Widows in the Cemetery and Red Hats in Church

Sometimes on paper things can look a little weird but in real time doing that something is downright fascinating. That was the case with a tour I signed up for at the senior hall. The day of the tour forty of us, dressed in serious rain gear, got on the bus early in the morning. The weather forecast was a 90% chance of heavy rain off and on all day and it was raining hard at the time. We would have had a full bus but ten people stayed home, afraid they might melt in the summer rain…or the ghosts might get them, I guess, in the fog that comes with morning showers and eerie places. We were headed to the oldest cemetery in town for a two hour walk and talk. 

Our tour guide was a man who’d written several books on “the art of memory” as he likes to call his fascination for the tombstones of our city’s founding fathers and this guy’s research was thorough! He was a retired lawyer and is a frequent lecturer at the local museum who had, for example, tracked down the court records of a couple of murder trials of the residents under some of the elaborate stones. He also got into the history of the Rosetta Stone and how that influenced the style of some of cemetery art we were seeing. Like in any town, the streets and buildings named after the founding fathers are known long after they're gone but how they made their money and what their contributions to the growth of the city were is often forgotten. This tour brought them all back to life. I can honestly say I never knew our town has such an interesting cemetery, complete with an Egyptian style pyramid mausoleum no less. I thought places like this could only be found out East. And the rain? For some miraculous reason the only time it didn’t rain all day was when we were walking around the cemetery. The ghosts who reside there must have enjoyed our company and put in a good word to the Rainmaker.

The next day I was supposed to go on a walk-about with my Red Hat Society Chapter. Seventeen of us had signed up for a guided tour of several churches downtown with lunch sandwiched in the middle. The architecture and stained glass windows (some by Louis Tiffany) are really something to see---I’d seen them many times in the past when I was working in the floral industry---but that wasn’t the reason I emailed my cancellation after I got home from the cemetery tour. One, I was exhausted at the moment and wasn’t sure I could climb all those steps and walk the downtown streets so soon after my cemetery tour. But, in hindsight I know that wasn’t the only reason I bowed out. The other reason is because I was stupid and I let some hurtful comments cause me to second guess myself.

The back story on those comments: Last week in another blog that I frequently visit there was a shocking---at least to me---discussion about The Red Hat Society. Some of the comments were: The Red Hat Society “encourages older women to be worse than invisible, it shows older women as being ridiculous.” Another person said, “I would rather have no friends and hang out with my cats than pal around with a bunch of loud, absurdly dressed women,” and a third person said the Red Hat Society “spawns conformity” and that they are “an annoying part of society.” The one that really got to me as a widow was a comment about how she’d rather enjoy the company of a man. Well, duh, we don’t all have that choice and some of us don’t want to be cougars just to be with a person who stands up to pee. Does she know the demographics of men to women in the over 70 age bracket?

I left a few comments of my own, trying to balance the negative stereotypes being thrown around and so did a few others but as much as I tried not to let the discussion bother me, over the next few days the nasty comments were like a single pimple on a flawless face. You can’t quit zeroing in on that pimple when you're looking in the mirror! When I thought about what I was going to wear to the walk-about the nasty comments were there in my head….and I hate to admit it, they kept me home and from having an interesting guided tour and a pleasant lunch with some nice ladies who don’t want to let widowhood (or their couch potato husbands) keep them at home. I guess I need to re-read the poem that inspired the Red Hat Society so I can screw up my courage and resolve again. The whole point of the society is that at a certain age women no longer have to care about the societal conventions that put restrictions on us when we were younger---when we had too many responsibilities and other people to answer to, jobs and reputations to uphold as well as needing to be good role models in our families. We are free, now, to wear colors that don’t match and laugh in the streets and explore the world around us. The red hat is a symbol for that kind of freedom. Will someone cross-stitch those last two lines on a sampler that I can hang in my kitchen?  ©

 

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickles for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.