Busy Week, Purging, Bucket Lists and Loneliness

If my wintertime dragged on because I had nothing much on my calendar, I’ll make up for in the next couple of weeks. They should fly by and that’s okay with me. Over the next six days alone I have a dentist appointment, a luncheon, a Red Hat Society tea, a Movie and Lunch Club date, a lecture on selling houses, another lecture on how to pack for overseas travel plus one morning I’ll keep my niece company while her husband has surgery and in the afternoon I have to clean the garage for an upcoming appointment for my sprinkler system spring turn-on. (How do garages get so messy over the winter?) I doubt I’ll ever travel overseas but l like gadgets and gear so I thought that lecture would be interesting. I’ve decided I won’t be selling my house this summer so I could skip the real estate lecture, but I won’t. Buying and selling is still on the table but the condo open houses I’ll be going to over the summer is mostly to check out the communities, to see which ones fit my needs the best.

Have I mentioned that I flunked the class I took last winter about purging? I need to do more of that before I move. It was given by a professional organizer, a mercenary without a sentimental bone in her body and her ideas of disposing of collections and “guy things” rubbed me the wrong way. The first year after my husband died, I paid off a $40,000 mortgage selling his stuff (aka junk in some people's eyes) and Ms. Purge told the class to just give everything that belonged to a dead spouse to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I about went into cardiac arrest. Giving generic, one-size-fits-all advice to a room full of widows drove me crazy. “He had his is fun with his stuff,” she said, “You don’t need it anymore. Make a clean break!” I get that mindset, I really do, but on the other hand some widows have trouble making ends meet yet they don’t understand some of their husband’s “stuff” has great value and could be sold to help pay the bills. "Be smart," I would have added to her lecture, "and do a little research before you wholesale donate everything but the kitchen sink."

For some odd reason a lot of people recently have been reading a Bucket List post I wrote three months after Don died, so I reread it. Of the 40 things listed I’ve accomplished 21 of them. That would be impressive if I hadn’t listed some pretty small and insignificant things like get low lights in my hair. There was only one biggie---going to Nantucket. (Well, two---moving being the other one.) If I was rich, I’d rent a cottage on Nantucket for the summer. Three things on my Bucket List I no longer want to do like buy a bike. After falling over my own feet since I wrote that list and breaking my elbow and doing damage to my shoulder that lead to surgery, my days of chancing another fall are over. I could get a three wheel bike but I’d have to eat a lot of crow because when my mom was my age she bought an adult-sized tricycle and I made so much fun of that bike, I should be ashamed of myself. Thankfully, I didn’t do it in front or her or my dad.  

I need a new Bucket List with goals and things to check off. I’m drifting through life again and dare I say the word ‘lonely’ has entered my vocabulary recently and I hate both those things. In the winter it was easy to tell myself that any isolation I felt was purely weather related “and this too shall pass” but with spring I’m not buying that anymore. I need a friend! How on earth does a person my age find friends other than doing what I’ve been doing? I’m getting out and about in the community, doing things I enjoy and I’ve made a lot of friendly acquaintances since Don died, but no one person I could call and say, “Hey, do you feel like going over the Lake Michigan for an afternoon?” or even out to lunch. Woo is me! Cripe, it just dawned on me that I’m down today because the next two weeks is filled with too many memory triggers---birthdays, anniversaries, a sadiversary, etc. And Lake Michigan is calling because it’s what we used to do annually to celebrate our birthdays. Thankfully, I’ll be too busy over the next two weeks to feel too sorry for myself. Still, I need to restart the “this too shall pass” looping message in my head. By March I hope to shed the ‘lonely’ label I have stamped on my forehead! Fingers crossed. ©