When Death leaves you in the Lurch

 



First, You Cry.  Remember that book from the 1970s?  In it, Betty Rollin wrote of her transformative experience with breast cancer.

I stumbled on a more recent book of hers: Here's the Bright Side: of Failure, Fear, Cancer, Divorce, and Other Bum Raps , published in 2007.   I'd say widowhood qualifies as a bum rap, wouldn't you?  Death left us in the lurch.  No way around it.

There is a bright side. I couldn't say this better, so I'll quote a large portion of her book.  For all newer widows reading, remember - I've been at this eight years.  Eight years.


"I woke up one morning and realized I was happy. This struck me as weird. Not that I didn't have all kinds of things to be happy about—love, work, good health, enough money, the usual happy-making stuff. The weird part is, when I thought about it, I realized that the source of my happiness was, of all things, cancer—that cancer had everything to do with how good the good parts of my life were.

When I thought about it more—and looked into it and started talking to other people—survivors, not only of cancer but of various other of life's infinite variety of bum raps—failure, divorce, illnesses and reversals of all kinds, death of a spouse, and so on—it turned out I was not alone. It turns out there is often—it seems very often—an astonishingly bright side within darkness. People more than survive bum raps: they often thrive on them; they wind up stronger, livelier, happier; they wake up to new insights and new people and do better with the people around them who are not new. In short, they often wind up ahead. There are even studies, scientific studies (!) that show that people often say they have benefited from the terrible things that have happened to them.

Coping well is part of this phenomenon, but there's more to it than that. Within each form of misery, there seems to be something of worth, a hidden prize waiting to be found. Sometimes it's found right away, sometimes not: a painful, debilitating divorce or widowhood can lead, gradually, to a new tranquility within and without. (Not to mention the possible emergence of a swell new mate. Have you ever encountered the particularly dipsy-doodle joy of a newly married widow or widower? A person who thought love was forever buried with a deceased mate, but by golly, here it is again!) "

..........

 

Thank you, Betty Rollin, for your eloquence. 

 

Widowhood, you left me in the lurch for a while, but you have given me new life.  I haven't had a sign of grief now, in what, weeks.  I'm happy. Wow.  I got to discover these ~

 

Faith in God and His/Her Provision

~~~~

 Doing what needs to be done 'well enough' is well, enough

~~~~~



A fighting spirit,  mine, and yours is there when I need it

~~~~~

A welcoming heart and open mind is all Life asks

 

Who would've thought, that terrible day death changed the landscape, that the struggle would pay off so handsomely?

 

 

Am I better off without him?

"Goodness.  I didn't divorce him!  How can you even ask me that?"

But I do ask that.

Am I better off without him?

This whole idea came up when I looked through old files in my art studio yesterday.  I hate to admit it, but some of these files are nearly twenty years old. There are snippets of articles and notes.

I found a note my late husband wrote to me on March 26, 1996.

Dear ____,   What we did last night was devastating, and I'm still angry.  Yet I see you and our union as a blessed gift from a loving God.  I am sad that we hurt each other from our woundedness.  Love, ___

I guess the argument he's referring to was a doozy.  We had rough times in our marriage, especially a six year spell from 1991 to 1997.  Often, during this time, I seriously contemplated this question "Would I be better off without him?"  I stayed on the fence a long time, and some would say circumstances merited my departure.  Then, in 1997, I jumped off that fence toward him, toward us.   Not that circumstances were a lot better.  But, like the pearl which forms around an intrusive grain of sand, we faced what was hurting us and held on together.  We learned.  We grew.  We shed entrenched beliefs that were really harming us.  We had five very very good years beyond 1997.  And when his terminal disease hit in 2002, I unleashed every tool and effort to add months to his life, as did he.  Together we added 36 long months, each a hard won pearl in our strand. 

Am I better off without him?  I'm better off without the pain and daily struggle when times were tough.   Now that my grief is spent and I'm tickled to be alive, I'm better off without the pain and daily struggle his death left me.   And the pearl necklace we created?  It is in my past, in my heart.   Every once in a while I see evidence of it, like this note, which I'll hang on to.

Am I better off without him?  I am better off because of him. 

And, I am better off today because of the help I've received, and because of the choices I make.  Well, not all the choices.  But enough good choices mixed with these have added up.  I am better off than when I first lost him. 

A new strand of pearls is emerging now.  I have to remember that making pearls isn't fun, but it is worthwhile.  Turns out the strand won't be all pearls.  It has diamonds here now, sparkling in today's light.

Am I better off without him?  Difficult question.  I am blessed to have diamonds in my life at present.  I hope I will have more diamonds in that thing called the 'future', but the future has no guarantee.  In any case, I know I can make pearls from grains of sand, and try to do so every day.  If that most terrible grain of sand called death intrudes upon me once again I'll ask for help.  How would we make it through life without each other?

Do you see the day when you will be better off without your late husband?

A widow dating, with a good book

Dating a Widower , by Abel Keogh.

On the face of it, this book appeals to a very small niche.  But think about this.  Substitute the word 'widow' for 'widower'.  Then turn it around.  "What is it like dating me, a widow?"   The five points in its first chapter inspire me to ask  "Am I really and truly opening my heart, my space, my life, my future to this man I'm now loving?" 

After I, as a widow, started dating again, I discovered Abel Keogh's blog, specifically his "Widower Wednesday" posts.   I read about widowers and girlfriends or new wives.  I read about these women's joys, their heartbreak, frustration, and confusion loving men who had lost their wives.  Were they really now in the center of the widower's heart?  Were there red flags they should consider?  Red flags signalling that the widower isn't ready and willing to make her number one?   Red flags like his keeping photos of his late wife around?

As I dated, I had to ask myself if I prevented myself from enjoying new love.  Was I making unrealistic comparisons from cherry picked memories?  Was I not releasing myself from a commitment that death had already terminated?  And my fear - if I flung myself away from my past, would future love even catch me?  I looked at the photos of my late husband around my house. There I was, dating, and I still displayed his photos.    Red flag.   Nowadays, I have new photos of my boyfriend and me around the house.  Yet, as much as I care, stepping into the future with him sometimes feels 'don't tempt the fates' scary.  When I trust my soul, and realize that merging two lives is a process, my fear is calmed.  I believe I am meeting the criteria for putting my boyfriend first.  But this matters more: Is he feeling this?  Is the ghost of my late husband interfering?

Now, regarding dating in general for widows... I realize many legitimate reasons for dating exist, and a serious relationship isn't necessarily one of them.   But, if loving 'til death do us part' again is the point of our dating, Abel Keogh's thoughts in both his "Widower Wednesday" column and in Dating a Widower 's first chapter may be useful.   Have a look! 

One can link to Dating a Widower's first chapter here:

http://www.abelkeogh.com/writing/datingawidower.php  

Abel Keogh expands upon the five points I quote below in his book.   I insert brackets where I have reversed genders and added a minor variation.

.........................

"When it comes to [women] , there are five things about them that affects their behavior after they've lost a spouse.   

  
 1) [Widows] have an internal need for relationships. 

 2) [Widows] will stay in relationships with [men] they don't love.

 3) [Widows welcome men] they're interested in.  (Here I changed Abel Keogh's words: "Widowers pursue women they're interested in.")

 4) [Women] can only actively love one [man] at a time.

 5) A [widow's] actions speak louder than words."


What do you think?   Are these five things true for widows who hope to love again?

Widowhood: Part 2

I've edited this page, and added what I failed to tell you my first post:

Widowhood.  It's like a scarlet "A", only it's a black "W".  Who wants it?  Where does it lead?

Our wedding vows said: "Until death do us part".   I guess one can quibble that we haven't proof "God" directs that show, but let's assume He (or She) does. Why does God sever a wife's obligation and commitment to her husband when he dies?   God's rather intelligent.  

The former 'wife' is given permission to move on.  She is instructed to move on.  Let the past be past, and all that.  Widowhood is a passage, not a destination.  Why then, is it so darn hard?

For me, the term 'widow' felt like a warm blankie the first two years.  I was numb, angry, wretchedly sad, but being a 'widow' would elicit sympathy and that consoled me somewhat.  Following that period, in what I'm calling my 'Widowhood Part 2', widowhood felt less consoling.  More like a corset stuck in 'autotight' mode, slowly crushing me.  Life was just about putting one step in front of the other, never getting a good lungful of air.  I had to free myself from that damn corset!  Was that corset my lingering connection to the man who loved me so much?  I so want to form a genuine new connection with my new circumstances, and want what I have now.

I surprised myself when I wrote in my January 3rd post "I'd finally let him belong to the past."  Was I happy?  Happier.  I guess my job was to put him in the past, to shed that corset, and live free or die inside it.

Now back to my original  writing in this, 'Widowhood, Part 2'.

So, God, I've a new set of wants, since I've been released from my old ones.  What do You think of these?

• I want to be female. 
• I want to be pliant and not compliant
• I want to answer to You
• I want to pursue creativity
• I want to pursue wonder
• I want to be an idiot
• I want to be valued
• I want empowerment
• I want to sink my hands into new soil
• I want to love
• I want to connect with the new 'he'
• I want to see life through other people's eyes
• I want them to see life through mine
• I want to be deliberate and not put off life 
• I want to live outside normal parameters 
• Outside 'married'
• Outside 'widow' 
• Outside 'single'
• But not outside this big, beautiful 'me'

Have you noticed the stirring of new wants?
  

A - OK.... now

Let's face it, widows.  It's not our fault that we're single.  It's not our fault that we hurt.  Our particular loss is earth shattering.  If someone else understands, hallelujah!  But if they don't, shrug and love them anyway.  Expecting special treatment after say, the first year is silly.  Really...

Widowhood is lonely work.  It's supposed to be.  At the end of the day it's up to us to choose how we will go on.  

Choose life!

Easier said than done, I know.  Next to impossible in the beginning.  Pushing that huge boulder of tasks and grief up the steep, rocky hill of life leaves us wondering if we'll ever get it to the top.  My experience?    People help out.  But they have their own boulders to push.   Leave them be.  

Let them leave us to our own devices.

By golly, pushing that huge boulder up that hill one grisly step at a time made me the woman I am today.   Stronger, fitter, wiser and happier.   We've all been there.  All done the hard part.  Pushing that weight up that rocky slope.  It feels like forever.  Looking back, it wasn't such a long time.  After five years, that boulder got lighter and the ground levelled off.  After six years, no big deal.  At seven years, I was eyeing the open sea, wading in now and again.   Nice.   But I was still looking back.   Stuck and scared.   Where to head completely on my own?   In a world of two's, a bold new course: toward love that has my name, and my name alone, on it.  I don't believe this is selfish, because with that decision joy returned.   Peace, too.   Evidently I was overdue for self love.  And he would have been happy I'd finally let him belong to the past.  

Maybe the difference between the weight of grief and the freedom from it is reclaiming our own power to choose. After all, Choice was something that was stripped from us when death came.

Joy is here for us.

Why did it take me so long?  I'm slow.  Why not sooner?   Well, exactly when is 'sooner'?  Common wisdom says it takes widows five to seven years to move on.   It took me seven.  To others, it looked like I was doing well a lot sooner than I really was. So many of us put on a happy face and actually fool others into thinking we're well, because we're rather private.  Stoic.  Proud.

I decided to take my private angst public, through this blog.  The reason is my belief: God continually offers us gifts, and if I couldn't find the gift in this tragedy, I wasn't looking hard enough.   One year ago yesterday I wrote my first entry.  I posted my efforts, holding myself accountable to my readers to find the gift in my tragedy and move on.   Now I'm considering moving on from this blog.

Like Julian of Norwich, I believe that "All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well".  Why?   Because God is love, and God lives in the present tense.   I can hold the gift of life and be filled.   No longer am I like a bucket so drained of life by grief, and so full of holes no one can console me.  I am healed.  Circumstances could at any time pierce my bucket with more holes.  I hope in the future I can be more resilient.

Here is what I had to do

• Recognize that I was that empty bucket full of holes, and nobody could fill my emptiness no matter how much love and attention they poured in.
• Plug the holes in my bucket myself.  Do this by giving up the illusion that all shall be well only if time reverses itself.   Or if only people would be more generous.
• Fill my bucket with all manner of things - a few old things, but mostly new skills, new attitudes, new friends, new surroundings, new interests.  
• Share my journey publicly on this blog.

Every day is a challenge.  For everybody.   

Good luck.  God, and Love, is with you. 


P.S. Please don't hesitate to share in my comment section.  I'll write back!

What can we give ourselves today?

It may be too soon.  The grief may still be carving its presence into our being.

But,

if we're ready.   if God is asking this of us.   if it is taking more energy to hold back than it would to let go.   if people who care and understand want us to be here for them now.   if we give ourselves permission, life will ask us to: 

 

~ Let go ~

 



My love to all who journey this path, kicking, screaming, limping, crawling.  Someone is here to love us.  Be he or she God, our departed one, our sister, our brother, our Mom, our Dad, our son, our daughter, our friend -  borrow their strength.   Some glorious day it will become our own. 

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?

The surrogate spouse?

Meet Nip.





Early in this blog I wrote a post about feeling irrelevant.  Well, a couple of cats I adopted 5 months after my husband's death helped a bit.  I adore them.  Meet Nip.  Tux you'll meet soon :-).  That these cats hugely related to my loss became clear, when every year on my husband's birthday I wanted to adopt another.  My sister talked me out of it, or else I'd have seven cats now instead of two.

Something in me wants to care for someone or something. I want a central role and sense of continuity that volunteering or friends or extended family cannot provide.  My spouse is dead.  Now what?

I've been dating three long years now.   At first my heart was limp, but it did roar back to life. That part is great.  Obviously I'm looking for a man to love, but what I have come to appreciate instead is the fact that I had some pretty decent surrogate spouses already in place.   Besides my two cats, I have my garden.  And my house.  They offer me enough return on my investment, pleasure wise.  And I have a handyman I can depend on now.  Of course they do a crappy job of addressing the loneliness.  I may never live with a man again.  Face it.   With this blog as my witness, I have to make peace.  

I figure I have a chance at happiness, if even a blind pig can find an acorn every once in a while.  Someone I love needs to inhabit this life I'm living.   What I realized this summer is that this person was here all along. Welcome home, GowitheFlo.  I love you.

Weirdly enough, when I welcomed this adorable little girl and grown woman back into my life something strange happened.  Someone 230 miles away emptied out a bag he had retrieved from the back of his closet, and a 26 year old letter from me fell out.   He'd always thought well of me.   Facebook connected us and now we're friends again.  He matters to me.

Net result of all this grief and inner effort?  An epiphany this morning: I don't need my late spouse any more.  It has taken an awfully long time to get here.  I started writing this blog to hold myself accountable for moving forward.  Am I really O.K. now?

I expect my late husband is now saying  "I love you, honey, and I'm leaving you because you'll be O.K. "
To him I say "I miss you, but not so much. I love you, but I'll be alright.  I have found a way to go on."

feeling abandoned?

 

 

 

 

Were we abandoned by our husbands?    You bet we were.  Work through that grief, and we may find a deeper fear of abandonment still alive and kicking.  I truly hope not for you.  I hope you have made wonderful new connections that fill your heart.  But fear of abandonment is alive and well for me.  When my husband was alive, I felt strong in his commitment and love.  I carried his presence with me a long while after his death.  I didn't feel so alone.  Then his presence began fading. This is when fear of abandonment surfaced for me.

If I truly let myself need another man again I may be abandoned again - by sickness, by death, by his love petering out.  Can I reach out?  First I'm going to reach in. 

My new project, the "you're welcome, (my name)" project, said deeply into my heart, addresses this fear.   I can never really be abandoned, can I, when I welcome myself in?  I can welcome my own needy self - tenderly, carefully.   I need to be there, first for me. Then I need to be there for someone else.  I shared this with a widowed friend.  She took my hand, "I can see you're speaking from your heart." We sat there quietly, hand in hand, tears streaming down my face. Her heart reached mine without saying a word.    

No advice.  No need to talk about her own experience.  No need to fill the void.  Just be in the void with me.  Simply be there in that void with me.

I guess I'm talking about providing my own emotional support first, before offering and seeking it from someone new.  I've been pretty guarded about loving again.  It's scary letting a new man in.  But, darn it, I'll survive.

Do any of you ladies have these fears, too?

Happy Anniversary

Happy Wedding Anniversary. True, my husband's been dead some seven years, but I celebrate his gift of love just the same. Each year, if I'm able, I return to a campsite way up Maine's coast, where we would celebrate our anniversary. Perhaps in the future I will have a reason to lay down new patterns of celebration. I hope so. I am soooo ready!

His absence is a gift I've come to appreciate. In the emptiness I've discovered my neediness. I've discovered my fear and confusion. I've discovered my compassion and tenderness toward my neediness, fear, and confusion. I'm also amazed to learn that the more I welcome this emptiness and enter into it, the more I can welcome others into my life. Grief isn't all that bad, because letting go gives me more space inside to love anew.

I've come a long way. I've a long way to go. I'd like to share a little bit about me to give it context.

I was born April Fool's Day, an unexpected gender from an unexpected conception, cross eyed and needy. Mom and Dad thought they were quite through having children, but into the family I popped. Mom, already overtaxed in her capacity to mother, let me believe I was the final straw, calling me her accident, her mistake. Of course, I figured if I was smarter, or prettier, or popular, she'd welcome me. But, try as I might, I never became enough. I then tried to 'un' be, figuring if I disappeared, I wouldn't tax her capacity too much and she'd be at least grateful.

Unfortunately, neither approach resulted in a single "good job!", "I love you", or affectionate hug. Oh, dear. I then built a wall so high inside you couldn't see me and I couldn't see you.  I wouldn't have to feel the sting of rejection should my neediness show and someone not have the capacity to fill it. 

My husband was a big part of my healing, and I'm pretty angry that he isn't around any more to be my fan.   I know my biggest fan is God, amorphous as He/She is. I trust I'll grow, that when I say an unconditional "Yes!" to life, no matter what its circumstances, a larger love will manifest. It's just so bloody lonely sometimes. Still, the love story this anniversary celebrates is but a part of the larger love story I'm still writing. I would dishonor my late husband's love for me if I didn't enter this larger story.

 Happy Anniversary.

Welcome

This poem shares my heart today, and what I'm missing and need.

Mostly this poem is about loving tenderly, both myself and other wonderful people I've yet to meet. 

I want to see the world through your eyes.

You see it so differently than I.

I need to see what I'm missing

with these, my one pair of eyes.

I want to hear the world through your ears.

To know why you laugh and cry.

To know how you resonate so deeply

when your spirit touches the sky. 

I know life's secrets leave you hungering.

and life's snubs leave you aching some more.

My hands need yours to teach me

how to touch you where you're sore. 

I want to know you thoroughly,

and treasure who you are.

I want to love you candidly,

your tears, your laugh, your charm.

I'll make your fear grow pale, you'll see,

in light of love so pure and grand,

that life inside becomes vivid and real,

bringing you all it can.

I miss you when you hide from me,

afraid I've promised too much, too long.

But come at your pace to trust, my love,

for inside you is life's best song.

                                Poem by GowitheFlo

What man would touch me with a ten foot pole?

When I look at myself, overworked and overwhelmed at times, what have I left to give a beloved?

I'm used up.   With projects I adore and with projects I have to get done.  I've thrown myself into surviving, first from necessity, now with a healthy dose of defiance.  I am going to thrive.   Widowhood isn't going to leave me half alive.  I'm doing two people's work to manage the same household.   Where's the free time for a special man?
  
"Step into my world",  I have said into my romantic void.   "Help me.  Hold me.  I'm pretty.  I'm healthy.  I'm faithful.  I'm loving.  I have a wonderful relationship resume!  No heavy baggage.  No bitterness.  Just peace.  Gratitude.  I have a magnificent home by a pond.  Come play.  Come stay.  Come be my love."

 Me.  Me.  Me.  It's all about me.   With a Pygmalion fantasy.

Until I come up with free time and a free heart for a man on his turf, on his terms, sometimes, I'm not serious about connecting with a real human being. 

Are you having trouble moving on, too?

Suffering still?

Suffering.  Got this one down pat?  The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale rates the death of a spouse as 100 out of 100, then divorce at 73, marital separation at 65, death of a close family member at 63,  jail at 63.  For me and a lot of us widows and widowers, the actual death and loss of our spouse's company is a mere 100.  It's what comes before or after death, soldiering on in the midst of crisis, that lives somewhere north of 100 on this scale.

I haven't wanted to write about my philosophy of suffering.   I am reluctantly willing to enter it if I have to.  There, I guess that's my philosophy.

I can tell you suffering ends, like all of life's cycles.  I can tell you my life has a shot at shining again precisely because I'm trying to stare that sucker down.  Here are a few things I've tried.  I've had limited success but it's gotten me this far, able to write this blog. 

Out running it gets my endorphins going.  Out sourcing it takes some of it off my plate, if I can afford the hired help.  Out drinking it puts a damper on it temporarily, but I don't recommend it as a rule.  Out shopping it is for me about as dangerous as drinking.   Out eating or out cooking it doesn't appeal, which is a blessing, maybe?  Out humoring it hasn't worked, though it seems to work for a lot of people.  Out socializing drains me, but that's because I'm an introvert.  Out suffering it makes me a matyr nobody likes to be around.  And transcending it makes me a pompous idiot even I don't listen to. 

So my next strategy is outsmarting it.  How?  By listening that little girl inside me.  Maybe I can learn to out love suffering by loving her best I'm able.

Still heading...somewhere

In an earlier post I mourned my lack of relevance to anyone on a daily basis.   Who cares what I'm eating, thinking, feeling, doing?  It doesn't impact their lives.  No one else lives under this roof with me.  No devoted man's got my back. I'm unhitched.  God, I'm lonely.

I'M BEGINNING TO FLOURISH IN THIS ENVIRONMENT.  Is something wrong with me?   Is this self care?  Enjoying my own company again?  I'll be up a creek without a paddle if I get physically injured.  But I like living alone.  Eating whenever I'm hungry.  Watching whatever I want to on TV.   I'm beginning to feel like I did in my twenties, no, even better.  I've no pressure to please anyone or take care of anyone.  I can't bite off as much.  I need more sleep.   So I bite off less.

Now I ditch the meaningless activities, and savor the meaningful ones.   I'm happy with 'good enough'.  I'm tired of being the strong, amazing, superwoman who is doing so well.    Seven years in and I'm still struggling.  It is what it is.  I keep the property in decent enough shape.  Feed the cats.   Hug the cats.  Write this blog, because it's helping me get a handle on life post widowhood.

Less and less am I looking for somebody to take over the tasks I don't want to do.  I've forgotten what it's like for me to cook dinner and for him wash the dishes.  I've forgotten what it's like for me to do the laundry and for him take care of the oil changes and trash.  I've forgotten what it's like to have a live-in handyman.  I've forgotten what it's like to share the bed night after night.  I do really miss the last one.

Still, I'm afraid that if I put me first I'll push away anybody that could love me.  I don't know the answer.  Is it OK to put me first?

Death. Where is thy sting?

I am fortunate.  My husband died in the season new life takes root.  He loved Easter, rather he loved the promise that while darkness held Jesus in its grip those three days, the light of resurrection stripped death and darkness of its power.  Real life, and real light, took up permanent residence.

By some strange coincidence, his passage into death mirrored his beloved story.  I was there.  I felt his spirit enter mine after he died.  I don't feel very sorry and sad, either for him or for myself, on this seventh anniversary. 


I haven't wanted to celebrate Easter since he passed.  I haven't followed the Christian calendar. A little sting still there?  I have 'followed' God, though, so I'm quite sure God isn't bothered by my little failure of Christian etiquette.  

Post Mortem

I just finished my 'transitional' relationship.  My first involvement of body, heart and soul since my husband's death.  I'm so glad I took the chance with this man, because it was wonderful to have a man's arms around me again.  I came to love him, too, and that's never a loss.

It began on JD's 64th birthday, April 4, 2011, and ended on his 65th birthday, 2012.  On his birthday.  In a garden, after treating him to lunch.

Let's back up to one year ago. My first deep infatuation had just ended without consummation. The floodgates of female passion had opened wide and had no where to go.    Well, one way to get over someone is to meet someone new, right?   Enter JD.   He was friendly, handsome, and harmless. Totally trustworthy. But with four underage kids still at home he was Mr. Mom. With full and fair disclosure, he said the kids came first, he came second, and any woman came third.

I was lonely.  Maybe if I approached him as 'summer fling' material, I could swing this.  Maybe we could be more, my heart and body said during the fall.  We'd come to love each other in a way.  Twice we came back together to try to work something out.  Still, I was stunned when I heard the "I'm just not that into you" speech last Tuesday. Could have fooled me. He had invited me to Easter dinner with his family.

Did I want to go through the door he had just shown me?  Next day, on his birthday, I made sure I understood him correctly.  Yes. This time the good byes were for real.  I cried, and surprisingly, he did, too. 

                                                      JD, I so enjoyed knowing you.

Never, ever forget

Are you the most important person in some one's life?   I read this question recently and immediately rewrote it to say  "Are you the most important person in a Beloved's life?   Once we all could answer "Yes!" and reach out to him.  Now he's gone.  Have we moved on?   Come on,  girls, what are we waiting for?  Let the future begin!

You know we don't stop being lovable as women, when we stop being loved by our man. 

He died.  We didn't.  New love isn't here for me at the moment.  I hope it is for you.  In the meantime, I want to feel my feelings, and I mean ALL my feelings.   Especially my longing for comfort, for touch, for being the most important person to a 'him'.   Why wait and pine?  I play certain music when I want to feel my sensuality.   I sometimes force myself to play it, because before feeling all the wonder of my womanhood, I first feel the pain of my loss. Yet for me, this pain is fleeting.  What follows is the most tender embrace! 

Never, ever forget how are precious you are.   Even if 'he' isn't around to remind you.

In His hands

Yesterday I took my longing to be part of a couple and put it in God's hands.  I literally visualized this transfer, tucking God's fingers around my desire.  I know He will tenderly keep it.  I no longer have to concern myself with it.

It's been weighing me down.  Yes, I am single, and would love a man to delight in me and have my back.  Yes, I would love to delight in him and have his back.  But God can use me to love whether there's a man in the picture or not.  NO MAN DOES NOT MEAN NO EMBRACE.   Nothing and no one can keep me from embracing LIFE.   That, at least, is under my control.

In the last two and a half years I've tried my best to connect with new love.  Boy, getting back into the singles market has been quite an education!  I have no regrets.

I turned myself from a widow, defined by my past, into a single woman alive to my future.  I became more fit, attractive, and adaptable to new and entirely different men.  No one's going to be like my dear husband, and I'm not going to ask them to.  Since I don't meet men around every corner, and I want a man to judge me by content as well as cover, I went online.  Ah, the importance of the Profile.  Good thing I love to write.  I learned a lot.  Different bait, different catch. But much more importantly, I learned to describe myself in a positive light.   I began to see myself in a positive light.

Now I've become pretty comfortable with the meet and greet part of courtship.  I've become pretty comfortable with the attention that comes after.  Most gratefully, I've learned of my value through a couple of very special mens' eyes.  I've learned to make decisions based on my best interests, which are to remain loving and open.

The lesson I most want to learn in life is how to be more loving.   I can do no better than by putting myself in God's hands.  My profile's still on one site, and I'm not holding my breath.

Happy Valentine's Day

This isn't a pep talk for all us lonely widows. 

It's not a philosophical talk about the bearable lightness of single life.

It's not a wistful surrender to the past.

This is simply to say that love comes in many forms, and to say no to whatever form it is appearing in today is to slap love in its face.

And that is utterly stupid.

Happy Valentine's Day, friends and family.  I am blessed to know you.  I love you.

What the heck is relevant to me?

Frankly, I have had enough of the type of relevance one has as an indispensable caregiver during the relentless struggle with terminal cancer.  I pledged 'in sickness and in health' when we married.  I made good on that promise and I'm glad.  Totally worth it.  But when he died I was glad to get time off.  I don't fully appreciate how people can survive caregiving longer than my three year tour of duty, and my hat's off to them.  I know I want to hug them, help them, and tell them there is a wonderful life awaiting them when it's over.  Personally, I was sucked dry by the caregiving.  More than that, I'd had my insides turned out and scraped clean.  I had so little to give to anything or anyone else for years.  Years.  Is all grief like this?  So incapacitating?  

There is a benefit to grief.  Like Kahlil Gibran writes  "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain".   It's nice to finally feel full after feeling so empty.  I'm overflowing now.  I just want to set my course in life to reflect the lesson I've learned.
My answer to my question:  Love
It's begun with me but it won't end there.