first response was that now she could finally wear a t-shirt that said “grandma” just like all the other women her age that she knew. Katy, like Will before her, was to be an accessory.
Since no one in Will’s family ever called or stopped by or checked up on us in any way past the first two or so months after he died, I didn’t feel obligated to keep them up to date on our life, or my personal life. So, they didn’t know about Rob. When he appeared or when we got serious or the engagement or our plans to move Katy and I to Canada or our marriage. In fact it was mid-August or maybe even September already when I sent out letters informing them of our marriage and our location. Will’s oldest uncle and his aunt on his dad’s side were quite nice. Will’s mother? She didn’t take it very well. At least that is what I heard.
Today her Christmas card arrived. I had asked her not to send cards to Katy with messages intended for me anymore. Her card was just the message printed inside and her signature, and then out dropped a letter for me. It was as cruel as she could make it without directly violating her new-found faith in the Lord. The lord, as we all know, is big on form and light on intent. Her opening line was:
“I could bash you for what you have done to me and Will but I forgave you for all of that and I am at peace.”
Rob told me to just forget about it. Don’t let it have power. What she thinks I did to her is of little import to me. I know what kind of person she is and this is typical of that type of person, but that she implied that I did things to Will that hurt him is a bit harder to put aside. I know she is angry. She feels that life has cheated her time and again and never gives a thought to her part in the misery that defines her life now, but still. I feel often that I failed Will even when I know I didn’t and I hate that she can push this button. I will put this card and the letter away with the others. Katy can have them when she is old enough to read and understand them.
The spring after Will died I spent a lot of time playing The Sims. In retrospect it wasn’t as mindless as it probably seemed at the time. In my little virtual reality, I had control over everything. Nothing happened without my consent and I could manipulate circumstances to have everything just the way I wanted it. Therapeutic? Professionals might not think so but as I played I slowly got tired of being in charge of everything and the lack of surprise and spontaneity and was soon just constructing my little worlds and letting the Sims run amuck in it.
There is an interactive version of sorts of the Sims called Second Life on the web now. You can build a doppelganger and hang out in cyber-realities like the crew on the Enterprise would with their holo-deck. Okay, not that “real” but I have been thinking lately about my on-line connections in terms of real or not. It was prompted by a comment that my friend Murphy made on our mommy message board the other day. She mentioned the fact that we had been “talking” with each other for eight years this coming February. Though some of the other members of our group have met in person, I haven’t met a single one. I haven’t even spoken on the phone with anyone other than Christie and that was years ago when Will first got very sick and Katy was just a baby. She twangs. A southern girl who has moved more times than I can count and fearlessly pursues her dreams from the perfect mode of employment to the best locale. I admire that about her because I am not that way at all. But aside from pictures and posts, I don’t know her like I know my best friend, Vicki or my new friend, Char. There is something about face time and body language and seeing someone in their element.
But still, Christie and Murphy and the others are my friends. We went through infertility, IVF (some of us), pregnancy/adoption, nursing, weaning, potty-training. They were there during the early days of Will’s illness when I didn’t know it was physical and was tearing my hair out – virtually – not knowing what to do. Eight years and a lot of life has been shared.
I think about my blogging friends and acquaintances too. Rob and I are acquainted with a law student in New York City who goes by the name of Pulp. He probably isn’t much older than Farron and I wouldn’t know him from a hole in the wall if I were to walk by him on the street. But he counts. I know people all over. There is Rick the rabid Republican who blogs at the Register and stubbornly refuses to except that he is wrong about climate change (he is a flat-worlder in that respect). Barb and Ali are in Australia. I got my initial dating advice from Jim and Martin in Great Britain. Tanja is my larger than life Dutch friend in Arizona. I have friends all over Canada. Sally, Heather and her sister Karen, Cheryl – who came to our wedding. I know a lot of teachers. Murphy is an economics professor in the SF Bay area. Marsha teaches somewhere in Illinois and Andrea is down in Texas. Tanja will likely be in NYC come the next school year. I met a White House correspondent ala West Wing who is now blogging in Iraq somewhere. Janet is in Idaho. Liz and Candy share a place in Arizona and date biker/musicians up in the mountains at their leisure. A recent Facebook friend has a successful pod-cast that she sells on iTunes. And I know more widowed people than I can shake a stick at.
Alicia, a widow acquaintance, and I had a short exchange on yesterday’s blog about our “relationship” and though it is not friends, it is not strangers either. We know more about each other than many people who we likely interact with on a real and regular basis. How is that? It’s a puzzlement, as the King would say. What defines a relationship? When does it stop being acquaintance? And does that mean friendship? I think not because that is a mutual consent thing but I don’t remember asking anyone to be my friend ever. In some cases I just presumed and was not rebuffed when I did so, but in many instances it seems to be unspoken but mutually understood.
So what has prompted this ramble? Moving. Again. I am finally settling in here and at the same time am getting ready to travel to Texas for an extended stay. Though not to put down roots because the idea of fire ants, alligators, humidity, hurricanes and endless expanses of concrete can’t compete with the sky here, which I will miss terribly, or the space and the dry air. And I like the people. It has been easier to fit in here than in any place I have ever been. I am not sure if that is Canada or me however.
I am psyched for Texas. Really, I am. But while I didn’t really feel as though I was leaving home when I sold the place in Des Moines and came north. I can’t say the same thing about returning.
