There have been more than a few moments in the past couple of weeks that have made me want to write stuff down… to document things I don’t want to forget about as I go through this process, but it took four inches of wet, heavy snow to keep me in my bed… drinking coffee from the I Heart NY mug… to get me to open up the computer… and procrastinate shoveling the more than a few inches of wet/heavy white stuff from the first significant snowfall. Yup, it’s beautiful… but I’m really not ready to start pushing it off of the driveway or to chisel out a hole at the end of it where the plows keep stacking it up into a nice wall of ice chunks as if a glacier just went rolling past. So, I’m just gonna jot down a few notes, drink my coffee, and rethink my decision to not get a snowblower (I don’t like the idea of having a 100 pound paper weight taking up space in the garage 352 days of the year… but they’re less expensive than four wheelers… and plow trucks).
A week ago I voted. It’s not that I’m proud of participating in my civic duty (which I am), but more the fact that when I walked in Candy and Kat (Cat?… I’m gonna go with the “C”… less confusing with the Kat/Kateri similarity) were there to check off my name and to take my ballot. The last time I saw them at town hall was when I went to vote in March after town meeting specifically to support the Visiting Nurses portion of the town budget because Kateri really wanted it to pass (it did… it always does). It was the first time I had met both of them, but I had met Cat’s wife/partner/person a few days earlier as I was trying to get an absentee ballot for Kateri. So Cat had already kinda heard about my situation and it just so happens that she is a wonderfully compassionate older lady who lives three houses down from me. Candy and her husband live a few more down the road… all of whom I don’t know well, but when it comes down to it… I know I can rely on them as neighbors, and as friends… and they can rely on me. I feel that way because when I walked in to Town Hall to vote last week… they both gave me a hug… Candy and I caught up on the shit pile in her life (cancer and loved ones)… and tears filled Cat’s eyes before she even said a word to me… or embraced me in her arms. Her empathy was overwhelming. The sense of community was overwhelming. This is where Kateri and I had decided to set roots… and these women showed me that we had made the right decision… as I am left here without my wife to figure out where and what home is. It was heartwarming. It felt… good.
There have been more than a few moments in the recent past that have made me feel good. It’s a strange thing to feel after months of nothing but the pile of… yup… shit. I mean, I have tried to see the beautiful things in life throughout this whole process, but I gotta say… the dark stuff, the rough stuff, the sad stuff are really what consumes your life as you try to just get to the next day. As those “next days” keep piling up, I have realized they are starting to get filled up with things other than just the memories that I’m surrounded by in my home, or evenings of contemplation of what the fuck to do… and how am I gonna survive this new independent life, or the crushing weight of losing Kateri (I miss her…. so much). Those “next days” are filled with new experiences… experiences without Kateri… and that is a hard thing to come to terms with.
I shaved my head the other night (that’s just my hairdo… I haven’t paid for a haircut in seventeen years), looked in the mirror… and didn’t recognize myself. You wanna talk about a fucked up thing to go through… well… it was fucked up. It could have been the fact that my beard is the longest it has ever been coupled with the newly trimmed noggin. It could have been the fact that it was the first time I shaved my head in the bathroom after working on it for over a year… a bathroom in which Kateri put the first hole in the wall and I was now cleaning up 
little pieces of hair from a sink and tiled floor in a whole new life. A floor I tiled in the early morning hours over the course of three nights while Kateri was in the hospital… Maria being there by her side for her… while I did whatever I needed to do before Kateri was discharged with gastrointestinal issues from the immunotherapy. A floor I needed to learn how to tile for the simple fact that my wife needed a toilet upstairs so that she could sleep in her own bed. Staring at myself in the mirror… looking into my own eyes for the first time in a while… it was hard to deal with all the emotions that came flooding in as I recognized that specific point in the timeline… that life is different… but I couldn’t recognize myself. To my core… I am different… I have
changed, because my life has changed. I cried… a lot…. as I leaned on the sink and didn’t move as I searched in those eyes for understanding to what was going on, but never really got an answer. So what do you do? Well, I took a shower to remove those little bits of hair from my shoulders, beard, and body… put on some comfy clothes… texted with a friend… and waited for the “next day” to come.
Life as we know it may change, but as long as we are here… it doesn’t stop… whether we want it to or not. Sometimes, you just have to shovel the driveway. And sometimes… you have to do it alone.
Bloggery Post Addition…
Although it is very satisfying shoveling a long driveway and I’m always filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment once it’s all said and done… I currently refuse to attach the word “healthy” to the task. (ya, ya, ya… it felt good to be outside and in the fresh air)
Widower Day 179… really 180, but 179 was six months and I just couldn’t write anything… I didn’t have the energy for it and simply… there were other things I wanted and needed to do. I started this post because of the kindness and compassion of a friend and thought it kinda fit for the six month mark. It’s the people that keep us going, that give us purpose, that give us reasons to get excited for life… even after you find out that it’s our relationships with people that sometimes makes us hurt, makes us sad, makes it so that we don’t want to leave our little schoolhouse homes and face the world… but we do because the risk is worth it… and because sometimes its just what we have to do.
Ummm, now its Widower Day 174 and I was gonna continue on with stories of grilled steaks, talking on the porch, and four hour drives to Quechee, but I think those texts speak to what I wanted to say today… what I needed to just get out of my brain after having a “moment” driving between the lake and my house… and then for twenty minutes in the driveway.
Friendship. When you’re wading through that pile of poop (trying not to say shit so much), you rely on all sorts of friendships to get through the day. I feel the need to say that in the grand scheme of things, in this new “chapter”, I’m doing ok. All honesty, I am excited to see what the future brings, to meet new people, to have new experiences… and I am. There has been laughter, and singing in the bathtub, and sitting by fires, playing guitars, fun texting banters with friends… old and new, and beautiful fall scenery. There’s still enough Good in the world to show us that it’s worth putting pants on for… especially as the weather is turning. But when dealing with this shit (twice, sorry), this upheaval of life, I am grateful to have people in my life who share the common value of what it means to be a part of “The Good” in the world… who understand what is important in the world…who are present when needed even with distance in between. Just knowing that I could call any number of people at 3:07… a.m. … and they would be there for me is not only heart warming, but I also rely on it to keep some of that feeling of being all alone at bay. It’s not that I call people at three in the morning all the time, but if I did!… they’d answer! Everyone should have those types of friends and friendships in their lives, but more importantly… you should be that type of friend.
blog post except for this… I have had a rough go lately. I haven’t wanted to do anything… at all. To just stop everything for a bit. I have wanted off this ride… to change the song… or at least the tune. (side note… NO, I do not want to slit my wrists in the newly tiled bath tub while drinking a glass of whisky… smoking a joint… and a cigarette or anything. I kinda figure this is all sorta normal “widower” stuff. Life—beautiful…. sometimes a pile of shit. 3 times… I’m gonna stop apologizing) I have been sad, lost, and lonely. And it’s not that I need anyone to do anything because……. I guess here is the point I’m trying to make. This has sucked, these things suck, but it’s the people in my life… the people who are still plopped here on this earth with me… whether they be from when we were making memories as stupid boys 26 years ago or from this new “chapter” in life… it’s the people who provide me with strength, security, and reassurance… with excitement and smiles… with joy. It’s my friends… and I find them everywhere. Friendship comes in all shapes and sizes… in varying degrees… and with all sorts of intentions. When going through a traumatic event like this you need people. You may not talk often and you may not live in the same town. Hell, you may not even know each other very well!… but that’s not the important part of friendship. It’s being there at the right time, for the right reason… however big or small. That’s what I have… that’s what everyone should have… because that’s what let’s you know you’ll be ok.
Jesus… where to start. Although our wedding was the happiest day of my life… it’s not the story I’m jotting down here. This is about losing Kateri and having to face the overwhelming onslaught of “Firsts” that a widower goes through because the clock just won’t stop ticking. The first month… alone… the first five. The first summer. The first fall which will lead into the first Stick Season. The first load of laundry without her sleeping socks mixed in. The first home cooked meal with mushrooms. The first trip to the store when you realize you are shopping for one… and you can get whatever you want. The first trip away with no one to call home to and say “Goodnight”. I guess from day one… everything is a first in some way or another.
also knew it wasn’t gonna be an easy thing so I should probably start today on Anniversary Eve. The thought crossed my mind that going through pictures had the potential of taking a bit of time and energy so I might as well get the memories started. I have to say… I was correct in my assessment… going through pictures was rough. Beautiful… but rough.
Our wedding was awesome. We had it on a Wednesday at 4ish because we thought it would be easier for all of our friends in the food world to make it. It was held at a wonderful camp in central Vermont… before all the camps realized they could rent out their places after the kids go away to brides and grooms from far away places who want that “rustic” or “Vermonty” wedding experience… for an exorbitant amount of money. For us, it was a place we could afford that was in the next town over and it turned out to be the perfect choice for us to celebrate our love for each other… and our commitment to each other with around a hundred and twenty-five of the most caring, fun, loving, artistic, and just plain fantastic people around. Actually, as I was on my front porch this evening, it was me thinking about those people… one in particular… that put into a certain perspective where I was in life and what this date means for me.
can’t tell you how hard that is to accept. I find solace and strength in the fact that the man who was there standing, speaking, and guiding us through the ceremony of our marriage was in our home days after we first found out about Kateri’s cancer, when she was in palliative care, and is here for me now as I struggle with a loss that has been absolutely crushing. I know I can call any one of the men who stood up for us at any time of the day… for just about anything… and they would do everything they could to help me out (side note-we only had “Men of Honor” in our wedding party). Thinking about those men is what made a slight shift in my brain as I thought about what our wedding anniversary meant to Kateri and I… and what our anniversary means to me now that I am in a this strange widowed state. I’ve been struggling with that whole breaking life up into segments (before Kateri, Kateri, after Kateri) and am just starting to get used to the fact that different periods of life like to mingle for a bit before moving on or slipping off into the past. As traumatic as this experience is, I don’t think anything will be slipping off into the past anytime soon. Kateri will always be a part of my life… I’m just hanging on for some more hours in the day to not feel so crappy.
We smoked a pig… another glorious thing. Along with smoking the pig, we were able to have some entertainment when the grease lining the lid and walls of the smoker decided to join the party and provide us with a bonfire. Of course, then you realize you still need to put the pig on so you have someone… hopefully without a ton of body hair… slam the lid shut. Luckliy, our volunteer had all of the hair on their face, head, and body afterwards. We scrounged and found windows to attach to wooden stakes so that we could make our “church”, meeting a wonderful cast of characters and seeing some cool places during the search. Our friends picked flowers from the farm up the road… the one with the beautiful big white barn. Kateri and friends brewed our “Wedding Beer”… I bought a shit load of A&W. We were able to buy wine from a friend… and neighbor. We made steamed buns… mmmmm, steamed buns. There were cabins and porches for friends and family to stay and hang in… and for us to write our vows on… three hours before the ceremony (yes, both of us). There was a pond for people to naked swim in under the faint light of the stars. There were people. Nothing but wonderful people. We wanted to have nothing but friends and families that we loved and cared about at our wedding. Even the people helping serve the food, pour drinks, play music, and wash dishes… everyone was someone we wanted there, someone in our life. We wanted to know that whoever we came into contact with on the day of our wedding… they would put a smile on our face… and they did. Kateri always said our wedding was the type of wedding that she would enjoy going to… I agree.
It’s Sunday morning. I’m drinking coffee in bed from my “I Love NY” cup for the first time in a while. I loved our Sunday mornings. I would get up, make coffee, bring up two cups… one with just the right amount of half & half to make it the appropriate color. Kateri would look at bathroom designs, gardening shit, far away places that have beaches and blue water, pictures of friends and family, calendars of events happening in the area, or cool shit going on just far enough away to warrant a road trip. I would look at Craigslist, check my email… the weather… and the headlines. I’m sure we weren’t the only couple with that sorta routine. It wasn’t anything unique or exciting, but for me it was perfect… and I miss it.
out of Dodge and was hoping to skip out of work a little early and hit the ocean, but sometimes things don’t work out as planned or anticipated and you have to adapt. Luckily, I enjoy my job and am surrounded by some pretty cool and supportive people. When you start your day not knowing if it is gonna be business as usual or some memory or emotion is gonna pop into your head and put you in the corner for fifteen minutes until the tears dry up and you can focus on not cutting the tip of your finger off with the ten inch chef knife you’re still holding… it makes for an interesting day. (I feel the need to point out that I’m never really worried about cutting myself… I’m a cook… it happens… sometimes badly… and we still don’t get stitches… smart, I know. Plus, when you use a tool for 24 years… muscle memory and skill can play a big role when needed. It’s like when you have to dice 25#’s of onions. By onion fifteen, when you can’t see shit through the water pouring out of your eye sockets and everyone in the kitchen is trying to be witty asking why you are so emotional… training and skills take over… and you finish task. Hopefully, with all your fingers.)
I was never really worried about losing my shit because it was the five month point or anything. I’ve been pretty even keel with the emotions and life lately. I mean, I’ve got my moments but I’m doing okay. I think it comes down to just being another phase of this process. I feel as though at the beginning of this phase in my life (Kateri’s passing), it was such a traumatic, emotional, and confusing event that my body and mind did everything it could just to keep me going… and I can’t tell you how much time and energy that takes. It’s relentless. That’s why I felt the need to keep telling myself to “roll with it”, to just get to the next point, whatever that next point may be. At some point, the body and mind says, “OK… I’m tired… you need to stop and sit for a bit”… and everything kinda goes numb. Which is sorta helpful when your philosophy has been to “just roll with it”. It’s like a forced, continual, fucked up meditative state with moments of feeling like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man talking about KMart.
So… I didn’t go to the ocean… but I went for a little drive.
The great thing about going for a drive is that the scenery is always changing… you are always somewhere different… and you just need to figure out where you’re going and what the theme song is gonna be. I left not knowing where I was gonna end up, but if I hadn’t given into the need to cover some ground I could have missed a spectacular sunset. Sometimes… sunsets provide the perfect light to end the day.
On Widower Day 137 I closed Kateri’s personal bank account. I had tried to close it months ago, but going through an experience like this you learn about things like wills, probate, estates, and administrators… and it takes time when all of that is new to you. I never really freaked out about not knowing how much money was in there or how many accounts she may have been taking care of directly from it because I knew there probably wasn’t much. I figured if she ran out of money… well, people wouldn’t get theirs. I knew I had all the regular stuff taken care of so I didn’t put much weight on the matter… or the additional stress on myself… most the time. We always had our own checking accounts, for no particular reason except that it wasn’t a thing to us.
Tacos tonight. It’s really only the tenthish time I’ve cooked something for myself (like, actual cooking) and it’s nice to fill the house with that chicken grease and chili scented mist once again… while being on edge the entire time that the smoke detector will go off.
experience, my life is good or, at the least, pretty decent.
I was home from Idaho for about three days before I noticed the eggs in the flower pot… they’re still there… I think they look kinda nice. I have found myself being a little oblivious from time to time and not being overly concerned about why I’m not paying attention to certain things or putting undue weight on them. I’m assuming all that stuff will still be there when I’m ready to pay attention to it. It’s actually been quite the educating, busy, somewhat hectic, somewhat nerve wracking, positive, and empowering couple of weeks. As it pertains to this thing… Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning… there’s a plethora of reasons I’m fiddling around with this site and I’ve realized one of them is that just by having it provides me with questions on how I want to live my life as I go through this experience. I’ve recently been reminded that it also gives me strength as vulnerability is scotch taped to the posts I publish.
astro turf at some new shopping/eating/huge movie theater type place… at the age of 42. It was nice to see my family again so shortly after our last visit. We’ve been together more in the last year than in the last 5 or so… which has been nice, even if the circumstances have leaned more towards the heavy real life hard shit than the celebratory, but I’ll take what I can get. We haven’t spoken much since I’ve gotten home, a couple of times, but not nearly as much as I would like to. Of course, I believe most people are in that boat.
I was writing it on the plane because that was the first chance I had to sit and put thought into it. My sister had asked me if I would be willing to do it only 2ish days before! I was honored… I was also delirious on an hour and twenty minutes of sleep as I wrote it. It was a great experience putting thought into what it was that I wanted to say to two people who have been with each other longer than I have been alive… what it was that I wanted to say to my parents? As the same for these blogs, it was nice to sit and focus on what I wanted to share and why. I have found that writing allows me to take all those things swirling around in the noggin and kinda line them up in a row. Everything is still there… I just plug away at one thought at a time… while all the others are smashing up against that one thought up front like a pack of crazed shoppers waiting for the doors to open at Walmart… two hours after eating Thanksgiving Dinner.
50 years together… however you wish to cut it… is filled with all sorts of things. I’m not one of those people who likes to sugar coat life, which might not make me the best person to give speeches and toasts for celebrations, but this is about the bond between a husband and wife that have made it through 5 decades of life together. They have not only built their lives together, but have created, nurtured, loved, and supported children…. something that should also be acknowledged because committing to live life with one person can be quite the challenge… add in dirty, snotty, bratty children and I’m sure it can be ruthless at times. Not ever having children of my own, I’m only speaking to what I have seen as friends try to corral their “littles” into SUV’s, deal with their children being sick, or ornery, or going off to school, or first loves… and first heartaches. You know, a mother puts a band aid on her child’s scraped knee, cheers for them at gymnastic meets or ballet recitals (less “cheering” at a ballet recital), drives them to swim lessons, and sends them cards in the mail telling them she loves them as they go through rough times when they are older and out of the house. A father teaches you how to throw a baseball, ride a bike without training wheels, what work ethic is, and how to maneuver the transition of being a boy to becoming a man. That’s what mom’s and dad’s do… they raise their children. A husband and wife, who stick with each other through thick and thin, through the good times and the challenging times, through disagreements, through experiences that spouses just shouldn’t have to go through in a perfect world… that creates a family. Of course, come to think of it, mom and dad got lucky… they had perfect children that were always well behaved and as we grew up… we made all the right choices!
Mom and Dad… Donald Martin Lidstrom and Denise Ann Lyeburger got hitched. Dina posted a picture of you guys… I think from your wedding… and it was awesome! I’ve been given quite the education on time as of recently and as I prepared to travel to Boise to celebrate and recognize the 50 years you guys have been together it caught me off guard to see a pic of two hip youngsters that would one day be Mom and Dad…. You guys had style! Fifty years… that’s a long time filled with a lot of experiences. From my vantage point… the forty-two years I have been a part of your life have been filled with the type of love that you hope for from a parent. But again, this isn’t about me… or Dina… or anyone else. This is about the 50 years of life you two have committed to each other, through thick and thin, through the hard times… the good times… and all that jive. I know there have been difficult times, but the good memories, the good times, the sense of family that you two have provided the Lidstroms overshadows all the other bullshit that sometimes comes with life. You have definitely tested all sorts of waters within this marriage… but you are here today… together… as husband and wife. So, here is my toast:
I remember the three month point of all this widower shit and it being quite the emotional day. As I realized I was coming up on four months… well, I felt prepared. Of course, then a co-worker at the job tried to compare them needing to take a break after being gone for two and a half hours to the time when the crew covered for me as I was watching my wife die from cancer in palliative care and the two weeks I took off afterwards. They actually said, “You should remember when we all…”, I cut them off right there. If you don’t know me I can become very “animated” if something doesn’t jive with me… and that definitely didn’t jive with me. The fact that I had such a traumatic event in my life being used by an individual to try and justify THEIR actions, to move the actions of a collective group (covering for me)… of a team from an act of kindness and empathy to something that is required to be paid back is just wrong in my eyes… especially when there is no connection to the two events except for how we should treat each other in the grand scheme of things. Ya, I flipped my lid… and I don’t really apologize for it. I have also moved on from it… besides writing about it now I guess… because we all say stupid things and life has taught me that there are levels to what is really important… and what is not. Now all I have to do is figure out how to not let good people saying stupid or inconsiderate things get under my skin. The next time I say something stupid might be when I start that process… which could be later tonight. That all being said, I’m actually holding up ok with life on my own… kinda… I think.
forties. Time keeps moving.
Note to self… it takes about an hour and a half to upload a three minute and fifty-eight second video to this little blog when at home. I have no idea why it takes so long. This isn’t even the first time I’ve tried to post one. This is just my first moment of success in getting moving pictures from one box to another and onto my blog! (I’m blaming it on the old, slow, and outdated internet wires n stuff attaching my house to other wires that go other places)
Music has always been a prevelant thing in our life. Whether it be Kateri putting on the B-52’s for cleaning music, some Steely Dan on a rainy day (who I never cared for up till the last 5 years, I would say), or some classic 90’s gangster rap in the kitchen as we were using tilt skillets for fryers or getting out stations ready for service. I will forever associate Warren G’s “Regulate” remix featuring Michael McDonald with our time at The Barn Door. If you haven’t come home to a message on the machine from Luke and Will after they held their phones up to the speakers that were perched on top of the ice machine, so as to capture that classic tune off of Pandora, because that was their top priority at the moment and not the pounds of lima beans that needed to get shucked or the natural disaster that just happened in the dish pit… well, you don’t know friendship.
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 