Once in a while on my “Fridays” I like to stop at the Park-n-Ride halfway between work and home and have a smoke as I sit on the tailgate of my truck. It’s just nice to sit, not move, and take a breath… filled with all sorts of nasty shit… before I start my weekend. The other day I stopped, had my smoke, and when I closed the tailgate and was heading for the driver’s side door, I heard the older man who had parked not far away ask if I could help, “move a dog from one car to another?”… and being in a friendly mood I immediately said, “Sure!”.
We walked over to where two crossover/wagon type cars were parked at a 90-degree angle to each other with their rear hatches open. In the back of his car, I could see the shape of a large dog under blankets. The plan was for each of us to grab an end of the blanket and simply transfer the large canine from one car to the other. I would like to point out that at this point in time… because the gentleman just said “Dog”… I figured I was simply helping move an old dog because he was sick or couldn’t walk or something and was just too large for the older gentleman and woman to wrestle themselves!… I was wrong.
We each grabbed an end of the blankets and when we were about halfway between the two cars, I could see the blanket slipping from the man’s grip. I tried to lower my end to stay level with him while being as gentle on my end as possible, but unfortunately when he got to about 6 inches from the ground he couldn’t hold on anymore…! It was one of those slow-motion experiences where I saw the pup’s head pop out from the blanket… and then I heard it hit the asphalt with a slight thud! I felt horrible for the ol’ boy!… and man! We just dropped his sick and aging canine companion! Then… I realized something wasn’t lining up. Mind you, at the beginning of this experience I was just asked to help move a dog. Come to find out… I helped two strangers move a dog from one car to another… which had died the night before while sleeping in bed with its owner. Yup… wasn’t expecting that!
Honestly, I felt like a schmuck. As we were going through this process, it really wasn’t until the dog was in the second vehicle and I put my hand on his rib cage that I realized he wasn’t breathing, moving… or living. Before I had come to this realization, I had mentioned how we just had to do the same thing with our dog, Xander… pick him up to get him in the truck because it was too high for him to jump into! I was trying to provide some comfort by sharing my own experiences with old dogs… not dead ones! I felt like an asshole for a hot minute, but I was able to get on the same page without anyone noticing… or at the least, pointing out my faux pas…! The saving grace for myself was the gentleman saying, “Thank you”, “God bless you”, “You’re a good man”, and the such as I walked back to my truck, embarrassed by the lack of awareness I just demonstrated!
I thought about what I had just experienced during the rest of the drive home. The wide range of emotions were kind of surprising to me. I felt embarrassment for my lack of understanding of what was actually going on at first. I felt sadness for the owner(s) who just experienced this great loss in their Life. I felt for the pup… and hoped he had a wonderful Life of chasing chipmunks, playing tug-of-war with ratty ropes, or simply soaking up the summer sun while lying on the front porch. I thought of Xander… what he has given me… and how fucking much I love him. I thought about him dying, which made me love him even more. As I drove over the river and through the woods, all I wanted to do was get back to The Schoolhouse and feel his love when Amanda opens the front door so he can run to my truck in the driveway as he welcomes me… home.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
I have the experiences of holding Kateri and hearing her last breath… and then doing the same with my Mom two years later. Because of those two events and who they involved, my relationship with Death has become more personal… more intimate… more Real, I guess… and my acceptance of things I have no control over has become much more central to how I react to whatever environment I am in. I absolutely hate… HATE!… that I have those two experiences, but I am glad I have a couple of Life Experiences that taught… and are still… teaching me how to be more compassionate, to be more accepting, and how to empathize and be more engaged with other people having a rough go of it. There’s enough crap out there in The World, I’m just trying not to add to it! Doesn’t always happen and can definitely be a challenge, sometimes!… but I try… and I hope you do, too.
What’s “The Sourdough Stump?”, you might ask…? Well, at this moment in time… I can’t really give you a clear answer. The easiest and simplest way for me to explain it is this: Free sourdough bread for neighbors, friends, and strangers… or, as our little card says… Spreading kindness with free sourdough bread for whoever stops by… but for me, there’s a lot more that goes into it.
For the last tiny bit, Amanda, her mom, and her sister have been baking sourdough bread “together”… while spread across the country… and it got to the point where we realized we don’t eat that much bread in this household, but she didn’t want it to go to waste! So, on July 6th, 2025, Amanda grabbed some logs from the woodpile, made a sign sayin’, “Free Sourdough”, and The Sourdough Stump was born!… or created… or.. developed..?… definitely not birthed!… anyways, it was the start of what has so far been a wonderful adventure full of creativity, kindness, conversations, honest communication, and exercises in being more comfortable showing our vulnerabilities for Amanda and I…!
I’ve gotta say, it was super entertaining getting a text from her while I was at work which contained a picture of a couple of loaves of bread (in brown paper bags) sitting on top of a few stumps on the side of the dirt road in front of the Schoolhouse…! Unfortunately, no one stopped for those first two loaves sitting atop some stumps, but that just provided us with an initial goal of: Can we get at least 1… just ONE!… person to stop for a free loaf of sourdough bread!… that’s sitting next to the road… on a stump of wood…? Come to find out, the answer to that question is, “Yes, yes you can.”.
One of the things we keep going back to, the thing we really like about The Sourdough Stump and one of the objectives central to our idea is that it’s a free loaf of sourdough bread… no obligations… no expectations… no strings attached. It’s been fascinating to hear how many people say, “You should put a donation or tip jar out!” or “You should start selling it!”, but we like that it’s free, people… FREE! Of course, we’re also trying to figure out how to make a little money to offset some of the increased costs (flour, supplies, electricity… we have an old ass oven that makes the lights flicker when it kicks on!, etc.)… and we have the pipe dream of kinda making a living with it somehow in the future!… maybe..?.. but we haven’t figured that out yet considering our “Business Model” is currently one of just giving shit away as we drink coffee on the porch on Sunday mornings…! For right now though, we’ve simply loved meeting some neighbors, seeing some friends, and crossing paths with travelers visiting from strange and distant lands…!.. like Canada… and New Hampshire.
Since the moment I was sent that initial pic of some bread on a stump, Amanda and I have absolutely loved this whole little experience and personal event we’ve created in front of The Schoolhouse… currently on Sundays from 9:30am till the loaves run out…! We have no idea what we’re doing or how we want to do it… or why..?.. but that’s been the exciting part… the figurin’ it out… and seeing where it goes. Although we aren’t exactly sure of what we want The Sourdough Stump to be, there are interactions and observations each week that provide us with some guidance in forming our “Mission” and/or “Philosophy” with this little project/hobby of ours and if we wanna keep taking steps forward with it… whatever those may be.
So, if you’re out for a Sunday drive in Vermont and come across a stump of wood on the side of the road in front of a cute ass little red schoolhouse with some bread on top (of the stump, not The Schoolhouse)… stop and take one!… and a sticker! Who knows… you may also get to meet some neighbors and have a nice conversation!… unless it’s raining or really cold out… then we’ll just be creepin’ on you through The Schoolhouse windows…!
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
In my Widowhood, I have found that it is a challenge to get excited about things… a lot of things… most things, really. The Sourdough Stump is not one of those things. Food can be nourishing in all sorts of ways.
Like I said, we’re not exactly sure what we’re doing here, but we created an Instagram account you can follow to see when the stump is out and where this little project goes…! Follow along!… @thesourdoughstump
I have dreams of Sourdough Stumps dotting dirt roads all over Vermont… providing bread and conversations for neighbors all across The Green Mountains.
FYI… I’ve been a professional cook for thirty-one years and Amanda was a professional baker after graduating from The Culinary Institute of America: Baking and Pastry… so I guess we DO know what we’re doing when it comes to the production, baking, and food safety side of things for The Sourdough Stump. I mean, c’mon… we all have those neighbors/friends/co-workers whom we can tell what kind of pets they have at home by the cupcakes they brought to the potluck…!
Amanda is a pretty big T. Swift fan. In honor of that I’m REALLY hoping The Sourdough Stump takes off and we get a huge number of followers/fans so that I can refer to them as “Stumpies”…!
These are the notes of things that popped into my head yesterday that I was actually gonna write or talk about… but didn’t…
I’ve never paid attention to my mental health… then I lost my Wife.
I’m definitely going through a thing… but I don’t know if I’m going through a thing only because I think I’m going through a thing…?
For you Widowed Folk… I’m at 7 Years 3 Months a Widower… this is just MY experience.
This is my “Weekend Hat”… I got it days after Kateri died… I’ve been feelin’ how it’s lookin’.
Part of me feels weak… one of those “Suck it up, Buttercup” kind of things.
I drove to the dump with the windows up… it felt safe… like I was in my own little capsule/world.
I was gonna do this earlier, kind of off the cuff/in the moment/what I was going through at that specific time… but I realize I would just be blabbering away, and I wanted this to be a bit more pointed… focused. (Well, I basically just narrowed it down to “Keep it up, Champ!”.
I miss my friends.
I just keep obsessing about… What the fuck am I gonna do?!
For the last 3 years I’ve had a design for the Woodpile before my sister got here… she says she’s just the labor… but this is one of those years that I need help… and need to ask for it.
I would love to just run away to some seasonal gig… but our Priorities and Wants change throughout Our Lives and I’m just not in a Seasonal Gig Space in Life now.
I don’t know what I wanna be when I grow up… and I’ve grown up.
This is one of those Time is Running Out struggles I’m dealing with… I’m getting old…er.
There are a ton of things I love in My Life. Just a couple are:
That Amanda will sit on the stairs and postpone work so that she can be there for me as I talk about… and cry over… some aspects of Life I’m struggling with.
When I remember to grab a new bar of soap BEFORE I get in the shower… Little Victories… glorious.
I’ve gotten into this habit of falling asleep on the couch after Amanda goes to bed. We don’t have the same days off, so on Sunday and Monday Nights when she is at the beginning of her work week, I’m at the start of my weekend. Since I’m a child, I always feel the need to stay up as late as possible when I don’t have to wake up at 4:40 the next morning. Unfortunately, when Amanda goes upstairs to bed at 9:37… I’m usually snoring away on the couch by 10:02…!.. (sometimes still holding a Chewey Chips Ahoy cookie).
This particular evening was no different from the normal routine. I’m sure I had plans to stay up and watch some dystopian sci-fi-y action movie while shoveling food packed with artificial flavors and preservatives into my pie hole and to not… NOT… fall asleep on the couch!……………………… I wasn’t successful. Yup, it was just like most of the other Monday (my “Saturday”) Nights. I mean, besides being woken up by the “I’m being protective and assertive” Xander BARK! at 3:49am…! (Yes, I was still on the couch… slumped in a position that allowed my beard to keep my neck nice and toasty!… and sweaty… which was gross.)
As I kinda came to, I heard a knock on the front door. Mind you, I’m in Vermont… a lot of us who reside in old houses don’t really use the front door for this reason or that… so I knew it was someone I didn’t know who was lost, looking for some sorta help, or someone(s) who wanted to rob me. (I live in the woods with distant neighbors. When you live rurally, you learn how to protect your home/loved ones/belongings from all sorts of things… animals, the cold and snow, water, bugs, things that simply decide to break or give up on doing what they have always done!, Mother Nature, the natural deterioration over Time, and people… whose decisions and circumstances in Life lead them to make some not so great choices.) After getting off the couch with an under-the-breath groan or two, I shuffled to the front door, flipped on the outside light without saying anything for the element of SURPRISE! and saw this kid and his dyed-red hair in a hoodie holding his phone on my porch. I inquired what was up…? He mentioned a few things and that his name was… let’s just call him Cody! Codi! Code! I asked if he was ok… he said no… I realized there was some sort of mental health crisis going on so I told him I would meet him out front and we would try to figure some things out. (I said out front on the deck because I still didn’t know this kid from Adam!)
(Side Note: Guess what has two thumbs, might’ve smoked half a joint, started writing, and forgot that they put water on the stove for a Cup o’ Noodle Scooby Snack…?… THIS GUY!… winning.)
Long story short, we sat on the deck for a bit talking about the situation and it got to the point where I invited him into The Little Red Schoolhouse so that we could make some phone calls and plan the next steps. Amanda had already started to scour the interweb for information, and our options in the early morning hours were to call 911, call a 24-hour hotline for a local mental health provider, he could go back to where he was staying, or I could drive him to the ER. After calling the 24-hour hotline, in hopes of being able to get him checked in somewhere somewhat close, and learning from the “Mental Health Professional” yawning on the other end of the phone (Fuck-you, dude… do your job better) that he would need to wait until they open to be checked in… I decided to drive him the 40 minutes to the ER.
It was a pleasant drive in, and I always enjoy those commutes where the stars are twinkling all bright when you leave the house and at some point, you notice the slightest lightening in the shade of darkness you’re traveling through and realize The Day… is right around the corner. We chit-chatted about this and that, but I kept it light and non-intrusive or judgmental, considering he was saying some pretty wacky stuff. Nothing that I felt was dangerous, but things that definitely didn’t add up. As I figured, it was simply my job for the night/morning to do what I could for this young man who knocked on my door at 3:49… a.m…. asking for help. Once he was checked in and through the double doors, I gave my contact info to the nurse at the desk and asked if she could pass it along to Cody! Codi! Code!… just in case… and then I drove home… in the daylight.
Now, before you start thinking I’m this wonderful guy and wanna nominate me for various Good Samaritan Awards or a Nobel Prize for being so fucking awesome!… let me tell you about the second time Cody! Codi! Code! came by The Schoolhouse… at 12:16a.m…. three days later… straight-up and cutting to the chase of asking for a ride to the ER… again. The differences this go around were that when I opened the door this time and he started talking, I realized he simply didn’t wanna be where he was and he… more or less… thought I would simply take him wherever he wanted at any time of day or night (I know who he was staying with and am pretty sure it’s a pretty safe place). The other main difference, and one in which I have thought a lot about and have struggled with, is that I had to be up in four hours to get ready for another long day at work and my brain has been going back to the question, “Was I supportive and willing to help this kid out that first night only because it was convenient for me at the time…?”. Hmmm.
Being a part of The Good… being a Good Person… can sometimes be a struggle. Not just because there are so many differing opinions and definitions of what it actually means to be a good person or what is actually “Right”, but also because us as individuals are so different in how we receive and react to the millions of outside forces/experiences bombarding us every minute of every day… and have since our birth!… which have formed our opinions on… everything… and make us who we are Today. Being a part of The Good or being a Good Person doesn’t mean there’s Perfection… it means you Persevere through the struggles until one day you look up from the path you are on and recognize all the work you put into yourself simply made you a little bit better of a person.
In my Widowhood, I have found that thinking about and making goals pertaining to this or that has been beneficial as I am learning to live a life where I’m still sorta finding my identity… figuring out who I am… who I wanna be type shit…… we’re all a work in progress! The things I make goals for can range from big and lofty to small and mostly insignificant, but they provide me a sense of accomplishment and usually a valuable experience that allows me to take something I have put time, thought, and energy into (whether it be physical/material or experiential)… into the future. Currently, I am sitting on the side of a bed in Lubec, Maine, with my Blundstones dangling 3 inches from the tiled floor of my hotel room where I can see the ocean through the water-stained sliding glass door as I check the second coordinate off the list of my goal to visit the 4 corners of the continental U.S. Yup, I’m as far east as you can go before you need to hop on a boat!… and I have no desire to do that.
Today is the anniversary of Kateri’s Death Date… April 22nd… she died 7 years ago… and I thought a little Road Trip to the Easternmost Point in the continental U.S. would be a good adventure and could provide me with Time & Space to remember Kateri, our Time together, and to think about where I’m currently at in this gig called Life. Plus, I needed to test out the newish truck I bought 3 months ago during my Mini-Mid-Life Crisis…!
Amanda and I hit the Southernmost Point in Key West last year, but for this… I decided to do it solo… sorta. I mean… Kateri is not only with me in “spirit”, but she was nestled in a little glass jar sitting on my gloves in the center console for the drive over here… and has been pulled out for photo ops at light houses by the ocean and at the summit… well, almost the summit… of a mountain. Other than that, it’s really just me spending some time with myself as I reflect on Life in an area that is new me and one in which I find interesting.
Just to let you know, Lubec is tiny and quiet… and it’s the off-season… so it’s even more quiet..er. Although I am super happy with my Road Trip and Destination for the 7th Anniversary of Kateri’s passing because of the calmness and solitariness, it would be nice if there was at least 1… ONE!… restaurant/coffee shop/bakery/teahouse/fish house/clam or lobster shack/pizza place/burger place/Chinese restaurant open…! And I’m no coffee connoisseur, but man… I just want a decent cup of coffee that’s strong enough to defend itself…! (Thank you Tom Waits)
I’ll be honest, I got here last night… saw some sights… spent an hour and a half in the truck getting a pizza… spent another couple of hours in the truck today, finding food and seeing some other closed sights… and now I’m just chillin’ in my room as the tarps flapping from the ocean breeze are accompanied by the clanking of chains off in the distance. It’s nice here. It’s quiet… besides the tarps and chains. It’s beautiful… and the people seem nice, but it’s not Home… and I’m ready to be Home… in Vermont… at The Little Red Schoolhouse… with Amanda and Xander. I guess that’s a positive indication that I have a pretty decent Life. Well, I know I have a pretty decent Life… I think I might actually even have a pretty good Life. And honestly, I’ve always had a Good Life. Have there been bumps, challenges, and the unexpected?… of course, but that’s just a part of the gig… and why someone invented Deep Breaths… and these emojis 🤷♂️🤦♂️🤪… ❤️.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
I Love Kateri… and miss absolutely everything about her… everything. Loss hurts.
He said his name was John… of the “Moores” or somethin’… lineage from the 1600/1700’s… and he is the reincarnation of some historically significant bloodline… or some shit. His plan is to create the new and independently sovereign country of… “New England”… consisting of the states we here in The U.S. currently refer to as… New England… but he’s gonna start with becoming the Governor of Maine in 2026… among other things… yup. During my time in the Lubec area, I spent probably a total of 2 and a half hours communicating face-to-face with other humans. 2 hours and 19 minutes of that were eating breakfast and walking around a little fishing town with John. He was very animated and a little hard to follow at times, and he usually informed me I was “slow” or would say, “keep up!” when I mentioned I wasn’t following him, disagreed, or asked a question, but I probably learned more about myself… and Life… during my time with him than at any other point on my trip. I mean, I didn’t walk out to the edge of a wharf or pier with him just in case he had the inclination to push me off into the ocean or somethin’… and I always had an “Exit Strategy” if the space we were in required it… but he taught me a lot..! (He said his IQ was around 182!!).. and I’m thankful he is now a part of my story.
Although I believe it helps us to accept the things that we have no control over for what they are, it doesn’t mean we need to like them. That acceptance just gives us Time, which allows us to focus more on the things we would like to change, build, or improve upon… or that simply fill us with joy, happiness, and a potential smile.
The temperatures are warming up, the snow has mostly melted… even though it’s snowing right now…!, and with the third boiling of sap, our second Season of Sugarin’ has come to a close.
I’ve gotta say, I really enjoy winter… love it, actually… but I’m welcoming the warmth coming along with the sap this next little bit…! I think my body and brain needs it. There’s a lot going on out there in The World… on top of all the things most of us probably think/worry about on a daily basis… or are starting to think more about… like our futures n stuff. It can be a lot to deal with. It is a lot to deal with sometimes, but interspersed throughout our days are the beautiful things that happen solely because it’s Time for them to show themselves and we just happened to be there and look up…! You know, sunsets, low tide, the first crocus type shit. They’re there… even when you’re focused on other things.
Amanda and I started making our own Maple Syrup last year sorta on a whim, and it’s been a wonderfully fun and educating experience for both of us right here in our back yard. Nope, we ain’t no professionals, but that’s one thing I love about making Maple Syrup… it’s pretty basic stuff. If you’ve got fire, a pot, and Maple Sap… you can make syrup! Now, the fact that it takes 40ish gallons of sap to make 1… yes 1!… gallon of syrup… well now… that’s when “The Process” of boiling off 39 gallons of water comes into play!… and it’s a fantastic exercise in the practice of Patience.
I’m not gonna get into the progression of our “Operation” over the 6 times we’ve boiled within the last two years, how we started with a stock pot over an open fire… on a windy day!… and have now reached the “2 hotel pans on a box I made out of stainless steel from an old kitchen’s hood system that was being thrown away”, but each time we’ve boiled, we’ve learned to do it a bit more efficiently and have been able to make it a scant more comfortable..y. More importantly, we’ve had fun doing it… together. Plus, when Maple Syrup is part of the end result from an activity, it helps sweeten the blow when you realize it took you ten hours to get a quart of Ash Infused Syrup!… which I’m just gonna brand as “Raw Syrup”… and sell to the Asshole Tourists… it’s gluten free. (Not to the Good Tourists… because they’re Good People. Just the Assholes… because… well… they’re Assholes)
(Side Note: Sugarin’ Season takes place in spring… which we here in Vermont also like to refer to as Mud Season because of all the dirt roads… and there’s a lot of water run off… from all the snow n shit… which is what makes everything green for the two weeks of summer! But currently, the sump pump in my basement is going off every 17 minutes and 22 seconds…!.. yay.)
Amanda and I have only Mondays off together so if we wanted to boil sap together this year, we had to do it on Mondays. Sometimes, Life… and the weather… don’t care about your plans or the schedule for your little Sugarin’ Operation. Last Monday, because of an appointment/meeting/discussion that had been scheduled in the afternoon, I decided to wake up at 3:30a.m. in hopes of getting the fire going by 4:00a.m. so as to have enough time to boil our sap, jar it up, take showers, and get into town. The Oracle was calling for rain in the morning, so I even hung a tarp the night before for one less thing to do in the first few hours of the day… and so I wasn’t sitting in the rain. Just as with every previous boil… it took longer than I had anticipated (ugh… Patience… and Realistic Expectations), but I made it to my appointment…!
I actually rather enjoy getting up early, prior to The World waking up. There’s a sense of calm a couple of hours before the sun rises as the darkness is slowly replaced with the view of leaves, trees, and pastures on hillsides. I’ve had a lot on my mind as of late, and it was nice to have an opportunity to kinda be forced to sit and think. Awe… thinking. Sometimes it can be rewarding. Sometimes it provides clarity… or sometimes, it can create more questions. It can be heartwarming, sadness provoking, or profound. No matter what, we all do it!… think, that is… even if there are times we question if we were!… thinking.
One of the things I thought about in the wee hours of the morning as the sap was steaming away is that there’s a lot going on out there in The World…! Although I’m not one to get too worked up about all the bad shit in The World… (I have no control over most of the big things. I have a basic understanding of the effect money has on people, power, and politics. I get the gist on human nature.), I still pay attention and can understand the anxiety people are feeling over the current state of affairs both within The United States and outside our borders. I get it. It’s like squinting to watch a horrible reality gameshow on a 3″ screen where your retirement is someone else’s Prize Money and most of the audience members think they’re contestants on The Show, playing for a certain Team, and a piece of The Winnings. It’s whacky out there. It’s wild. It’s complicated. And… it’s on top of everything else in our Life!… gross. I’m just gonna keep truckin’ along and take advantage of opportunities to reflect on my actions, decisions, and overall Life during the quiet times… such as at 4:36a.m…. when watching sap boil.
Luckily, I was out there for a few hours and had plenty of time to think about other things besides the state of the World. Ya, I thought about some of those BIG Things like Money, Health, Jobs, My (Our) Future, My (Our) Home, and the such, but the small things were also there, like somehow, I forgot to clip my pinky finger’s nail…! I mean, that’s sorta weird… right? How did I just not clip one nail..?!… or did it happen to grow super fast..?…!.. I have questions.
I thought about how Kateri would’ve loved making Maple Syrup at Home from her own trees. I started to try to picture what that experience would have looked like but for some reason it felt… futile… pointless. Yes, she would’ve loved this… LOVED IT!… but Kateri and I didn’t have this experience… and that’s ok. We had almost two decades of being in each other’s Lives. Twenty years of which were filled with all sorts of other wonderful adventures. Sitting there, in the beat up ol’ camping chair in the dark with my coffee… on my land… at my (our) Home… I had this sense of wanting to be more in the present. I didn’t want to reminisce and feel the sadness that comes along with remembering the good times with Kateri or think about all those “If she was here…?” type questions. It just wasn’t the time for that. I wanted to think about Today and Tomorrow and This is What I Have. On this particular morning, Amanda and I were making maple syrup… because that’s something we do..!.. and I loved the feeling of excitement and anticipation I had as I pictured her with her coffee walking across the backyard to join me under the tarp so I could fill her in on the progress… and my early morning escapades. I wondered if Xander… our pup… would be by her side, but knew it was probably a good bet he wouldn’t be. Nope, he’d still be in bed… probably stretched out under the duvet… diagonally at this point. He’s not exactly what we would call a “Morning” “Dog”.
When it comes to the 6 times we’ve boiled sap, as I sat there at the start of #5 nestled in the old camping chair with my coffee mug sticking up from the armrest as the light from the fire escaped through the cracks of the fabricated metal box and stuck to the tarp and trees… I was feeling pretty good about Life. I was on schedule. The sap started boiling sooner than I expected. It was quiet… besides the sounds of The Woods, water hitting a tarp, and the crackle of burning wood. The tribulations of Life were still asleep or hangin’ somewhere off in the distance and all I had to do was keep a fire going, sap in the pans, and sit there with my thoughts. I was tired, maybe… but good.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
Find/Make/Recognize Time… Time for yourself. Time to figure it out. Time to remember. Time to reflect. Time to plan. Time to learn. Time to share. Time to give… and knowing when you need to take it. Take time to stop… and think… about whatever it is you need to think about.
We’ve semi-started a tradition of eating Breakfast for Dinner on nights we make maple syrup. You know, pancakes n such… just seems fitting.
Life is everchanging as we adapt to an everchanging World… along with everything that goes into that. It’s always moving… shifting… morphing into something familiar, but which doesn’t feel the same. Life is continually updating to The Present…. and we’re forced to exist in The Now. In my Widowhood, and I think we all go through something like this, there have been Moments when I’m walking up the driveway, or driving down to town, or strolling through the woods, or snowshoeing with Amanda, or simply sitting in the Kateri/Xander Chair where I find myself taking a look around and going, “Huh… so this is what My Life looks like right now… Who’d a thunk? Wouldn’t have guessed that This or That was gonna be a part of it..!”. Today, while driving my truck home after getting windshield wipers for the cute little Jeep Renegade… the one whose front wheel had fallen off… I had one of those Moments.
On this morning’s ToDo List was the final task pertaining to my mini-Midlife crisis after the previously mentioned wheel fell off my vehicle… and I bought a new(ish) truck. This morning, a friend of mine helped me replace the fender on the cute little Jeep, which had gotten a bit crumpled when my wheel tried to smash through it! And now, I am at a point in My Timeline which feels slightly different than the one I was at just about a month and a half ago.
I’ve thought a lot about Life over the last 6 weeks… a lot about My Life. There have been some significant emotional, psychological, and financial challenges that I needed to face, to figure out, to get past and overcome so that I could move… forward. After my wheel falling off and subsequently me freaking out and buying a new(ish) truck literally the next day… then getting snow tires/bed cover/ice scraper/jump pack/etc…. after making the decision to get rid of Kateri’s Tacoma along with deciding who would remove it… and then having it removed…!,.. after going through the steps I had planned out once the dust settled from the initial runaway wheel, I’m filing this experience away in the “Memories” and/or “Remember When?!” folders because my cute little Jeep’s driver’s side front fender is fixed!… and I even got to help…!.. a little.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
My Life is filled with 49 years of wonderful experiences and memories along with more than a handful of uncomfortable ones… and few that I could’ve lived without. That’s just how Life goes. Nope, this isn’t how I expected it to go, but my story is still being written and every day that I’m awake I have an opportunity to adapt to the world outside my windows as I try to persuade The Future to be kind and go in the direction I would like it to. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t, but Perseverance will get me to tomorrow… where there’s another opportunity to try it again.
For years, I’ve had Dreams of Grandeur of becoming an auto mechanic. This experience only reinforced that dream!… hmmm.
The wobble in my steering wheel was rather concerning when I first felt it as I crossed over into Vermont. By the time I got to the next exit the wobble had added a wibble, so I figured I should probably play it safe and get off the interstate. At this point, although I found it concerning, I didn’t think that much about it. All I thought was there was an appointment at Mike’s in my near future… (and there was!). When I got off the interstate and started heading north, I was still at that stage where you turn down the radio and listen to all the noises your vehicle is making while trying to decipher what is an old sound… and what is a new one…!
I got to the gas station 11 miles up the road and realized that the wibble wobble had no intentions of going away. I pulled into a parking spot, gave this bar a little push, gave that bar a little pull, looked at some stuff and some things… everything seemed solid…! Considering I’m a cook and not a mechanic and didn’t really know what I was doing… I was definitely trying to look the part! I even popped the hood in hopes of seeing something obvious! Unfortunately, I didn’t learn anything from popping the hood. I was just reminded of the fact that chipmunks will squirrel away acorns in all sorts of places… like the hollow part of your hood. So, I kept on truckin’… in my cute little Jeep.
The church on top of the hill is the last point on the drive home with somewhat reliable cell service, and with the shimmy and shakes I was experiencing I decided to shoot Amanda a text letting her know something was up with my car… just in case something happened. My next text to her was sent after I pulled out of the general store 5 and a half miles up the road… and thankfully the text went through! Of course, she didn’t see it right away because she was engrossed in putting together a puzzle, but when she did see it, it said… “My wheel just fell off”… and that event set in motion an experience (that I’m currently going through) which is filled with everything from “What the fuck was that?!” to “That was pretty frickin’ cool…!” while also hitting all aspects of my life. It is providing me with the opportunity to remember Kateri, to take a couple more steps into my widowhood and find a bit more out about myself, to fulfill a midlife-crisis dream and buy a new(ish) truck… and end this experience with saying goodbye to the 2001 Tacoma that has been rusting away in my driveway for the last 3 years. I have finally become comfortable with letting go of the daily reminder of one of Kateri’s Hopes n Dreams… her own Toyota truck.
First Event in the Chain… The Wheel Fell Off.
Yup… my driver’s side front wheel fell right the fuck off. I pulled out onto the road… heard a clunk-clunk… was gonna stop to reverse back into the general store’s parking lot… but it was too late! After that second clunk the front-left side of my vehicle dropped a foot as I heard the sound of metal scraping on asphalt. I turned my head to the left and could see that I was sitting much closer to the road… and there were multiple feet of empty space between the vehicle I was sitting in and the wheel I was looking at across the road! That’s not supposed to be over there!! This is an example of one of those “What the fuck was that?!” situations.
After the initial shock wore off, my brain went to “What are the priorities in this situation?… when your vehicle is sitting at a slight angle in the middle of the road (in my lane, at least)… with only three wheels!”. So I put the hazards on, got out of the vehicle and retrieved the wheel, rolled it to the side and texted Amanda. I just wanted to let her know what was going on, that I was fine, I was gonna need to tow the car… and if she had AAA…!
Once she was on her way, I took a breath, walked back to the car… and the problem solving began! I thought about the possibility of somehow rolling it back into the parking lot…?… not likely. The “thought” that actually created the environment for me to have my first “That was pretty frickin’ cool..!” experience was, “Well, the rotor doesn’t seem to be mangled or anything, maybe if I just start jacking the car up I’ll just be able to put the wheel back on…? Now… where are the lug nuts..?..?…! LUG NUTS!!…”… I found 1… solo… lug nut. Well, maybe it’ll be enough to get my cute little Jeep out of the road..? So, I placed the car-jack where I thought looked “safe”… and started to slowly lift the driver’s side naked wheel well up off the cold asphalt.
As I was turning the “Awkward Jack Turning Thing-a-ma-Jig Tool” a vehicle pulled up beside me and a younger guy asked if I need any help. Why YES!… Yes I do need some help!… Would LOVE some help! It also felt good knowing that I could use help… and that I took the step to actually accept it from this stranger. I’m glad I did because when he returned from pulling up ahead of me, he was carrying an impact drill and socket set! This was the start of one of those perfect backwoods “Vermonty” experiences which reminds me of why I live here and love my little “neighborhood”. I mean, once getting a read on the kid, after introductions and giving the low down on the situation, I was quite confident we were gonna at least get this thing out of the road…! And God dammit… we did.
Once I reached an acceptable height to reattach the wheel, Parker (the kid) tried screwing in the lone lug nut… to no avail. When we pulled it out, we realized it was stripped to shit and was basically useless. So now what? I’ve got a wheel… but no lug nuts! Thankfully for good ol’ ingenuity, we simply took (well, not so simply) a few lug nuts from a couple of other wheels to attach the front wheel well enough to roll down the road!… at slow to moderate speeds…! Unfortunately, there were a plethora of stubborn lug nuts, so we ended up taking 2 from driver’s-side-rear and 1 from the passenger’-side-rear…but it worked!
Once I realized we were gonna be able to get the wheel on and that I was most likely gonna be able to get home… a calmness kinda fell over me. It was relieving knowing that this part of the challenge had been figured out. What started out as a somewhat fucked up, annoying, frustrating, and potentially dangerous situation ended with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. It was a wonderful experience!… besides the whole wheel falling off thing.
When Amanda and I got home and were talking about the situation, my priority was figuring out how to get to work… on Thursday… it was Sunday, but I had the next three days off because of my weekend and New Year’s Day. My plan was to order lug nuts off of Amazon (well, Amanda did since I don’t have Prime and wanted them shipped fast!), get them on Tuesday, put them on the Jeep so that I didn’t have any empty spots, drive it to work on Thursday and hit my friend’s shop on the way home. All of which I did… and my buddy was amazing.
Second Event in the Chain… my Mid-Life Crisis.
I’ll be honest, when my wheel started doing the wibble wobble thing my mind went straight to, “Fuck this… I’m buying a new truck…!”. I won’t get too much into it, but I feel like I’ve been sorta going through a Mid-Life Crisis with a touch of Widowhood thrown in there for good measure. For the past few years as the Jeep has been chugging along and accumulating miles, I’ve been looking at trucks. Lots of trucks. All sorts of trucks! When Kateri died and I went from a 2-income household to just my income (I’m a cook)… I basically thought I would be driving the cute little Jeep a bit longer into the future and didn’t think I would actually be able to buy a newer vehicle. It’s just kinda fun to wish for things… and to dream of owning an old truck.
For the last year, I narrowed it down to either a 1980-’88 Toyota Truck… or a newer Tacoma that would be more comfortable and reliable. The conundrum was that they are basically kinda sorta the same price (ish) so it’s really a matter of if I should be rational and responsible… or spend the money on “The Cool Factor”. I’m 49… I went the rational/responsible route. Yup, I bit the bullet and bought a new(er) Tacoma… which is red… and I love it.
It was fun buying a new vehicle even though it was nerve wracking at the same time… and always takes longer than expected, but Nick was wonderful and after some wheeling n dealing, I felt comfortable with what we had landed on. As we sat there waiting for paperwork to be finalized and the truck to come back from being filled with gas and the interior gone over one more time, I realized this was the first time in 24 years that I was buying a vehicle solely because it was the vehicle that I wanted. Kateri and I had multiple vehicles over the years but as one would come to the end of its life after hundreds of thousands of miles, we would talk about what would fit our needs, what did we want to buy, what worked best for us. This time was different. Yes, having a car payment again is rather disconcerting, but the fact that I’m paying for my truck… one that I’m excited about… one that I picked out… for me... actually feels… good. Of course, I didn’t drive it for the first week since it came with summer tires and I didn’t feel like sliding off Wild Hill and wrecking the thing before I even made the first payment!… but we’re good to go now… green license plates n all!
Third (and final) Event in the Chain… Kateri’s 2001 Toyota Tacoma.
Kateri and I bought a 2001 Tacoma in 2010. Her dream car was a Yota with a wooden bed. After she died, I had Hopes n Dreams of removing the bed (it’s super rusty) and turning it into a wooden flatbed. Unfortunately, Time, Mother Nature, and Money were working against me and once the gas tank rusted through (around the fuel pump rusted which caused the pump to fall to the bottom of the tank leaving a hole on the top!), it basically sat in its spot for the next 3-4 years as the Vermont weather slowly chipped away at the truck’s integrity. Heck, I had tow straps holding the gas tank on in the first place!
Because of the situation… and me not wanting my driveway to look like a used car lot or salvage yard… I came to the conclusion to simply let the ol’ Gold Toyota go. More importantly, I had reached that moment in Time where I was comfortable letting it go… and ready for it. It’s still amazing to me the amount of weight I put on certain things because of their attachment to Kateri and our life together, and it feels somewhat relieving when I reach these types of decisions… and accept them.
My Little Red Schoolhouse and that beat up 2001 Toyota Truck are two material things that probably hold the most attachments to Kateri for me in my Widowhood (plus her wedding ring and a bracelet)… of course, the house I have no plans to get rid of!… even though it’s rotting away, as well..! We loved it… LOVED IT!… when we got that truck. We drove all over Vermont in it. I have so many fond memories of Kateri and I camping in it, filling the back with items for our wedding, driving over the App Gap after work through snowstorms, hauling debris to the dump from the bathroom we demolished, or simply going for a drive to places where the roads get narrower and narrower as the forest gets thicker and thicker. At times, we might’ve even gotten lost… but we didn’t care… because it was all part of the adventure!
We all use and view our vehicles differently. Living rurally, cars/trucks/transportation is a huge thing… you spend a lot of time in your car simply going to the grocery store. Kateri and I were also filled with that wanderlust for a good chunk of our life together… basically, until we bought our Little Red Schoolhouse. One of Kateri’s favorite things to do was to sit in the passenger seat while The Band blared from the speakers and smoke from a joint was being whisked out the cracked window… and watch The World go by. Road trips were a common thing. We would spend a lot of days off just driving around and seeing the sights. Before we bought our house, looking at real estate was a wonderful excuse to putz around Vermont and talk about our future… talk about our Hopes n Dreams… as the ground beneath us was changing constantly as the miles piled up.
From the moment the ’01 Tacoma became inoperable, it has sat there reminding me that I don’t have the means to fix… that it has been neglected… that I have neglected it. Anytime I want to move something out of the garage, I only have one option because there’s a broken-down truck in front of one of the garage doors… and it annoys the fuck out of me. For the past three years when it comes time to move wood from the road to the garage, I get frustrated by the number of trips I need to take with the little garden trailer being pulled behind the lawn tractor… as I drive it right past the truck! Don’t even get me started on all the times I go to Home Depot and wished I had an operational truck!… instead of figuring out how many 2×4’s I can slide between the front seats and still shut the back door instead of strapping them to the roof…!
What it comes down to and where I’m at is that every day when I come home from work, the store, a neighbor’s house, etc… I see that truck sitting there… withering away… and it’s Time for me to let it go. It doesn’t mean I’m “letting go of” or “moving on from” or “getting past” the loss of Kateri… because we Live with Loss for as long as we are alive… it just changes over Time. For me, I recently went through a series of events that in the end transpired into some cool experiences, a new truck!… and an open parking space, and the removal of a rusty ol’ eyesore… that just happened to be filled with priceless memories of Life and Love.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
In 2019, a guy named Doug left this note on my front door. I wasn’t anywhere near thinking about getting rid of the Tacoma and shared that with him over a very pleasant and enjoyable phone call. I felt that if I was ever to get rid of it… I’d contact him first… so I kept the note… and called 5 years later… and his wife informed me he passed away… in 2019. I’m glad I kept the note. I feel fortunate that I was able to talk to him. And albeit somewhat brief, I’m thankful for the wonderfully heartfelt and honest conversation I was able to have with his widowed wife. Pretty frickin’ cool.
I donated the truck to Habitat for Humanity. At first (after trying Doug), I just wanted it gone and maybe I could get a couple of bucks out of it, but that didn’t feel right to me… Kateri wouldn’t have cared for it. Habitat helped her mom out so I thought Kateri would appreciate the attachment and that her truck was gonna go towards helping someone in need.
Trains of Thought on the Jeep wheel falling off.
The logical train of thought shared with me from people who know a lot more about this kinda stuff is that there was corrosion between the wheel and plate and the lug nuts simply loosened up over time. And yes, I’m still beating myself up for not checking lug nuts when the wibble wobble was going on!
Because I’ve lost a bit of faith in humanity these days, I’m still saying that someone stole four of my lug nuts when I was in town because they needed them for their own car. I hope it worked out for them.
Although I love my new truck, I’m not yet comfortable having it and it’s not lost on me that the main reasons I was in a position to buy it was because my wife died and I straight up stopped spending money, my mom died and there was a small chunk from when my father sold their house, and there was a global pandemic where I worked… and worked… and worked.
Kateri go rid of a bunch of cassette tapes when we moved back to Vermont because we didn’t have a vehicle with a tape deck. When we bought the ’01 Tacoma later that year… it came with a tape deck…!
I kept the tailgate from Kateri’s truck, but I have no idea what I’m gonna do with it yet. Maybe a table up at the fire pit? Maybe a swing? I might just hang it from a tree out in the woods?!
The truck sat so long it created divots in the asphalt…! Stuart the tow truck operator pointed that out. Stuart… another positive part of this experience!
And with this blog post I am closing the chapter of my Life which includes Kateri’s 2001 Toyota Tacoma as I take steps further into my Widowhood and root myself more firmly in the present. I am looking forward to finding excitement in the road ahead as I sit behind the wheel of my new truck… and watch the world go by.
I’m lucky, I get to watch the world go by with Amanda and Xander by my side. Live in The Present, people… The Past will always be there tagging along in the back seat for you to check on through the rear-view mirror.
The loss of a loved one and the grief that comes along with it never goes away… it just slowly changes as Time keeps marching on until one day you realize… it’s different. During the Holidays, it could be an obvious thing such as when you realize you’re not breaking down every time you open a Christmas Bin or with every ornament you unwrap from its tissue paper sleeping bag. Other times it’s simply a feeling you get when you look back on your Life and are able to recognize that you are much more firmly rooted in and excited about The Present and Future than you were a year ago, three years… or seven. You are able to look back fondly on The Past and merely recognize The Pile of Poop Times because memories of The Good Times have caught up to them and are starting to pull ahead and overshadow…! The shitty stuff will always be in the rearview mirror and they will sometimes feel closer than they appear … depending on which mirror to look at… but once they get far enough behind and the feeling of them chasing you goes away, you find there are long stretches where you can hit the cruise control, put on some Steely Dan, and enjoy the view ahead through the windshield of your cute little Jeep Renegade.
Today is December 19th, 2024. Seven years ago, Kateri and I were sitting in a doctor’s office as he informed us that Kateri had Stage 4 Metastatic Malignant Melanoma. This was three days after we learned she had a mass in her brain and two days before I left to spend what we thought was the last Christmas with my mom. Let me tell you… it was a fucked-up time!… one that I’m glad is in The Past. Nowadays, December 19th is actually kind of a special day for me and in a weird way… a good day.
I’ve dealt with (and am dealing with) the loss of Kateri in the only way I know how… and I feel I’ve done ok with it. I’m one of those people who feel the need to attach things to other things so that I can keep them in My Life, even though they mean something different to me now.
For the last few years, I’ve had my annual dermatology check-up with Dr. Dan on this particular anniversary… it just kinda worked out that way. Dr. Dan has been our dermatologist since we moved down here and is the one who initially found Kateri’s melanoma. Kateri loved Dr. Dan… and I know she had an impact on him. You could see the sorrow in his eyes as he tried to be supportive of her with the diagnosis, and I felt his empathy and compassion when he would check in with me over the phone or take me out for a meal and some music after she passed. He’s a good man… which helps make him an even better doctor.
The first few years of Widowhood were rough, and I know it’s a Lifelong process, but I’m glad I’ve been able to feel the healing effects of Time. I don’t exactly have any desire to see doctors or hear what they have to say about my health, but this is different. And although I’m pretty sure it’s not natural for anyone to look forward to going to the doctor, I will say I enjoy my annual visit with Dr. Dan. We schedule it to be the last appointment of the day to give ourselves a little extra time to catch up, fill each other in on our lives, and reflect on the special person Kateri was. Even though I’m sure he will remove something from my body to send off to some lab (Kateri called it her weight-loss program!), I’m mostly really going to the appointment for the conversation, to wish him and his family a Merry Christmas, and to personally say… Thank-you.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
Just because I miss people and things from the Past, it doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the Present or am unable to look towards the Future. Just because I’m living in the Present and am excited for the Future, it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about the Past or the people who were in it.
The Christmas Tree has been around for a while. From what I understand, back in the 1500’s those festive people The Germans are credited with starting the tradition of selling dead trees for an exorbitant amount of money to overworked, overtired, over stressed parents just searching for that specific Cabbage Patch Doll and a little Hope!… who would also appreciate it if their children stopped fighting over who gets to help Mom or Dad duct tape the tree to the roof of the Tesla. It was pretty dark times back then, so they actually started setting up and decorating the Trees in September so that the children had something to look forward to for a quarter of the year. I mean, who doesn’t get excited about waking up on Christmas Morning… after waiting four months!… to open up gifts of potatoes, sticks, and lumps of coal?! Which, back in the day, I would suspect that the lumps of coal were a good thing. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was cold back then… a little coal could go a long way!
In case you didn’t notice, I don’t actually know the full history of the Christmas Tree… and I guess it doesn’t really matter to me. What I do know is that I have wonderful memories of decorating trees throughout my younger years with my parents and sister, through my twenties and thirties with my wife Kateri as we built our Life together… by myself for five years after she died… and now with Amanda as we foster new traditions and expand on our Life together. As Amanda and I decorated our tree… for the second year…!… I noticed a few cool little things that are now attached to my memories of decorating Christmas Trees over the years.
The colored lights/white lights preference thing is really what got me thinking about my Life this Holiday Season. I’ve always put colored lights on my tree. Kateri found these cool ones that look just like the ol’ retro bulbs you picture your dad stapling to the garage while balancing on one foot halfway up a fully extended extension ladder… except tiny… and LED!… which we used for years, and I kept up with in my Widowhood. Well… now it’s not just my tree… it’s mine andAmanda’s tree… and Amanda is a White Light type Christmas Tree person! Let me tell you about the tension THAT provided us in the Little Red Schoolhouse for the weeks leading up to Decoration Day!! Actually, there wasn’t any tension because Amanda and I have a healthy relationship built on Open and Honest Communication, Respect, and an understanding that Compromise is an integral part of any decision-making process involving more than one person. There’s that… and the fact that Amanda was able to find some lights that we could change between both colored and white!… not to mention 8 other colors with varying rates of flashing from “Awe… that’s calming” to “Frank just had a seizure!”. Either way… crisis averted!
Just as it goes that everything changes over Time… my (our) Christmas Tree is different this year from last… and the year before that blah blah blah. Yes, it is filled with all sorts of familiar trinkets, decorations, and doodahs but it’s still different… even if visually just a bit. I can see the changes in the missing ornaments and the addition of new ones. When decorating the tree, it was nice taking a moment to spend on each ornament, asking myself what I had attached to it, and deciding if it made the cut or not. Amanda did the same thing with her stock of memories. We did it together, strategically hooking glass snowmen, various Santas, and pictures of Xander on tree limbs until we got to that point where you take a step back to get a good look at your work and realize… it’s done. Amanda attached her Bow. I attached the Angels and fastened the Star. We moved the step stool out of the way because we were done with it… and it’s not great for pictures, turned on the lights (white… this time), and sat on the couch with the dog to take in the beauty of this year’s Christmas Tree… perfect.
Widower Notes n Thougths… on Christmas Trees:
Colored lights over white lights.
Real tree… period. I don’t even wanna hear your Plastic Tree Argument & Rational!… which I’m pretty sure is a published paper in some psychology magazine.
Christmas Tins make great storage containers and double as decorations under the tree!
Anything can be an ornament… anything. Three of my favorite ornaments are a rubber chicken key chain, a stuffed alligator from a slipper, and Santa in a hot air ballon… which is an actual ornament… because I have those, as well…! (I’m also fond of the Yodeling Pickle… which hides somewhere in the tree… and I’m jealous of a few of Amanda’s.)
Just like ornaments, anything can top your tree. Amanda and I currently have a Bow, 2 Angels (1 on a toilet paper roll), and a straw Star with seashells at the points… yup.
I’ve learned that the presents strategically placed beneath the tree aren’t the most important gifts given to us at Christmas. The memories attached to the pieces we pull out once a year are what gives Life to the pine tree we chopped down and stuck in the corner of the living room. Then we wrap those pieces safely back in their blankets of tissue paper and nestle them in worn boxes with edges blunted by years of, “It’ll fit perfectly… right… here!” for another 11 months… and throw away the tree. (I burn it… because I can!) As the years add up, so do the ornaments… the decorations… the memories… the feelings of Love, excitement, and anticipation.
Because we are creatures that Love other creatures, when you unpack the holiday bins there’s also a hint of Loss and remembrance simply due to our attachment(s) to The Past and the people (pets/other living things) we’ve Loved… and have Lost. It’s all part of the gig.
When I was laid up due to the Smashed Asshole, I tried to take advantage of the time where I couldn’t do anything besides lay in bed, so I decided to finish a Photobook I started a couple of years after Kateri died. I actually started the Photobook on a trip to Idaho to visit my Mom when she had cancer. It was the first year of The Pandemic, so I drove cross country and slept in Rest Areas so as not to interact with The People, catch The Vid, and then infect my Mom!… because that would’ve sucked. Considering the amount of guilt I already feel about the stoopidest things and the effect the loss of her has had on my Life, it would’ve been even rougher if she died because I brought The Rona with me!… instead of dying from cancer. Ugh.
We all… or a lot of us… have a whole bunch of pictures on our phones capturing moments in Time. Sometimes we have 16 pictures… separate moments in Time, I guess… trying to capture a single moment! Awe… memories. Needless to say, in the months following Kateri’s death, all the pictures I took of her in the 4 months and 3 days of what she was calling her Dance with Cancer were right there whenever I opened up my little picture app. Let me tell you, when we go through experiences where Life decides to show you just how brutal it can be… you don’t really want to be reminded of it just because you wanted to show someone a pic of the Meatloaf & Mashed Potatoes you ordered at the Ol’ Vermont Country Inn & Tavern…! (I don’t know if that’s a place, but if it is… I hope they make meatloaf! Mmmm… meatloaf.)
I didn’t want to get rid of the pictures, but I also didn’t want to keep seeing them, so I thought about printing them out and then deleting them from my phone. Then I thought about the fact that through the magic of the interweb we have the ability to put pictures on mugs, t-shirts, ballcaps, stationary, blankets, wallets, mousepads, canvas, and… Photobooks!… which is what I was looking for.
Of course, it has now been six and a half years since the start of my Widowhood and those pictures on my phone are buried deep behind pics of woodpiles, Sister Visits, Xander the dog, my Life with Amanda and more, but I still wanted something tangible, something I could flip through… if I ever felt the need… and then simply put back on a shelf… or wherever. I actually mostly finished the Photobook quite a while ago and just kinda didn’t do anything with it. It would just show up in my little “Projects” file/tab/thingy whenever I got on Shutterfly… every 10 months or so. Knowing I was gonna be laid up with a Smashed Asshole I thought about things to fill my time with and decided it was the right time for me to finally take that step of going through it one more time and then hitting the old “Checkout” button. I may not worry so much about these pics popping up unexpectedly and at this point it’s not quite as traumatic, but for some reason this was just something I wanted to do.
Well, the Photobook I made from pictures taken when Kateri had cancer arrived on Saturday. I titled the book Kateri’s Dance with Cancer 2018 because that is how she referred to what she was going through. The Pictures cover the timeline from when she walked through the doors to the CTScan/MRI/whatever and we got the call that night that there were tumors in her brain… to the last morning of her life. There are a few others I added from over the years that I cherish because I feel they capture some of the things I love about Kateri and/or our Life together.
I’ll be honest, I don’t sit there and take too long of looks at pictures of Kateri… especially from the time of cancer… it just kinda puts me in a pretty sad spot! This was a special occasion, though. It was sort of exciting opening the orange box and seeing Kateri’s smile when I got my first glimpse of this thing that has been in the back of my mind for years! As I sat there on the couch holding this book of memories on my lap, I took a moment, took a breath… and opened it up.
For me, when I opened the Photobook for the first time on Saturday, I knew that I wouldn’t be opening it again for the foreseeable future because I was at the end of this process I’ve been working on for years. I gave myself Time to flip through the book… to remember how strong Kateri was as the cancer was chipping away at her body… and her Life. I turned the pages slowly, feeling the smoothness of the paper on my fingertips. I read the words I had captioned the pictures with… but had not fully remembered. I stared at them… one after another… and felt the Love and Pain that simultaneously comes when we remember those we’ve lost. And then… once I felt comfortable… once it was Time… once I was ready… I simply closed the book… and put it on the shelf.
The last photo in the book
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
If you’re a Widow or Widower… do it how you want to do it… how you feel is the best way for you to deal with it… for you to get through this Lifelong and Life-Changing experience. I mean, we still need to think about other people, but the loss of a spouse/partner changes… or touches… every single aspect of your Life, especially in the beginning. Not just the material things you see every day like the jelly cupboard, chairs, art, books, winter coats, stew bowls, wooden boxes, and broken Toyota trucks in the driveway but also the theoretical, philosophical, and for some the spiritual meaning(s) and purpose of our Past, Present, and Future. It’s a lot to deal with… be easy on yourself.
As I’ve gone through this healing process, it has allowed me to become more compassionate and understanding of the fact that there are unique struggles each of us cope with on any given day. I may not know or have gone through what you’re going through, but whatever it is you’re struggling with… the struggle is real… and I just don’t want to add to the struggle!
I can only speak to my experience with Widowhood/alcohol addiction/loss of parent/loss of friends type shit… those are what I’ve gone through… not much of the other super challenging, Life altering, and/or otherwise generally crappy things in Life. This Photobook… this blog… they’re simply tools I use to help heal… myself. I hope you’re taking the best steps for you to take care of yourself…!..?
I woke up on the couch this morning beneath the fleece blanket that Kateri’s father had given us years ago. My head wedged in the corner padded by a pillow I stole from the guest bedroom as Xander nestled his 85 pounds into the crux of my knees. It was a much different way to for me to wake up than I did 13 years ago. Thirteen years ago, I woke up as a Husband. Today… just another day of Widowhood.
I’ve gotta be honest, for six and a half years I have tried to be super positive about… everything. I’ve overcompensated on trying to focus on the good things in life because the bad seemed to infiltrate every aspect of my day to day. Well, sometimes I have to just let the feelings do what they do and today it seems like I’m not gonna get too far past… blah.
My Wedding was absolutely wonderful… still the best day of my life. Nowadays, it’s more of an opportunity to reminisce about life, my life, what has filled it, and what has been taken away. Over the years since Kateri died, I have tried to give my Wedding Anniversary it’s time and space. I’ve tried to do things with purpose and with specific attachments to my previous life and in particular… my Wedding Day. This year… not so much. Not because I’ve “gotten past” certain aspects of my Widowhood or because I have any sorta sense of closure with this whole experience. No, this year I just happened to have this thing called Reality taking up a bunch of my time and I had to adapt to doing things I didn’t really wanna adapt to… or even have to deal with!… but like I said… that’s Life.
Although I had to incorporate The Present as I was coping with The Past, it was still a decent enough day spent in the woods around The Schoolhouse… with a chainsaw and a four-wheeler… as I thought about Kateri and our life together.
Widower Notes n Thoughts… on my Wedding Anniversary:
Our Wedding was quite the party… it took three days..!
I love that we smoked a whole pig at a vegetarian Summer Camp.
We had a live band the night before the wedding…!
We were young. Not like young-young, but young enough to let loose and not be too stoopid.
I can’t believe we didn’t get eaten alive by ticks… didn’t even think of them.
It was fun to hear about the shenanigans and gossip of who hooked up with who in the days and months following the celebration.
Our Wedding was on a Wednesday. We were in the restaurant world… all our friends worked weekends…!
I remember that feeling of pure love and joy when I made the commitment to Kateri. I think everyone should have the opportunity experience those feelings.
Widowhood is a hard and complicated thing. Besides my sister and father, I’m not in regular communication with a single person who was at my wedding… that’s fucked up…!.. but it’s even harder to accept that a lot of the reason I have lost touch with so many peeps… is of my own doing.
I like to think we’re all still friends that are simply consumed with our own lives… and I look forward to catching up.
If you’re reading this and were at my wedding… Thank You, I hope you had a nice time, I miss you, and I hope you are able to look back on it with fond memories of the day… and of the Love Kateri brought into this world as she danced to the music and melody of her own soundtrack to Life.
Well, the cheeks are feeling the warmth of the sun for the first time in about six and a half years… and the chin has been freed from the fuzz for the first time in even longer! The Beard is no longer… because I cut it! And let me tell you, you can attach A LOT!… to a beard.
Throughout my life with Kateri, I would talk about how I really, really, really wanted to have one of those long… sorta unkept and scraggly… beards that you see on the faces of Old Timers sitting on the front porches of their hundred-year-old Vermont farmhouses. Ever since I could grow it, I’ve always had facial hair. When I was younger, I would change it up quite frequently. Then I kinda settled into the goatee and the occasional Fu Manchu with a western flare… and maybe some sideburns. I always enjoyed the Half Beard, but it made me look like Beaker if it got too long. From time to time, I would let the cheeks grow in, but there always came the point where it got a little itchy and since I work in kitchens… it got hot…! Mmmmm, hot AND itchy! So, for most of my life I’ve had something on my face… just not all over it.
This post isn’t about all the fun things those of us with Functional Facial Hair can do with it, this is about how I used a beard to help me take steps into a world I was unfamiliar with and scared of as I coped with the death of my wife. In some regards, I hid behind the mask of my own face… which I did not recognize.
Unconsciously, I quit shaving partly through Kateri’s Dance with Cancer. It just wasn’t a priority and since I already had facial hair, I didn’t really think of it. For the first few weeks after she died, for some reason I couldn’t really look in the mirror. I was in this kinda haze of just going through the motions while trying to keep my head on straight. I mean, I would while brushing my teeth n shit just to kinda check in, but only little glimpses. One night after getting out of the shower, I was standing in front of the steamed-up mirror and as I wiped the water away and saw the foggy reflection, I didn’t recognize the hairy person staring back at me. It didn’t look like me. I didn’t look like myself. And I didn’t FEEL like myself… or at least who I had been for the last two decades. It was an odd feeling that reminded me that life was different now and as I look back on it… that we can have profound moments pop up in our lives at the most unsuspecting times.
Widower Notes n Thoughts… on Beards:
First and foremost, I… loved… my… beard…! I loved it the most at its longest. And it will forever warm my heart that I have the memory of being told that I looked like an Axeless Mountain Dwarf…!
I had the beard for six and a quarter years… that’s how long Kateri has been gone. That sounds like a long time… and can feel like a week.
Kateri never got to see me with a long ass beard… she would’ve loved running her fingers through it. (I can feel that… and now I’m crying. Six and a quarter years that can feel like a week… and sometimes yesterday.)
I can also remember the feeling of Amanda (my girlfriend) running her fingers through my long ass beard… and it reminds me that there are new experiences out there simply waiting for us to get to them. Experiences that are exciting, fun, and feel… GOOD!
There are people in my life that have never seen me without a beard… who weren’t a part of my prior Life.
I’d like a job where I don’t have to put on a beard net, but I’d rather wear a beard net than find another job…!
I don’t know the last time I had more hair on my head than on my face…! Of course, I’m currently in the experiment of “Let’s see what happens if I don’t cut my hair…?”. I’ve had a shaved head for quite a spell now. Once I started to… you know… get a “little” thin up there I decided to accept that I would probably be shaving my head for the rest of my life… or until I retire… or I get out of kitchens… or win the lottery.
I’m pretty sure the hair on the head will be gone in a few weeks.
It’s fun seeing people’s reaction when you shave a beard off, but because I’ve had a beard for a while now… that’s how I picture myself in my brain. So, I found myself in a couple of situations where someone would be looking at me with this strange/quizzical look and I was trying to figure out why! Is there something on my face?!… in my teeth?!… are there flying monkeys behind me?! Nope… the person is just seeing my chin for the first time.
Pandemic Facemask Beard was always fun to see at the end of the day. Wearing a facemask with a long-ass beard… not so much. The beard pushes the top of the mask into your eyeballs every time you look down! The blue surgical ones were the worst.
Complete strangers will come up to you in the airport and comment on your beard.
Last week, after six plus years, I wanted a change. I was ready for a change. Shaving allowed me to have a little fun while pushing my comfort levels on certain things… such as, how I look and/or people see me…!
Ok, my cheek skin definitely looked and felt like it hadn’t seen the sun in over six years! It had that kinda zombie flesh feel and appearance to it. I mean, that is if zombie flesh is as soft and smooth as John Legend singing Moon River on Barry White’s butt!… when he was a baby… and somehow had the superhuman strength to support being sat on by John Legend.
I felt different with the beard… like a different person. When I looked in the mirror that evening a little over six years ago, I felt I looked like a person humbled by the weathering effects of Life… and in some weird way I wanted my actions to reflect it. By her simply being her, Kateri taught me so much about how to be a good person in this crazy world, but it was the loss of her when I truly realized I could’ve done or been… better. A better husband. A better friend. A better co-worker, acquaintance, and customer. I could’ve listened better. I could’ve made better choices. I could’ve been abetterperson. It’s not that I feel as though I’m some sort of horrible person that just went around punching puppies or anything… I just could’ve learned some lessons a little quicker. In some ways, the beard gave me the strength of a safety blanket to sorta hide behind as I tried to be the person I thought “that person” in the mirror looked like…! The Beard allowed me to change how people saw me… how I looked… how I felt… and with that, I thought I could start to figure out who I was in this “New Chapter”… and who I wanted to be.
P.S… I’m already working really hard on growing The Beard back!… by not shaving.
When Kateri died, I made the conscious decision not to go to the Doctor. If there was something going horribly wrong with my body… I just didn’t wanna know! I guess it also had something to do with the fact that the one thing… person… I loved more than anything was just plucked out of my world, and I didn’t really care if The Universe had the same fate for me. I didn’t want to know if I had high blood pressure, low platelet levels, tonsillitis, or even cancer. I felt as if my future was ripped away from me and I didn’t have the ability to look towards the upcoming days, months, and years with any sort of clarity, plan, or excitement. And I’ll be honest… it’s still a challenge!, but after 6 Years of Widowhood… I’m starting to take care of some things I have been pushing off simply because I didn’t wanna deal with them. I figured, being able to actually see the world I was left to live in without Kateri would be a nice “Step” in helping change my mindset from “It is what it is and I’m just gonna roll with it…” to… “I’ve got a lot to live for… I kinda wanna stick around for a bit and see where this or that goes… maybe I should take care of my things AND Myself…!?!”. Soooo, I went to the Eye Doctor… pressed my forehead against multiple strange contraptions… saw a little red barn… and apparently needed glasses!… which I kinda knew. (On a side note, I also paid out-of-pocket to get this done because the Health Care and Insurance industries in this country suck big ol’ donkey balls.)
Widower Notes n Thoughts… on getting glasses:
It’s amazing… leaves on trees, grass, and road signs all have sharp edges in real life!
Apparently one of my eyes wouldn’t have passed for the DMV. Good thing I’ve got two of them!… and now glasses, as well.
Through my Widowhood and with the added Global Pandemic I’ve lost sight of a few things. Glasses aren’t gonna fix that… that’s on me.
Getting my eyes checked wasn’t just about being able to see. The act was also an attempt for me to gain some clarity on the steps I want to take as I fumble my way into the future.
If you are new to corrected vision… and like to smoke weed… you’ll be very entertained for the first couple of days!
Yes, that is a shoelace attached to my glasses in the pic… just testing things out!
Do I look worried?… cuz I wasn’t…!.. not in the slightest!… once I learned that they were gonna use sedation during my first colonoscopy. As I figured, I’m either gonna be asleep through the whole thing or I wasn’t gonna remember it, so really, the roughest part was gonna be the preparation for the procedure as it entailed a lot of pooping… and little sleep… due to the time of my appointment. Since this was my first time, I did have the added anxiety of not knowing how my body was gonna react to drinking over half a pound of MiraLAX diluted in half a gallon of Yellow Gatorade! (not Purple, Red, or Blue) Questions creeped into my brain such as, “Would I have time to get to the appropriate areas of the Schoolhouse specifically designed for the expulsion of the contents of my bowels?”… “Does the cleaning out process come on quickly? Instantly?!!”… “Would I wake up in time if the kids needed to get to the pool in the middle of the night?… or would I shit all over the new bed Amanda and I just bought as our lives are becoming more and more intertwined…?!”. Luckily, there weren’t any moments of the cleanse where Amanda and I had to look at each other and say, “Well, we’ll just look back on this one day and have a good laugh!”. Nope… as they say at Yacht Rock Radio… it was Smooooooth Sailing…!
I had the colonoscopy because… well… there has been blood coming out of my butt for a bit. You would think if someone had blood coming out of their butt for a bit that they would want to see a Doc about it… and I did!… but didn’t. Honestly, I thought it was something like I had accidently wiped with a little too much force one day… maybe… and that it would simply heal and go away on its own… but it didn’t… it just kept bleeding. So, when I went to the Doc to have her look at my knee and elbow after my little fainting spell, I informed her of how I’ve been tearing through the OxyClean trying to save underwear, chef pants, and 501 Jeans from the embarrassing stain of sporadic apathy towards my personal health… and bodily fluids. She asked me to roll over onto my left side and said, “Let the games begin!!”. OK, she didn’t actually say that. She basically just said that she thought it was a bleeding internal hemorrhoid (she was wrong) and ordered a colonoscopy.
The procedure was pretty routine and as expected I fell asleep and don’t recall any of it. After starting the process 17 hours earlier, when my head hit that pillow, I don’t think they needed much Sleepy Syrup to get the job done… I was out! All I remember is how cozy and cool that crunchy hospital pillow felt on my upper cheek and then it was much anticipated sweet dreams for me! They told me I may wake up during the procedure, but that didn’t bother me. I kind of approached it the same way I approach turbulence when flying. It could be the bumpiest most anxiety riddled ride of my life… as long as we land and I’m able to walk off the plane…?… I’m cool with it! Of course, I do remember thinking it would be weird to wake up to my colon displayed on a 45″ TV three feet from my face. Luckily, that didn’t happen. I walked away with only pictures of the trip for memories.
They found a 10mm Sessile Polyp inside my rectum which was the source of the bleeding. (Rectum?!… it nearly killed him!!) Now… I know polyps are pretty common, but there’s always gonna be a certain level of worrying about the “What if’s..?” when you hear they cut out an abnormal growth from inside your pooper, used a tiny little metal clip (…inside there!) to seal it up, and sent it off to the lab to see if it’s business as usual?… or I’m gonna hit my Out-of-Pocket Maximum real quick like! You know?… the two extremes! Either way, a couple of things I learned from going through Kateri’s Dance with Cancer and then with My Mom’s was that I can only work with the information I have, and that patience is needed until the next opportunity arises in the timeline for new information. Basically, that whole “What’s in my control?… what isn’t?”… and whether or not to worry about it type of stuff. Luckily, I also learned not to go spelunking on the internet to find information!
Honestly, in the time since losing Kateri, I don’t really worry about too much. After that experience, which is still going on, nothing seems to be that big of a deal. Sure, there have been challenges and some sucky times in the past five and a half years, but they don’t even compare to the 4 months and 3 days that led up to Widower Day 1, the morning I woke up and truly felt… alone. Jesus… that was a crappy way to wake up! Thankfully, I’m not there anymore… I’m not in that space… that feeling of singularity in the world has dissipated some with the passing of Time. Heck, a big reason I wanted to get checked out is because there IS someone I wake up next to in the morning that I love and cherish and want to spend as much time as I can with! Thankfully (again), I didn’t crap all over her thigh as she tried to get some zzz’s before waking up early on a day off to drive me to get my innards swabbed.
Now it’s just The Waiting for Results Game. I can do that… wait. I’m actually pretty good at it. I find it pretty relaxing, actually. I mean, all you gotta do is… nothing! (Kinda like growing a beard or letting a fire die out… they’ll both happen without having to lift a finger!) Of course, it seems like when I do a lot of waiting for something, it’s then followed by a big burst of… Scrambling!… I really need to learn how to balance some of this shit out. Until then… I’ll just keep enjoying the scenery as I plug away at The Great Corn Maze of Life, amending direction when my steps lead me to dead ends, finding comfort knowing that I’m not wandering the labyrinth alone, and recognizing that sometimes I’m gonna get a little lost… a little confused… a little frustrated when I realize I’m in the middle of a cornfield wishing the butter wasn’t all the way back at the barn. (I have no idea what that is supposed to mean! Take from it what you will. Sorry, that’s what happens when I’m home alone on a day off and wanna be all “poetic” n shit because I smoked some pot and my brain is like, “Ya man… that’s so deep… you should totally immortalize that thought on the internet…!)
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
Sometimes we need to take the Little Victories in any given situation. For me, I’m pretty proud of the fact that I scored a 9 on the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale where anything >8 is considered “Very Good Bowel Preparation”…!… Winning.
You know you love someone or something when you’re willing to deal with any of the varieties of bodily fluids that come out of them. Whether it be romantic or platonic, True Love is scooping poop to put into a screw-top container so that you can use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver it to someone in a cold room wearing a white coat… and Danskos.
(Didn’t have to do anything like that this time around. This Post’s subject matter just reminded me of times I experienced or witnessed that lesson!)
Happy Halloween Eve!… or would it be All Hallows Eve Eve?! Either way, Halloween is tomorrow and I hope you have a fun… and safe!… one. (Full dislosure, I’m not dressing up this year. This pic is from years ago when Luke went as Hulk Hogan, John was Randy “The Macho Man” Savage, and I was “Rowdy” Roddy Piper… fun memories!)
PooperUpdate: Test Results came back and after Googling multiple words, I’m pretty sure it’s business as usual!!
Posted at 11:07 am by Darren Lidstrom, on September 28, 2023
Kateri and I always said that we thought we would’ve enjoyed going to our wedding…! It was a good one. We surrounded ourselves only with people who we wanted to be surrounded by… on that specific day. Everyone who was there were there because we asked them to participate for this reason or that. Thankfully, they all said, “Yes.”… and I can’t thank each of them enough for the memories they have provided me to look back on as I reflect on my life. I am grateful for the faded mini movies that race past the tip of my brain from time to time, with their inklings of vividness pinballing off the backs of my eyeballs. They were good times, I say… good times.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
I’ve been missing my old life as of late. I’ve been missing the people and the experiences we shared over the years and I wished I was better at keeping in touch. Even though there may be years in between our communication… I still love them all and from time to time the thought pops into my head… “Do they think of me (us)? Do they remember me? I hope they remember me…?”. I know that sounds a little weird, but Widowhood can be a very isolating and lonely existence at certain times of the day, month, year… here and there.
I was up past the One Two (midnight) talking to an old friend last night. He was one of our Men of Honor. We haven’t spoken in months and when he sent a text message saying he was thinking of me… I just had to see his ugly mug (and beautiful hair), so I Facetimed him. When we were finishing up the ol’ convo, I mentioned that he and his wife were in Vermont 12 years ago today and I thanked him for standing up with Kateri and I, in front of 125 of our closest family and friends, as we celebrated our love for each other, partied, danced, laughed, and talked around the fire as we smoked and ate pig… while maybe smoking other things. He didn’t realize that it was my Anniversary Eve… was simply thinking of me. I love that shit… and am so happy we talked.
A Wedding Anniversary for a Widower (Widow) is a strange thing to think about. For me, it’s difficult to process… and in some regards, accept… just how different my life is now than it was prior to Kateri’s Last Breath. My Wedding… well… I still think of it as the best day of my life so far, but it was in a different time… a different “chapter” of my time on Earth that I simply don’t have access to anymore. If you would’ve asked me twelve years ago, today is a date that I thought I would be celebrating and getting excited about for decades to come. Instead, I now use it as an opportunity to remember Kateri, all the beautiful things she brought into this world and into my life, the lessons she taught me, the memories we created throughout the years, and the million and a half other little reasons that on September 28, 2011… at around 4…ish… it made me so grateful to be surrounded by such an amazing group of peeps as I was given the chance to call her… My Wife. (…or was it Fate…?)
As I was driving home from work one day a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the leaves have started their annual metamorphosis and I realized I haven’t posted anything this summer… even though there have been a few big things that have happened in my life and in my Widowhood over the last threeish months. Ok, there was really one main big thing that happened followed by a few other fun things, but that one big thing took up some time and space in my everyday life. Luckily, I kinda had an episode yesterday where I sorta fainted, hit my face on the Jelly Cupboard, and woke up on my dining room floor in a puddle of water with a knee that… well… just doesn’t feel very good… and Amanda crouching over me with the look of worry in her eyes… yay! (Don’t worry… I’m fine. Everything’s fine.) So today I’m taking it easy… not moving cinder blocks and slate up to the firepit for our wood-fired hot tub… and am gonna catch up on getting some things down on paper…!
So… the big news on the widower front… my girlfriend Amanda and I made the decision to move in together and have her shimmy on up to The Little Red Schoolhouse…! Let me tell you, as a widower… as for me… having to go through the process of the two of us talking about it, coming up with timeframes, contemplating challenges for each of us, feeling the excitement about unknown possibilities ahead while reminiscing on memories from the past and how I would deal with combining the two… well… it was a lot…! I will say though, after the five plus years since Kateri died and having spent the bulk of that time with Amanda, it’s nice to have that feeling of sharing my life with someone I love again. I haven’t been able to look into the future very far since Kateri passed, but I’m at a point where that is changing… slowly… but it’s changing…!
Preparing for Change…!
The Little Red Schoolhouse… my Home… is filled with my life and over the last 5 years and 4 months it has provided me with a space that I could use to feel grounded in a world that was completely new to me… a world without Kateri. Although Kateri was no longer by my side, I needed to hold onto some of those things that provided me with a certain level of closeness to her. Even as mine and Amanda’s relationship grew, The Schoolhouse was still my space and I set it up in a way that I felt was best for me to deal with this stoopid life of Widowhood. In some ways… I was nesting.
As Amanda and I slowly got to the decision of her moving in, I thought about her and how to initially make The Schoolhouse a little less like a shrine to my memories and more of a starting point to setting up our Home… which basically came down to moving some “Kateri Centric” items that had helped me cope in the past and which I felt I could live without seeing everyday if it meant it made the space more comfortable for Amanda. For this post, I decided to simply upload some pics and give a little blurb about each of them. There are about 1,372 other pics I could’ve used to illustrate the experiences this widower went through while preparing for a significant change in life… but you’ll get the idea.
Kateri’s Purse: Kateri’s purse hung on a coat hook in the mudroom since I brought it home from hospice. I love how worn and soft the leather was, the smell of it, and the pack of travel tissues still chillin’ in an inside pocket. It went home with someone who understands that it isn’t just a bag to put shit in.
The Note in the Kitchen: This was one of the first things I took down once Amanda and I decided on the move. I wrote Kateri the note one morning before I went to work… after she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Metastatic Malignant Melanoma… and before I realized just how big of a pile of shit was about to be thrown at Me, Kateri, and everyone who knew and loved her. The note simply says:
Good Morning
I am sorry I am not here, but I love you more than anything… and I’ve got my rock. Enjoy the morning with some coffee…. I miss you already.
Love
Darren
Kateri, Karaoke, and NYC: For Kateri’s Celebration of Life, our buddy had this pic of Kateri singing karaoke in NYC blown up… because it’s frickin’ awesome! Since then, it has lived at the top of my stairs with a couple of other pics of Kateri hanging with some special people in our life. I… love… this… pic!… but I also love Amanda and feel that if she is gonna move in… maybe she doesn’t wanna be welcomed by my dead wife every time she goes upstairs! So, I took it down. It’s gonna go somewhere… just don’t know where yet.
Kateri and I got this box while living in Colorado. We used it for a variety of things, but since we bought The Schoolhouse, it has lived in the mudroom where we would stage recycling before it made its way to the garage. I never understood why we didn’t just take recycling to the garage so after Kateri died it became basically just a flat surface for me to put things on… and for a memory. Some might simply see an old yellow box, but for me it reminds me of when I got so frustrated with the situation that I put my boot through the front/right side of it… and I have had to live with the fact that I did that as Maria and I were trying to get Kateri to the Cute Little Jeep so that we could take her to the ER… and that this was the last time Kateri was… home. Yup, that’s been a hard one to live with.
Iris’s and Poppies. Kateri was a flower farmer and I love that she made beds and planted plants at our home that come to life year after year. Sometimes when I go out in the evening and the sun is setting, I’m taken aback by the beauty that the natural world provides us in our lives and the ability Kateri had to capture it.
The Last Night…!
Once Amanda and I made the decision to live together, the countdown started. For five plus years I learned to become comfortable with being alone and actually cherished certain aspects of it. One of those things is that ever since Xander came into our life just under two years ago, it was me and him at The Schoolhouse. I can’t even begin to tell you how much of an impact he has had on my life. We both lost Our People to the “unfairness” in the world, but somehow came into each other’s life. I like to call him “The Roommate”… but he’s so much more that. He’s my companion… my buddy. He came into my life at the perfect time… even though it meant that Amanda and I lost a friend. I’m honored that Judy entrusted us to take care of the love of her life. Although she was looking for someone to take care of Xander, I think she was also thinking of who he could help take care of, as well.
As the days went by… as they do… it finally came to The Last Night…! The last night where Xander and I live alone. The last night of this being My Space. The last night of texting Amanda “Goodnight”… which we have done almost every night since we’ve met. The last night of going upstairs, crawling into bed, and Xander jumping over me as he assumes his position at the foot of the bed… then pushing his paws against my legs as if I’m the one taking up all the space! I miss that. Of course, now it means that I get to lean over and kiss Amanda goodnight… instead of texting her… which is much better!
For my Last Night, I ate Flatbread, smoked some pot to honor mine and Kateri’s past (and because I like pot), and put together a Lego… because I have found putting together Legos is fun and helps me relax… and I might be addicted. The pic of Xander is the last night he had free range to half the bed.
The Move In…!
I’m finding it kinda funny that I don’t really have much to say about the actual moving in! Luckily, Amanda didn’t have a bunch of furniture or a large Beanie Baby collection that she felt the need to have on display. Nope, it was pretty much smooth sailing!
Amanda and I have always communicated well, and I think that it worked in our favor as we maneuvered through this new endeavor. Once the time came, we really just tried to enjoy it!… and not freak out. For both of us, the excitement far overshadowed any trepidation we had with the decision. For me… it was a welcomed change and seems to be the right time. Although there are still some things in boxes, we’ve settled in nicely…!
I absolutely LOVE how we decided to store our cookbooks! Old boxes… Good Housekeeping would be proud.
The Second Annual Sister Visit…!
I have another post started about this new little annual event the four of us seem to have started so I’m not gonna get into it here, but it was wonderful time filled with BBQ, Duck Races in downpours, cooking hot dogs at the fire-pit, and nightly friendly games of Uno with family. (Sorry, that’s a lie… there’s no friends in Uno!)
The Wood Pile…!
Another part of the Annual Sister Visit I’ve come to love is the stacking of the wood pile! It’s been fun coming up with different configurations the last few years and it tickles me pink that my Sis and Bro-in-Law truly enjoy doing it!
After seeing how his wood was stacked, I was all ready to claim victory over my neighbor who isn’t aware of the competition we are in together, but then I saw that he’s chopping more wood… I’m gonna have to check the rule book.
Amanda’s nephew came to Vermont to visit us at The Schoolhouse before he starts his first year of college at Alabama… the Roll Tide one… pretty sure. It was fun hanging with him talking about life while hiking up Bald Top or chillin’ by the fire or playing Bananagrams as a Don Toliver playlist makes its way through the speakers. He’s a good kid… young adult… and I look forward to hearing about and seeing where his choices take him. (I’m refraining from making any cracks about Alabama… it’s a beautiful state… with lots of billboards… which seem to be for local lawyers, politicians, mattress stores… or telling you to Go to Church or The Devil Will Get You!!..!)
The Wood-Fired Hot Tub…!
I’ve been talking about making a wood-fired hot tub for years now. Whenever we could, depending on where we were living, Kateri and I always tried to make an outdoor shower. Once in a while we were even able to have a HOT outdoor shower!… but we never had a tub. We talked a lot about making one, especially after we sat in the wood-fired clawfoot tub in the bath house Chichi and John built in the woods of Vermont during the early 2000’s. There was a parlor stove, window, tile and everything!… it was magical.
One of the things I love about Amanda is that she is supportive and can be motivating! She’s been listening to me talk about this wood-fired water trough thing for a while now and one day she was like, “Ok, let’s go get what we need!”… so, we did! We’re actually still in the building stage. I mean, we tested it out in the back yard just to see if it would work… and because we could fill it from the garden hose, but the plan is to have it up at the fire-pit… which we’ve already started to piece together.
The building of the Water Trough Hot Tub has been a wonderful experience for me on both the Widower Side of things (…those things I still do that remind me of Kateri, our life, what she taught me about myself, about what’s important, and how to live without her…) and my present life. On the Present Side, I’ve loved everything about doing this project with Amanda. We’ve definitely had a few hiccups and head scratches followed by a few laughs, but we’ve certainly had fun throughout all of it…! On the Widower Side, it’s just one of those activities that I know Kateri would’ve really enjoyed doing and it simply reminds me of her and how wonderful she was.
There’s an old well at the edge of the woods in my back yard which I figured we could use to fill the tub up with water. The water in the well is crystal clear, but we tested it anyways… it’s an old frickin’ well for goodness sakes!… who knows what type of bacteria, microbes, or other tiny ass little buggers are living in there?! Would I drink it?… No. Would I fill up a water trough with it and sit in it?… yes. Will I buy some sort of chlorine tablet/liquid/goop and learn the appropriate ratio/amount to kill everything that may pose a threat to my future bowel movements if they happen to get in my mouth or enter my body through some other opening?… (like my ears or my nose!)… Definitely. Now we just need to figure out how to pump the water out of the well, up a hill, and into the trough!
A Widower’s Thought On: Opening an old ass well for the first time in “Who Knows How Long?” without having any knowledge, information, or idea of what to expect…
The lid was heavy and kinda awkward.
I was pretty afraid of falling in. Nope!… doesn’t sound like a fun time to me!
I also really didn’t want to see a body at the bottom or a hand floating or eyeballs staring back at me!… NOPE! NO! NOT EVEN! NO WAY!! Truly… I was freaking myself out.
Too many scary movies.
Xander Turned 9…!!
He was super excited to get to wear his little glittery gold top hat again this year and eat the Peanut Butter-Pumpkin with Peanut Butter and Greek Yogurt Frosting Birthday Cake that Amanda made him. Fun times!
Down to the Last Smartie…
Well, here we are… down to the last Smartie.
I had bought a bag of them in June when a couple of my Sister-in-Laws came over to go through Kateri’s clothes before Amanda moved in. I figured the timing would create a more comfortable environment for everyone involved for an event such as that. I used a wooden bowl to hold them for easy access, but we didn’t eat the entire package. So, over the next couple of evenings I made my way through them until I got to the last one… just sitting there… all alone… in an almost empty bowl. I decided to save it for my last evening alone in The Schoolhouse… but it’s currently still sitting on the stool I use as a nightstand next to the bed. I’m sure I’ll be trying to unwrap them with the stealthiness of a Candy Ninja, so as not to wake up Amanda, in the middle of the night at some point… it just hasn’t happened yet.
Kateri would call Smarties her “Pills”. For her Celebration of Life, we had bought a ton of them and there were quite a few left over, which I was able to finish off over the course of a few months… and then my buddy started sending me a bag of them every time I ran out!
Smarties remind me not just of Kateri, but also of my life in the months/year just after she died and what that time was like for me. It was confusing, scary, sad, traumatic, relentless, fucked up and kinda just generally sucked. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom every second of the day. Some days it took something smaller than a dime to remind me of that. When I had Smarties… life got better! I mean, life didn’t get better since the passing of Kateri solely because of those little stacks of fruity sugar heaven wrapped in cellophane memories, it’s because Time has a way of healing the wounds life offers us as payment for the experience of giving, receiving, and feeling… Love.
It was quite the beautiful view outside the airplane window yesterday morning. Amanda and I were flying home after spending the last five days in her old stomping grounds to celebrate her parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary (Woohoo!… 50!… that’s pretty cool!… but I’ll get more into that). After spending the night trying to get comfy in the one square foot that airlines give you these days, the warmth of that sunrise was the perfect way to be welcomed home to the East Coast. Unfortunately, there was still another flight… and then an hour and a half drive back to The Schoolhouse before the traveling was done, but that sunrise was a nice way to start the day… which hadn’t really ended from the day before.
We got home late morning so I took advantage of the time, unpacked, and did laundry so that I could start the work week feeling settled. After being up for what we figured was around 30 hours I wasn’t exactly doing anything quickly, but the sun was out so I felt the need to do something… and then sit… do something else… and sit again. It hit me during one of my little breaks, as I sat in Kateri’s/Xander’s Chair and thought about this trip, that I am kinda dealing with another sort of loss from my life that is simply collateral damage from the loss of Kateri. She came from a big family… she had 7 siblings… and each of them were a huge part of Kateri’s and my life. It’s sorta The Nature of the Beast, but when Kateri died the frequency of Damato Interactions went the way of the dodo simply because she isn’t here. I love my In-Laws just as much now as I did when Kateri was alive, and I know they still love me, but life has changed for all of us. As I was staring out the big ol’ Schoolhouse window decompressing in the chair, I thought about how much I miss having them in my life… because they’re pretty awesome. Being widowed is technically the loss of a spouse, but in widowhood… you learn that you lose so much more. (Ok, that’s sounds a little dramatic. Kateri’s death is the big “loss” here… everything else is really just… different.)
Intermission
(I needed to eat dinner… then I ate a pint of Ben & Jerry’s… and then fell asleep on the couch. I’m back.)
The reason for this trip to Oregon was to celebrate Amanda’s parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. Amanda and her sister were asked to help with the party planning and to create a program (speech) which they would present to the guests. This was also quite a fairly good-sized shindig… 126 or so people!… so, we thought it would be a good idea to get there a few days early in case there were any party planning crisis..es. Amanda doesn’t get home much, so it was also a nice opportunity for her to catch up with family and a few friends. For me, I was excited to learn more about a woman who since the day I met her, I’ve just kinda wanted to know… more. I was looking forward to meeting people whom I’ve only seen in video, or heard stories about, or hadn’t met at all. I was thrilled to play my part in this little adventure… The Boyfriend!
For the most part, I just didn’t want to embarrass Amanda, disrespect anyone, or make an ass of myself…! In hindsight, I think I did ok. Also in hindsight, I don’t think I was expecting to receive as much as I did from this trip… even if no one knew they were giving me anything or I didn’t recognize it at the time. This trip allowed me to once again feel what it is like to be part of… how do I say this… someone else’s family… one that is sizeable and substantial… one that has history and stories and made up of all walks of life. I got to spend time with a family that loves one another. Yes, family is family and anyone reading this probably understands what that means (…eye roll, eyebrow raise, little head nod…) and can give examples of their own challenging experiences with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Moms & Dads and annoying little brothers, but again… I’m The Boyfriend… just along for the ride with helping hands when needed…! I might’ve heard some tales about this person or that, but from my experience… they were all fascinating, delightful, and warmhearted people… mostly… 98.7%.
Intermission…#2
(Once again, I had to eat dinner… and then something came up… got distracted… went to bed. Now, take 3.)
People at work have asked me about the trip… How was it? How’d it go? and all that jazz… and I’ve gotta say that I’ve really enjoyed sharing some of the things I dug about our little excursion. It was nice to actually see where Amanda grew up and has spent most of her life. I think that where we live and the people who come in and out of our lives adds a uniqueness to each of our stories. The more we know, the better we can try to understand… well… “Where this person is coming from”… what makes them tick… what makes them… “them”.
Considering this being my first time visiting… and meeting a bunch of Amanda’s family, being “The Boyfriend” also afforded me the opportunity to sorta… observe… and there was something that kinda touched me on a couple of different fronts (Widowhood, Kateri, Amanda, relationships, marriage, anniversaries… love). When it comes down to it, we were there to celebrate the life of two people whose relationship as Husband and Wife started 50 years ago. As I tagged along here and there, as I hung out at their house watching and listening to 8 people simply doing what they do in a world I’ve only peeked into, I saw a beautiful thing… this thing called Love. I’m not talking the Love parents have for their children, grandchildren, or vice versa n such. And I’m not talking about the Love I saw between friends who haven’t been in the same space in way too long. No, I’m talking about the Love that has endured the ups and downs of building a life together for over half a century. It wasn’t the hundred and twenty whatever guests at the party or the beautiful slide show their Son-in-Law put together of their life that showed it to me. Nor was it the number of cards I saw in the basket congratulating them on this milestone. It actually had nothing to do with anything except for how Amanda’s parents interacted with… each other. They were comfortable together in that best friend kinda way. They were happy and excited to be sharing this experience with people in their life. They were proud. And when they danced to an audience at their 50th Wedding Anniversary, they were the perfect picture of two people who can take a moment away from the world as they get swept up in each other’s arms and in their love for one another… just the two of them… Husband & Wife.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
Our life is a book in the making and the pages filled with our stories add up over the days, months, and years as we live on the perpetual last page. Last week, I enjoyed sharing the last page with Amanda, her family, and her friends as we flipped through some of her earlier works.
I was standing in the garage the other night doing the ol’ routine of chopping kindling and looking around wondering how I could rearrange all the crap I’ve accumulated over the years when the thought “I Live Alone in a Life Built for Two” popped into my head. It was one of those moments that just kinda creeped into the brain. As I thought about it, I realized it wasn’t exactly accurate or really even how I feel about my widowhood and life these days, although I vividly remember the times when “alone” was the feeling I had from the time I woke up in the morning to the time I went to sleep… sometimes also in the early morning hours. I’m glad I had that sorta sad thought cross my mind… it reminded me of how life isn’t stagnated… that we have our own unique ebbs and flows… and that I’m not alone. It made me bring back into focus the people who are still in my life, those who have come into my life, and although there are those whom I can no longer hold in my arms… I carry them with me as I flub through my day to day in a reality, which for decades… I could not have imagined.
I don’t know how I found it or what I was looking for when it showed up on the computer screen, but I came across an article and snippet of an interview where Steven Colbert asks, “What do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?”. The selfless simplicity of Keanu’s answer, knowing he’s had significant losses in his life, just kinda hit me when his response was, “I know that the ones that love us, will miss us.”. Thank you, Mr. Reeves, for focusing on life… even when asked about your thoughts on death. (That was totally profound, Ted… super deep. You’ve come a long way from, “All we are is dust in the wind, dude”…!)
Posted at 11:17 am by Darren Lidstrom, on September 26, 2022
On September 24, 2021 Xander came to the schoolhouse for a temporary stay… and never left. Sometimes when we live a life touched by loss, some of those losses teach us lessons when we look for them and gives us things when we… weren’t. Xander came into my life four days before my 4th Wedding Anniversary without Kateri. He was by my side as I went through that anniversary crying in my bed, sitting on my deck pondering life, or doing whatever. I thought about how he was in a new space… with a new person… and not with Judy (even though at that point his stay was still just a temporary thing and we thought they would be reunited). I wondered what he was thinking about. I hoped he wasn’t sad, but felt he knew something was up. For almost a year now, all I’ve wanted to do was make sure he has the best life I can give him. I want him to have the easiest life I can provide for him. I want him to be himself. I want him to be a dog being a dog. I want him to be happy and feel like he’s home in a life which is so different from what he knew on September 23, 2021. I want him to feel loved… because I’ve got so much frickin’ love for the guy that I don’t even care about his love strings (hair) being all over the couch!… and the stairs… and the chair… and my bed… my fleece pants… and… and… you get the idea… it’s a lot of love… and love strings.
The dude that turned The Schoolhouse into a house in the 60’s also made a little path through the 6.5 acres so that he could harvest lumber for the woodstove n such. When Kateri and I bought the place, I cleaned up the paths since they had started to get overgrown by the lack of use. Since Xander has come to The Schoolhouse, we have walked the path almost every day. Well, nowadays I feel like our afternoon walk is more like me walking the path… and Xander walking, running, sniffing, digging the other 6.49 acres! It was on one of these walks that I recently realized that Xander has taught me a few things as we have gotten to know each other over the last year. Lessons and exercises that I learned while running up hills in the dark yelling, “Xander!” and “Come here, Bud!”… or standing for ten minutes while getting eaten by mosquitos as he tears apart a rotting stump… or simply walking behind him hearing nothing but the pitter patter of his paws on the pine needle padded path surrounded by the sounds of the woods. I realized I have learned a lot… staring at an 83 pound Pitbull’s butt as he trots along on the hunt for chipmunks. These are a few of those things.
Patience
By the time I get home from work Xander has been cooped up in The Schoolhouse for 9 to 11 hours so when we go for our afternoon walk I want to give him… time. Time to run. Time to be outside. Time to be a dog sniffing, digging, patrolling, and playing in the woods and yard. On one of these walks I found myself standing there… for I don’t know how long… as Xander was tearing apart a rotting stump and digging deeper and deeper along it’s roots. It was hot… which in Vermont also means buggy… and I was just about over it. At that moment I recognized just how much fun Xander was having trying to get at whatever it was he was fixated on. I wanted him to stop so that we could keep on our walk and I could get to my evening tasks. And then I thought about how he spent the day surrounded by walls with only a view of the world outside the windows. So I took a breath and pushed my thoughts of evening chores to the side and took in the scenery and sounds of the woods while I waited… and waited… and let him be a dog.
Responsibility
When Kateri died, I was thrust into this weird “Instant Independence” kind of life. I was responsible for only myself… and Kateri’s chickens. When the last three chickens (Lil’ Bitch, Chicken, and Chicken) got eaten by raccoons (bastards), I was the last living animal left at The Schoolhouse besides the mice, snakes, and other country creatures. The moment Amanda and I told Judy we would take care of Xander and he could live at my house, I assumed the responsibility of providing the best possible life I could for him. I was responsible for his health, his safety, and his happiness. It’s a responsibility that fills me with warmth every day when I come home and can see him through the big ol’ schoolhouse window sitting on the end of the couch with his paws hanging over the edge just waiting for me to walk past so that he can run to the door to meet me. Of course, sometimes I see him on the couch and by the time I open the door… he’s not there. Nope, sometimes when I open the door I can hear him in the dining room crunching away at the food in his bowl leftover from the night before. Yup… gotta say… sometimes it hurts just a little knowing that food is the bigger priority for him than seeing me at that moment!… but I’ve accepted it.
Unconditional Love
There have always been dogs in mine and Kateri’s life, but we never had one of our own. We moved around a bunch… and were renters… and just thought it would be easier to pick up and start another adventure if we didn’t have animals. Once we bought our Little Red Schoolhouse, once we had our own land, once we had our own Home… that’s when things like pets, chickens, Hopes n Dreams would really start to take off. That first Spring in our first home is when those Hopes n Dreams started to take shape in the form of 8 chickens. And then two Springs later… Kateri died… and things like Hopes n Dreams turned into a cloudy and muddled view of life, love, and the world in which I was living in. Over the last four and a half years some of those challenges that come along with Widowhood have eased and some of those cloudy views have started to clear up a bit. Love is a complicated thing. For an emotion that can make you feel as though you are on top of the world… there are also circumstances where it plays it’s part in making us feel completely isolated… and alone… even when we’re surrounded by loved ones. A dog… Xander… brought life back to my Little Red Schoolhouse. A dog… Xander… has provided me with companionship, friendship, and love every single day over the last year. A dog… Xander… lost his person. Xander lost the life he knew and was thrust into an unfamiliar world… my world. Judy entrusted Amanda and I with the love of her life… and she gave me the opportunity to feel loved every morning as Xander nudges his way under the blanket for warmth an hour before my alarm goes off, every evening I come home from work to a wagging tail and the funny hoppity hop around the living room, and every night he makes his way up to the bedroom with that familiar clickity clack of toenails on wood floors… fashionably five…ish minutes after I have crawled into bed. As her life was ending, through her asking for Amanda and I to bring Xander into our lives, Judy gifted me with the feeling of Unconditional Love at a moment in time I needed to be reminded of it.
Loss in life is simply a hard thing we all go through at on point or another in varying degrees, but we need to remember that we’re living in a world where beauty, love, and happiness still exists and hopefully we have people in our lives that can remind us of that… even after they are gone.
I knew I didn’t have the time to write about Thursday night because… well… I’ve just got a lot to do before my sister comes to visit! So, I decided to simply tell the story of when I found a snake… IN MY UPSTAIRS BATHROOM…! The video is 23 minutes. The actual ordeal took much much longer… and the trauma will last a lifetime.
A couple of notes:
My sister is still coming to visit… pretty sure.
The headlamp was for seeing into holes in walls and dark spots… where snakes can hide.
There is now more spray foam in my house… and less duct tape on the roll.
I’m actually gonna get back to writing in the next couple of days, but as of late I just haven’t found the time. I’m currently in Idaho after driving cross country to visit my mom because on January 19th she/we got the news that the Docs are out of options for treating her cancer. Don’t worry, another… longer… video that I made at the rest area right before Boise will be coming of me babbling about why I just drove 2697.1 miles… and of the shift my thoughts took after being in the “Cute Little Jeep” for two and a half days with nothing but my thoughts. (That’s a lie… I had music, a sleeping bag, instant coffee, phone calls and Facetime with friends and family, my guitar, my camp stove… and Squishy.) For today though, I thought I would start with when I was doing laundry as I was getting ready for the road trip. Who knows, maybe someone will find my “Housekeeping Tips for Widowers” helpful…?! (Martha would probably be appalled by my directions and fitted sheet folding abilities, but Snoop would probably be in the same frame of mind as I was in and realize… it’s just a fitted sheet.)
First off, I’m just gonna say that I’m not really worried about my new roommate shitting on the floor. I mean, I’m pretty sure he just won’t, but if he does..?… I guess it would be my own damn fault… because he’s a dog… whom I never want to put in the position of needing to make a decision such as, “Should I just shit on the floor?!”. He’s a very well behaved four legged animal whose actually been staying with me for the last seven and a half weeks. The first half of his stay was more of a temporary thing with us spending the second half really gettin’ to know each other to see if a more permanent stay was the best decision for everyone involved. The quick is, a few Mondays ago, after he had been up here a week or so, my girlfriend Amanda and I were asked by our friend to adopt her dog Xander when she dies… because her love for Amanda is simply immense, she thought the world of her, and knew that Amanda would love him and take care of him. Basically, we said yes and thought Xander could/would stay up here with me… since I live in the woods and he would have space to run around… because he’s a dog. Yesterday morning, in her sleep, our friend Judy peacefully passed away. At that moment, the moment in which death drew that definitive line in our life, The Little Red Schoolhouse became Xander’s… home.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
It’s actually been a few weeks since Judy passed… I’m just now getting back to this post. Life gets busy once in a while… and simply doesn’t stop for us.
I now have a dog hook. It was just a hook in my “Laundry Room”… but now it has dog stuff on it.
As of last night, at around 7:03… the Honeymoon with Xander was over after he booked it through the woods… up the hill… in the dark. Which meant that I was running up a hill… through the woods… in the dark. Fortunately, I had a flashlight… and four little LED tealights I crammed into my pocket as I ungracefully pulled myself over the rock wall to chase after him. This was the first time I was like, “We’re just gonna walk to the wood pile, it’s dark, the small woodland creatures are sleeping, he’s good at staying close…. I’m not gonna use the leash or put the reflective coat thing on him…!”… and then he bolted.
When he took off at a sprint, my plan was to run up the hill to the path, stop, and listen for him rustling in the leaves. He ended up being just on the other side of the path… the same path in which we walked down (instead of B-Lining it through the woods!) to get back to the house… me bent over holding his collar (good thing I’m short!). After a little sit and chat by Kateri’s Potting Shed… and then a bit of the cold shoulder… we made up. I figured, he’s just a dog being a dog and I’m just learning how to live with a dog… learning to live with Xander.
I have an odd “feeling of guilt” type thing going on. Xander has already added so much to my life and I’ve been having a blast with him… but it’s only because our friend died. It’s a weird thing to balance. Well, maybe it’s not about balancing anything. Maybe it’s more about recognizing the connection between two separate experiences and taking each experience for what they are…? I guess it’s kind of about living in the present… and remembering the past.
We got Xander a dog bed for the bedroom. I already gave up the couch… I wanna keep my bed…!
I love that I can see him all curled up in blankets and sleeping in it from my bed. Every night when I call it a day, there’s a few minute delay before I can here him stretch as he is getting off the couch and then the clickity-clack of his toe nails on the wood floors and stairs as he saunters up to his bed. He’ll come into the bedroom, get a pet on the head, a scratch behind the ears, and then be there until the morning.
I’m having a hard time considering Xander “My/Our” dog. He’s still Judy’s dog… Amanda and I are simply looking after him and promised to give him a good life… as he stays at my house… and sleeps on the couch… or two inches from the woodstove.
For me, the day Kateri died our Little Red Schoolhouse became… silent. Not to mention that once the bastard raccoons massacred Lil’ Bitch, Chicken, and Chicken… I became the only animal in my household for the first time in twenty years!…(besides Mutual of Vermont Wild Kingdom happening in my walls and ceilings)… and I got very comfortable with a life of not being around and/or being responsible for another living thing…! (ummm… FYI… I actually think raccoons are pretty darn cute… except those specific ones… they’re bastards). So I’ve been having to think about stuff like, “Am I ready to share my space, to share The Schoolhouse, to share my home…?” and “Do I want to be responsible for another living thing until it… or I… die!”. Oh yeah, don’t worry, I’ve also thought about the fact that if I’m already this attached to the guy… am I willing to endure the pain that will come if I outlive him?… he’s 7.
(The answer to that is yes… because unconditional love and adventures are parts of life that kinda make it worth living.)
I’m totally kicking my neighbor’s ass at this whole wood pile decorating challenge!… that they’re not aware they are a part of. (Yes, I started this post before Halloween…!)
There are a few things that I just absolutely love about living in Vermont… things that are simply a part of living in New England such as seeing steam pour out of sugar shacks in the spring or the hills turning so green throughout the summer that it makes you thirsty. The leaves changing in the fall creating a sea of reds, yellows, and everything in between. And the piles of wood you see in yards on daily commutes as you think to yourself, “They better get a stackin’ before the center of that pile rots and a plethora of woodland creatures decide to move in!”.
Kateri and I always loved having a wood stove. There’s just something to be said about having a hot spot to stand next to when it’s 17 below outside and the snow is piling up. We lived in just two places without a wood stove and I’ve gotta say… life just wasn’t the same! I mean, it was still pretty frickin’ good… just colder.
I’ve always enjoyed stacking wood… for my own place. As we like to say, “It warms you twice!”. Of course, I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually warms me like 4 times with the amount of times I move it… stack it here, then unstack and restack there, then move it inside… and then finally light that shit up and get the stove a crankin’!
When we bought our Little Red Schoolhouse, it was in the fall so one of the first things we had to do was find a few cord of wood. I was so excited because for the first time we actually had a covered spot to store it, out behind Kateri’s Potting Shed under the lean-to… and I stacked it there for a couple of years. When Kateri died and I was left here alone, I was forced to figure out how to make things a little easier on myself when it came to all sorts of things. The lean-to was great… and I loved seeing three cord neatly stacked and settled in for the winter between those red posts and under the galvanized roof, but it was also the furthest possible point away from the house that we could stack it! So last year I decided to simply make a couple of long rows above the lower rock wall since it would be much…MUCH… more accessible in case I needed to access it. (Current year’s wood is in the garage). Plus, it’s basically where my wood guy drops it so I thought it would make it easier to stack! That, coupled with the fact that I’m in a personal competition with my neighbor… who doesn’t know it, but is also my inspiration… on who can create the coolest stack of wood made me think about how I could take this “chore” and make it into something that would provide me with a little joy and give a sense of accomplishment more than just having my wood stacked. So this year I decided to add… lights!
As a widower, I thought about how could I take this event that happens every year and insert a little bit of Kateri into it. I guess you could actually say Kateri was my inspiration for the theme of this year’s stacking. She had bought a few iron balls which had little battery powered LED lights that you wrap around them to spruce up your garden/yard/home/whatever and they’ve just been hangin’ out in her shed for three years now. When I thought about my one sided competition with my neighbor… those globes came to mind. Yes, my neighbor has iron rings with flowers hangin’ in them and little whoop de doos n shit… but you can see mine IN THE DARK! Mwah ha ha!!
Yes, some may simply think of stacking wood as a chore and something that just needs to get done… which it does… but more so this year than in any years past I have found it is warming more than just my Little Red Schoolhouse. This year, every time I look at those tidy rolling rows and see the light shining out over the dirt road of Wild Hill… it warms my heart with the memory of my wife… and the life she gave me.
It’s raining. It’s a little windy. It’s Sunday. It’s nice…. cuz I’m comfy n cozy and still in bed… with coffee.
I’ve been pretty busy the last few months, but last weekend I took some time and replanted Kateri’s aloe plant, a couple of brugmansia cuttings which had been living on the window sill in the kitchen, and some leafy thing living in bark that I had been watering without knowing what the heck it was… but figured the leaves were still green so they would probably enjoy some agua. (I’ve been told that those leaves are actually an orchid. Soooooo… I guess I have an orchid. Yup… I’m tropical!) I’ve also had this piece of Christmas Cactus hanging out in a small old timey glass bottle for the last three years… haven’t done anything with it in those last three years… no dirt, no direct sun, not even a lick of water… but threw that in a new pot with some soil and placed it in one of the big ol’ schoolhouse windows to see if it would catch. The fact that it is still a… shade of green…… gives me hope! And why not?! What’s the worse that could happen?… all those people who come hang out at my house (which is pretty much just one other person… My Lady friend) would see that I planted a dead cactus thing?!… I can live with that.
To cut to the chase… repotting Kateri’s plants is an extremely personal experience for me in terms of the attachments I have put on them in relation to her, to my memories of her, my love for her, and to the last twenty years where I got to see how much joy plants… these plants… gave my Wife. To do it with my Lady Friend was a wonderful exercise for me as I learn to live in this state where I feel as though I’m living… in-between lives. Yay!… widowhood.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
I’ve had what some have described as a “Heavy couple of months”. And I guess I have. But I’m getting through. Life is simply a mish mash (mosh?) of experiences and encounters that play their parts to get us… Here. There are things that bring us joy… and things that do not. My guitar is one of those things that brings me joy, but also provides me with a little balance. Although it can be frustrating (considering I don’t know really know what I’m doing!), it will always push the world outside the windows aside and allow me to simply sit on our little green rocking chair… in our Little Red Schoolhouse… and get lost for a minute or two.
I’m just gonna say it… I’m tired. Rather exhausted, really. Physically… psychologically… and emotionally……. tired. For weeks now, all I’ve really wanted to do was lay in bed on a Sunday morning with my coffee and some weed and write a little blog post since I haven’t for a bit, but I’m in foodservice during a time when it’s difficult to find help and the entire country has decided that the Pandemic is over…. and they want to come… here… yay. It’s actually not that bad… it’s just a lot when you feel like you’re behind before you punch the clock in the morning… or after working 11 eleven hours running your ass off while peeling beets, pickling red onions, panning up and cooking 40#’s of bacon, or trying to find product because the big food purveyors cut our order due to their staffing levels…. more “yay!”. (Although I do not work for a little independent restaurant, I do feel the Pandemic is showing the public some of the cracks in our food system, how fragile and challenging our industry is, and how the little guys are strugglin’… if still around… while the big players will do just fine. It doesn’t help that customers have no problem telling the high school kid working behind the counter that they are worthless and bitch at them about the fact that they had to wait longer than expected for their muffin! Yup…. my wife died and turned my life into a game of Pick-Up Sticks. Sorry you had to wait… for a muffin… grow up… and fuck off.) Ok, that’s all I’ll say about that for now because I’d rather relax as I lay in bed and write this… and I can already feel myself getting worked up!
More than a few things have happened since my last post that I wanted to write down… that I wanted to sorta process and share. There was working Memorial Day Weekend and then Fourth of July shenanigans… which I prefer to call Independence Day. There was learning from a good friend that an old friend had decided to jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge. My lady friend and I went to Mystic for a weekend… and yes, had the pizza. I flew for the first time in a while to spend a couple of days with my mom… which was wonderful. (Seeing my mom was wonderful… the whole flying experience was mostly just an entertaining necessity. Luckily no one got into fisticuffs and the only plane I saw on fire was for training purposes as we were landing in Texas. Yup… Texas.) But for today, I’m going to write about yesterday… when I went to go see my Mother In-Law, Mary Ann… at the hospital.
Considering the fact that Mary Ann has been a part of my life for decades… I don’t really know where to start or what to write so I’m just gonna start with the immediate and set the scene. The Friday after I got back from Idaho to see my mom, I got a text from my sister in-law telling me she resigned from her teaching gig and was flying to Mexico (where my mother in-law has been living for the last couple of years) because she was having health issues and couldn’t take care of herself. After rain storms, rental cars, Mexican hospitals that only took cash due to said rain storms, four airplanes… morphine… and a wheelchair later… Mary Ann was back in the states where we learned she has cancer in her bones, liver, and lungs with a blood clot in her pulmonary artery for the cherry on top. Once again… fuck.
On the widower side of things, it’s a strange experience to go through. It brings up all sorts of things. It brings my life with Kateri right back to the forefront of my thoughts, memories, and emotions. Kateri’s family was mostly here in the East while mine are on the left side of the country, so I’ve spent more time with them than I have my own family over the last 20 years. Since Kateri died, I haven’t spent much time with any of them but I think we all still consider each other family. (Now we’re all considered Out-laws!) When I heard Mary Ann was sick and coming home, I didn’t think of her in terms of someone from a previous life whom I didn’t have any attachments to anymore… I simply thought of her as my Mother In-Law… as Mary Ann… as Mom… as someone I love very much because of the time and space we shared over the years coupled with the stories Kateri shared with me about her life with her mom. I love her… and it sucks to see people you love get hit with a big pile of poop.
Loss… it doesn’t help that I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately and how we are forced to live with it. It’s a balancing act. This year I’ve already had two friends die and both my Mom and Mother In-Law are now living with cancer. When Kateri was in Palliative Care/Hospice, it was made apparent to me that the world doesn’t stop just because your life is complicated or even falling apart. It’s a challenge to find time to deal with everything. Sometimes, it’s a challenge to be there for someone. Sometimes…. it’s a challenge to be there for yourself. When Kateri was dying, I took the approach of, “How can I make this/these memories something I can look back on and be proud of as a person, as a friend, as a man, and as a husband… even if those memories are gonna suck to remember?”. I’ve tried to keep that approach to life since. Because of that approach… and after I was told of something that Mary Ann had said… I knew I was gonna miss another Sunday morning of drinking coffee in bed, smoking weed, and blabbing on about my little world because my priorities for the weekend had… changed.
“I want to be with Kateri.” Without knowing the context in which they were said, those are the words that made my plans for Sunday clear. I knew exactly what it was I needed to do. Sunday was the first chance I had to drive the three to four hours down to Connecticut to see Mary Ann in person… so I did… and then drove back. A couple of years ago, a friend of Kateri’s and mine who is a glass blower brought me down to the floor of the shop he works at and started the process of putting Kateri in glass so that I could give her to her family. For about a year and a half, Mary Ann’s piece has been sitting on my kitchen counter in a little purple velvet bag because I wanted to give it to her in person since she was living in Mexico. Basically, I didn’t want to risk mailing it to her and then Kateri getting lost in Mexico. Even though… to be clear… Kateri would’ve been 100% fine being lost in Mexico!… but the priority was to give her to her mom. When I heard her mom had said those words… it crushed me… and my priorities became clear. I thought, “Mary Ann is not with Kateri (thankfully)… but I can bring Kateri to her.” Looking at the situation, I would’ve had a hard time if something had happened to Mary Ann in the last few days and I had decided to simply lay in bed on a Sunday morning, smoke weed, write a blog, and live my little life instead of doing what I thought was the right thing to do for me… and her… at the time. I needed to have an experience I could look back on without regret. I’m glad I took the time. I’m glad I got to see Mary Ann’s face as I handed her her daughter. I’m glad we were able to hug each other, cry, and feel the love and energy that Kateri still brings to this world. I’m glad I was able to say, “I love you”… while holding her hand… and hear her say, “I love you more!”.
Priorities… we’ve all got our own. Decisions… we’ve all got to make them… and live with the consequences. Make the ones that are the best for you at the time.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
I’m attaching a GoFundMe page one of Mary Ann’s daughters had set up to help with medical stuff and the whole getting to Mexico and back. Kateri and I both come from humble beginnings… (I’m still in humble beginnings!)… neither one of us exactly came from money so events like this are just another added stress when dealing with an already stressful situation. When Kateri went into Palliative Care, a friend of ours set one up for us… and it has literally saved my life. Because of the generosity of friends, family, and strangers I have been able to limp along for three years now. Because of that experience, I personally know how helpful a few extra bucks can be not only financially, but psychologically and emotionally, as well. So…. please share if you can.
Did I mention Mary Ann would teach art to the street kids in Mexico? That’s the kinda person she is. I mean, she’s human like the rest of us and I’ve seen her do the two handed, double pump, middle finger flip off to family members!… which was always entertaining and something we all laughed about for years!… and just another reason I love her.
Well, I’m laying in bed on a Sunday morning… drinking coffee… smoking a little somethin’ somethin’… and trying not to be annoyed that it just took a half hour for my computer to connect to the internet… errrr!! I’ve been pretty excited about getting to today. It’s my first day off since Easter and my first “weekend” since the end of March. Luckily, I enjoy working and I enjoy my job, but I also really enjoy my time off…!
Currently, I’m in the midst of memories of the shittiest time in my life. Last Sunday, April 11th, was the anniversary of Kateri going into Palliative care. It’s weird, things seem to be coming back… memories… that sorta kinda just pop into the brain. Things that are rough to remember. For example, like when I just typed “April 11th”, the memory of talking to Kateri’s Cancer Doc in a hallway of the main hospital as he told me the option(s) going forward popped up… which was the option of drilling a hole in the side of her skull to relieve some of the pressure that the tumors were putting on her brain. For a seven days now I’ve known I’ve been in the anniversary of the last two weeks of Kateri’s life, yet today was the first time that that memory came back… and it’s just kinda hard to deal with. It’s really fucking hard to deal with, actually. It’s a challenge, which was actually the topic that started my thought process for this blog post… dealing with everyday challenges as a widower… but since I started thinking about that over a week ago… challenges… it has snowballed in my brain to the point where I simply have a mish mash of heavy thoughts (because one thing always leads to another!) swirling around and I can’t seem to grab any specific one to focus on. Yay!!
Last Wednesday is when I first started to feel some relief from my workload and as I was standing on my porch that evening, I thought about how my life as a cook has instilled this attitude of doing whatever it is I need to do to get the job done… to get through service… to get through the day. The last four months have not been easy for me at my gig… there have been all sorts of challenges… but I fell back on my work ethic and my new approach and attitude towards everything in life since Kateri died to get through… to keep going… to get to today… with the hope of getting to tomorrow mostly unscathed. When Wednesday hit… I felt good… I felt proud of facing that immediate challenge of needing to focus on work shit until I had a moment to focus on myself. Although I had to pay more attention to this and less attention to that, I was able to get to a point where I could lay in bed… drink coffee… smoke a doobie… and take some time to face the emotional and psychological shit storm that comes along in my life that starts the end of December, picks up in intensity on April 11th, and then hits the crescendo on April 22nd… the day I heard Kateri’s last breath. On the work side of things… I’m glad I got to this point. On the life side of things… this point kinda sucks… but I’m glad I’m here and going through it.
Last Thursday I woke up ballin’. No, I wasn’t having dreams of dunking on Lebron as we battled on the court in a game of One on One… I literally woke up sobbing. I had dreamt that I had cancer in my brain. The last image I can remember was me in my back yard checking to see if my sump pump had spewed any water out from the bulk head. There were people around, but I don’t recall anyone specific… except for my father… for some reason. I was crying in my dream because I felt alone… because in my dream, Kateri had already died. I felt lost without her there… and the loss of her in my life was unbearable as I was faced with the uncertainty of some not so fun information. It was intense… hence the waking up with a wet pillow and puffy eyes. It was one of those odd feeling moments when you recognize you are coming out of sleep and start to separate dream from reality. After I wiped and rubbed my early morning eyeballs, I was able to temper my emotions… put my big boy pants on… grab a cup of Joe… and head to work. Even on the way out to my cute little Jeep I could feel myself getting emotional and not wanting to face the day, but I did anyways… because that’s just what I had to do.
Widower Notes n Thoughts:
The other day I wrote down the note, “It took me a lot of living to get… here.” As I’ve thought about it more and more… I don’t really know where “here” is. I guess that’s what it feels like when you’re feeling… “lost”.
“Lost” is one thing. Coupled once in a while with feeling “insignificant” in the world… kinda sucks.
Almost three years out… I still sleep on “my” side of the bed.
Sometimes when laying in bed I wedge my Achilles tendon between my big toe… and the toe next to it. It just feels good.
I have found “Widowhood” to be an extremely hard life to live… but it’s my only option. I have an even harder time with the fact that life told Kateri she didn’t have an option… and it took her away from me… from us. The world would simply be a better place… if she was here… next to me… laying on her side of the bed.
Before I left for my trip to see my mom, I had the idea that I would be writing quite a bit while I was out there…. that didn’t happen… and I’m cool with that because it just meant that I spent more time with my mom! Going into it, I sorta approached each of the three segments of the trip… The Drive Out, Hanging with My Mom, The Drive Home… into their own unique emotional, psychological, and personal experience’s… each of which I feel sooooo fortunate to have had! I got back last night and am taking advantage of the time I have to recoup, relax, and reflect on the past week and a half. I’m excited to write a few blogs during this time, share some pics/experiences, and was gonna start at the beginning, but we’re gonna work backwards because… well… this is where I’m at right now! For today… I just need to stop. I need to stop moving. I need to stop thinking about everything. I need to rest my body and mind… maybe while on the couch, from my bed, in the tub, or maybe all three! Whichever way, it feels good to be home.
As a widower, I could’ve attached all sorts of things from my old life to this trip… but I didn’t… that’s not what this trip was about. Even though I took a part of Kateri with me for the ride (She was always up for a road trip… and I could hear her voice saying, “Where the antelope roam!” as I rolled across Nebraska and back into Wyoming), this trip was for me… as time moves forward… in my present life. The day I left I thought about Widowhood and how it’s a layer of complexity which I would much rather not have in my life. But I also thought about how it’s just part of my life. A big part… but just a part.
Random Widower Notes n Thoughts… of my trip:
It’s a big, beautiful, diverse country… and everyone needs to drive across it… when there’s not a pandemic happening.
I have never “dictated” so much to my phone. I hope I don’t start saying, “Period” or “Coma” or “dot dot dot” when I’m having conversations with people!
Three days in the car… you think a lot.
Tom Petty Radio is a pretty darn good Road Trippin’ station. The news channels will drive you batty.
It’s scary as hell thinking about giving your mom with cancer a hug after driving cross-country during a pandemic… and you think about it a lot.
I’m glad I got to be on the road… out in the world… seeing our country… during the election. Isolated in the thick of it.
I overpacked… waaaaaay overpacked.
Driving 80mph is weird. Luckily… no sharp turns.
Why do your knees hurt when you just sit for three days?
I miss my mom and family… and love them tons… but it’s nice to be home.
I’m ready to get back into my life!… tomorrow.
The Video Description
Well, I literally just got home from my drive to go spend some time with my mom in Idaho. The gist of it is…. I left Vermont 11/1/2020 at 5:30am and got to my P’s house in Boise on Tuesday… Election Day… after driving 26 hundred miles or so… only stopping for gas/to pee/poop/or to sleep in the back of my Jeep Renegade (it’s “cute”… ugh) at rest areas. Hung out with her and my dad… didn’t go out because of the pandemic/she has cancer/not much energy right now/etc. So we watched election shit because it was happenin’… and important… and was something we could do from the couch. I’m glad I saw her… and was able to see how she was doing. (She’s doing well… she’s good) It was nice to talk… and share pictures… and watch movies that I never thought I would watch with her! And then I drove back to Vermont on 11/9/2020… post election… doing the same thing but adding in a snowstorm in Wyoming/Nebraska and arriving home on 11/11/2020… at 11:00pm… funny. On the drives, I thought about my life, my widowhood, my mom, my future, my past, my country, my job, my home, my friends, my family, my feet… and more! This is me in my driveway… after sitting for a few moments… after 63 and a half hours in the car covering 2,667 miles (or so!)… and before opening the door and getting out of the vehicle. Ummm… yeah. I’m writing this description the next day after unloading a little/eating/sleeping in/decompressing/reflecting and relaxing because I realized… after a couple of “moments” this morning… I’m exhausted. It was a wonderful trip during an extraordinary time to see someone I love more than anyone…. but I’m glad to be back at my little Schoolhouse… in Vermont… where there’s a wood stove and a bathtub… both of which I’m about to use.
For some reason I decided to search The Oracle for widowed celebrities… and I’m not exactly sure why besides simple ol’ curiostity. I mean, I’m not exactly up on celebrities and I kinda don’t care for reading or watching stuff about widowhood, but I searched it anyways. If you became famous in the last decade… 15 years or so… I probably can’t pick you out of a line up!.. or really care to! But, if you’re a widow(er)… I feel for you. It don’t matter how many people know ya or how much money you got from that horrible 90’s sitcom… or one hit wonder!… if the person you loved more than any of that type of shit… the person you loved more than anything else… up and died… life sucked.
Just a pic of my Jack-O-Lanterns!
So… that first part was really just notes I made the day before the 2 and a half year mark. The video below I made the day after the 2 and a half year mark. And now I’m posting this blog three days later. Yup… I’m slackin’! But what it comes down to is, I had a moment where I decided to simply look at the last two and a half years of my life… and tried to not let the emotional attachment to last 20 years with Kateri be the focus of my thoughts. And I’ve gotta say… it felt good to look back at my accomplishments over those two and a half years and be comfortable with how I have handled them! Sure, I’ve taken some wrong steps, but just took a step back when I realized it. Sure, I’ve said some things that I probably shouldn’t have said in certain moments or environments or to certain people, but I’m learning to think before I speak… a majority of the time… sometimes… here and there……… I’m working on it! Sure, I’ve made some mistakes, but as of right now… I’m ok with all of that.
We all make mistakes. Luckily, for two and a half years I have been surrounded by people who are understanding, caring, and supportive… and realize we are all just fallible animals trying to get through the day. It’s because of those people and the lessons Kateri taught me in life that I was able to have a positive moment on this new timeline where I could feel accomplished, comfortable, and proud of how I have dealt with my “Widowhood”… even if that “moment” came to me while in the shower! (I’m pretty sure we all do a lot of thinkin’ in the shower!.. when we’re not singing.)
ps… if you take a gander at the video… I know I say, “ya know?” a lot. This is why I prefer to write things down… I ain’t no orator!
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 