Since my shoulder surgery two weeks ago I’m sleeping better.
I’m only waking up once or twice during the nights instead of seven or eight
times like before the procedure. That’s a good thing for my all-over health but
I don’t remember my dreams as easily as I did when I wasn’t reaching a deep
sleep in between waking up so many times. This morning, though, I woke up with
a dream hanging on and its one I wish I couldn’t remember.
In the dream Don was
breaking up with me. He was going off to have fun with his new friends---a less
than angelica looking bunch of ragtags, I must add. I guess you could say he broke
up with me when he died but I didn’t need to hear the words to start out my day
or to feel his tender last kiss still lingering on my lips. I don’t get guy
logic! Why kiss someone like that if you’re going to say goodbye in the next
breathe---or was it my own logic since it was my dream? “Adios, aloha, ciao,
arrivedece, goodbye Jean, it’s been nice knowing you.” Nice knowing me? Nice! Get out your dictionary, buddy, and find a
better word. (Did you know that Stephen King says if you have to use a
thesaurus to replace a word, you shouldn’t be using that replacement word in
the first place? Easy for him to say. He has a bigger vocabulary than I do.)
“Kiss off, Don!” I replied in my dream, “I don’t need you to tell
me what I already know. You’re going away and you’re not coming back.” I was as
mad as a soapy, wet cat in a bathtub and I stayed that way for an hour after I woke up…almost
two if I need to be honest with myself.
No matter how well we widows have dealt with the death of
our spouses, no matter how much we have moved forward in our new lives the
holidays still bring with them a certain level of melancholy and apprehension,
don’t they. The fact that Don died early in January doesn’t help. That timing
just extends a long season of being alone while the rest of the world seems to
be celebrating, and memories of past holidays interrupt my journey forward. I
have no plans for Thanksgiving, did I mention that? Although I did turn down
two offers. I didn’t feel
like pretending I fit in with the first family that invited me. They are a
large, close-knit family and I don’t know many of them well enough to call them
by name. With the second offer I got, it would be too hard with my arm in a
sling to help with clean up and the would-be hostess is in no condition to be
cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner which she would have done if I had accepted her kind
invitation. She loves to cook, but she shouldn’t be on her feet that much. She’s
ten years my senior and has been known to pass out when she overdoes.
Someone suggested I could get the Salvation Army to deliver
a Thanksgiving meal to me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. 1) I give money to
the Salvation Army to buy holiday meals for the poor. 2) I can very well afford
to order a fully cooked holiday dinner from an upscale deli that you just
warm up the next day. And 3), Thanksgiving---or any of the holidays---isn’t just
about the food. It’s about the people you share it with. I’d say “bah humbug”
here but I think that word is strictly reserved for December. I’d look it up to be sure but I feel the presence of Stephen King looking over my shoulder
and he is one scary guy. Why do they print books of common phrases and dictionaries
of synonyms and antonyms if we’re not supposed to use them? Answer me that, Stephen! Ohmygod, is
this what senility feels like, you start talking to people who are dancing
around in your head?
My niece and her husband came to town this week to take me
out to dinner and to bring me some photos to scan for a book I’m working on.
It’s a photo essay covering the life spans of my parents and I will give a copy
to my brother, my nephew and my two nieces for Christmas. But mostly I wanted
my all-time favorite photos of my folks all in one book that can travel with me
to the assisted living place I hope I never have to move to, but I’m a realist so
I’m covering my bases. I have eight boxes of photos, sixteen large photo albums
and a huge box of slides and no one is going to let me keep them all if I’m
forced to move one day. My Plan B is to spend the winter making 8” x 8“ topic
essay books like the one I did for my brother’s birthday last
year. After I finish the book of my parents, I’ll do one of Don and me, one of
my nephew and nieces, one of the family cottage and all its reincarnations and
one book of my favorite things. Then I will make it well known that if anyone
tries to send me off to assisted-living without my six, compact photo essay
books, I’ll disinherit them assuming I’ll be able to dial a phone and can
remember who my lawyer is. Who says getting old isn’t a blood sport. You have
to be strong to become as weak and helpless as a kitten if you age badly. In
the meantime, I’m going to start eating spinach for breakfast. It worked for
Popeye, why not me? ©
