What Will the Future Be?

In twelve, short winter days it will be a full year since Don passed away. The year went by quickly and I am grateful I am past the panicked stage of grief and the crazy I-have-to-do-everything-all-at-once feelings that chased me around for so many months. And tonight as I think about what it means to face this first anniversary I am reminded of a passage I read in a book a long time ago, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden: “Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

There are other quotes from the book I saved in a notebook and they are speaking to me as well like this one: “We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.” Grief and its aftermath is that kind of a force that makes us find a new direction in our lives, an uncharted course that eventually picks its way back down the hill with the volume of our tears added to its flow.

Do you save quotes and lines from songs, books and movies to savor later? I’m getting so bad that I’m constantly wishing for a red light when I’m driving so I can write down the title of a song to google later. Since Don died I almost feel like he’s speaking to me through lines spoken or sung by other people. Like tonight I was watching Mel Gibson’s movie Signs and I fell back in love with these lines: “…what you have to ask yourself is what kind of a person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible there are no coincidences?” Lines like that can keep my mind occupied for days. Until Don died I never believed in signs from the other side, but a few things have happened that I can’t help but question if it’s sign or a coincidence. The spookiest coincidence/sign that happened this year was on a day I was driving home from spreading Don’s ashes at the beach and I was wondering if I had done the right thing, picking where to leave him. As I was mulling over that painful thought I turned a corner and a saw a huge rainbow just as Tim McGraw came on the radio singing the song, Please Remember Me. I had to pull over, in awe.

I’m hiring a house cleaning service next week. Whoopie doo. I’ve traded in my husband for enough money to pay someone to save me from the fate of living knee-deep in dust bunnies and “doggie nose art” on the lower windows panes. I justify it as giving myself 720 more days to live the “high life” of a widowed, senior citizen. How? In the last few years it’s been taking me three days a month to clean what I used to be able to do in three hours. Three days a month times the twenty years I plan on living…that frees up over two years to spend quality time with my self instead of Mr. Clean. That’s enough time to take several around-the-world cruises. Damn it, I’d rather have Don back than to go Bora Bora, Sydney, Hong Kong, Dubai, Athens and Rome. And I really do like doggie nose art. I’d put food coloring on Levi’s nose to improve his work if I thought he wouldn’t lick it off. But life goes on and there are Bucket Lists to rewrite and watery ink to flush from paper. A widow can fight the changes that come with the title but you can’t stop them from coming. Eventually your life stills continue its flow down the hill of time. ©

“I'm not sure this will make sense to you

but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction

so that I no longer faced backward toward the past

but forward toward the future.

And now the question confronting me was this:

What would the future be?”

Memoirs of a Geisha

Please Remember Me, Don, and Johnny Appleseed

Lake Michigan Shore

It occurred to me recently that I’ve been “Johnny Appleseeding” Don’s ashes over two counties and seven places. Half were buried in April at a cemetery in a little town he loved. But this week---at seven months out from his passing---I scattered a quarter of Don’s ashes at Lake Michigan. Also this week I scattered smaller amounts in two other places: 1) under the white pine trees we planted right outside the window where I sit at my computer, and 2) along a nature trail. The nature trail runs close to the back side of the 160 acre farm where Don grew up. A month of two ago I poured some of his ashes in the river in the heart of Rockford where Don grew up. It was near the dog park where we used to take Levi. Then there are the ashes enclosed in a four inch tall ash urn kept in a velvet box, plus the tiny amount enclosed in my sterling silver ash urn locket.

In the 1800s Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed had a purpose when he went across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania planting apple trees but I have no clue what my purpose was in dividing Don’s remains between so many places. Maybe I really believe that out of the ashes new life grows and I wanted be sure at least one of the places I deposited them will remain undisturbed until that new life comes forth. (It’s never been my style to put all my eggs in one basket.) Or maybe I just like the idea that Don gets a choice of places to haunt until his soul gets tired of hanging around earth. And then there is the strong possibility that I just didn’t like the idea of having to go to a cemetery to remember Don on days when we’re supposed to honor the dead.

It’s a popular myth that Johnny Appleseed randomly planted trees in his travels as a missionary but the fact is he actually planted nurseries and built fences around them. Back in his days on earth, there was a law in the Midwest that required people who claimed frontier land to plant orchards to hold on to their claims and that made the land around Johnny Appleseed’s little nurseries popular plots to homestead because bargain priced nursery stock was close at hand. When he died his sister inherited 1,200 acres of his apple saplings, and to this day several locations claim Johnny’s gravesite. I can see how my decision to strew Don’s ashes over two counties could cause confusion over Don’s final resting place so maybe someday Johnny and Don will have a where-is-he type dispute in common.

The day I spread the ashes at Lake Michigan with my oldest niece and her husband in tow it was a beautiful, sunny day. We went to Don’s favorite antique mall, had lunch where we could watch boats going by and, of course, we drove down to the beach. From there, we walked a short distance down the shoreline where we left the ashes---some in the water and some at the top of a sand dune that is near where the burnt remains of a small town is buried underneath the sand. Mother Nature took what the fire didn’t and now Mother Nature will have her way with part of Don. Don loved the folklore of that old ghost town and he had read everything ever written on the subject. I still have $3 Banknote issued in 1837 from the bank in that ghost town---Singapore, Michigan.

All of Don’s ashes have been spread now but I had a hard time stopping myself from dividing them even more. On the way home from Lake Michigan I was trying to figure out why it was so hard to bring an end to my Johnny Appleseed-like mission. Did I do the right or wrong thing leaving Don in so many places? Imagine my surprise when just after that question entered my thoughts I got a sign that I took as a seal of approval. As I turned a corner a rainbow, big and bright appeared in the sky and at the same time Tim McGraw was on the radio singing the song, Please Remember Me. ©

 "Remember me when you're out walkin'
When the snow falls high outside your door
Late at night when you're not sleepin'
And moonlight falls across your floor….

 .....please remember me.”

Top of the Sand Dune

Wild Goose Chases

Today I called the number listed on our loan coupon book for payments on the Traverse. “No, problem,” the guy on the line said, “just take a copy of the death certificate to a local branch and they’ll take care of getting your husband’s name off the loan.”

Ya, right. Simple as making a mud pie. A twenty-five mile trip to the only branch in the area later I find out that the only way to get Don’s name off the loan is to refinance the car. Why didn’t the call-in center at the loan department tell me that? It could have saved me a morning on the road. I don't want to refinance. I want to pay off the Traverse and downsize to a little sub-compact hatchback as soon as the insurance money comes. And I hope that happens so fast the neighbors will gossip about how quickly the little old widow lady is spending "her husband's" money. I can’t help it. For the past 11+ years I’ve been driving, loading and parking wheelchair friendly vehicles and I can’t bear to look at the current model any longer.

Along the way, I made a wrong turn which made my fruitless field trip even longer than it should have been. Hint to other widows: Don’t listen to the ‘prime country’ radio station while driving. Tears are like cell phones---they impede your driving skills. At one point I had to pull over while Tim McCraw sang:

"I've never been this close to anyone or anything
I can hear your thoughts I can see your dreams
I don't know how you what you do
I'm so in love with you, it just keeps getting better"

Those words brought back a sweet memory of a slow dance Don and I shared early on in our relationship. Dream like, the rest of the people on the floor seemed to disappear and it was just the two us acknowledging with our eyes and touch that we’d found our soul mate. Say what you want above country music but their lyrics really know how to reach down inside a person and retrieve your memories. This one was like watching a video on the romance channel. I kid you not.

"Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away..."

God, I can’t wait until this roller coaster of emotions, paper work phase of widowhood is over! I want to be left with my memories and skip all the frustrating stuff like being sent on wild goose chases that accomplish nothing. But then again, if not for today’s wild goose chase how long would it have been before this sweet, sweet memory was revisited? Thank you, Mr. McCraw! ©