Awe… Monday morning. One good thing about being a cook… Monday mornings usually don’t mean shit when it comes to the work week! And when your work week starts on a Tuesday or Thursday… well, it just doesn’t seem quite as bad. I… for one… have always enjoyed what I do for a living so My Mondays never really fazed me. I liked going to work… I loved being in a kitchen. It makes your job… and life… a bit more enjoyable when you don’t look at the start of the work week as the bottom of a hill you need to climb for the next 5 days! Of course, since Kateri died… I now have that Monday Morning feeling almost every day I wake up. I just want more time to put towards myself, my home, and the new future that life decided to wait until I was 43 to show me… when I thought I had a good handle on what the future held. Luckily, I still enjoy what I do… where I do it… and who I do it with… so that helps. Either way… it’s 9:20 on a Monday morning… and I’m still in bed. So….. ha ha.
The long and short of Thanksgiving… A lazy morning with the Macy’s Day Parade, the day spent with friends that I love, entertaining situations, fun conversations, good food, the meeting of new people, and lasagna. I also brought a “date” to Thanksgiving Dinner… did I mention dinner was held at our friend’s house where Kateri and I first lived when we moved down here? Or that our friend is also the mother of our other friend… a dear friend… the friend who married Kateri and I? (he’s one of Kateri’s pocket people) Did I mention how I sometimes can’t stop my brain from swirling as I try to figure out how to balance old life/new life collisions? Yup… I put a lot of weight on the situation. And in hindsight… too much. I feel that seems to be the case with a fair amount of things.
Now, I feel the need to mention that my “date” happened to be a friend of mine who I’ve spent quite a bit of time with over the last year and she probably knows more about what I’m personally going through than anyone else. Basically… for me… I’m glad my first holiday with someone other than Kateri was with someone I felt comfortable going through that situation with! For all the anxiety I put on myself thinking about this or that… it turns out that when you are surrounded by people you love… good people who love you back… you can take quite a bit of worry off the table. Well that… and being somewhat “grown up” and having the ability to have “adult” conversations helps everyone involved!
Yup, Thanksgiving came and went… and now it’s Monday. I’m getting my chimney swept today and it’s still trying to snow, so I’m gonna get dressed, go and shovel some of the white stuff away from where I think these guys are gonna put their ladders, do some chores, play a little guitar, be responsible and take care of some Grown-Up stuff, and get ready for Tuesday… which is really My Monday.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
- I’m actually getting a little excited to decorate for Christmas, but I rearranged the living room and don’t have as many flat surfaces for my little village! Don’t worry… I’ll figure it out.
- I went through Kateri’s basket… the one that’s been next to her chair for the last 588 plus days. I’m glad I did… but it was weird. I just didn’t feel the need to see it every day anymore. One of those taking steps in this new life type things… creating My Space.
- Now I wish I had shoveled the icy/wet/slushy crap that fell from the sky two and a half weeks ago… my driveway is 63 feet of frozen H2O! Good for sledding… not for walking.
- I’m settling into this living alone thing. Last week, I moved a single roll of toilet paper from the upstairs bathroom to the downstairs bathroom probably 9 times instead of going to the store to buy more… and I was fine with that. And yes… it might’ve been a little embarrassing when I had company in the downstairs bathroom… and the toilet paper was in the upstairs one!… but we all survived.
- I had my first outside fire in a while yesterday afternoon/evening… I need to do that more. Now that there’s snow… I won’t worry about burning down the hillside! (it’s the Westerner in me… fear of forest fires!)
- Aaaaaand…. I hope whoever is reading this is having a good day! If not…?… well, find something good in it… maybe it’ll snowball from there!
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I am thankful that I was just able to give my mother a hug… to hold her in my arms… on Thanksgiving morning… and I wish Kateri was here. It took me ten minutes to write that sentence. Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving without my wife. The first Thanksgiving I am spending with my family in years… in at least over a decade… and it’s where I’m supposed to be today. The last seven… nine… eleven… twelve months have been filled with some of the most horribly inexplicable events that I have had to deal with in my life. My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer which spread to her brain. Melanoma took Kateri away from me in four months and three days. There are many things in this life that I am not thankful for, but there are more people, friends, family, and experiences that have been in… or have entered… my life that have given me strength, love and compassion to keep moving forward through this timeline. It’s a strange life to live when your mantra is, ” Well, for being the worst thing I have ever gone through… ever felt… ever experienced… it went as well as it possibly could have.”… and it’s still going.
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 