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Time, Timing and the Healing of All Wounds


There are essentially two camps of thinking when it comes to re-partnering or finding love again after being widowed. The first camp is loud and belligerent in its conviction, believes that time must pass and grief work must be done and that all parties involved must be consulted beforehand. I don’t belong to that camp. I find them to be irritating and sheople-like. But then again, I don’t believe that time heals wounds or that such a thing as grief-work even exists (it sounds suspiciously like those “camps” that Dr. Phil holds, tapes and uses as filler when he can’t come up with real topics to discuss). I am also a firm believer in not allowing friends and family, who are merely appendages to your life really, to have say over the general direction my life. In-laws will get over you. Parents and siblings have lives of their own that should occupy them more. And children grow up and go out into the world to live lives that they won’t allow you to input to, so why do you owe them input into yours when they are essentially not mature enough, or self-less enough, to give meaningful input? The second camp, my camp, believes that love will come along again if you are open to the idea and living your life minus the drama of single twenty-somethings who read Cosmo for the man-snaring dress and sex tips and visit their tarot readers monthly to see if their bar-hopping is going to pan out. And the grief part? The idea, prevalent among first campers, that if you wallow in it hard enough and long enough it will diminish to a corner of your psyche where you can wall it off and pull it out only on anniversaries is the most simplistic thing I think I have ever heard. Grief is. And it continues to be. Forever. It diminishes, if you want to use that term, as you begin to reclaim your life and rebuild it. Nothing short of that works. Could that be the “grief-work” everyone talks about? Perhaps. But what does love have to do with it?

When I was single, and I was for forever and a day, it seemed to me that the more time I spent pondering my single state the more single I remained. It was only when I was busy living and moving forward that the opportunities to fall in love and have that love returned presented themselves. The same held true after my first husband died. And what love has to do with grieving is that it is made easier by being able to share the load with someone who cares about you in a more intimate manner than your children or your mother-in-law can. This is true of most everything in life.

I am not going to pretend that I didn’t think about falling in love and marrying again early. In fact I thought about it even before Will died. Ours was a Terry Schiavo-ish situation with him first suffering from a rapidly progressive dementia until within little more than a year, he couldn’t communicate or understand at all. At that point, I spent well over an additional year on my own before he died though the man I had married was long since gone. Though I can intellectually understand those with terminal situations who refused to contemplate the future before their spouses died. I don’t get that kind of denial personally. So, when I read things other widows have written about time lines and respect for one’s late spouse or the need to make your children the epicenter of your life until they are grown or “working” the misery as reasons to not date or begin relationships, I chalk this up to the fact that some people aren’t me.

There was a recent flare-up on the widow board caused by a poster’s plea for others to not casually toss about absolutes when replying to other people’s queries. I watched the thread for a day or so because I knew it would dissolve into the age-old debate between the daters and the not-daters. Everything widow eventually breaks down along those lines when the subject is moving on. A woman I have little patience with leapt upon this topic, as she always does, to criticize and shame those people who haven’t followed her example of simply living for her children and waiting for the day that she no longer misses her husband. I have always felt there was a story behind that and to my surprise, those who usually support her vitriol, openly or through their silence, chastised her to the point where she admitted that she was the hypocrite I suspected her to be, an early dater. Her relationship however didn’t work out and she is essentially carrying a torch for this man still. Not at all unlike what happens to the single and divorced in the world. We are not as unlike them as we like to think in this respect anyway. So much for the idea that waiting is the given though, and those who begin to feel again and act on those feelings are horrible people and bad examples.

Rob finds the finger-waggers as irritating as I do. Not because he worries about what people think. He doesn’t. But because it is disrespectful and presumptive of others to claim knowledge of his heart and mind simply because they share his widowed state. As he is fond of pointing out, widowhood does not make saints out of assholes generally, nor does it give any special ability to guide or give counsel to people who had social issues or issues at all to begin with. So, I resisted the urge to re-register and comment. Easily as it turns out but I couldn’t let it go enough not to blog on the topic because, personally, I feel that the vast majority of the bereaved are back out into the world sooner rather than later and it is those who cling to their grief via arbitrary timelines and “rules” and absolutes who are the ones who really need help. The rest of us are doing all right without them.

Make a Difference Day


All over the United States today people will meet up for various activities to try and make a difference in their communities. They will clean roadways and parks. Sponsor and volunteer at events for senior citizens or underprivileged children to bring joy or hope or just a little bit of a good time into the lives of these people. My aunt is helping out with bingo and lunch at the local high school for the seniors in her area. Never mind that she is, at 76, as senior herself. She was telling me about it when we were back in Iowa visiting last week. The do this once a year and provide transportation for people who can’t drive any more or they go to the nearby nursing homes and bring over anyone who is able to make the trip. It’s a much anticipated and appreciated event which begs the question of what do these seniors do the rest of the year? And what are the volunteers doing the other 364 days that would qualify as making a difference? Or is one only expected to put oneself out just this one day a year?

To my aunt’s credit, she makes a difference every week. Her community sponsors lunch for the senior citizens once a week at the same school and my aunt volunteers to help serve before sitting down to lunch with her friends. My aunt is not someone who volunteers to make a difference as much as she does this for herself. It makes her feel good to help those of her peers who aren’t as fortunate in their health and circumstances as she is. She doesn’t view it as making a difference as much as it just being the right thing to do.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I am opposed to Make a Difference Day. I’m not. It’s a good idea, but it is also a short-sighted one. One day of volunteering might instill the “volunteering” spirit in the odd person here and there but more likely these volunteers simply pat themselves on the back for a deed well done and then try to salvage what is left of their weekend. Longer projects like those sponsored by the Jaycees or Habitat for Humanity and Meals on Wheels Programs or local food banks/pantries are probably better ways to make differences than one time events. Still, if just a few people pick up and run with the ideas they get today then it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

Get out and make a difference America. Today is your day.

Expectations


Got an email from my oldest friend today. Not old in the chronological sense, but from the years we have known each other sense. She and I go all the way back to the fifth grade and The Church of the Resurrection Grade School. That’s thirty plus years now. Aside from family, I don’t think I go back farther with anyone else. Despite a few breaks in contact here and there over the decades, she could probably tell anyone who was interested in just how much, or not, I have changed over time. She was inquiring about our recent 25th high school reunion, which she missed, and to fill me in on her mother’s recent surgery. It seems her mother needed knee replacement and was under the impression that replacing a major joint was on par with most day surgeries. In, out and home to be all comfy snug as a drugged up bug for a day or two and then back to one’s normal routine. Alas, it was not the case. Apparently one cannot receive a new knee and go to the gym the next day and begin abusing it in spin class or on the treadmill. There is the whole pesky recuperation thing to deal with first. For my friend’s mother this means purchasing a walker, acquiring a toilet seat heightener and being eligible for a short term handicap parking sticker. I knew without her having to tell me that her mother would be horrified at the prospect of any one of those things, but all at once probably sent her over the edge. I know this because even though I haven’t seen either of her parents in many years, I have parents of my own who reject anything that hints at the fact that they might not be as young as say, my friend and I are. Which is not that young by the way.

She marveled at the differences in expectations patients can have about procedures like knee replacement. Being a doctor, she has seen these expectations run the gamut from Monty Python crowd of “It’s just a flesh wound” to those who believe there is never a good reason not to be put completely under. Expectations. And pity the poor doctor, or teacher or barista at the nearest Starbucks who can’t live up to them.

One of the reasons I was glad that immigration forced me to prematurely retire from teaching was the unrealistic expectations that were being forced on me by superiors and lawmakers and the media. A job that once beckoned me through the school days an hour or more before my students, and most of my colleagues, arrived every morning has been sucked dry of its joy the ridiculous notion that schools should be run like businesses and that educating children was no different from putting together appliances. I am sure the same could be said of medicine and the damage that has been done there by insurance companies who feel their true purpose is to enrich shareholders. Expectations. One of those eye of the beholder things, eh?

As a widowed women I found a veritable rule book of expectations I was expected to adhere to with the conviction of the newly reborn. One of my favorites was the one year rule. The widowed are expected to put off any major decisions until the first anniversary of their spouse’s death has been duly mourned for all to see. and maybe hand them certificate suitable for framing afterwards. Who knows. It sounded a bit iffy to me. Put off? What does that mean exactly? I had a master’s degree to finish. I was actually in the middle of my thesis when Will died and was preparing for my final seminar class that coming July. Selling my house perhaps? I wasn’t in dire need of that but if I had been, would it have been better to wait a year and hope a foreclosure wasn’t the result? I did reach the conclusion it was time to start looking at other career possibilities, but I was going to stick with teaching until I had things lined up. Would waiting a year to start planning my move have given me more clarity or simply thrown cold water on my momentum?

Expectations are about reality but sometimes reality bites a bit too hard to be given all that much credence. If my father hadn’t the lofty expectations he did after his strokes and being diagnosed with plumonary fibrois, he would be dead already. Expectations might inconvenience and cause us to shake are heads a bit in wonder, but in the end they are subjective thing. Better to be a square peg than one of the numerous round holes.