A friend of mine lost someone very close to them in the last couple of days and on the drive into work yesterday morning I found it ironic that I (the long winded widower) wasn’t sure what it was that I wanted to say to them… I didn’t have the words!… and I told her that. She texted me that she truly thought she was prepared for what was happening. My response was:
“I don’t think we are ever truly prepared for the loss of someone… who truly loves us.”
I mentioned to her to remember to take care of herself, too!… which I think is actually the more important message for people living through loss.
Random Widower Notes n Thoughts:
- Yes… I spent waaaay too much time deciding whether to use “who” or “whom”… and I still don’t know which one is correct!
It was hot today. Hot and… humid. When I got home this evening my bedroom was 84 degrees… a thick 84 degrees. Some might say “sticky”… like me… I would say that, but that has nothing to do with this really. Except for the fact that I’m writing this in the shade on my front porch on a Thursday evening… and I generally don’t write these things outside… on Thursday’s. It’s a change. It’s different. It’s kinda strange. It’s also quite the challenge to see what I’m typing because the reflection of my bright ass yellow shirt makes it a bit hard to see the screen! (and no… I’m not gonna change seats… I’m comfy.)
This is my final pic… and then a video… as if there wasn’t enough already! I really haven’t done anything with my little shrine to Kateri and as I was going through boxes I figured I could add a few things from the top of the jelly cupboard… so I did. I wasn’t sure about how to dispose of the sage bundles used for smudging, so I asked sis-in-law. Well, I found out that neither one of us really knows what to do with used sage bundles, but we figured as long as the intentions were good… it’s all cool and groovy. So… that’s what the video is about. Just a heads up, I mention it’s January 28th… it’s not… it’s June. There would be a heck of a lot more snow on the ground if it were January!… but there might still be a fire.
taking advantage of dates such as “The Second Anniversary of Kateri’s Kick-Ass Party” to remember her and our life, but now that I’m here… I’m not sure what to say! Not that I’m all verklempt or anything (although, I’m sure there’ll be some emotional moments), two years just happens to get filled with all sorts of things… experiences, emotions, fun times, not fun times, learnin’ times, pandemics, protests, and simply life. So… we’ll see where this goes.
When I got to my room over looking Lake Champlain (I splurged… I figured my wife just died and we were celebrating her… I wanted to be able to see something nice when I woke up the next morning), the staff had left me a couple of cupcakes and condolences. Such a simple gesture… that I will always be grateful for.
When Bruce got here, he immediately mentioned that he thought it was something bigger than the valve and gave me the number to Sargent Artesian Wells since it was coming upon quitting time for just about everyone. Luckily, when I called Chaz from the well place he was just as awesome as everyone from ARC and said he would get there tonight at some point… which didn’t happen… but I was fine with it. Even though the experience was somewhat nerve wracking on a couple of fronts, my interaction with Bruce along with knowing what is currently going on in the world made it so I wasn’t freaking out about what the possible fixes may be. However big the issue was… however painful it may be financially… I was gonna be fine.
After Bruce couldn’t fix the issue and had gotten me in touch with the well guys, he helped me prep the well for Chaz… and then we chatted for the next hour and a half in my driveway! (He also had five gallons of my water in the back of his truck from when he was testing the valve that he gave back to me after saying that it was my water to begin with). The moment Bruce approached the wishing well and simply started pushing it over… my mind was blown. I didn’t realize it wasn’t attached to anything!… at all!… it was simply around the well and over the years earth and grass had accumulated up the base of it! I mean, I kind of understood that, but there were also wires going to the light in it… that we never used… but that didn’t stop the toppling over of it! Bruce pushed… I guided it down… and when it was on it’s side, just laying there in the front yard with the rotted parts holding on for dear life… I thought of Kateri.
It was a hot one this week. I mean, after nine months of winter, 85 was simply sweltering! When it hit 91… forget about it! So with the heat wave I thought I would make sure The Ladies had everything they needed to stay cool, clean, and safe. No… I did not sew little tiny face masks for their beaks (they are already quarantining themselves and have the social distancing down), but on Tuesday evening I shoveled out their shavings, put new hay in the nesting boxes, took out the vent covers in the rafters (well, where the top of the wall and rafters meet… I have no idea what that would be called… I’m a cook), clean water, new food, and even shoveled some of the shavings and shit from their little penned in area. Gotta say, nothing like cleaning a chicken coop after it has warmed up a bit!… yummy.
That seems odd… I thought I remembered latching it…?! And then I saw how the eye hooks were still attached to the shingles they were screwed in to, but those shingles were now attached to the door as if something simply ripped them from the wall!… the feeder was empty and broken, and Chicken (not sure if it was Chicken #1, 2, or 3…?), was a mangled mess laying lifeless just out the coop’s door in their little yard! Yay!…. Wednesday!
I even taped some Pop-Its to the steps to try and deter the visitor! And then Wednesday night happened.
We bought our Five Different Shades of Orange 1973 Super Beetle at a garage sale in Bristol back in ’02 or 3. That kinda makes it sound like we were rolling in cash and just picking up cars as we were out and about enjoying a Saturday, but it actually took a few weeks to make sure we had the money… and Bob (the seller) was having a fair amount of separation anxiety… so it was a process. He would come into the restaurant Kateri and I were managing to grab a bite and we would chat to get acquainted with each other a bit more so that he could feel comfortable knowing his little bug was going to a good home. We feel it did.
Although “Squirt” is what a lot of people call Kateri, we got a kick out of thinking about how drivers who were following us would interpret it!
Today I’m writing what I was gonna write tomorrow about yesterday, but I realized the date and the whole “Widower Day” was kind of a funny run of two’s so I thought why not tonight?! (I don’t know why… I just happen to like numbers. Yup, as Kateri would say… I suffer from O.D.D…. it spells odd.)
I couldn’t really make out the shape of the car, but I could tell the lights were the taillights of on old Volvo station wagon… and then made the assumption that it was John plugging along in front of me. This is where I felt a little bit of the warmth that “community” and “neighbors” provide once in a while. I loved the fact that before I could actually see any of the particulars, I could tell who it was. It made me feel like I was driving “Home”. After literally saying how I would’ve “Hit the open road” just a couple of hours earlier, it made me realize that I do still really love where I live… and the fact that I know my neighbors. I don’t know most of them very well, but each of them have come into my (or our) life at one point or the other. Some I wish we (I) got to spend more time with… I guess I still can. Some, I’m fine with just a wave here and there. Either way, it’s comforting knowing the people on my Home Road. It eases the loneliness… and that little experience helped fill a tiny bit of the emptiness I feel every time I head back north. It was a little thing. It was random. It was moment specific. But it was significant to me on an insignificant drive back to the schoolhouse.
I think… like everyone else… I wish I could just drop everything, pack a bag, load the car, and experience wanderlust again for a while instead of plugging away at the grind. Not that things have been absolutely horrible… I haven’t been getting punched in the nuts when I wake up every morning or anything like that… but it DOES get a little tiring when you constantly feel overwhelmed, are constantly trying to “figure things out”, and life keeps showing you that there are things you have control over… and there are things that you don’t. So…. I’m just gonna keep plugging away at routines for right now… keep an eye on what I have control over… and maybe try to create some new routines! (Like ones where I have to brush my teeth at a rest stop, in a hotel, or next to my tent would be fun! Or in my schoolhouse… I have no plans of letting go of my schoolhouse! Gotta have home to come back to!)
The past couple of weeks have been good, filled with some good things. My lady friend and I went to Salem, Mass last week to get out of Dodge, see the ocean, and check out some witches! (the witches weren’t actually a main focal point) One thing I love about the East Coast is it’s history. Yes, we have some pretty horrendous history in this country, but everywhere does.
It’s fun to walk around a town made up of old brick buildings and wooden houses where you can read about what took place on that spot hundreds of years ago!… even though they weren’t good times. (I guess that’s how we learn not to do those things again… or not let them happen again.)
It’s up to us to decide on which to focus on and when. We aren’t helpless. Sometimes, we can do things that are actually helpful to ourselves… and others… without much effort.
Well… it has started. I have begun the process of going through shit to see what I want to keep around, what I want to save, what I want to throw away, and what I feel other people may want… of course, people definitely tell you what they want when your wife dies! More importantly though, I would want something to go to someone I love… who loved Kateri… if there is significant weight put on whatever object by whatever person… and if it’s in the “Give Away” pile! In this case, I’m going the kitchen… so there isn’t a ton of those types of things.
I mean, I don’t know if anyone is gonna be fighting over the 2 year old Cheerios in the glass jar on the counter!.. but maybe?!
Well… I officially have a Therapist for the first time in my adult life. It’s funny, as I sat here after writing that sentence, I didn’t know what I really wanted to say!… and then a friend texted and my thoughts shifted to jogging in the rain… which sounds kinda sloshy… fun, but I will probably never do… and doesn’t have anything to do with my Therapist. This is sorta what happens for me every time I stop and take the time to think about what it is I’m going through… where I’m at… what brought me here over the last 44 years and how it all works together to push me in a certain direction as I try my best to steer the wheel of life… which happens to have a significant amount of “play” in it! I keep seeing sayings like “YOU control your life” and “It’s how you show up” type stuff… and it’s true… but there’s a shitload out there that we have absolutely no control over which affects our life in one way or the other and to whatever varying degree! Hence… “play in the wheel”! (My father had an old Wagoneer. One of those classy ones with the mountain scene on the back widow. You could give the wheel a quarter turn before you headed in whichever direction!… Man, I would love to have that Jeep now.)
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!
On the way to work yesterday, Christmas Eve, the realization hit me that I think this is the first Christmas in my life that I will be waking up in an empty house… alone. No one already drinking coffee downstairs. No one sneaking little wrapped packages into old socks hanging by the wood stove. No one making phone calls seeing when other people will be swinging by. I can’t smell the oil being heated up for the round upon round of fried dough. Nope… it’s pretty much just silence here at the schoolhouse. I did manage to fill the air with the smell of coffee… because this day needs to start one way or the other… and I really, really need it!
I’ve also come to the conclusion that as for now, that whole “alone” feeling isn’t gonna go away for a while. Yes, there are people in life… people that I care deeply about… friends and family that care deeply about me, but when I lost Kateri… even though I may not have lost everything… I did lose that comfort you have in life knowing that there is that one person… that one special person who will always be there for you… who will guide you, love you, support you, laugh with you… and hold you when you just need to be held. For almost twenty years, I never really felt alone… but I do now. Not because I’m sitting in bed on my computer instead of taking bong hits for baby Jesus. Not because there isn’t the smell of oil heating. Not because sister-in-laws went to Jamaica or because friend’s and family are miles and miles away. It’s not even because it’s Christmas Morning. It’s simply because Kateri is not here… and I wish she was.
Yes, I may feel alone and sorta lost… but it’s still Christmas Morning and I want to make the most of it. I want to connect with friends and family. I want to open packages and cards from people I love. I want to share gifts with special people in my life. I want to laugh, share stories, and reminisce. I want to push all the ugly, unfortunate, and complicated challenges out for a day and just relax with my coffee by the fire, some Christmas tunes, and most likely a movie along the lines of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Life will be there tomorrow when I wake up for work, but today… it’s Christmas… and I’m gonna try to focus on the things that I have come to love about the Holiday Season… even though they have become harder to see.
Well… I guess it’s not a tradition this year! And I’m okay with that. Yes, I will have fried dough on Christmas again in the future… (I wish I had some now!)… but I’m also learning about how my Christmases (holidays/anniversaries/weekends) are gonna go… and how I would like to spend them in this new life.
It’s a big, complicated planet filled with a whole bunch of humans… who are complicated. It doesn’t matter spiritual beliefs or traditions or backgrounds or placement on the globe… it’s basically try to be a part of “The Good” in the world. We can always start small and just try to be a part of “The Good” in other people’s lives… as we go through our’s.
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.
Kateri and I weren’t exactly “texters”… or really even cell phone users, but for some reason I had started texting her when the time was 1:23 or 12:34 or 3:45 or 2:34… you get the idea. I’ve always enjoyed numbers. At the ranch where Kateri and I met, there really wasn’t much to do in the winter if you weren’t working, or snowmobiling, or snowshoeing… or any of the other things you do when there’s 5 feet of snow out the window… with another 4 feet on top of that. So I watched movies here and there, put together puzzles, hung out with the other seasonal riff raff, and read a few books. Some of those books were filled with stories, some were filled with history, and some were filled with exciting tid bits of information like how the Fibonacci Sequence shows up in the arrangement of the seeds of a sunflower. Over the years I have read less and less about “math” as my interests turned towards other things… like cooking, guitar, and hanging out with Kateri… and now I think I’ve dumbed myself down to where I simply get excited when I look at the clock and it reads 4:56! Which I guess has nothing to do with equations or mathematics… but it’s a fun little observance that has absolutely no real significance in my day to day life… and I guess I thought Kateri needed to know when the numbers lined up!
It provides me relief. When she first died and I realized I was playing almost every day… I bought myself a new guitar… a new sound. It provided me change, but with the comfort of familiarity. This year, I thought I would take advantage of my solitude and buy myself an amplifier because of the whole “I’m not gonna bother anyone”… and plus I needed a little personal growth with my hobby. I wanted a few more options with how my “Escape Time” sounded as I searched for relief from the swirling thoughts… and it has been working. Like everything else in this new life, I try to fill time and space with people and experiences that make me feel good… with the hope of dampening down all the crap. Unfortunately… the crap is always there. But fortunately… I can sometimes swap it out for a few moments of “The Good” in the world through walks in the woods with neighbors, conversations on the couch, Stewart’s Orange Soda, Ben and Jerry’s… or simply the strumming of strings.
It’s a hard memory for me because I remember not being very sympathetic to her headache. It was before we knew what was going on and I thought it was just a headache that would go away in time… but it never did… and I’m reminded of that morning by stupid studded snow tires… two years later. (I’ve written this down before and I just find it interesting how it’s one of those recurring memories that is time specific. I wonder if this memory is gonna visit me every year when the weather changes and the people start freaking out with the first forecast snow. I swear… people lose their minds!)
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.
It was the Halloween of… ummm… 2003 maybe..? Could’ve been 2004 or 5. Well, up to 2007… but one of those years. I know we were living in South Starksboro in our cute little cottage with a loft and a woodstove… it was pretty cool. (Our first stand alone home together… rented from a couple who became very special to both Kateri and I… and who still are. It’s weird to think back at those memories right now. I wish I could get everything that is bombarding my brain right now down on paper… but I can’t… and I’m trying to get to what it is that I wanted to write about! But now… I’m thinking about how Kateri called our back yard the Dagobah System. You know?!… Yoda n shit… and it kinda was.) Anyways, I know it was within that range because on one Halloween we used the tiny bedroom downstairs and the loft you couldn’t stand up in… where we slept… up the ladder… as the places to “design” and make our costumes for the evening. We weren’t going out. We weren’t having a party. Well, I guess we never really had parties… but the point is, we were just gonna be hanging out at home that night and Kateri had a knack for coming up with some fun things to do.
It’s been a year and a half since Kateri passed away… that just seems all sorts of fucked up to me. It’s weird because at some points it seems like it has been that long (whatever that means)… and at other times it seems like yesterday. Actually, anytime I think about Kateri it seems like yesterday… which is hard… and the main reason why I have to try and manage my emotions much of the time. I can function in society without breaking down in the grocery store or coffee shop… but I still don’t care if I do. Although I haven’t become comfortable living my life without Kateri (I just want her back)… I have become more comfortable with my situation… and all the bullshit that comes along with it. Mourning the loss of a spouse is one of those “Big Life” experiences that happens to be somewhat complicated and I realize I am just settling into this whole grieving process… because it’s gonna be around for a while! Oh, it’s gonna change here and there… maybe it’ll even take a break once in a while… but it’s not going anywhere. I’m just learning to live with it.
So yeah, I’m just gonna say it… my body hurts!… but all my winter wood is neatly stacked and tucked away in the lean-to keeping it safe from the rain… and snow… and out of site! I’ve been looking at the piles on the other side of the driveway for about two months now. I was just never motivated enough or had the time to stack it, so I made it The Agenda for this weekend. My plan was to get out there just after the sun came up and have it done by early afternoon, but sometimes things don’t go as planned. However, I’m happy with how the day went… besides being reminded that I’m getting older and that I haven’t taken care of my body in the last year and a half or so! Oh well, that’s why I did it yesterday… so that I could recover today.
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.
Ok. So all I really wanted to say is that… for me… 536 days into this experience is about the time that I needed to make the decision to start looking at the future a tiny bit more. I’m tired of the “routine”. Yes, there are things I have been doing that provide me joy (guitar, sitting by the fire or on the porch, eating cake pops, etc.), but those things are literally to get through the day. Losing a spouse is crushing… in every aspect of your life… at least it has been for me. We do things… anything… to just… not… hurt. (To give you a glimpse into the emotional state of this widower… I saw Kateri’s name in a sentence I wrote… and now I’m a wreck. I love her name… how it looks… everything that fills those letters and the spaces in between. That it was who she was.) But getting back to the point… I’m ready for change. I feel the need to make some small changes… and I’m ready for some big ones, as well. (ummm, FYI… not toooo big of changes… or too many!… or ones on a whim! Even though whims make for good adventures). I just feel the need to take a step back, take a moment, and move forward with a bit more focus on having my happiness and well being in mind going into the future.
The friend I was with was female… (ummm, and she still is)… so when R. asked if we were The Schoolhouse people it made for an interesting introduction when I had to explain that the schoolhouse was mine and my wife’s first home… that my friend is not my wife and that I live alone… because my wife died from cancer. Fun!
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!
We were talking in the kitchen the other day how we couldn’t believe September is more than halfway over! Seeing the trees already trading in their bright green leaves for the vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges of Autumn Time in New England (well, Vermont) came up a bit quicker than expected… but then again… I don’t know where the summer went… or the last 17 months.