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. ©

Genealogy, Travel Lectures and Snow Angels

I’ve been bored without something on my calendar to do this past week except for that trip to the grocery store Tuesday and that was just a made-up excuse to get out of the house. My desktop computer is working again and you’d think that would keep me occupied and it did for a half a day before I got caught up. One of the things I did was I posted something on Facebook I’ve wanted to do for a long time, a family history paper I ran across that my husband wrote back in 5^th or 6^th grade. It’s written in pencil and shows a teacher’s corrections written in red. His nieces and nephews and great-nieces and nephews have probably seen the ancestral chart one of his brother’s made, but Don’s homework assignment included occupations and moves ancestors made since the first one came over from Ireland as a barrel maker. I didn’t want that information to get lost with me and I’m guessing a few of my Facebook contacts on his side of the family will preserve it beyond my grave.

There always seems to be one person in each generation who takes up the genealogy gauntlet.  On the other hand, there are always the people who couldn’t care less and will throw important family documents away. Case in point: When one of my aunts died and her kids were cleaning out her house none of my cousins wanted the 1800’s immigration paper, Italian Army discharge papers, naturalization paper, coal miner’s license and  other documents that all belonged to my grandfather so they asked my dad if he wanted them. We went right over to pick them up, plus we got a small wicker suitcase that my grandfather carried all his earthly possessions in when he came to America.  What a gold mine for genealogy research and I had the Italian papers translated. Fast forward twenty years, I created a blog to post those papers and the research that followed. I’ve since gotten messages from people searching the same family tree (my grandfather’s brothers came over in the same time frame) and I got one message from a grandchild of one of the very cousins who didn’t want those papers. She had stumbled upon my blog while looking for her roots. We were both shocked to learn of our close connection. I love that story.

All week long I’ve been stalking the school bus, looking to catch a pair of teenaged sisters that live down the street and do it in such a way that no one called the police to report my weird behavior. Thursday I made contact. Operation Snow Removal 2014/15 is now a done deal. They seemed genuinely happy to have the job of shoveling my snow this winter and one sister had her arm in a sling last year so I’m sure I got a little sympathy when I explained why I need the help. Now, if they just show up all winter and don’t burn out I’ll be one happy widow lady. Never mind that I’ll to have to learn to accept hearing the word “totally” in every sentence these girls speak and not act like someone is raking their fingernails over a blackboard. I’m totally fricking happy to make that concession. They can totally say “totally” as often as the like and I will totally resist saying it back in a coy way that borders on making fun of the young’uns.

Friday I went to a lecture given by a travel agency and a guide that organizes trips for senior citizens. This slide show/lecture was on South America. Not that I want to go there but what a paradise for nature lovers and fans of lost civilizations. I know the guide fairly well---she facilitates the day trips I take through the senior hall---and if I ever do travel abroad, I’d go with her. I keep trying to get her to plan some trips around the states but even after escorting over fifty trips aboard she still isn’t interested in traveling the USA. I don’t get that. I guess because I grew up in the “See the USA in your Chevrolet” era (remember Dinah Shore singing that commercial?) that idea is firmly imprinted on my DNA just like “Anytime is a good time for Coca Cola” and “Fight tooth decay, stop bad breath all day with Colgate Dental Cream” has thoroughly brainwashed me into decades of brand loyalty.

Besides that, in this era of a terrorist around every corner and Ebola on every plane coming to America (I’d use an eye-rolling icon here if I had one) I’m not exactly inspired to fly. The last time I did it many decades ago I cried on take-off and landing both, thinking it would be the last sight I’d ever see and in between the stewardess tried to disfigure me with hot coffee poured down my chest. Yes, I graduated with honors from the School of Scary Cats which means you’ll never see sky diving on my Bucket List. Still, Nantucket, Cape Cod and New Orleans are on my Bucket List so there could be one or two trips in my future before I kick that proverbial bucket. ©

Attitude and Bucket Lists

Facebook is the source of some wild and crazy things---amazing, funny, sad and heart-tugging posts as well as downright stupid stuff. Where else can you go 24/7 to see elephants taking mud baths, photos of your minutes old great-great nephew, clever words written on paper, recipes for ‘smore pie, 27 dogs in a swimming pool, a photo of Ryan and Romney hugging, and get an update on your niece-in-law’s surgery? On Facebook you can also get videos from around the world like the one below called Unsung Hero and sub-titled Not Every Gift is Tangible proving that while we might not understand the language and their streets and homes might look different other cultures value the same intrinsic things we do.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the photo at the top (as well has the video below and all the things mentioned above) appeared on my Facebook feed today. Wouldn’t you love to know who thinks up this kind of stuff? Where do they live? We could be walking by these clever people every day and not know it. What do they do for a living, do they walk-the-talk? Or did they “borrow” the words photographed and posted from a book or Sunday sermon? Does it really matter so long as the words makes us stop and say something like, “Knowledge and hard work ARE important but attitude, yes, Attitude, really does trump them both.” Yeah, my attitude could use a tune-up from time-to-time. Thank you, anonymous creator of clever things and my friends for sharing them.

According to my Franklin Language Master attitude is: 1) a posture or relative position and, 2) a feeling, opinion or mood. Okay, got it. We see attitude everywhere there are people. In some of the music videos out today, for example, they project an attitude of I‘m-in-your-face-sexy-and-I-know it. You can turn the volume off on the news but still pick up on the attitude of protestors who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. If we watch a movie about Mother Theresa or the Dalia Lama we'll see their attitude of love with a capital L. I can watch a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher and see him judging us all and us not measuring up to his piousness. He scares his flock by finding the devil everywhere, that’s his attitude. Well, look there! I just revealing my attitude of disdain for hellfire-and-brimstone preachers and on Sunday no less when I should have an attitude of love thy neighbor. Why do some people make it so hard for us to love them? Why can’t we all be like the guy in the Unsung Hero video where we’d constantly be reacting to the world around us in positive ways? Like him, if we open our hearts to seeing the opportunities to be kind and loving, we'd find them. Wouldn’t we? When we take ourselves out of the coasting through life mode we can change our little corner of the earth.

I admit it, I coast through life sometimes. I don’t always appreciate the hard work it’s taken me to get where I’m at as widow and a woman or appreciate the knowledge I’ve tried to equip myself with to rebuild my life and build it the first time. Sometimes it feels like I should be “over it.” I should be ready for bold adventures and new relationships. I should be polishing the silver and having dinner parties. Whoa, back up here! Dinner parties? When I start doing that, my nieces are welcome to put me in a nursing home. I don’t cook. I don’t entertain and neither of those things are on my Bucket List. Nor should they be unless I want to commit suicide using stress as my weapon of choice.

Recently I’ve been reminded of my Bucket List by Bella Rum over at the Cul-de-sac Chronicles blog. I wrote it three months after Don died and when I reread it this week I realized that I had a good attitude for a widow back when I wrote it. It was honest and filled with do-able things. And I need to edit it, rewrite and expand it. One thing that will go on my new Bucket List is a mission statement about the kind of attitude I should strive to hold dear to my heart and strive to achieve on a daily basis. How about you? What is your core attitude or approach toward living your life? Have you written your Bucket List. ©