Category Archives: Friends

Words for a New Widow

30 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Friends, Grief

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Today I learned that the husband of a neighbor died three days ago. In an instant, I was transported to the first days after Kevin died almost six years ago. Shirley came to see me. We hadn’t lived here a year yet, and I had a full-time job so hadn’t gotten to know many of the neighbors. I didn’t even recognize her but that didn’t stop her. She knew I was here alone and didn’t hesitate to take me under her wing. She came back the next day and asked what I needed, and I still wasn’t sure what her name was! Luckily, my sister had arrived and made her own introduction to help me out.

I prepared to take Kevin’s cremains to South Dakota for a memorial service, and she offered to help another neighbor take care of our dogs while I was gone. (It didn’t happen because Buddy ended up needing veterinary surgery care, but that’s another story.) Now, that’s generous.

When I came home about a week later, she called and insisted I go out to supper with her and her husband. I still remember it; we went to Uno for a burger. Uno is a restaurant I had not been to before, and now it’s not even there any longer.

A week after that, she just happened to have an extra ticket to a local big deal, a Christmas concert at her church. I didn’t really want to go but she talked me into it, and I am grateful she did. It was a kindness of the true holiday spirit, and it did uplift me.

She checked in on me from time to time after that. I would see either her or her husband walking their dogs, or at lunch, or the garden center, and just here and there. By now, I have recommended a hair stylist to her (she loved my cut but did not like the stylist or her cut), have borrowed her fondue pot, asked her advice about my consulting business, and given her rides to lunch. I know her much better now.

And yet, grief over the loss of a spouse — any grief, but especially this one — is so very personal that I am hesitant to intrude. Her children and grandchildren are arriving, and I don’t want to be in the way.

I have created my own sympathy card and will take it to her tomorrow. This is my message for her.

The Thing About Grief…

I was swept off my feet with the experience of losing someone special, too. But I don’t know how you feel about your loss or what your worries are.

I also had doubts about what I should do next, where I should be, how I was supposed to act or react. But I don’t know what kinds of doubts you have.

I felt the distress of wading into unfamiliar territory, the messiness of grief. But I don’t know what you find uncomfortable or awkward.

I can now recognize the joy that is mixed in with the sadness. Be kind to yourself, patient, and trust that you will have these kinds of discoveries, too. I’ll help you if you want me to.

I understand now that love does not end because he is gone, that grief does not last forever. You probably can’t see it yet. I’ll listen when you want to talk.

I am encouraged by knowing that every ending is followed by a new beginning. I believe you will grow from this experience. Yes, even at your age! I’ll help you celebrate when you are ready.

Nobody knows your grief except you. I can’t guess what you’re going through, and you couldn’t explain it all if you tried. That’s okay. You’re okay. You’ll do it right; there is no other way. That’s the thing about grief. 

–Solowingnow.com, Patricia Duggan

Rest in peace, Don. Rest, Shirley.

The Second Hurdle

30 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by in Friends, Making progress

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That mountain looked mighty big. In fact, it looked plain mighty. It was rumored that a rookie motorcyclist of less than a year’s experience was going to attempt crossing the Beartooth Pass in Montana. Sixty-eight miles of windy, curvy roads, and the highest elevation highway in the Northern Rockies. It is heralded as one of the most scenic Beartooth mapdrives in the U.S., but I don’t know how anyone who was driving would be able to see anything but the road in front of her. I didn’t.

It was July but we were pulled over to dress warmer in our leather coats, gloves, and balaclavas. Was it true that there was still snow at the top? We: my friend Janet and her husband Troy, who both had been driving motorcycles for 30 years. Pat beartooth pass groupMy brother Jeff, who had been driving at least 20 years but this was his first big road trip. My husband Kevin, who had been driving since he was in high school. And me, that scared rookie.

Curves are hard enough, but managing the climbing speed on the Montana side, and then the downhill control on the Wyoming side meant finessing the clutch, the accelerator, and brakes while keeping the 658# bike upright. Though possible snow.  What was I thinking?!?

We decided I should go first so I could set the pace. I would be followed by Jeff, then Troy and Janet, with Kevin last. I believe in following speed limit signs, even on a motorcycle, especially on the curves. They were all so patient and encouraging I didn’t have the heart to tell them I wanted to  change my mind. Plus, I knew we were almost 600 miles from home, and either they went over without me and I drove back home alone, or they had to forfeit the trip. Sometimes it’s good to have that kind of motivation. Of course, I knew they would never have agreed to this in the first place if they – the experienced ones – didn’t believe I could do it safely. Umm, did I say this was my idea?

Montana Side
Wyoming side

Holding a big bike upright is a lot easier if you are going faster rather than slower. I already knew this from the 1000 miles of practice I had in the previous months. Still, I wasn’t going to do anything stupid. And so we pulled back onto the road, with me in the lead, at about 25 mph. The first couple of miles were fine, like riding the Black Hills of South Dakota, and I relaxed a little. I had done this before, and I could do it again. But as we climbed, I started praying, “Oh, God; oh, God; oh God!!”

Troy zoomed by me. Then Janet. I started to sweat and feel like I was out of my league. They were out of sight, around a turn to the right. I made that turn and found myself in a topless tunnel of snow with walls almost 20’ high and a blue sky overhead. Up ahead on the side of the road I saw Troy, crouching down with a camera in his hands, ready to get my picture as I drove through the Pass. Janet was right there ahead of me; she pulled off on the slim shoulder but there was no room for me.

pat-beartooth-snow-tunnel-e1525101106515.jpg

yes, it was July 16 – Janet on yellow bike, me in pink coat behind

I kept going. All by myself; I didn’t see anyone in my rearview mirror. Around the next curve, and the next one. No one ahead of me. Then there was a large pull-off area next to a snow field. I made it safely and parked my bike. I realized how cool and windy it was but I was too hyped to be cold. Kevin and Jeff were suddenly beside me, smiling big goofy smiles, feeling the freedom and the accomplishment. I started crying. pat kevin snowThe stress and the excitement and the relief washed over me. I had done it. Sort of – I had to get down the other side yet, but still, this was something amazing I had done. I was staying between the mountain and the wild blue yonder.We made it down the Wyoming side without incident, although there was a bad accident we had to drive by. I chose not to look but the others said there was a mangled motorcycle on the side of the road beyond the ambulance and cop cars.

At dinner that night, Janet presented me with a small sign:

I never doubted that I could do it. The question was whether I would do it. It’s one thing to know something intellectually, and it’s another to feel the feelings of fear, then step into that fear and do whatever it is anyway. If you’re like me, you play Devil’s Advocate with yourself, imagining all the What-Ifs that could happen, judging yourself before you even try. But I know the antidote for fear is preparation, followed by action. When you are tempted to let fear shut you down, remember that developing any skill is a process. If you try, you evolve. Good habits make us better; bad habits help us get worse. Understanding the situation from all sides is prudent. Having a back-up plan is responsible. A little teensy bit of fear is maybe a good thing – it keeps you alert and aware.

I have been known to ask myself, “I wonder what I would be capable of if I just would apply myself?” That’s not fear speaking; that’s laziness! I do enough to get by sometimes, and then I feel the sorrow of not having really tried. What has been working for me lately is the mantra that It’s my time to become the solution. I have shifted my mindset, to feel the fear and do it anyway, or to just get off my butt and do it anyway..

I sold Kevin’s bike a year after he died. Mine has been sitting in the garage ever since, waiting for the time I feel like riding again.  It’s not doubt or fear that keeps me away. It just doesn’t feel the same without him. I had taken it out a few times that first summer after he passed, but that fire has gone out.  I know I could if I wanted to, I just don’t.

I’m thinking I might sell it and buy a convertible instead.

The Things We Keep

01 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Friends, Uncategorized

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I want to tell you about my friend Jackie,

jackienme

Last summer at the Eastern Shore

who moved about three months ago from Virginia to Pennsylvania, which is  home to her even though she has lived here for 16 years. Isn’t that how it goes sometimes….you live somewhere, with friends and furniture and fun memories, but those fixtures are not enough to ease the longing for that place we call home, that sense of truly belonging, with the people we love most, trying to fill the void that can’t be appeased with all the stuff we have accumulated.

 

Jackie had spent nearly a full month culling out the things she no longer wanted or needed (an exercise could all benefit from if we had the motivation she does). She had a yard sale, then donated several boxes to a local charity, and even gave some things away (I got 2 plants and Pampered Chef pitcher!). She sorted and saved, wrapped and rewrapped,  packed and  piled her things to keep and to let go of. She started out quite deliberately, and then as the time of leaving got closer (and as friends were more objective than she), released some things to make room for the new life she was curating.

I went to help her or hang out a few different times. I admit I was a little jealous of the wide-open, fresh-start future awaiting her. She returned home, but I don’t know where my “home” is. Her roots go deep; mine go wide. Her parents live in the house she grew up in; not only are my parents both deceased, but my closest sibling to my home town is nearly 100 miles from there. She had a plan; I feel  adrift most days. She is single, never married, no kids (but 2 adorable dogs); I am solo, hundreds of miles from my nearest sister and thousands of miles from my three kids and five grandkids, still occasionally overcome with memories and dreams of a life that has been short-circuited. Of course, I am happy for her, and truth to told, I am not unhappy with my own choices to stay put and wait for inspiration.

It was interesting to peek into the pieces of her life as we packed and rummaged through closets and arranged the stuff that makes up her. I was reminded of how I painstakingly went through each and every single item that was Kevin’s after he died, which has taken me most of three years to do. And I couldn’t help but think as I drove away from Jackie’s what it would (a) take to divest myself of my stuff to make yet another move and (b) for my kids to someday have to go through this exercise without me. Except for the “crap” (as Kevin would call it) in my Diva Den, which is all my crafting/sewing/painting/unused exercise stuff, I think I don’t have all that much that would cause them to ask “WTH was she thinking?!??  It may not all be necessary, but it’s comforting and meaningful, and it reflects me.

So back to Jackie. One 30-something aged woman, two dogs. A yard sale, a donations pile, a large trash bin. A 20′ U-Haul, a car trunk, and a full SUV. Full of energy and optimism. Kevin went quietly and quickly, without a dime, nor a pair of shoes on his I-hate-bare-feet, nor his glasses to see where he was going, a book for while he was waiting at the Pearly Gates, not even a pair of pants or even his own toga! He left behind friends, memories, and a garage and one attic full of just his stuff. That’s the way to go, I guess.  If prepping and packing and purging weren’t so dramatic and draining, I might consider it myself. If I knew where to go. So I’d know what to keep and what to let go of.

Once I had to make a bottom-line decision about what to keep. It’s like those people who face evacuation from a raging fire or a hurricane. My house was in imminent danger of flooding (Moorhead MN, April 1997). I was going to have to leave. I told my boys to pack up a suitcase each with enough clothes for a week, and I had friends clean out the refrigerator and freezer. I took my box of important papers and a stack of photo albums (yeah, it was before the digital age). And we drove  away. It was not hard in that moment to prioritize my valuables. I was mentally prepared to completely start over if I had to.

What is hard is going down Memory Lane, taking detours, reliving every significant moment, touching your past, and deciding what things to keep. Is the apron my great-grandmother crocheted important enough? What about my favorite book(s)? The wedding dress? The pottery collection? How about those red plates I got a second job for so I could afford them? The basket of old love letters and other memorabilia from school days or between-husbands days? The 60 or so dragonflies that adorn my walls? My $300 leather planner? Oh, and the painting I commissioned of the adobe wall and the hollyhocks? I love that painting. The curio cabinet Kevin gave me for Christmas? The sleigh bed I always wanted and now have? The cedar chest or what’s in it?

How much of all the stuff I have is “valuable” because of the joyful experience I had acquiring it rather than any monetary merit? What is replaceable, if I could afford to buy it new? What have I forgotten that I even had, so therefore should be willing to not keep  any longer?

I have moved at least a dozen times in my adult life. For about the last three times, I’ve said This is the Last Time! And yet, I don’t think it is. Above all, what I want to keep is my sense of self, the Me I’ve become in the past three years, while keeping the Me I was that made me who I am. Kevin’s death forced me to face the reality that life is short and so should be really lived, not endured. Helping Jackie prepare for her move showed me that while it is work, it is work worth doing to dream up new dreams and chase them down.

Another thing Jackie’s leaving has taught me is about the impact on others that you are in a relationship with. Usually it is me who does the leaving. Those dozen moves were all me driving down the highway. But this time Kevin left, and I stayed. Last year my next-door neighbors Richard and Rosie moved across town, and I stayed. Buddy died, and I am here. Now Jackie is off to Pennsylvania, and I’m still here. Maybe I’m still here because it is my time to understand how it feels when someone else leaves and I stay. Maybe what I need to keep now is my compassion and my generosity of spirit in helping others  … helping raise grandkids? Helping them to be curious about life, to go exploring, to have adventures, to make memories. To know that even when someone leaves, it’s not about you; it’s about them. To know that life goes on and relationships can still continue and thrive. That the things we keep are up to us, whether it’s a memory, an artifact, a secret, a friendship.

Jackie is coming back here for a visit, and I’m happy to report we’ll be spending some time together. We’ve managed to stay in touch by phone, text, and Facebook, so it won’t be awkward to pick up where we left off. I remember what I used to sing as a Girl Scout when I was younger:

chloechewie

Chloe                     Chewie

Make new Friends, but keep the old. Some are silver and the others gold.

 

(Shout out for Jackie’s two dogs, Chloe and Chewie who have their own blog at http://chloeandchewie.wordpress.com, and a facebook page at Life Adventures of Chloe & Chewie.)