Well… as of today it has been a year since I started jotting some thoughts down pertaining to this whole widower thing on this little bloggery I have called Thirty Days of Mo(u)ring. Yup… a year. I have published 74 (75 now!) posts, learned a bit about how these things work, learned a bit about myself, have gotten some lovely words of encouragement, and have had strangers come into my world that I would now consider my friends… ish. I had absolutely no idea what I was gonna be doing with this blog, how I was gonna do it, or really even why (still don’t), but a few people have reached out to me to say “thanks for sharing… it has helped me get through my shit.”… and I can’t tell you how much that warms my innards.
There are so many things that I want to share, but being a widower is hard… and it takes time away from life. A year. It’s weird to think about all that has happened in that year… and all that I thought would happen. At this point last year, I hadn’t yet finished the upstairs bathroom that Kateri and I started to remodel before cancer… but I finally did… and I took a bath. I hadn’t yet rearranged the living room into a configuration that Kateri would never see. I hadn’t yet gotten on Widow/Widower support groups to try and promote my blog… and then find out that I didn’t wanna share it on that platform because it felt more like self promoting than being supportive. I hadn’t yet gotten on dating apps because of the curiosity… and crushing loneliness. One of my best friends hadn’t yet left Ned for Arizona… cutting off one of our last connections to a town I absolutely loved. Our closest friends here in the Upper Valley (the one Kateri always wanted to live next to, to be neighbors with until we grew old) hadn’t yet decided to start taking steps to relocate for other exciting opportunities. I hadn’t yet been to Atlantic City where “Angel” approached me asking if I wanted to “conversate” in my hotel room (I didn’t). My boss and good friend hadn’t yet left work to make another go at opening another successful restaurant. Old friends hadn’t yet come to Vermont to sit on my porch for the first time… solely because they knew I needed them. My mother had cancer in her brain a year ago… and doesn’t as of today!… (now we’re just waiting for it to clear from her lungs… CT scan today). There have been a lot of changes and learning experiences in the past year. On this day last year… it hadn’t even been three months since I heard Kateri take her last breath as I held her arm with two of our best friends sitting next to her… and holding me.
I wish I could say I’m in better shape than I was a year ago, but I’m not too sure I can say that. They say time heals… but so far I still feel it just changes things. Personally, I’m constantly overwhelmed, constantly worried about money and everything attached to it (I’m a worry wort), constantly trying to “figure out” things that can’t be figured out, constantly trying to do things that make me happy… and always trying to find more hours in the day to fit it all in. Just because I have moved further away from that horrible horrible date, it hasn’t exactly made it easier. I have been forced to manage my grieving and sadness because life doesn’t stop. I still have to go to work, take care of responsibilities, take care of the house, the chickens, deal with the blah, blah, blah… and fit the emotional stuff in when I can. Sometimes it will just show up and I have to either suppress it because I’m about to go back into work or I’m at the store or something. Sometimes, I’m in a place where I can let it go… like sitting in my car in my driveway when I just get home… or in my bed writing a blog. Either way… it’s a hard thing to manage… and a stupid thing to have to manage. It also doesn’t hurt less… it’s just more sporadic.
I know this all sounds pretty depressing… as if there was very little joy in my world… but that’s not the case. It’s a very manic experience being a widower… kind of all over the place emotionally and psychologically. Which just means there are times I’m doing well and feel pretty good about the direction I’m going… and then there are times I need to take a break from writing blogs or thinking about whatever to just go outside and dead-head the daisies in the planters on the porch… because it provides me with a sorta connection to Kateri… she loved dead-heading flowers. She would say, “Pop their little heads off” or simply “Off with their heads!”… and it made her happy. I loved seeing Kateri happy.
I guess that’s one goal of sharing your life with whoever in whatever capacity… to see them happy… which makes us happy. It doesn’t always happen… and sometimes things happen that we just can’t be happy about… but they’re gonna happen anyways. Sometimes, there are days where we just want to stay in comfy clothes, smoke a pinner, eat ice cream, and watch re-runs of Friends. But the joint burns out, the ice cream gets eaten, Friends move on to short lived spin-offs or other endeavors… and we all have to put our pants on to start a new day.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
- I should probably take the home phone and internet out of Kateri’s name at some point… but I’m really afraid of losing my number!
- I look down a lot when I walk… so I miss shit.
- I’ve been wanting to get Kateri’s truck up and running. I loved seeing her in it… and currently it would be helpful to move wood!
- Kateri’s dream car was a Toyota with a wooden bed… such the Vermonter!
- I’ve noticed I’ve been able to remember some of the fun stuff from before the pile of shit… which is such a nice corner to turn within this process. It doesn’t happen a ton, but when it does… it’s just so warming.
- Yup, I could eat better, sleep better, and just take care of myself better… but I’m doing good enough.
- Thank you to everyone who has checked my shit out! It makes me feel warm and fuzzy…. even though it’s hot and humid.
Now… I’m just gonna say that I’m one of those people who actually enjoys it when they look out the window and sees a little bit of the white stuff on the grass in the Spring. No, that isn’t some hip and modern drug reference I frequently use in this rock star life I live… it was just snow… in the yard… and it was kinda nice to see.
Last year, Easter fell on the 1st. It was actually three weeks before Kateri passed. It’s weird to think about… she wasn’t in Palliative Care yet. Heck, we hadn’t even received the bad news of no more options yet. Maria had just gotten to our house the day or two before… I think. She came to help… and to be with her sister. It was the three of us for the last three weeks of Kateri’s life… going through it… together. I am forever grateful to Maria for being here for many reasons, but it really comes down to the fact that I think Kateri needed her to be here. Kateri needed Maria to be with her as she was preparing to leave this earth… she needed her help… her support… her love. And Maria… needed to be with Kateri.
I didn’t remember the video when I stumbled upon it trying to clear space on my phone, so it sorta caught me by surprise. It’s hard for me to see Kateri in the “Cancer Time” and it’s quick, but it’s Kateri… through and through… in a space she loved… with people she loved.
This is kinda one of those “spur of the moment” posts. It’s cloudy and a bit chilly…. with large patches of snow adding to the coolness of the image out the ol’ schoolhouse windows. I’m still in comfy clothes… from last night… because I fell asleep on the couch after watching the first scary movie… alone… in said schoolhouse… since Kateri passed away (“The Silence”. At least it wasn’t a ghost/paranormal/psychological sorta movie. And… I survived!). I actually woke up at 6 something, but was comfortable enough and warm enough, so I just decided to stay horizontal… till 9:13!… (a.m.)… and not trudge upstairs. It’s been one of those slow moving/Tupelo Honey on the radio types of mornings… and it feels good. The coffee tastes nice, dark, and strong… and I’ve already gotten to have a nice visit with a friend from down the road. I even got to pull out power tools!… and use them in my front yard while still in those comfy clothes… with the addition of rubber boots! It was literally just replacing a couple of straps… but some people… well I… will take any opportunity to fix something using tools.
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.
