dating a widower

Devils Den


The CCC overlook

The CCC overlook/Image via Wikipedia

There is so much to say and yet the hour is late for telling it all right now. I will tell it all, as much as I remember. I didn’t write it down as it occurred though I probably should have. I find that the most important moments of my life are often recounted retrospectively and are thus suspect for total accuracy.

I believe now however that I can safely add Arkansas to my list of the most romantic places on earth, and I don’t even think my now fiance would argue the point. Well, not much.

I can’t remember a better week. As my co-worker T. Pilcher would say, “Everyday is a festival!” Everyday in that cabin in Devils Den State park was that and more. The simplest things, like breakfast for instance, was something to be savored, prolonged, because it was just too wonderful to rush through.

Sometimes you forget just how perfect life really is amidst the surviving and the details. It takes those simple moments together with someone you care about to bring the reality of what a joy life is home again.

That was what this last week was like for me. It was being home again.

Looking Back


Lot's Wife on the Dead Sea Shore

Lot's Wife on the Dead Sea Shore by Ian W Scott via Flickr

In the beginning, I looked back a lot. Went over every detail and tried to figure out what I overlooked or just didn’t see that could have made the difference between Will dying or still being alive.

When it finally sunk in that this was not the most productive use of my time, I downgraded that particular brand of self-torture to “hobby” and took up the full-time task of trying to stay one-step ahead of disaster.

My world was a house of cards, and it took only the slightest suggestion of a breeze to threaten it. I was single-minded in this respect as well. I rarely let anyone stop me from doing what I thought needed to be done. There were times when I was wrong, because who isn’t, but more often I managed to come to just the right solution and stave off the wind for another day.

Afterwards, I tarried for quite some time in the eye of the hurricane that I had been holding off with super-human will, but as time passed and the urgent needs of survival faded, I found that I wasn’t able to anymore. The adrenaline surge came to an abrupt and I was swept into the maelstrom.

Storms pass, even tropical ones, and you climb out of the temporary shelters, assess the damage and call your insurance man. That used to be Will. And then it was just me and whomever I could cajole into assisting me. Now there is an exotic Canadian applying for the job. It is harder than I thought it would be to allow him to help. I thought I had learned so much. In the end, I still have trust and control issues to work on.

Still, once upon a time, I didn’t even acknowledge the existence of  these issues, let alone work on them.

I am not sure how it happened that I came to fall in love and agree to abandon the cocoon existence I had so carefully constructed for myself and my daughter. For all my Saggitarian impulsiveness, I am more of a water rabbit. Bunnies don’t like working without a net. It makes us cranky. Crankiness being our standard cover for insecurities and fears.

I guess it would be too simple to say that I just couldn’t resist, but I couldn’t. There is something compelling and ultimately futile in resisting destiny and oddly unmistakable. I have never been able to back away, even when I was terrified, and I wouldn’t say that I am really. How could I be after all that has happened? But, I am not naive. I don’t lightly discount the fates. Destiny is the stronger force, but the fates will play havoc where they may.

An Engineer will tell you the Glass is just Poorly Designed


A glass half full

Tomorrow Rob, my boyfriend, will finally arrive. He is driving down from Alberta which is a province in Canada. We met on the internet. Apropos considering how much of my life has been spent there in the last couple of years. Last year certainly. The message board we encountered each other on is a site for young widowed people. Not exactly somewhere you would think about finding love. And it wasn’t love. Not at first. It was a friendship.

As it turned out we both have the same need to communicate through the written word, and truthfully are probably much better at communicating that way. We exchanged emails that were more like letters of old, and it wasn’t long before IM’s began eating away sleep time the way grief once did, but I was a much happier person for it and, I assume, so was he.

We met in person for the first time the last weekend in February in Idaho. And yes, that is an odd romantic destination. It will always be a romantic place in my mind however. Now, two some weeks later, he is coming here to spend my spring break with me. In Arkansas. And before you think it, I refute utterly the idea that we might not have much of a clue about romantic getaways. It is not the setting that makes an encounter between two people romantic. It is the intent.