happily remarried after widowhood

You’re Radiant


One day last week while we were cleaning up after lunch, Rob surprised me with “You look radiant.” And followed it up with, “I hope you’re not pregnant.” He was teasing about the being pregnant thing, but he wasn’t wrong about the radiance. All last week I felt this inner fire and joy. Sometimes all the stars align and everything seems to be in its place and you can’t remember the last time life was so perfect. Of course life isn’t perfect, ever. Even the best of times have their moments when life’s little details aren’t so little, and everything plus the kitchen sink mounts up with such an unrelenting steadiness of pace that you can almost predict the exact moment the tipping point will be reached. Almost. 

 

This week Rob noted that the radiance in my eyes and demeanor was on the retreat. For no reason and too many reasons all at once. None of them worth burdening my blog with, though my dear husband patiently listened to each one and offered arms and shoulders and many kisses in his campaign to restore radiance. Mindless radiance though is for brides, pregnant women, and very small children. Categories I don’t fall into.

 

Tonight as I was starting the pancakes for supper, Rob arrived home with an armful of roses. He’s a Virgo. They don’t give up easily. Actually, they don’t give up at all. As the pancakes burned to the griddle, Rob and I smooched in blissful ignorance, but later I pondered the question of radiance, wondered  what I look like radiant as opposed to not, and thought back to just a bit earlier in the day as I navigated the Avalanche around Sherwood Park (with a tiny assist from OnStar) and how wonderful that felt, and I decided that radiance should be mindful, a purpose even. It shouldn’t be the emotional equivalent of your Sunday best but worn everyday for no reason at all but to elicit queries and compliments.

Sold


Sold it

Image by Mundoo via Flickr

Oprah hosted an episode recently that dealt with bereaved who weren’t able to get rid of their loved one’s things. The point that the experts made was that eventually closets need to be cleaned out and possessions are just “stuff” that needs to be given away or disposed of so one can “move on”. Someone on the YWBB posted about how they made it sound so very easy.

 

Of course it sounded easier on Oprah because, I would guess, not one of the people dispensing the advice had ever lost a spouse (or child). Anything is easy in theory.

 

I sold my house yesterday. It is the house Will and I bought together just weeks before he started to get very sick and less than two months before the doctors told us it was terminal. He only lived here a year and a half and suffered from dementia the entire time, so there really are no happy memories, but it is still a little sad. This is the house where Will and I had planned to raise Dee and a sibling. It represents all the dreams we had for the future. Our future. But that was not what was meant for him, or me, and all I can do now is hope that whatever it was he was supposed to do wherever he is, that he has as much love and happiness now as I do, and that someday our futures may cross again for a moment.

 

None of this is easy. And they are wrong when they call it “moving on”. You don’t do that really. You move forward because it is the only direction that time travels, and eventually you come to find that you are looking forward more than back and that there are things, people and places waiting for you up ahead. They won’t replace what you have lost, but they become new and special in their own right.

 

So, I have sold the house to a very nice young couple who were so excited at the mere thought of living here that they were nearly jumping up and down according to their realtor. That makes me happy.

 

I will see my new home in less than two weeks. I am not jumping up and down, mainly because I am too tired, but I am excited. Rob showed me the neighborhood on Google Earth the last time he was here. It already has a familiar feel to it. Enough that I already refer to it as home which has caused a bit of confusion.

 

Today Dee and I are going out to the cemetery to clean off Will’s headstone and place some flowers for Memorial Day. I am not sure when or if I will ever go back there. But like the house, it represents a path I am no longer on.