The Weirdest Date I Ever Had

The Amazon delivery truck---yes, my town has a few on the road---is coming to my house today and I can hardly wait. The stuff it brought last week is due out of my five day penalty box for the infraction of being wanted during a pandemic, but I’m more excited about what’s going into that penalty box after I get my delivery. In the box right now is ink for my printer, a ream of paper and a fingernail repair kit. Nothing fun. But today---wait for it---I’m getting a bird call from the Audubon Society, Milk-Bone Trail Mix and a 'pandemic bra' (otherwise known as a comfy sleep bra). You’re a smart cookie so I know you’ll understand my excitement over the wear-it-home-only bra and dog treats but you’re scratching your head over my bird call excitement, aren’t you. It’s very simple. Over the past week I’ve added to my daily routine thirty minutes of sitting out on my deck and to amuse myself I started mimicking the birds. I’m not a strong whistler but I swear the birds think I’m one of them, so I must be doing something right. I can only mimic a few bird varieties in my yard and I don’t even know which ones. All I know is our “conversations” are kind of cool.

I searched my blog archive trying to figure out if I’ve ever written about a date I had before I met my husband with a guy who took me bird watching. I can’t find a post on the topic and I'm shocked that it took me this long to load the experience in my blog fodder canon. I was in my twenties and the guy was a college student working as a temporary delivery guy for the Valentine’s Day rush at the floral shop where I was working at the time. He was a redhead and trust when I say I had good reasons not to like redheads back in those days of having a redheaded cousin who, growing up, was a thorn in my sides whenever we were in spitting distance. But Bird Watcher Bill got extra points for being a big flirt. I was the only person working in the place who was under forty so, by default, I was his flirting partner. When he asked me out on the date he didn’t tell me we were going bird watching---for real taking part in the Audubon’s Annual Bird Count. He didn’t even tell me when he picked me up and I was wearing a dress and nylons, and when he drove directly to the boondocks he didn’t tell me then either and I assumed the worst. Yes, I was getting raped, murdered and left in a shallow grave. 

He was enjoying my growing state of wariness and it wasn’t until he pulled out two pairs of binoculars, a chart and pencil that he revealed why we were parked in the middle of nowhere. I went from fearing for my life to thinking I was being punked before the word ‘punked’ became common verbiage for a practical joke. The real date, I thought, will start as soon has he's had his fun teasing me. I never laughed so hard on a date in my life before or since as I hobbled around on my high heeded dress boots. In. The. Woods. And when he wasn’t shushing me because I was scaring the birds away I was thinking this guy can’t be serious about counting birds. “Audubon Society? What’s that,” I asked. I didn’t know people actually did count birds back then.

He was a nice guy, was studying to be a forest ranger and a few years later, I heard, he was out West monitoring fire towers in a national forest. I should have gone out with him again. He asked over other holidays when he was home and helping out at the shop, but like I said I was shallow and picky back then about potential boyfriend material. It wasn’t the bird watching that didn't earn him a second date. It wasn’t his red hair either. It was the fact that when we stopped to eat he ate half the French fries off my plate. We might have played tongue tag out in the woods---okay, we DID play tongue tag a few times---but I didn’t like sharing food with him. I was polite and suffered in silent back back then but today I might have stabbed him with a fork because I still don't like people eating uninvited off my plates and getting hand cooties on my food. Given the world pandemic we're in right now one could say I was just ahead of my times wanting to avoid other people's hand cooties.

I think of him occasionally when I'm watching birds hopping around the tree tops because, really, who doesn't want to remember the fun times we've had in the past? Would it have worked into something serious had we gotten to know each other better, who knows. I do believe dating a forest ranger who could make me laugh until my sides hurt and who was as kissable as they come could have at least been fun fodder for writing a romance novel. You can bet your buttocks, however, that the guy on the book cover would not have red hair. Since those days I've become totally citified but back then my childhood of running around in the woods and living summers at a lake was not all that far in my past. I loved the great outdoors back in those days so the whole idea of having a forest ranger spouse did have its appeal. Today, I think of going in the woods and I see ticks crawling up my legs and poison ivy reaching out to grab me and few, scary survivalists living off the grid. 

I miss seeing birds around my house now that I’ve quit feeding them. I quit feeding them because of the mice that came with along to do clean up duty under the feeders and they’d bring bird seed into my basement to store up for winter. Then I’d have to d-Con the basement to get rid of the mice. If I play my cards right or more correctly if I use my bird call device right I can have my birds back without the messy mice. I just hope I don’t accidentally call the hummingbirds to circle my head as one product reviewer reported happened. One of those little guys scared the crap out of me once when he got too close up and personal. But that’s a story for another day. #leavemyearwaxalone! ©

Widowhood Evaluation Time

Recently I was reading a blog of a woman whose husband died within a few months of mine. I don’t read her much anymore because her plight usually brings me down and that’s sad because we go way back to when we both blogged at a stroke support site. Back in those days our caregiver stories tracked almost the same in terms of the heavy load each we carried and length of time we carried it. Now, she says she misses her husband more, not less than in the beginning of her widowhood journey. She says that everything reminds her of her husband and that makes her feel even lonelier. She’s stuck in grief, she says, and is wondering if she needs counseling.

A person commenting on the post said she is a widow in her seventh year out and she feels the same way, she still cries every day and she’s lost friends because she can’t move on. I have to wonder, though, if after so many years can you still call it grief? Perhaps a different label at that stage of the game would define the problem better and if it were me, I'd start with a lot of blood work to make sure a seven year-long depression doesn't stem from a chemical imbalance. These two widows’ stories make me wish there was a magic pill we could take to make everything okay again. Some would call that an anti-depressant and that may be a necessary tool for some but, in my opinion, after a while most widows need to pull that Band-Aid off and let the healing process happen on its own. Pills and alcohol just postpones the emotions one needs to move through to reach acceptance. At least that’s my layman’s theory.

One thing my friend wrote about I can truly relate to. She said she went from being a caregiver without a moment during the days to waste to being a widow who drifts from day to day wasting a lot of time. It’s a restless feeling to have so much time on your hands and it’s a feeling that still plagues me more often than I’d like. Guilt comes with the idleness. I have chosen to fill much of that time with whatever activities catches my eye in the senior community. Not that my way of coping is any better than anyone else's but we all have needs and I need to talk with someone other than the dog from time to time. Even if it’s mostly the 'shallow acquaintance' talk I find in my travels, there are times when the banner goes to a deeper level and the mystery of when and where that can happen is all I need to keep me going. Sure, I still miss my husband and think of him often. Sure, there are things every single day that remind me of him. But those memory triggers, now, are strangely comforting. They remind me that I was once loved deeply and I was important to the happiness of another person. Not everyone near the end of their life can say that. One thing we can all say, though, and say with conviction is the past is past and we can’t bring it back.

Just suppose we could bring the past back. Would any of us do it if we truly could? If we knew in doing so we couldn’t change a thing that happened back then? Not the outcome. Not the words we said or didn’t say. Not the painful parts as time marched us to the same ending as before. I wouldn’t. I would not want to see my husband go through his stroke again just so I wouldn’t feel lonely or restless now. Nope, once was enough. As I move forward in widowhood I am able to filter out the bad or painful memories of my husband’s and my struggles in his post-stroke world and, for me, that’s a miracle brought to us through gratitude and grace. I may stumble and fall in my pursuit to put meaning back in my life again, but without that goal would any of us get back up again? Some widows apparently can’t. So I raise my glass to toast all of us widow ladies who keep on moving forward! I see you everywhere---on the internet and in my activities here on the home front. We are women and we are strong which reminds me of a conversation I had with my audiologist last week.

She wanted to know if I was dating yet. I laughed and said, “No, way!” Then I got serious and told her that I would never put myself in a position where I might have to be a caregiver again, that I loved Don and didn’t mind doing it for him because we had a long history together of supporting each other through difficult times. I also told her that in my circle of friends from the senior hall there is a running joke that guys in our age bracket are only looking for cooks, house keepers and/or nursemaids. It was her turn to laugh. Then she said if your mom died her father would find another woman right away, that he was so helpless he can’t do anything for himself. Her mother, she said, was tired from doing it all for so many years and the audiologist predicts her mom would be like me and never get remarried. We chatted on for fifteen minutes covering topics like raising boys in her generation versus mine. Just think, that concept of marrying for a cook, house keeper or nursemaid will die out---and good riddance---with the 30-something generation. Young guys, today, can do it all and in my book that’s a good by-product of the Feminism Movement of my generation. Yup, my conversation with the audiologist was one of those light banner things that turned deep and philosophical and I left the place feeling good inside. ©

Widows and Weight Watchers

 

All week I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of going back to Weight Watchers to rid myself of the pounds I put on during my Winter of Boredom. The niece-in-law I walked the nature trail with all last summer signed up and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in going on Saturdays. One of the pros of going is that Weight Watchers has worked for me in the past. And if I want to live to be 100 I need to turn my diet around. Again. Why does healthy eating have to be so hard for some of us to maintain long term? The winter before last I spent a lot of months losing the weight I put on during my New Widow eating binges and now I’m right back where I started.

One of cons of going to Weight Watchers is the King Arthur Flour catalog for April just came in the mail to tempt me. Strawberry stuffed scones for breakfast? What a great idea! And have I mentioned that my social calendar for April and May is getting close to being overbooked? Losing weight is time consuming. Another con is I just signed up to use one of the gift certificates I won at an auction last year for cooking classes at an upscale restaurant in town. They are teaching Thai cooking the night of my class. How am I going to fit eating five Thai dishes and drinking wine into Weight Watchers’ Simple Start program? Lie, of course. All fatty-fatty-two-by-fours are good at that. No, I didn’t eat all that cake. The dog did it! I also hate all the measuring, counting and homework that comes with losing weight which probably explains a lot about why I have to do it in the first place. Now, they have all the online tools I’ll have to learn! Weight Watchers comes with too much homework and I am one, undisciplined widow who can’t be good for long. Jeez, if I left the food part out of that last sentence about being “an undisciplined widow who can’t be good for long” it would make a great line to use in an online dating profile.

Speaking of dating, if you read the Time Goes By blog linked in my sidebar this week Ronnie had an interesting post about statistics for the 65-plus population. One line really showcases the reason why so many senior halls are filled with mostly women. Quoting TGB: “In 2012 there were 43,145,356 people age 65 and older – about 5.5 million more women than men.” So, if you are a woman 65 or older who wants to date, feel free to use my undisciplined widow line. It might give you an edge. And if you are over 65 and still have a guy of your life, keep it in the back of your mind that if you ever need to supplement your income you could take him down to the senior hall and sell his hugs for a $1.00 each. Think of it like the old kissing booths of our youth only you’d be doing a good service for your senior sisters. Guy hugs are hard to come by the older you get!

Speaking of yarn---oh, I wasn’t it? Well, pretend I did and now I’m going to explain the photos below. They are baby sweaters I made for my nieces. They are both going to be first-time grandmothers soon and I knitted the sweaters to start their ‘sweater drawers.’ When they were growing up my mother always had a ‘sweater drawer’ where she kept extra clothing. It came in handy when my brother would send his kids (my nieces and nephew) over to the family cottage without a change of clothing and the weather would turn unexpectedly the way it often does around a round a lake. Both of my nieces have homes on lakes and I’m sure they’ll need to accumulate some extra stuff to have on hand for when the grand-babies visit. I knitted car seat blankets for the mothers of the babies so the sweaters are just something extra to acknowledge how special it is to be newly minted grandmothers.

From what I wrote above about joining Weight Watchers, one would think the cons outweigh the pros and I didn’t even mention that I’ve already signed up and paid for a restaurant crawl along Lake Michigan,  a fancy meal at a culinary college and a chocolate crawl in my adopted hometown. I have so many fatty-fatty-two-by-four 'holidays' coming up on my spring schedule! Plus I’ll need one glorious week to eat all the junk food in the house before starting Weight Watchers, But it’s time to pay the piper so I told my niece-in-law I’ll join after I have my bi-annual appointment with my internist coming up very soon. I’ll let him think my efforts to lose weight were inspired by him because I just know he’s going to give me The Lecture. ©

  
 








 

Comparing Widows and Purging Stuff

Comparing widows is wrong, I know that. But I'm going to do it anyway. From my days of being a caregiver in the stroke community I know several women who were widowed in the same time frame as me. So it’s natural---or maybe I should say it’s an irresistible temptation for me to compare where I’m at compared to where they’re at as we all transition to a life of living alone.

One of them—I’ll call her Exhibit ‘A’---within a couple of months of losing “the love of her life” was signing up for internet dating and she has been swapping out new relationships as often as Mother Nature does the seasons ever since. She says she’s having a good time. Good for her, if she’s telling the truth. She’s in her fifties and she has a long life ahead of her. But here comes the big BUT…I wonder if Exhibit ‘A’ has truly finished grieving not just the loss of her beloved husband but also the years of being his caregiver, the loss of  having a purpose in life. Yes, I know that long-term caregivers often do a lot of their grieving before their spouse dies so dating so soon isn’t all it appears to be on the surface. But it’s a whole different can of worms to grieve part of yourself, the spouse/caregiver without a care recipient. In our own unique ways, Exhibit ‘A’ and I are both running around trying to fill up the time we once lavished on our needy husbands. But the fact that all the men she meets have small flaws that causes her to discard them in short order makes me think she is unfairly comparing them to the spouse on the pedestal and she's really not as ready to move forward as she claims to be.

I compare ‘A’ to a widow I met at the senior hall---Exhibit ‘B’---whose husband made her promise that she’d have fun after he died and she is like a rat on speed, in a maze trying to fulfill his wishes through frequent tears. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’ know what their husbands wanted for them, but do they really know what they want for themselves beyond fulfilling deathbed promises? Can any of us move forward while trying to live someone else’s dream for us without taking the time to dream our own dreams, decide for ourselves what would make us happy again? I don’t have an answer to that question other than I’m glad I don’t have a death bed promise to keep. Life is complicated enough. All I know is that I’ve read too many widows’ stories where they’ve gotten right up to the edge of remarrying again, only to back out or have the guy back out. Unresolved grief? I find it hard to believe that the Exhibit ‘A’s of the world who are searching frantically for love could not be harboring unresolved grief that keeps them from finding the very thing they are looking for.

Two other long-term caregivers-turned-widows that I know are still having a hard time just getting through their days. They are both standing still. Both Exhibit ‘C’ and ‘D’ cry often and don’t know where to begin putting down new roots. They know they have to dig out the old roots to move forward---purge their husband’s stuff from the house---but they can’t seem to make themselves do it. It’s a hard process and I’m only about 90% finished with my own purging so I’m not passing judgment here. I’m just stating facts. And it’s certainly isn’t fair of others who haven’t lost a spouse to judge why a widow just doesn’t call the Salvation Army or Goodwill and send off all her husband’s clothing, tools, hobbies, books, half done-projects, cars, boats, mementos and work related stuff. For one thing, some of that stuff has too much value and many widows can’t afford to just donate it or give it all away when selling it would help build up a nest egg. <See me raise my hand here.> But mostly it’s the memories attached to The Stuff that makes it so hard to let go. Letting go of stuff is a smack-yourself-in-the-face admission that he’s never coming back and if The Stuff is gone are we worried the memories attached to those things will be harder and harder to recall? My answer to that question has been to take photos of The Stuff before purging it.

At some point in the purging process (even thinking about purging) the sheer volume of The Stuff  a person leaves behind when they die gets overwhelming. You might even start getting suspicious of those who offer to help. Do they really care about you or do they just want The Stuff for themselves? Or worse yet, do they see no intrinsic value in the memories attached to The Stuff? And it’s not unusual on occasion to get mad and/or resentful of your spouse that you have to do all that physical and emotional work of disposing of The Stuff. Why did he have to leave so many things behind? Why did he have to die in the first place?  Exhibit ‘A’ did the purging without batting an eye. Gone, done in one week. She had a mission to fulfill. Out with the old, make room for the new. Did she let go of things she’ll later regret in her mission to find a new love of her life? The sentimental soul that I am likes to think she did…or does now and just isn’t admitting she acted too fast.

There are so many ways to grieve and move forward and if I knew more people I could fill the alphabet with more exhibit variations of the process. All I know for sure is how deeply sad it makes me feel when I see women from my old caregiver circles struggle so much. We all went through so much together dealing with the repercussions of our spouses’ stroke. You’d think we’d know the drill on how to handle adjusting to drastic changes in our lives, but in the end we are no better or worse off than a million other widows. ©

Dating, Dreaming and Firemen

I’m a person with a high tolerance for being alone but I’m so sick of my own company right now I’d like to scream. The snow was keeping me trapped in a cycle of shoveling and more shoveling broken up with periods of sleep and playing on the computer. I’m bored! And I’m seeing Don more frequently in my dreams again. Last night I was back in high school cuddling with a guy while watching a football game and Don was off selling peanuts to the other people in the bleachers. I hate football and I haven’t thought of the kid I was cuddling with in fifty plus years. He was nothing special to me back in those days, not a boyfriend or crush or even close. He was just a kid who grew up sitting behind me all though grade school and he got in trouble more than once for dipping the ends of my pigtails in his ink well. I suppose the dream has something to do with an essay I’d been working on about widows falling in love again. But I’ve been working on my taxes, too, so why wasn’t I dreaming about dating my accountant? Now there’s a macho guy worth having an imaginary cuddle-fest with while the whole world is watching. The widow is out on a date with a handsome, young guy! Bets are flying back in forth in the bleachers as people try to decide if he’s a grandson or a paid escort.

One of my sister-in-laws asked me if I’d like to fall in love again which is why I was trying to write about the concept. She was widowed a few years before me and she thinks it would be nice to have to a man to go out to restaurants with and I told her guys in our age bracket are only looking for good cooks and caregivers. “Someone would have to take us both as a matched set,” I told her, “to get both of those qualities.” It was a toss-away comment but if I was going to be truthful, I’d say the whole idea of dating again makes me sick to my stomach. And I hate the taste of Pepto-Bismol. Call it a selfish attitude but after years of being a caregiver I’m still worn out from the responsibilities that come with love, and I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation in the spring, still sleepy and looking around for what to do next. Love again? I'd rather have a bar of dark chocolate, but thanks for asking.

Besides, senior citizen dating sucks! During the years after we took my dad’s car keys away, I had to chauffeur him and his girlfriend of ten years around on dates. Their dating destinations were dictated by which fast food joints had the best coupons in the Sunday paper or which town near-by was having a VFW or lodge dinner or a sale on all-bran cereal. And who wants to go dancing at 10:00 in the morning? Apparently a lot of people do because that’s when they hold senior dances at a near-by fire department. When Don was still alive I couldn’t get us up and out of the house early enough to check those dances out. Now that I don’t have that excuse, I’m still thinking it’s too freaky early in the morning to polka or line dance or whatever it is they do down there. The band is made up of firemen and if they get a call, they’re out the door and you’re left dancing to a jukebox…or so I’m told. I suppose I should go see for myself for no other reason than I’d get a few images of hunky firemen stuck in my brain. Who knows, that might make for some sweet dreams at night. Jeez, I’m starting to sound like a cougar and I’m not even a cat person!

Before anyone else says it first, I know that not everyone in the septuagenarian and octogenarian sets go on dull dates like my dad and his friend did. I guess it means something that I don’t want to acknowledge my older brother and his lady friend would need tracking devices implanted if we wanted to keep up with their love life. They are literally all over the U.S. and Canada. It probably means I’m not bored or lonely enough yet---Yet? Gag me with a spoon!---I'm not going to roll the dice and gamble on another human being changing my life as I know it. It probably also means I’ve said everything I’ve got to say on the subject of falling in love again and it’s time to shovel some more of that relentless snow! Spring, where are you? ©