Something is scaring me

the "future"

Today's issues are enough. Don't invite disaster.

Time was, a decade ago, the future held heartwarming scenarios for me.   That was then, before widowhood. This is now.  Now, I'm afraid of counting on the future.  If I put my hand near this flame, I mean, this "future",  I'll not emerge unscathed.   Who of us can?   The 'future' has death written on it, mine and yours.   Why trust its golden lure?   Can it deliver something beautiful and good before it delivers death?   I wish I could have faith.  Instead, after the future took my assurance of tomorrows away with my late husband, I made a truce: I won't tempt it and it won't burn me.  (Like I can stop the future from happening by not dealing with it???)

Except ~ somewhere deep inside I have continued to build a foundation for a future.  Part of me hopes for and relishes the future.  How can I not?  Life, and people, and nature are precious and loving is most natural.  Part of me feels naive if I become enthusiastic about the future.  It's like I'll be Charlie Brown.  Lucy has the football just so.   Just when I really really want to kick it...

What is in front of me?  Is it really the 'future'?  Or is it 'fear'? 

What is it I need to learn? I need help sorting it out.

Have you faith in a bright future?

Number One in my heart

 

Used to be that my late husband was Number One in my heart.   He hasn't been for quite some time.   

I started fully occupying the 'Number One' bench this summer, after dating had yielded no suitable candidate for romantic bench warmer.  Indeed, in settling myself in on this bench, I wrote here, on August 21st, that Love, not fear, was now going to be in charge of my life. I made a commitment to live in the present tense.  And I assumed my life would be a solo act.  So how strange it was that five days later I became reacquainted with Joe, a friend I knew in New York City three decades ago.   He'd looked me up on Facebook.

Maybe you've read my last post  "Moving forward with the Emergency Brake on".  I've had some time to think about it.  Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm disengaging the emergency brake.  

O.K.  First and foremost, Love exists in the present tense and this is where I want to live.  Fear lives, if you can call it that, in the future.  So I've disengaged that darn brake, and I'm on the road. 

Why did I let two scary 'what if's' unsettle me?  I, or we, can deal with them.  The first 'what if' is my challenge balancing his needs with my own.  I've had no evidence this challenge is a problem.  The second 'what if' is death - one or the other will die first - if this romance blossoms into full love.   I've been there, and don't relish the opportunity to lose one I love again.   But I'll be O.K., with God's help.  Besides, who knows who will die first?  The only way I can figure out how to avoid these two 'what if's' is to avoid loving at all.   So.   Easy choice. 

I'm going to offer part of this bench to the man above.  Will he join me?

Moving forward, with the emergency brake on

"I'm alone. Who can help me out here? "  I once cried out.

Silence.  I will never forget that relentless silence when he died.  I begged for his help beyond his grave.  Silence.  Nothing.  Occasionally I'd be blessed with a glimmer that he was beside me, but damned if this glimmer was going to help me with something I really needed.  Silence.  Nothing.

Nothing to do but pick up those pieces and "Suck it up, Marine".

Let me tell you what life is like for this widow seven long years later: it is a lovingly crafted system with fewer moving parts, each designed to not overwhelm.  Discipline and indulgence teeter on a fulcrum of faith in God and the ultimate goodness of life.  I don't ask for perfect, predictable circumstances.  That would be dull.  Instead I ask for equilibrium.  After my long fall through hell before and after my husband died, I want peacefulness at the conclusion of each day.

I've long assumed that peacefulness for me requires solitude.   I've actually become a bit of a hermit, enjoying my own projects, my own timing, my own weightless independence.   Though I have felt the longing for union, evidently it's more in the abstract.   My first relationship as a widow was fairly insubstantial and never really threatened my equilibrium.

Now a man has come into my life.  A good man.  With him I feel a caring and a peace.  Peace with someone.  This is new.  I didn't even feel this sense of soul peacefulness with my late husband.  This new peacefulness is also extremely unsettling.  Does this make any sense?  What if I fall in love,  need someone, and lose what life I've created on my own, not to mention, lose him if he dies? I will experience another very hard fall into hell.  It cost me years to recover when my late husband died.  Rationally, I say this could be a long free fall into heaven if I let go. But this isn't how I feel. 

So my hand is on the emergency brake, and my life grinds forward.  This is the best I can do for now.  I accept that God is in charge, and I will try to take my hand off that emergency brake and place it on His.  God has always found a way to flow around, through, above and below a journey to hell or to heaven. 

Does anybody have any advice on this?  I could use some help.

the safety net

 

What does Bruce Springsteen have to do with a safety net?  A lot, in my case.  I went to a Springsteen concert recently, by myself, late at night, in a big city, but I wouldn't have gone without somebody waiting for me when I got home.  I can honestly say I wouldn't have gone without that safety net.  After all, it was just entertainment.  I didn't need to go.

There are certain things I don't do by myself.  I don't go out alone at night to movies or plays or concerts or ball games.  Olden days, I had my buddy to do these things with.  Now, if a friend isn't available, I don't go.  I can travel alone, go to workshops alone, but unless an entertainment venue is right down the street, I am in my hotel or RV before dark.  In my mind, I'm thinking "Better to be safe, than sorry."  After all, no one's watching my back.

Any of you widows relate?   Certainly other single women living alone travel at night to entertainment venues.  No one checks up on them to make sure they arrived back home safely.  I could use a dose of their bravery.  I simply don't have confidence to head out for an evening's entertainment on my own.

Life is so fragile; I feel so fragile.  What am I to do?  Maybe I should do what I do when I go up on my roof to clean out the gutters.  I call someone first and ask them to expect a call from me in two hours when I am through.  If they don't hear from me, come looking for me.  I may be on the ground. 

Somehow it feels babyish for a 59 year old to ask someone to wait for my call when I return from a concert on my own.  What do you think?

In over my head, again

I know that feeling.  Fear.  Perplexity.  Being leagues beyond my comfort zone.  Aware that abyss of  abandonment is only too happy to welcome me back.

Soon I head out in my small RV for a trial run of a couple hundred miles.  I'm starting to load it and test its systems.  Once upon a time my late husband and I headed out in it, to cherished places only campers go.  This year marks the eighth annual trip I've made on my own since he died.  However, before I head out, a few things need fixing.  Easy fixes.  Yeah, for a welder or a plumber.

Uh, oh.  I see my little pity party coming.  Get out of here!  OVER MY DEAD BODY will I give up RV'ing to avoid a difficulty or three.

Fear.  Perplexity. I know you well. Sometimes I try shake you off, with liquor, or shopping or procrastination.  Pretty stupid.  Prayer can work OK on fear, but I've yet to master miracles that fix problems.  Better to try to master the task.  And lighten up!  

Last year, hopeful that learning to swim would help me with fears beyond the water's edge, I began a DVD course called "Total Immersion".  I'm up to lesson 7 out of 10, and yes, learning to swim is actually teaching me life lessons.  For instance, a body will float if it just relaxes.   Water is friendly.  Keep any muscle not needed for forward propulsion relaxed.   (Actually very few muscles are needed for forward propulsion.)  Conserve energy, breath efficiently, and maintain focus for the long haul.  Trust the process of learning one drill at a time.  The joy of swimming will result.

So I'm trying to hang in there, learning what I need to live a joyous life.   Yes, I'm in over my head.   But, every once in a while, when I 'get' how to do something and actually get it done, my head breaks free above the surface and my heart breaks free with a joy I can't contain.   Initiating that flip from fear to 'I get it!' takes a surprisingly small amount of energy.  Now the flip itself takes a bit of time...

"It's OK.  Just start where you are. Just try....,  OK, try again.... OK....try AGAIN... You go, girl!!!"

How do you deal with being in over your head?

Growing into my own skin

I've been away this past month, traveling in Ireland and France.   Sounds wonderful, was wonderful, but I was way out of my comfort zone.  I'd have it no other way.  I travel to learn, not only about the culture and terrain of another country, but about myself.

I went to Ireland by myself, knowing no one, for a bicycle tour on its west coast.  I added a pre-trip extension to the cycling portion, to explore Ireland a little first, and get over jet lag.  Six other people had decided to do this as well, in the form of three married couples.  Two of the couples had come together.  I felt my single status acutely; once I was part of a happy couple like them.  How was I going to fit in?

Until this trip, I have played my 'widow' card in new circumstances with couples.   I have found my identity as widow comforting.  It presents a status that is neither single nor married, but in a way both.   The shadow of the missing husband always exists. Since I'm really trying to move on now, I didn't explain myself as a widow to these couples.   As a result I felt intensely disoriented.   Remember your first days of college, when you didn't know anybody and they didn't know you?  Did you wonder if you'd fit in?   I felt like that with these couples.  I was me as simply me.  Would they like 'simply me'?  Who is 'simply me'?

I met her, well, me, in their feedback.  I met a lively yet self contained woman, sometimes animated, sometimes quiet, with a gutsy and peaceful spirit.   Much to my surprise and delight, I as 'simply me' was welcomed and appreciated.   I was scared I wouldn't be enough.   I needn't have worried.  

A few days later a man with similar qualities joined the cycling portion of the tour.   A lovely self assurance emanated from him.   He was quiet yet warm.  I've feared that quiet is read as aloof.  Not so.  I will think of him when I'm judging myself as too quiet among people, and remember that even quiet people like me and him can have a powerful and positive effect on others.

Thank you, God, for giving me this opportunity to learn.  Now I will unpack my clothes and souvenirs.  Unpacking my experiences and memories will be even more fun.

Is it happening again?

Shoot.  I don't want to do care giving again.  I got a call last night from my oldest sister.  She and her husband took my 98 year old father to the ER.  He requires some degree of medical intervention and some degree of care in his home afterward.  How much?  When?  Now?  My brother's lined up to be Dad's caregiver.  Will he be there when Dad gets out of the hospital?  Do I have to live with Dad?

Flashback to 2002 through 2005.  Three years of 24/7 care for my dying husband.  On my own with the exception of six weeks' help from his daughter and six days' help from my sister.  God bless them both!  Three years of pills, injections, chemo infusions, stem cell apheresis, plasma transfusions, operations, therapy, clinical trials, weight loss, temporary blindness, chemo brain, steroid personality, no immune system, sterile house, cooked food only, pneumonia, ER, thousands of miles on the car. 

Doctors warned me. If I got sick, he could die.  With no immune system, my husband couldn't even fight off the smallest cold!   Well, I didn't get sick but once, and my husband survived.

I phoned my sisters.  They helped calm me down. My father's situation is entirely different.

It's not happening again.