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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.

On Being Dramatic


Stage in Polish Theatre in Bielsko-Biała.

Image via Wikipedia

I can be dramatic, and dramatically understated about it too. It stems from a passionate sense of fairness for the most part, an inability to understand why some people can be so deliberate in their contempt for others feelings and circumstances, and a need to fix things that might…possibly…border on the edges of being a tiny bit of a control freak. Hmmm….there is that ability to understate again. This is not to say that I don’t sometimes simply explode with impatience at the ways of a world that sometimes baffles me, but for the most part my Queen-like tendencies are more like the lioness than royalty.

 

My sweet fuzzy husband-to-be is more often bemused than amused by my “impatience”. He is usually quite good at reigning me in with humor and reason, and he is a good listener. He never tries to tell me what I think or to define my perception of things. Though sometimes I just “wanna be mad for a while”, it seems to me he doesn’t indulge that want for longer than I need. When I am ready, he is there to offer a cooler perspective. It’s nice to be read so well again.

 

The only regrets I have about my more pointed outbursts, aside from the fact that I had them in the first place, is that more often than not I am wasting effort. But it’s hard to ignore the challenge of a windmill, when it is begging to be slain. At least for me.

 

 

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.