Widows Living Double Lives---Or Not

Sometimes I wonder if the whole world isn’t walking around showing something different on the outside than they feel on the inside. Robin Williams, for example, before he killed himself seemed driven to entertain people to the point he was living a double life. I guess a few close friends knew he suffered from depression but he was either: A) keeping a stiff upper lip, as they used to say, or B) was afraid he’d do what he ultimately did if he let go of his public persona. That’s an over simplification, I know, because he’d also been known to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol which only complicates an already complicated human condition. All I know for sure is being admired and loved, having opportunities, having close friends and ‘stuff’ and enough money to pay your bills doesn’t give you immunity against feeling something is missing in your life. 

I got a pedicure on Saturday and the girl was twenty minutes late getting me started. She apologized and went on to explain that the woman scheduled before me---another widow---was late for her appointment. According to the pedicurist, who knows the woman’s family, the widow has become a recluse since her husband died and has done nothing but drink beer and get drunk this past year. Her family is worried. “She needs to get involved with the widows over at the senior hall,” I told her. “They have tons of activities…” blah, blah, blah I went on to sing their praises. I told the same thing to my hair stylist recently because she’s was worried about her mother being alone and depressed. Later, my hairdresser came to the senior hall with her mother---a daughter helping her mother get over the fear of meeting new people. She reminded me of a parent walking a child to the first day of kindergarten. These two widows aren’t living a double life, they wear their misery on their sleeves. 

Monday I went to a crazy class at the senior hall, a demonstration on all things related to granola. How bored did I have to be last February when I signed up for that class? Massively so but I went anyway even though Monday I didn’t give a wit about granola (says the woman who bought $17.00 worth of ingredients). So there I sat learning how to mix twigs and nuts, knowing full well I still have a bag of unopened, pinhead oats from the last time I took one of these better eating classes. It’s sitting right next to a bag cookies---opened and replaced several times since the oats found their way inside freezer. At least when I die and they clean out my kitchen they’ll think I tried to eat healthy. Appearances are important. Oh, God, is that proof that I’m living a double life? Which is better, being a Molly Mope-Face 24/7 or being a Mary Sunshine in public and a Molly Mope-Face in the dark of night where cookies have been known to get mistaken for human hugs? 

Tuesday I was back to the hall for the annual spring cleaning day. Over 700 paying members---$15.00 a year---and only twenty showed up for cleaning day. What does that say about us twenty? I don’t know about the others but it says that I don’t volunteer much for the fun duties like being a door greeter or pouring coffee so it doesn’t kill me to get down and dirty once a year. They ask those of us who are able, to volunteer for at least two things a year and my second commitment is coming up in May. I’ll be helping with the Mother’s Day luncheon. It’s fitting that I work it since I’m not a mother who needs honoring. I did learn one interesting thing about volunteers when I worked this luncheon last year; twelve men showed up to set up the tables and chairs and to take them down afterward. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen that many men at the hall at the same time. Guys: Take a note. If you're looking for a second chance at love, skip online dating. Join a senior hall. You’ll be surrounded by single women.

Once in a while one of those guys will sit next to me at a lecturer. He’s a fuddy-duddy sort of guy who loves to cook and garden and he comes with no x-spouse baggage aka dead or divorced women in his life. Okay, that could mean he’s gay or maybe he was a wild flowerchild in his youth who “lived in sin” with the love of his life. Maybe his mamma killed off all his girlfriends like in a movie I saw recently on TV. Don’t you wish living people came with QR codes like they’re putting on tombstones now? You could hold your cell phone up to a person’s QR code and see their entire history. It will happen one day in a galaxy far, far away. People will have embedded electronic IDs that prevents teens from buying beer, old people from driving cars and people from living double lives. Like cows now have computer chipped ear tags that decide what vitamins and how much food each cow gets, our QR codes will force treatments and restrictions on the Robin Williams’ of the world and we’ll all live mundanely even-tempered ever after. So says the keepers of Orwellian conspiracy theories and, sadly, that could put Nabisco and Dos Equis out of business. ©

Ageism, the Widow and Robin Williams

 

This week I got the second annual ‘shine and buff’ on my car as part of the “free” package the dealership gives you when you buy a new car. I say “free” but you gotta know the cost of that five year program is built into the initial cost of the vehicle. I tried to get them to take if off the car price, but they wouldn’t do it. So I dutifully got my annual shine and buff, otherwise I’d feel like I was throwing money away. The Malibu looked great when they got done…everywhere but on one wheel. I called it a hub cap but evidently cars don’t have hub caps anymore. It’s a whole tire mount and costs a royal fortune to replace. It was gouged deeply the entire way around the hub cap that isn’t a hub cap. On the way home I remembered hearing a terrible grinding metal sound when I went to a car wash recently, but as I was inspecting the car at the detail shop, I thought they had done the gouging. I was upset. They were upset. My word against theirs and I was out numbered. And in hindsight I was apparently on the worry side of the truth.

When I left the detail shop I drove straight to the dealership where they have a body shop. No matter how the wheel mount got damaged, there was no point in putting off getting a new hub cap that isn’t a hub cap. (Out of sight, out of mind.) And that’s where I discovered I can be prejudice against elderly people working in service departments. The guy was my age---maybe older---and working alone, trying to do ten things at one time, writing himself notes, having trouble file papers, typed with two fingers and to top it off, he sounded like Mr. Magoo. He was so slow and foggy acting I was afraid I'd have to do CPR at some point. I was there an entire hour but eventually he got a price on a new wheel mount---$495 new plus labor or $250 installed for a reconditioned model. I went for door number two and vowed not to go back to the same car wash where I think the damage occurred. You have to make a shape turn before getting your tires lined up in the track that takes you through the car wash and that’s not easy to do. The day I heard the grinding sounds my back tire was on top of the track before it dropped down in it.

The next day I found out I’m prejudice against people who seem to be too young to be doing certain jobs. I had my first ever appointment with an investment broker. I swear I have slips older than the kid who sat across from me in his expensive suit, in a building with polished marble floors and frosted glass walls. His teeth were so white and perfect I couldn’t quit looking at them. Saturday Night Live once did a skit where they used a black light in the dark and all that showed up were sets of teeth talking to one another and gloved hands gesturing. That’s what his teeth reminded me of. He’d obviously put a ton of money into dental work, probably a graduation gift for completing his degree. He told me he majored in the psychology of investors which I’m sure impresses young ladies during Happy Hour but happy hour for me is an afternoon nap.

Anyway, I went in there wanting to open up a brokerage account to dump the required disbursements that the government makes you take out of your 401K when you reach a certain age and he, of course, wanted me to roll over the entire 401K into a brokerage account instead. Makes sense on paper to do that and it's what most people do, he said, but I wasn’t going to take Mr. Bright Smile’s advice without doing my own research because once you roll over a 401K like that, you can’t undo it. At one point in his "pitch" he stood in front of a white board with his colored markers, drawing pie charts and graphs until my head was spinning but in the end we did it my way. My 401K is with the same investment company. I can still go to one website to see my old and new account and I am comfortable with that. At the end he said, they are so geared to try to simplify a client’s finances that he wasn’t listening to me. I wondered if his psychology of investors class forgot to cover old ladies who get bull-headed.

And last but not least, I am heartbroken over Robin Williams' death. It’s so hard to accept that someone who brought so much joy to so many people couldn’t find a way to keep some of that joy for himself. Over the years he was open about his struggles with depression and with drug and alcohol abuse, which all goes to prove that money and fame can’t save a person from mental illness or the demons that come with addiction. From all accounts, he was a caring individual in his personal life, a good friend, and a genuinely nice and compassion human being. His work with Relief Comic, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, the Live Strong Foundation, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is proof of the latter. The many testimonials on TV and social media the past few days are proof of the former.

I have loved Robin since his Mork and Mindy days, so did my husband. Five of Robin’s movies are in my top twenty all-time favorite films: The Dead Poet Society, Good Morning Vietnam, What Dreams May Come, The Bird Cage, and Good Will Hunting. He shared his enormous talent with the world and he will always be remembered for being a gifted comedian and talented actor. I hope he finds the kind of heaven his character in Dreams May Come found. (See it the video below. It's my favorite after-death scene from any movie.) ©

P.S. I was the recipient of a random act of kindness this week. A woman in the car in front of me at Starbucks paid for my drink. When I got up to the window they handed me the paid receipt and said she does it quite often when she comes through. It sure put a smile on my face!

Loneliness and Dogs that Play Dead

I don’t know how pioneers did it…stay sane while living without much human contact for months on end. It’s been nearly a year---slight exaggeration---since I’ve been out of the house to talk to anyone, and that was just a clerk at the supermarket. He was a chatty-Kathy but that was hardly enough to keep the marbles in my head from falling out. Between periods of snow, fog, pouring rain and ice the weird weather has me trapped in 1500 square feet of boredom. But the fact is I’d have no where to go even if I could. I’d have to make something up---like a desperate need for purple eye shadow---just so I’d have a reason to back the car out of the garage. I have one week out of the month where all four of my reoccurring social events fall and then it’s nothingness again until the next month. I can only have so many conversations with the dog before he lets me know I’m about as interesting as watching a digital clock tick off an hour. I could take up bingo and go the senior center once a week but I don’t need can goods and with my luck, I’d win a bunch of soup and lima beans.

I’ve been hanging out on YouTube a lot lately where I fell in love with Bobby McFerrin a few days ago. Why has the world been hiding this genre bending guy from me all these years? I got all excited when I found out he’s actually going to do a concert in my town in the spring but that was a short-lived excitement because the tickets start at $350 and if I didn’t want to go alone I’d have to buy two and arm-twist someone else into going with me. But who? I can’t think of anyone I like $350 worth. Damn it! It’s all Don’s fault for dying and leaving me alone in the house with too much time on my hands.

On Facebook someone posted a picture of a dog with a sign hanging around his neck. It read: I spontaneously drop to the floor and play dead even when no one tells me to because I’m hoping for treats. That intrigued me enough to look the trick up in my dog training book but after reading the instructions for teaching ‘play dead’ I realized that while Levi isn’t too old to learn it, I’m too old to teach it. It would require me to get down on the floor with him which old people who live alone and have fake knees can’t do if they ever want to get back up again. The last time I was on the floor, I had to have Don park his wheelchair next to me so I could climb up the side. Woo is me. So I’ve been trying to teach Levi to balance and catch treats placed on his nose instead of playing dead. He thinks I’m crazy and looks at me with disgust. If he could talk he’d say, “Who wants to eat a treat that’s been on a nose during flu season? That’s gross!” And that’s coming from a dog who licks himself.

Paul Tillich, who I don’t know anything about other than he wrote a cool line that ended up in an internet collection of quotations, once said: “Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.” I wonder what word good old Paul would use for that limbo place in between loneliness and solitude. That’s the place I’m at. I still miss Don daily but I can’t call it ‘painful’…not like it was in the beginning. But I’m not ready to say I’m at peace with being alone like the word ‘solitude’ requires. It’s boring at best and boring at worse with more boring in between. If it gets any worse I’ll start baking cookies to take to the neighbors so they’ll be obligated to invite me in for coffee. I wonder if that would work. Better yet, if I go to the mall and spontaneously fall to the floor and play dead I'll bet I’d get treated with a lot of attention. Damn it! I forgot. I’m snowed in! ©

Another Letter to my Deceased Husband - Rest in Peace

Tomorrow is the six months anniversary of your passing, Don. I hope you are resting in peace. Rest in peace. People say that all the time but what exactly does that epitaph mean? You know me, I wasn’t exactly sure so I googled it. Apparently it’s meant as a prayer that the deceased person---that would be you---will find peace in the next life, free from the struggles of living in this world. Well, we’re running into a problem here, aren’t we Don, since we’re not Christians and don’t believe in the resurrection, final judgment and heaven which makes it a little hard to think of death as a jubilant rest in paradise with angels floating on the clouds. It’s an interesting visual to imagine, though---what paradise would be like. My dad believed in the traditional, Pearly Gates and gold lined streets kind of paradise but if I believed in an after-life paradise it would be different for each and every one of us, like in Robin Williams' movie, What Dreams May Come. (I need to rent that movie sometime. It’s been 14 years since I’ve seen it and every so often the storyline runs through my head and it still intrigues me.) My paradise might be like the heaven Robin's character experienced of walking around inside of a freshly done oil painting. What fun he had slipping and sliding. Your idea of paradise would probably look like one of the covers on the magazine Garage---neon signs and guy-bling every where and shiny, old cars with a group of guys sitting in the corner drinking coffee.

Rest in peace. Minutes after you passed away you had the most peaceful look on your face. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that look. It gave me comfort then and it gives me comfort now. Maybe it seemed so special because earlier that day you looked confused and scared, like a little boy who needed his mother to hold him and rock him in her arms. But you were hooked up with so many wires and tubes that I couldn’t get close enough to do more than hold your hand. I still wonder if you knew you were dying. None of us talked about the gravity of your situation in front of you and without your hearing aids in there was no way you could have overheard any of the doctors or nurses as they came in and out of your room. Maybe you could read our faces. Maybe your body was telling you it was ready to give up the fight. Or the activity in the room was giving off clues. Remember when my dad was within an hour of dying? The Hospice nurses would come in every few minutes to check his toes, and then they'd say, "It's almost time." It reminded me of opening an oven door to see if the cake inside was finished baking yet. I can't remember if anyone did that to you on the day you died. Probably not. I'd remember the surreal absurdity of that. Questions without answers.

Rest in peace. I know it isn’t the common meaning of the phrase but I prefer to believe it means that our soul or spirit can be at peace because the people we leave behind think of us with love. We sow the seeds of our future heaven or hell by the way we live our lives i.e. if we’re cursed after we die and no one has a good thing to say about us, then we’ll be  in hell. But if people loved us and we’ve left good memories behind then we’re in heaven for as long as we're remembered. In other words it’s the people we leave behind who create our heaven or hell in their minds by the imprint we left on their lives. No Pearly Gates, no gold streets to walk unless our loved ones envision us there. That's where Dad is in my imagination, where he wanted to be. None of us can know what comes after we die, of course, but I do know that by my definition, you’re in an American Picker kind of heaven, Don. You’re in that tricked out garage and you are resting in peace, laughing and telling stories with a cup of Starbucks in your hand.


P.S. I still miss you, Don. ©
 

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