New Year’s Resolutions and Revelations for the Widow

A new year is here and I’m sure it will be March before I let my guard down and revert back to writing 2014 on my checks. I’m as predictable as my yappy Schnauzer greeting his squirrel friend when she comes to our bird feeders. I try to get him to only bark when the squirrel leaves the ground feeders’ station to crawl up the pole but Levi still doesn’t get the difference between high and low, even though I let him outside on the deck when I see the squirrel eating from the hanging feeders. To his vermin chasing genes it’s like giving a glass of wine, a cannoli and kiss to an Italian. Okay, that’s a stereotype and we’re not supposed to do that anymore but I’m half Italian so I’m going to let it slide.

I haven’t made any New Year’s Resolutions yet. I put myself on a no-media schedule for the three days leading up to the holiday and the two days after so I could completely ignore the holiday and all the news people talking about last year’s big stories and this year’s celebrations around the world. This was my third New Year’s Eve since Don passed away and the no-media thing worked well for me. I wasn’t sad, depressed, teary-eyed or any other adjective I could put in front of my name. I did do a little toast at midnight with a few sips of wine but then I threw the rest of the glass down the drain. If I’m going to ingest empty calories I’d rather have a cookie. But I’ve been good these past few days and when the sugar monster wants to be fed I give him an organic, rainbow carrot. There you go, blood and guts, if you work hard enough you can turn that into glucose.

For the year 2013 instead of writing resolutions (which I usually did before my husband passed away) I choose to embrace the one word mantra idea that was floating around that year. I chose ‘courage’ and I even found a ‘courage’ charm and a Cowardly Lion charm that I wore on a chain whenever I’d go someplace where I felt my newly minted widowhood would be a tested for its strength and courage. It did the trick, it really did. I’d touch that necklace and be reminded to push forward into uncomfortable situations. Now, I don’t need to be pushed; going places alone no longer bothers me.

For 2014 I resolved to take and post more photos on this blog and if you follow it at all you’ll know that resolution got broken rather early in the year. My smart phone takes more photos of my thumb than anything else and my favorite camera is too heavy to lug around. I also picked another “widow’s mantra” to see me through the year and that turned out to be a mixed bag of marbles and feathers. I had picked ‘seek contentment’ and I envisioned that happening by doing two things: 1) Keeping a tighter lid on my expectations, and 2) using the social circles I had established in 2013 to find a few good friends within. I felt I had the bones to have a more satisfying life and I just needed to flesh them out. So here it is the dawning of 2015 and I can say I’ve gotten a good handle on managing my expectations over this past year---move that one over to the ‘success column.’ But I’m about ready to call it a big goose egg on finding a few close friends. I have many friendly acquaintances in the Red Hat Society and at the senior hall but I don’t see any of them developing beyond that. Hanging out in those two groups, though, is something to do and is good for a few laughs but that’s about it.

So, I’m off to Emerald City to ask the Wizard of Oz for a friend. If only it were that easy…but on second thought, maybe it is. When Dorothy, Toto and the trio of misfits they picked up along the way saw the Wizard didn’t they, essentially, learn they already had it inside themselves to get what they all sought? Sure, they believed in the Wizard long enough to think the useless items they got from him had special powers, but by the end of the movie Glinda the Good Witch set them straight on that score. The power was in them all along. And for me that lesson does apply, meaning if I look at my life through honest eyes I already have good friends---relatives and others I’ve known for decades who have been there for me, and would be again if I had a true emergency or I just needed to talk.

Hey, that gives me an idea! For 2015 I think I’ll pick for my mantra: “Hoe the row you’ve already got and don’t go off looking for new seeds to plant.” I don’t need new friends as much as I need to cherish the ones I’ve got.  And wouldn’t you know it, e-Bay has a Glinda the Good Witch charm I can get to remind me that I already have what I’ve been moaning and groaning was missing in my life.

What was I thinking? My soul mate is gone and a dozen brand new friends isn’t going to fill that void and that is a simple fact of life in the wild and crazy territory we call Widowhood.  ©