Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning

Tag: widowerthoughts

• I found a gift bag in the corner…

  Posted at 9:38 am by Darren Lidstrom, on August 9, 2020

  The moment I saw that bag and realized there were only three cards and a bunch of colorful tissue paper in it… I felt wonderful! If you watch the vid… I kind of explain the situation… but basically, I saw a bag… and recycled it. Sometimes, we gotta start small. One step at a time people!… or some shit like that.

  Widower Notes n Thoughts:

  • Since making that little video and feeling so good… I’ve had a few Crocodile Tear moments. Sad… yes. But not depressing.
    • It’s nice to be able to smile while I cry.
  • When I watched the video and the flood of emotions came rushing in, I looked to my left and saw this scene. The simplistic beauty of it was relaxing to me… the light, the colors, Kateri’s planters that I had filled for the summer and her geraniums enjoying being outside for a few months. It was evening time, there was a calmness… there was a warmth all around.

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  Posted in inspirational, Uncategorized, Widow, widower, widowervideos | 2 Comments | Tagged recycling, video, widower, widowerthoughts

• 2 Days After My 3rd 4th of July… a widower moment.

  Posted at 8:07 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on July 6, 2020

  Yay!… the lazy blog post! I was gonna do one yesterday because I had a pretty wonderful Holiday Weekend and have been feeling pretty good lately… but didn’t. Oh… I tried. Spent hours trying to figure out what I wanted to share… how I wanted to share it… and realized… there was just too much. There were simply too many fun experiences, interesting situations, positive steps in this new life, good memories, and some sad ones over the last little bit for me to consolidate them into something that would capture the… je ne sais quoi (that’s French!)… warm n fuzzy feeling…?.. with a sense of security….?.. and easiness…? (A feeling of refreshing tranquility and an absence of tension or worry… yup. Thanks google!)  So, I watched Unsolved Mysteries instead… and today you get a “Widower” post.

  First… some pics from my third 4th of July… in this new life.

  

  

  

  

  And now… a video… about a memory… that keeps coming back.

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  Posted in loss, videos, Widow, widower, widowervideos | 6 Comments | Tagged fourthofjuly, grief, loss, mourning, thirtydaysofmorning, video, Widow, widower, widower thoughts, widowerthoughts

• Our ’73 Super Beetle… and a song.

  Posted at 1:16 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on May 16, 2020

  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.

  It was one of those days where we were simply out and about driving around Vermont, watching shit go by, and hitting some yard sales…Kateri loved “Yardsaling”. The Super Beetle was parked on the road with a for sale sign in the window, so we started the whole kicking the tires, inspecting underneath, checking out the rusty spots, and dreaming of what it would be like to use for one of our favorite pass times… smoking weed (with a couple of Road Sodas back in the day) and driving the back roads of the Green Mountains… together.

  The inspection and dreaming was all going along fine until I had decided to roll a window down… and it didn’t go back up… and we hadn’t met the owner yet! Yup, Kateri was pretty proud of me at that point! Well, really all it did was force us (me) to find the owner and have a conversation about the vehicle… because I might’ve broken it. When we found Bob we told him we were checking out the car and his first response was, “You didn’t roll down the window, did you?”. Yup…. proud.

  We had a nice conversation, checked out some of the other stuff he was selling, purchased an iron gate that we carted around with us for years (not sure where that ended up!), and set up a time to take the bug for a test drive. Of all of our experiences with that little beetle, the test drive was my favorite. Kateri had never been in… or at least driven…(?) a Volkswagen Bug before and we figured that even if we didn’t buy the car, she at least got to have that experience! I’ll tell you… from the moment she saw that little, Five Different Shades of Orange Super Beetle… with a sunroof!… it always put a smile on her face. To be able to clearly remember her enthusiasm when she got into that car, fired it up and heard that distinct Bug sound as she cautiously took off down the road with the windshield six inches from her face, it makes me happy to this day… even as I can feel the tears on my cheeks. (I guess that’s how you know it was a good thing)

  I love all the memories I have of Kateri and I with that little buggy. It was an adventure every time we pulled away from our little house in the hills… to drive around other hills… never knowing if it was gonna start up again once you stopped for gas, a bite to eat, or to just take in a view. There was one time we decided to putz down south a tiny ways to where Kateri’s little sister was working for the summer at a kid’s camp. Luckily it was a beautiful day because at every stop we had to wait, let the engine cool down (I think. Again, I’m a cook and not a mechanic!… but believe those engines were air cooled.), and hope that it would start so that we could get to the next point on the trip… and eventually home! It was a great lesson in patience.

  The license plate! Oh my gosh… I loved our license plate. It was the first time we got vanity plates. (Are they still called that? Personalized?… whatever) At first, Kateri wanted to have some sort of variation of Pickin’ Apples… her code phrase for sex when she was younger. But we weren’t able to get one of those. We live in Vermont… there are a lot of “Apple” people here… so we started brainstorming other ideas. As much as I like to think it was “our“ Five Different Shades of Orange ’73 Super Beetle… it was really Kateri’s. Once we realized her nickname would fit on the plate, we just thought it would be appropriate! And then we found out THAT was taken. So what do you do?… You add a number to the end! Yup… people would see us puttering around The Green Mountains, smiles ear to ear, in a bright orange bubble with green rectangles on either end that said… SQUIRT1..! 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!

  When we moved to Colorado in 2007 we had to get rid of it. A friend said he could hold onto it for us and used his ex-girlfriend’s AAA membership to pull it out of it’s winter storage space… tarped in the woods… and transport it north to his place. It wasn’t in too great of shape at that point, the rust was kinda running rampant. As the tow truck guy was slowly using the winch to pull it up the angled flatbed… the battery fell through the floor! It’s sorta sad thinking about how she never hit the road again, but it’s kinda fun thinking about how our friends would sometimes pack into that broken down and stationary Bug after they had a few drinks, pass around a joint, talk, and reminisce about the good times. Kateri got to have that experience once when she came back to help a friend out. I love that image… Kateri smiling and happy in her ’73 Super Beetle… with people she loves.

  Widower Notes n Thoughts:

  • Last night I realized I had stopped counting how many days Kateri has been gone… how long I’ve been a widower… and I was comfortable with it. I figured it just meant other things were starting to fill my brain in this new life. Transitioning… or some crap like that. Then I rambled into my phone… and played a song.

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  Posted in loss, Uncategorized, videos, Widow, widower, widowervideos | 2 Comments | Tagged guitar, loss, mourning, SuperBeetle, thirtydaysofmorning, video, Volkswagen, Widow, widower, widowernotesnthoughts, widowerthoughts

• Two Years… a Widower.

  Posted at 1:19 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on April 22, 2020

  

  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.

  

  

  

  

  Yup.

  

  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.

  

  

  

  

  This has been out for years on tables n shit. It’s the day after I told her I needed space… and she gave me 2,100 miles.

  

  Tea Cups at Disneyland… a while ago.

  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.

   

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  Posted in anniversary, cancer, grief, loss, Widow, widower | 12 Comments | Tagged anniversary, cancer, earthday, grieving, loss, melanoma, mourning, randomwidowerthoughts, thirtydaysofmorning, Widow, widower, widower thoughts, widowernotesnthoughts, widowerthoughts

• It’s a New Year!… (widower day 623…)

  Posted at 11:12 am by Darren Lidstrom, on January 5, 2020

  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 was gonna throw out the ol’ “There were some good things, there were some blah blah blah things…”, but that was basically everyone’s year! I kinda figure that that’s just how it goes..?! And then I thought about how our lives’ aren’t just generalizations. They aren’t that simple. In the 365 days that I woke up in 2019 there were definitely ups and downs, but there were things… specific things… that stand out. So yup… here’s a New Year’s Random Widower Notes n Thoughts list for 2020. (yay!… and an almost ten minute video about a whole lot of not much at the end…!):

  Random Widower Notes n Thoughts… June 2, 2020:

  • In 2019 I got a snow blower! (my back thanks me… and yes, I’m excited about it enough that I had to mention it! People talk about how their cats or dogs or lizards are their “children”… which is kinda stupid… so I’m gonna start referring to my snow blower as part of the family. I think our relationship has grown enough over the last 12 months to make that leap!)
  • I pissed some people off in 2019… some of those people I love… which sucks, but it’s gonna happen. Luckily, we all survived.
    • I’m also not everyone’s cup of tea… I’m cool with that… I’m not a huge fan of tea, either! Of course, I still enjoy it once in a while… it just needs honey… lot’s and lot’s of honey.
  • I don’t really look at time in the yearly chunks anymore. In my brain, it’s still based off of the day Kateri died.
  • I haven’t changed anything in the house yet, but I’ve gotten used to everything I see being a reminder of Kateri and my “Old Life”.
    • I have decided to start that process in 2020, though! You know, redecorating and going through some stuff! I’m ready to start putting together my home… my life…. and figuring out how to keep Kateri a part of it.
  • 2019… I went from YachtRocks/Hits 1/Pop2K to Lithium and SoulCycle… with a bit of Caliente.
  • (I just got off the phone with my sis… love ya sis.)
  • In 2019 I learned that I’m gonna need to do more… which means I’m gonna need help… because I wanna do more… because I need to.
  • I need to be healthier… not much more to say about that!
  • I took my wedding ring off for more than 24 hours over the New Year’s holiday… for the first time… it’s currently back on.
    • It was odd… both the fact that I couldn’t feel it on my finger (it’s heavy and I use my thumb to adjust it a lot throughout the day!) and… well… it just wasn’t on my hand! It provides me with a huge connection to Kateri and I simply don’t wanna lose that. It made me soooooo happy that we got married… that we made that commitment… that I had a wife… and that it was Kateri. In this new life…. I had a wife… and that’s not what my life is now. (Although… Kateri will always be my wife… she just won’t be out front digging in the gardens or blaring the B-52’s while tidying the house or laying next to me when I begrudgingly would come upstairs because she said it was time for bed. Damn… I wish she was here to tell me it was time for bed!)
  • It’s easier to remember the cloth KAF shopping bag when going to the store. When shopping for one… I generally don’t need more than a bag and it has become routine to grab it from the pocket behind my driver’s seat. Look at me saving the planet!
    • If I was someone who bought six packs… I would still be cutting the plastic rings so that the penguins and baby seals don’t get their heads stuck in them.  My mom taught me that… in the 80’s… so some of you may not have any idea of what I’m talking about!
  • In 2020, I would like to be a little more focused… in everything… this blog included.
  • Since Kateri died, I’ve been on a quest to simply make things better or easier… hence snow blowers, woodstoves, and chop saws… proper tools for the job and better efficiencies. The quest also includes working on me… becoming better myself. Better at this new life, better at my relationships with friends, family, coworkers, and strangers, better at getting things done, better at taking care of myself. Basically… be a better person than I was yesterday… just so as to live a better life while I’m chugging along in this current one… and to stay on the rails most of the time!
  • Straight up… Happy New Year… on the 5th!

  ps… I started this post on New Year’s Day 2020.  Since then… I have had to use the term, “One appointment at a time.” again… but for the first time with a particular person… someone I love very much… more than most. Luckily, she’s one of the strongest, determined, and fearless in the face of adversity type of people I know… and she’ll (we’ll) get through this. Life doesn’t give us the option of when we need to deal with some stuff… it’s not in our control. What is in our control is how we approach it… how we face it… how we are going to let it exist in our life. It can beat us down… or we can accept the situation and try to take the best steps forward. I’m a “fixer”… I want to fix things as quickly as possible so that I can move on to the next thing. Sometimes… I simply can’t fix it. But I’ll do whatever I can to make it… a little bit better.

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  Posted in loss, New Years, videos, Widow, widower | 7 Comments | Tagged Lizzo, loss, mourning, New Years, randomwidowerthoughts, sunday morning, thefirstthirty, thirtydaysofmorning, video, widower, widowerthoughts, widows

• Widower Day 588… just got through a birthday, Thanksgiving… and now it’s Monday…!

  Posted at 11:24 am by Darren Lidstrom, on December 2, 2019

  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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  Posted in loss, Thanksgiving, Widow, widower | 5 Comments | Tagged Thanksgiving, thirtydaysofmorning, video, Widow, widower, widowerthoughts

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