I didn’t go to bed last night until the wee hours of this morning. I knew I was probably gonna be up late since I wasn’t gonna be working today. I decided early on in this “New Life” that I wasn’t gonna work on the anniversary of Kateri’s death… ever… and I’ve made it two years in a row! As a widower, I’ve had to deal with the loss of Kateri every single day I wake up, but as time goes by, day to day life kinda turns into this new normal and I’ve gotten used to balancing the weight of not having Kateri next to me and all of the things that come along with that… and figuring out how to “live” and function in this new world without being an emotional and psychological plane wreck! I feel as though there have been a couple areas of turbulence and maybe a bit of engine trouble over the last two years, but I’m still in the air!… even if I fly pretty low sometimes. One day… I hope to be in a space where I am soooo excited about life that I simply NEED to buzz the tower!… even if Goose is pleading with me not to. One day Goose… one day.
Initially I planned on taking three days off for Kateri’s anniversary so that I could do something out in the world like go to the ocean and stay at the dumpy little hotel, which we loved, and was right on the water. We got a kick out of the place when we found the shape of an iron burned into the carpet in the entry way of room 318 (I don’t actually know the room number… it’s the one on the top floor on the end… in case you were wondering). But The Rona has kinda put the kibosh on any plans like that so I was kinda forced to decide to stick around the schoolhouse… which I’m also completely okay with. I mean, this really is the place where I feel the closest to Kateri because it’s filled with all sorts of her Hopes n Dreams. I just wish there was more time for her to experience more of them.
Two years. Jesus… what the fuck…?! (sorry Jesus, just using you as an exclamation… I don’t blame you. We’ve been warned you work in mysterious ways! At least, that’s what I hear… I don’t actually go to church or follow you on any of your social media platforms… but I dig the message you were delivering. It’s just a fair amount of your followers that I have an issue with… they can get a little freaky!) Although at points it feels like Kateri died yesterday, the fact of the matter is that for 730 days (31?… was there a Leap Year or some shit?) I’ve had to learn how to live life without her. I’ve had to learn how to live My Life using the lessons that she taught me instead of witnessing her actions. She cut the path through the woods… I just need to maintain it and see where I can create new ones. (some bushwhacking required)
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
- I was able to Zoom with two of my sister-in-laws last night. It was fantastic and a pleasant surprise. It was also weird when someone mentioned it was midnight… and now the actual day Kateri died. It hit me instantly… unexpectedly… and I cried.
- I decided to work on the yard and flower gardens today to hopefully get a sense of connection and closeness with Kateri on this date… but nature decided to give us a couple inches of snow last night to start this Earth Day off!… so now it may just be a bath, a joint, some music, and inside stuff! Maybe I’ll give the plants a shower!… I know Kateri would do that once in a while… and I haven’t done it yet!
- I’m gonna try to fix Kateri’s truck this spring/summer… myself (I need it to move wood!). I’ve been watching car remodeling shows on Netflix… it can’t be that hard to at least get it runable!… says the cook.
- As a widower, you learn to do all sorts of things… while crying. After two years of not knowing when emotions will pop up, you just kinda roll with it because you still need to get things done! Let me tell you, crying in the shower as you are frantically washing soap off of your face and out of your beard because you realized you didn’t close the damper on the wood stove… and not skipping a beat… is a skill.
- Being a cook and cutting thousands of pounds of onions is also good training for widowhood!
- I’ve decided to start the process of going through some things around the house and to maybe move some shit around. I haven’t done anything substantial in the last two years… I feel it’s about time… and I kinda want to. I understand it may be slow going.
- I still put the toilet seat down… yup, trained well.
- I am older than Kateri ever made it to… that’s kinda fucked up… but bound to happen in these situations.
- A couple of things I’ve learned in the last two years:
- We can adapt to adversity… as much as we don’t want to.
- Kateri made me better. It’s a simple fact.
- Life is a lot easier if you surround yourself with good people… and if you put the work in to being a good person who makes decent choices. Luckily, I have a lot of wonderful people in my life.
- Priorities… what’s important… to me.
- How to cook for one…ish and to make half a pot of coffee instead of a full pot.
- There are loving, supportive, empathetic, and caring strangers out there… some you will never meet even though they might’ve played significant parts in your life.
- Plants… yup, they pretty much need water and sun. Trimming would probably be helpful… but I haven’t learned about that yet!
- If left to my own devices for nourishment… I make bad decisions… but they’re tasty.
- How to set up my own blog!… which has been a wonderful tool throughout this process, even if it has been sporadic as of late.
- Two years… basically, there’s a ton that has happened. Some good… some bad… some challenging… some whatever. That’s life, I guess. There are things we can control… and there are things we can’t. Although it can be frustrating, I’ve learned to not sweat the things I have no control over (most of the time!)… it’s just a waste of energy. There are plenty of things in this world that we do have control over… I’m just gonna try to focus on those and if I need to take a step back from time to time… I will.
- I just miss Kateri so God damn much. After two years… it still has the power to floor me… and I expect it will for quite a while.
- I hope you are all well, safe, and not making stoopid decisions in these uncertain times. Just as in my situation, time doesn’t stop and we’ll all find ourselves talking about The Pandemic of 2020!… as we shake hands hello… and give hugs goodbye. Love to all y’all.
ps… it feels odd not really ever writing specifically about Kateri and all the beautiful things that made her such a unique and loving person. Maybe my next post will be about her… and not me and my shit.
So…. wow. That kinda snuck up on me! I’ve had quite a few things on my mind as of late and have been kinda trying to deal with some “New Life” shit… “Old Life” shit… “Emotional” shit…… and snow. I guess I’ve simply been thinking a lot about life in general and wasn’t really doing the whole “2019 in Review” thing… until last night… at around 6:30/7ish… when it dawned on me that there were quite a few things that happened in 2019!
I established a draft! Yup… it’s pretty exciting! Not like a draft in the writing sense of the word… with my new woodstove and chimney. If you don’t know what I’m talking about… you’re missing out on one of the best things about cold weather… a hot spot to stand next to! It’s been kind of a fun challenge dialing in the new stove, but also kinda frustrating when I can’t get it to burn as efficiently as it should. Plus, when it’s 26 degrees out, like this morning… I wanna be all toasty and warm!
You know, do some shit outside… clean and organize the garage, take down window boxes, try to leaf blow the leaves from my yard to the empty land across the road without “Sunday Traffic” seeing me!… while periodically coming in to stoke the fire to keep The Schoolhouse nice and warm. It’s the first day in a bit that I would have this opportunity so I thought I would just go with it, go slow, relax, and enjoy the Sunday Morning doing a few things that would make me happy… like drinking coffee in bed as I hear the tick of cast iron warming my home.
And… we got older. Out priorities… changed. We slowed down a bit as we were settling into the rest of our lives. Even though I believe Kateri was happy with her life and with me… I know… KNOW… that Kateri wanted more excitement in her life… more adventures… more passion!… and I was happy with how things were. As a widower you can take that type of reflection and put the information to use by living every day like it’s the last!… or some other homogenized cliché saying… and I do most the time. But tonight… reflecting on life also showed me that I do… in fact… have regrets.
I’m just gonna preface this with my Wedding Anniversary was actually yesterday, I’ve been horrible at planning things lately, and at 10:08 in the morning… I’m still in the same comfy clothes as last night because I fell asleep on the couch! (I like to think of it as me being efficient… this way I don’t have to get undressed just to put them back on for a Sunday morning!) Long story short… well, abbreviated… this is what I did.
It was a beautiful drive… cloudy… cool. I took the dirt roads for the first bit and just got in the right frame of mind. When I hit Montpelier I thought, “I should probably eat breakfast…?!” and then Penny Cluse in Burlington instantly came to mind… because I love it there. As I got a little further down the road, another thought popped into my head that put a smile on my face… we cooked a majority of the food for our wedding in the Penny Cluse kitchen!… how fitting that I would be eating there!… today! It’s that whole attachment to experiences thing that I seem to keep trying to do, but it worked for this! So I got to Burlington, ate my Mama Cruz’s Huevos Rancheros, caught up with a couple of people, gave and got a hug from Charles, and moved on to the next phase of the journey.
Well, yesterday was a Saturday… and even though we got married on a Wednesday, most people get married on Saturdays… so the thought was, “I wonder if there is gonna be a wedding going on when I pull up?!”… there was. At least, that’s what I’m assuming… because there were people milling about as if they were getting ready for a wedding!
I’ll make this short n sweet since I had no plans on opening up the computer in bed when I woke up this morning! It was a Facebook post that sorta hit me… and I subsequently sorta lost it. It was from my sister and she was talking about how you don’t just marry your spouse… you become part of a family. She posted this because my brother-in-law’s mother passed away… her mother-in-law… and it just made me think about how death touches us all the time… from all sorts of different angles.
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 