WIDOW FOR A YEAR

In his book A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis recorded his reflections following the death of his wife.  I have read this book twice – once years ago and, again, after the death of my husband.  

I don't know how I happened to read Lewis' grief memoir the first time. I'm pretty sure I wasn't mourning anyone or anything back then.  Still, I remember being struck by this line:  And grief still feels like waiting. After Bill died, I remembered the book and I remembered the line.

Upon rereading the book, I found the full quote.  Here it is:

And grief still feels like fear.  Perhaps, more strictly like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about, waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down.  I yawn, I fidget . . .

It is a year today since Bill passed, and I find that much of this quotation resonates deeply with me--the suspense, the waiting, the provisional feeling, the fidgeting.  

 

How to describe the suspense?  I suppose it is not having a clear picture of how my life will now unfold.  Of course, none of us knows how our lives will unfold, but we are able sometimes, for a long or short while, to feel comfortable on a path without thinking about its ending.  And then there is an upheaval, and the path is no longer apparent.  That’s where I am now. 

 

And what of the waiting?  I haven't experienced Lewis' "hanging about waiting for something to happen."  I have kept busy with family and friends, with packing up a house and looking for another.  And yet the notion of waiting feels very familiar.  But what is it exactly that I am waiting for?  Am I waiting for BiIl to return?  For my old life with him to resume?  Of course, I know this isn’t going to happen, but I’m not sure my body, heart, and soul have gotten the message.  I think of the title of the memoir that Joan Didion wrote after the death of her husband:  The Year of Magical Thinking.  I don’t think I’m doing magical thinking, but I suspect it is unconscious magical feelings that give rise to this sense of waiting. 

 

Closely related to the feelings of suspense and waiting, is the feeling that everything is provisional.  My steps toward starting a new life feel tentative and uncertain.  I wonder if I will ever feel settled, comfortable on a new path. 

 

And finally, there is the fidgeting.  Evenings continue to be difficult.  I miss Bill very much as each day draws toward its close.  I wander around the house.  I find I am too distracted to read, and, so, I sit down and stream something until I can go to bed -- a not terribly satisfactory way of warding off loneliness.

 

And that's enough for C. S. Lewis.  Here, in no particular order, are a few more of my own thoughts at the end of this year,

 

The first few months after Bill died, I was in an altered state.  I did many things, but I don’t think I was fully present.  I am startled to remember  that I got my hair cut the day after he died and went for a pedicure the day after that. Sure, I hadn’t been doing much self-care in the final weeks of his life, but a haircut and a pedicure? 

 

There have been a lot of ups and downs since Bill passed.  I have been feeling quite emotional and teary in the run up to this anniversary, but, in general, I don’t cry often.  When tears do come, they always sneak up on me, without warning.  A couple of examples:

 

I donated Bill’s clothes over the course of many months.  This did not cause me distress; I miss him--his things are no substitute. And yet, on the day when I gathered up the last of his clothes, I took a suit off a hanger and found myself holding it against my body and weeping.  I wept for the man who wore the suit before he got sick.  I wept for the man I loved.

 

While I was checking out groceries recently, the cashier admired my antique wedding ring.  She went on and on about how beautiful it was.  I barely made it out of the store before tears began to fall. Although I wear the ring every day, it had never inspired tears before.

 

In addition to the painful times, there have been happy times, strings of days when I feel close to “normal.”  I sometimes feel guilty during these good spells.  I don’t think this is an uncommon feeling.  A friend who lost her husband a couple of years ago asks, “Does feeling okay mean we didn’t love our husbands?”  We conclude it does not.  We still love them and we know they would want us to move forward and not wallow in grief.  I try to remind myself to enjoy the good days while they last, because the grief will circle back around.

 

Which brings me to my next thought.  In my experience, grief is not a straight line; it is a spiral that spins away, then back again. 

 

I continue to feel untethered.  This feeling was starting to fade a bit until I began packing up my house.  Now the untethered, unsettled feeling is back.

 

                                Photo by Al Soot on Unsplash

(I looked for an illustration of “untethered,” and when I settled on this photo, I was happily surprised to find that a red balloon near its center was heart-shaped. Look closely and you will see it.)

People speak of “getting over” a loss; I don’t believe this happens.  I think we learn to carry the loss, to fold it into our lives. I recently received a mailing from the hospice that cared for Bill.  It suggested that the second year after a loss can be more difficult than the first because there is so much business to take care of during the first year.  I am choosing not to believe this.  I am choosing to believe it will be easier to carry the loss as time goes by. 

There has been progress. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that something had shifted, but I couldn't put my finger on it.  I finally realized that after many months of finding it uncomfortable to spend time by myself, I was able to be alone without feeling the need to call someone to keep me company. This was a great relief, as prior to Bill's death I had not only relished, but required, time alone.

 

I often feel Bill’s presence. I talk to him. I believe there is some part of him that lives on and is watching over me. 

Please don’t try to talk me out of this. 

 

Over the course of my life, I have seen a rainbow maybe once every year or two.  I have seen three or four rainbows during this last year.  I like to think that Bill is hanging them for me.  

Please don't try to talk me out of this either. 

 

Dear readers, hug your loved ones and be patient with their foibles.  No one knows what tomorrow will bring.

AM I BRAVE?

Over the course of the last few months as I’ve been preparing to sell, then selling, my home, and beginning to look for a new place to live, more than one friend has told me that I am brave, that I am doing great.  They are, I believe, reacting to the fact that I have been tending to most of this by myself, while grieving my husband who died just under a year ago. 

 

My friend Noelle even sent me this postcard to bolster my courage and remind me that I am equal to the tasks at hand:

 

 

I deeply appreciate these words of encouragement from my friends. They have kept me going when my spirits are low and my energy is flagging.  

 

And, yet, I wonder, am I brave?  

Or am I just doing what has to be done?   

  

Do I hear you protesting that this doesn’t have to be done, that I don’t have to move, that, indeed, the conventional wisdom is that one shouldn’t make any major decisions for at least a year after suffering the loss of one’s spouse? 

 

Well, yes, but conventional wisdom does not apply here.  My decision to move was not a sudden one.  I have wanted to move for several years.  This was not a house to grow old in -- bedrooms up one set of stairs and laundry down another. Too much house and too much garden for this time in our lives. But my beloved Bill did not like change and did not want to move. And just when I thought the time might be right to convince him we needed to downsize, he received his cancer diagnosis. After that, any thoughts of moving were set aside, as we put all of our energy into facing this new challenge together.  

 

That was over three years ago. I am glad Bill got to spend his final years in the home that he loved, without the upheaval of a move to disrupt his routines.  But since his passing, I have been rattling around our house, missing him and wishing for much less room in which to rattle. So, yes, I do feel that I have to move, and waiting another year would not make the prospect any less daunting.  

 

And daunting it is. After months of sorting, discarding, donating etc., the adjective I am most often applying to myself is not brave, but exhausted.  Add a sick cat and the search for a new house to the aforementioned emptying out the of old house, and another adjective on repeat play is overwhelmed.

 

Soon after Bill died, I mentioned widow’s brain in a post.  Overwhelm seems to be affecting me in similar ways.  Here are a couple of examples:

 

Yesterday, I got in my car to take my cat to the vet, and almost left before remembering the cat was still in the house.

 

Today, I opened the door from my house to my garage and was shocked to find that my car was missing. After a moment of panic, I remembered that I had dropped it off for service earlier in the day.  

 

These signs of overwhelm notwithstanding, I am continuing to put one foot in front of another as I slog to the finish line of this move.  I don’t know if this is brave, but if it is, I know a great many brave people, people getting on with their lives in the face of roadblocks and challenges, loneliness and sorrow. 

 

Maybe just getting out of bed and moving forward during these times of political upheaval is brave.  And if that is brave, imagine the bravery of those getting up every day in a war zone, and attempting to keep their families safe.  

 

Friends, let us applaud bravery of every description.  And, before I sign off, let me leave you with this unsolicited advice:  If you have lived in your house for over ten years and if you think you might move anytime in, say, the next ten years, start getting rid of things now.  

Trust me, you will be glad you did.

 

 

MYSTERIES OF AGING

I have recently found myself quoting Bette Davis on more than one occasion.  “Growing older,” she is reputed to have said, “is not for sissies.”  Here are some of the surprises/mysteries of aging that I have encountered as I contemplate Bette's words:

There is a woman living in my house with me.  I did not invite her in, and I don’t want her company.  She looks a bit like my mother and a bit like my Aunt Pat (may they rest in peace).  To be honest, I have not seen this woman in the flesh, but she follows me from mirror to mirror, so I know she’s here and I know what she looks like. 

 

Fingers crossed she will stay behind to haunt the new inhabitants of this house when I move.    

 

I don't feel old. Yes, my chronological age is mid-70s, and, sure, I sometimes feel my age physically after spending a day with my grandkids, but the age I feel in my heart and soul is 50-ish. 

Which brings me to my next point. 

 

Grandmothers depicted in children’s books are nearly always dumpy and featureless, with short, gray poodle curls.  Oh, and they are often wearing an apron.  Ok, so I occasionally wear an apron, but I don’t look like these illustrations and neither do my friends.  Can we update these illustrations, please?

 

Time is moving much more swiftly than ever before. Indeed, it is galloping by so quickly that I sometimes feel I had better jump out of the way or it will run me over.  Here is an example -  my twin granddaughters who were born five minutes ago just celebrated their fourth birthday! 

 

When I wake up in the morning, my hair is parted down the back of my head, in the manner of the Red Sea.  Even if  I wet it down and dry it, there is still a visible dent where the Red Sea has come back together.  

The dent

I go to bed earlier than I used to.  This doesn't make me a sissy, though. It's just my way of staying well-rested so that I can walk through the world (without an apron) feeling 50-ish . . . 

That's my story and I'm sticking with it. 

WITH GRACE AND WITHOUT REGRET

 

Yikes!!  I have accepted an offer on my house. This feels like a very big deal.  

  

Shall I explain?

 

My ex and I bought this house in 1993 when our girls were young.  The girls are now grown and have families and homes of their own.  My marriage to their father ended over 25 years ago, and I shared this house with a new husband for more than 20 years, until he died last summer.  

Since Bill's death, I have been living in too much house with too many memories.  It is definitely time to downsize.  Still, leaving this house where I raised my daughters and saw Bill through his final days, and starting over by myself in a new neighborhood feels daunting.  Perhaps most daunting is the thought of leaving behind the garden I have tended for so long.  It is true I have reached the point where the garden has become too much for me to handle, but it will still be a wrench to leave it behind.  

 

                                Here is a slice of the garden I am so reluctant to part with.

I have read that our bodies experience fear and excitement in exactly the same way--racing heart, sweat, adrenaline--and that it is our brains that decide which label to apply.  At the moment, my brain is vacillating between fear and excitement.  And is it any wonder?  This whole house-sale thing happened very fast--just a few days between listing the house and accepting an offer. 

 

My head is spinning.  

 

I was the weekly garden columnist for The Columbian (my City's daily paper) back in the '90s, and while riding my waves of emotion this morning, I remembered a column I had written about making peace with the transience of home and garden ownership. Thinking I might find some wisdom there from my younger self, I hauled out a box filled with my columns and found the one in question.  

 

Here it is, more or less as written in 1995:

 

             A year and a half in this house and I was beginning to feel that this garden was really “mine."  Sure, I had been intimidated at first, impressed by the 30 years of landscaping that had preceded my residence.  But hadn’t I ripped out miles of ivy and replaced it with perennials?  Hadn’t I disposed of a slew of junipers and put in blueberries and old roses?

 

             Surely my hours of weeding and planning, not to mention the title to the house, qualified me as the rightful owner of this garden. Well, yes, but yesterday I was reminded of the tenuousness of my claim.

 

             Here’s what happened.  When we moved in, there was a small, square wooden planter out in front of the garage.  Painted the same color as the house, it looked as though some thought had been given to its placement.

 

             There was a Mexican heather in the box when we took up residence in November of 1993, but it didn’t survive the winter.   So, last spring, I replanted the box with various annuals and kept them watered and fertilized.  Nothing thrived.  This spring, I set out some perennials, but again they just sat there looking puny.

 

             I decided to empty the box, replace the soil, and start over.  Which brings me to yesterday when I lifted the box to dump the soil and found a board at the bottom, carved with the names of the home’s former owners.  I expect they would not want their names bandied about in this newspaper, so I will call them Dan and Susan. 

 

             Susan is living in a condo now, where I understand she has a small space for gardening.  And Dan, far too early the victim of Alzheimer’s disease, spends his days and nights in a facility for those stricken with this cruel ailment.

 

             But when I uncovered that board, I was filled with the sense of  their presence.  I could see them planning the gardens, planting the junipers, trimming the bamboo, raising their kids, living their lives on this small plot of land to which I have so quickly become so fiercely attached.

 

             And I could see for a moment the next resident finding some artifact from our days in this house and pausing to wonder about our lives, then gathering her own life gratefully about her and getting on with the task at hand.

 

             Isn't this is as it should be? We don’t really own the land, no matter how many deeds we have in our safe deposit boxes.  It’s a funny thing about gardening--it makes you feel closer to the land, but it doesn’t necessarily heighten your sense of ownership.         

       

             Maybe that’s because gardening is an activity marked by transiency.  We watch as seeds grow into plants, then tumble into compost.  Favorite blooms—iris, tulips, peonies—are often the most ephemeral, and while gardening activities may stretch to cover seven or eight months in our mild climate, the high gardening season lasts five to six months at best.

 

             With so much of gardening given over to dreaming and planning, rearranging and starting anew, there’s rarely a sense of  being finished, even after many years.

 

             And while it is possible to view a house as a thing, a property to be owned and sold, the longer we labor on a piece of land, the less likely we are to believe that it belongs to us.

 

             Of course, we may become attached, even devoted to the land that we tend, but our very work forces us to see the larger hand of  nature at work. If we seek to create beauty without doing harm, we come to understand that we are mere stewards of the land, handmaidens to the seasons.

 

             And so, as I work outside today, I think of Dan and Susan and their family, and I feel gratitude for their stewardship and for our time in this garden, which I hope will extend for many years.

 

             And I also hope that when the moment comes for us to move, we will pass along this patch of earth to its next caretaker with grace and without regret.

 

Reading over this old column all these years later, I understand what it is I must do to midwife myself through this move, and that is to move forward with grace and to waste no time on regret.

 

Happily, the new owners, if the deal goes through, seem like they will make good stewards of this home and garden.  Believing this helps me to lean more toward excitement than fear as I imagine my next home.

There will be another, more manageable garden.  There will be another, smaller house. I can't quite see the details yet, but I expect it will all be just right for this new chapter of my life.  

 

 

 

          

 

         

 

         

 

 

 

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

 

                                                Matthew 22:39

 

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

                                                I Corinthians, 13

 

 

I think this is the first time I have quoted from the New Testament in my blog. These words, learned decades ago, came to me as I was thinking about love - not romantic love, but another broader, unsentimental kind of love. The above-quoted words had meaning for me when I was a child, and they continue to challenge me today.  (While I have issues with institutional Christianity, the words of Jesus still resonate.) 

 

I have been thinking about love a lot lately. Perhaps, in part, because I recently participated in a book study group, where we read Love Is the Way by Bishop Michael Curry.  Bishop Curry writes of a love that can bind a community, a radical love that might bring about social justice. I believe this is the same love Martin Luther King, Jr. was referencing when he said. “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." It is, I think, the love the Beatles were singing about in the song from which I took the title of this post.   

 

Of course, it is all well and good to set forth quotes about this kind of radical love, but how, I find myself asking, are we to cultivate and embody such love in a world so filled with hate and violence? I don’t know about you, but I am not making a lot of progress in loving certain of my neighbors.  And I am not referring here to the people in my immediate neighborhood, but to some of the people I see and hear in the news. People who spew hate. People lacking in compassion.

 

You get the idea.

 

One way I try to cultivate love, with varying degrees of success, is through the Buddhist loving kindness meditation.  Some of you are, no doubt, familiar with this meditation.  It is quite simple, although there are multiple versions.  Here is the one I like:

 

May I have an open heart.

May I be free from suffering.

May I be happy.

May I be at peace. 

 

After reciting these lines, the next step is to substitute someone you love, as in “May (name your loved one) have an open heart, etc.” After reciting the lines for as many loved ones as you like, the lines are recited for a person or persons about whom you feel neutral – e.g., the person who checks out your groceries.  

 

And then comes the hard part – reciting the lines for a person or persons about whom you have negative feelings.  I struggle with this.  Can I do this for those I believe are destroying the institutions in our country or preying on fellow citizens or starting an unnecessary war?  

 

When I try the meditation with these people in mind, I find myself reciting the words through gritted teeth.  And so, I often change the words to something like this:

 

May (the person I struggle to like, let alone love) have an open heart.

May they find compassion.

May they find empathy.

May they find humility.

 

Not perfect love, but the best I can do at the moment.

 

And what actions can we take to drive out hate with love? Perhaps we can take baby steps. In the words of the Dalai Lama, "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”  Maybe this would look like supporting our local food bank, protesting cruelty and injustice, smiling at strangers, picking up litter, helping a friend.

 

And what of faith and hope?

 

I have faith, against all evidence to the contrary, that our lives are undergirded by love.  I do not know where this faith comes from.  Maybe from my childhood religion.  Maybe from reading about near-death experiences. Persons having had such experiences routinely report experiencing, and being surrounded by, an indescribable love, a love beside which any love experienced during our lifetimes pales to a mere shadow of that encountered during the NDE.

 

As for hope, I have hope that people of good will, working together can bring about a kinder, gentler world.  Without this hope (which I sometimes struggle to hold onto), despair will surely drown out both faith and love. 

 

I will leave you with this thought:

 

“Even practicing loving-kindness for the time it takes to snap the fingers is beneficial. Each drop of practice is significant and, as the Buddha said,‘with dripping drops of water, the water jug is filled.’”

-       from insightmeditationcenter.org

May we each, in our own way, contribute to filling the jug. 

 

              Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

 

 

 

MORE NAGGING QUESTIONS

                                   Photo by Matt Walsh

Gentle reader - I once again find myself bedeviled by questions large and small, important and not so important, some keeping me awake at night - others not so much.  There is no natural order to these questions; they, in fact, make for rather a lumpy stew, which I suppose is a reflection of the state of my mind. . . . 

Here goes:

Why did the neighbor on the corner of my block still have a 12-foot-tall skeleton on display in his front yard four months after Halloween? (It disappeared this morning, just as I sat down to write this post.  The neighborhood sends its thanks.) 

Why does the neighbor across the street from the skeleton-displaying house still have Christmas lights up two months into the new year?  I like festive lights during the holiday season as much as anyone, but the juxtaposition of these lights with daffodils and other spring blooms is a bit jarring.

Why is the pull-off backing on pills not pull-off-able? You know the ones I mean.  They look like this.

Am I the only person who is not able to remove the backing without a wrestling match involving scissors and a good deal of swearing?

How does almost every single actor* (regardless of the age of the actor) in almost every single TV show or movie have teeth that resemble chiclets? Perfectly square, perfectly even, blindingly white. Are they veneers?  

Are they chiclets?

Bonus question:  Why has no one found a cure for the common cold?

Turning now to more serious subjects:

Why has the president who promised no wars on his watch started a war in the part of the world that most resembles a tinderbox, without bothering to seek authorization from Congress? 

Would the most cowardly Congress in my lifetime have stopped him if he had sought authorization? 

Before starting this war, why did our president threaten to attack Iran if it did not stop killing its citizens, even as he was sending forth ICE agents in our own country to terrorize and kill our citizens? 

Can anyone spell hypocrisy? 

Believe me, I have no admiration for the Iranian government, but are we really venturing into the Middle East again after the debacle in Iraq?

Have we learned nothing?

Why does the nation with the second-largest nuclear stockpile in the world (Russia has us beat) -- the same nation that is the only nation to have deployed a nuclear weapon against the citizens of another country -- feel free to criticize and attack other countries for trying to develop nuclear weapons?

Of course, I don't want any more countries to obtain nuclear weapons. But, as every parent knows, "Do as I say, not as I do" is not an effective message.  Perhaps cutting back our own stockpile would be a good start to making us seem less hypocritical.  (There's that word again.)

Asking for a friend - Is it possible that this war is an attempt to distract us from the high cost of groceries?  From the Epstein scandal? From our broken healthcare system?

Why are corporate leaders--and the members of Congress they have bought--still putting profits ahead of environmental concerns?  Do they not have children or grandchildren?  If they do have progeny, do they think said progeny will be able to eat, drink, and breathe profits?

Has our president read the U.S. Constitution?  If so, can he or one of his minions please point to the part of the Constitution that supports his claim that the recent Supreme Court opinion declaring many of his tariffs to be illegal was "unconstitutional"?  Has anyone told him that the definition of "unconstitutional" is not "something I don't like"?  

Why has Congress (I'm looking at you, Republicans) freely ceded its power to the president? 

Sigh.  I think I need to lie down.

*Per my actor daughter, the term "actor" covers both males and females.