The Bed I Make, the Dreams I Keep

There are seasons in life when the smallest habits — a made bed, a cup of coffee, a quiet morning — reveal bigger truths we didn’t know we were ready to face. Lately, Jean’s early‑morning routines have been bumping up against the deeper, older parts of her heart, the ones that still remember what it meant to belong to someone. And sometimes all it takes is a dream to remind her that grief has its own timetable… AI

It’s 7:30 AM. I’m sitting here with a cup of steaming-hot coffee, a load of clothes in the washer, and my bed is made. Who is this morning person I’m turning into? I’m on a 120‑day streak since I started using my Bi‑Pap machine — not only getting up like I’ve got a job to go to, but also making my bed. Before, there were many (if not most) times when my bed wouldn’t get made between laundry days. I’ve fallen into a routine that is both boring and pridefully pleasing at the same time.

Have you ever heard the commencement speech by retired Admiral William H. McRaven about changing the world by starting each day with your made bed? The core lessons in the speech, according to AI, are:

• First task: Making your bed means you finish the first task of your day right away.

• Small pride: This tiny win gives you a small sense of pride.

• Daily momentum: It pushes you to do one more task, then another, and another.

• Little things: It shows that the small things in life matter.

• Comfort at night: If you have a bad day, you return home to a bed you made, which gives you hope for tomorrow.

I first heard that speech back in 2014 when it went viral after he delivered it at the University of Texas. Although I didn’t implement the advice back then, I never forgot it. As someone in the YouTube comment section wrote: “Why don’t we have men like him running for president?” He really is an inspirational speaker.

Before it slips away, I need to write about the dream that woke me up at 7:00 this morning with tears in my eyes — because dreams like this are coming at me way too often to ignore whatever message is trying to surface.

In the dream, I had let myself into the cracker‑box of a house my husband lived in before we were married. I was gathering up his laundry to take home and wash when he came in with a pleasant young woman and her 10‑ or 12‑year‑old son. Don didn’t anything, but she was a regular chatterbox, telling me how happy she was to meet me and how I didn’t need to take his laundry anymore — she could do it. In the dream I was thinking, Oh my God, he’s moved on!

And that’s when I woke up, but I didn’t get up right away. I laid there thinking...until I had to pee, if you must know.

Don died fourteen years ago, and yet apparently I’m still emotionally attached. At least I’m not teary‑eyed at the lunch or dinner table the way a couple of my fellow residents are when the subject of dead spouses comes up. But maybe I should be, because I still seem to have unfinished business in the mourning department. He was My Person, as the young people say, the best friend I’ve ever had. And just once I’d like to dream about him where he’s happy to see me again. But no — in my dreams he’s always just out of reach, vaguely there, walking away, or I’m searching for him.

Back before the turn of the century I kept a dream diary because didn’t everyone back then dive into dream analysis? I quit when my dad was in the early stages of dementia and couldn’t tell the difference between his nighttime dreams and reality. That scared me, because my dreams were pretty wild back then — filled with colorful or arty‑farty escapades. If you’ve seen the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, you’ll get the picture. I spent several years learning how to transfer my night dreams to my conscious mind that now I can’t not do it.

So this morning I visited an online dictionary of dream symbolism and looked up “laundry.” It said: “Cleaning your clothes in your dream symbolizes your image in your life. You are trying to portray yourself in a different light where you feel more accepted. If you are organizing your laundry, this represents what you are trying to do with your thoughts and characteristics in your life.”

That explanation makes sense, but it also begs the question: does it matter that the laundry wasn’t mine, but his? That it was dirty laundry, not clean?

Another part of the dictionary says it’s extremely common to dream about someone we miss because we often have trouble expressing those same feelings in our waking life. That’s me. Stiff upper lip. I can do anything if I set my mind to it. After all, I got through 12½ years of caregiving a severely disabled husband and rebuilding our lives into something that gave him the best quality of life under the circumstances.

But the past is past. Or is it?

And maybe that’s what the dream was trying to tell me — not that I’m “done” with grief, or that I’ve reached some tidy stage of acceptance, but that I’m allowed to live the life I have now without feeling guilty that it’s easier and in a place that is both beautiful and safe. I know plenty of seniors who don’t get this kind of comfort or stability, and that knowledge sits heavy sometimes, like I’m benefiting from a trade I never wanted to make.

Maybe the real work isn’t saying goodbye to My Person — maybe it’s learning how to carry him forward while still letting myself enjoy the small, daily pleasures without feeling guilt. I may never get there. But the dreams keep pushing me as if to say, it’s okay to keep trying. ©

Borrowing Trouble From the Future (Again)

Jean didn’t plan on writing about dreams, grief, or the strange places the mind wanders at night. But then she woke up crying—something she hadn’t done in months—and the moment insisted on being examined. She’d cried at the doctor’s office the day before, too, which was even more unusual. Jean is not a woman who cries easily, not even when life has handed her the kind of losses that would buckle most people. But something about that dream, and the day that came before it, tugged at her in a way she couldn’t ignore. So she followed the thread, the way she always does, to see where it led…. AI

I woke up crying. And yesterday I cried at the doctor’s office. What’s going on with me? Waking up with tears in my eyes from a dream has happened before, but crying at a doctor’s office? That hasn't happened since 1968 when a doctor lectured twenty-six year old me about the evils of having premarital sex. And trust me, I’ve had plenty of reasons to turn on the waterworks when doctors delivered bad news about my husband. I didn’t even cry after I had to make the decision to pull the plug on his life support, and ten minutes later he died. I saved those tears for when I got home.

The dream-tears that woke me featured my mom hanging clothes on the line at our family cottage, my dad tinkering with something nearby, and my husband driving his yellow Chevy Cutlass convertible. I was walking home from a sleep lab in a far off city and I woke up when Don pulled up alongside me and said, “Why didn’t you call? I would have picked you up.” Since I’ve been using my BiPAP machine, I haven’t remembered many dreams, but this one was an exception. I can’t wait for my follow-up appointment with the sleep doctor to ask if not recalling dreams is normal when getting treated for Central Sleep Apnea.

I used to keep a dream journal and spent time analyzing my dreams each morning. The long walk from a sleep lab wasn’t hard to figure out. I had my first appointment with the sleep doctor last December, and it took until a month ago to finally get a BiPAP machine because his final diagnosis didn't come until after he'd sent me to three additional specialists plus an overnight stay at the sleep lab. Getting all those appointments scheduled took time. I had to see an ears, nose and throat doctor, a gastroenterologist, a urogynecologist, the sleep lab technician and last but not least, I had to go in for an out patient surgery plus go to the durable medical supplies place to get fitted for a mask. 

My mom hanging clothes in my dream was no doubt symbolic of airing my “dirty laundry” at the doctor’s office—the thing that made me cry. I had asked my primary doctor’s Nurse Practitioner if I was a candidate for one of the new weight-loss drugs on the market, and she listened—actually listened—to my history with weight gain. Unlike my primary, who told me several months ago to “just move more.” She said severe sleep apnea is one of the qualifying factors for the weight-loss shots. She ordered a bunch of blood work and will submit the request for Medicare approval. (Fingers crossed.) I’m not sure how long that will take, but that’s what made me cry. Not the full-blown ugly cry of a toddler whose candy was snatched by the family dog, but she could tell I was trying to hold back tears. I would have managed it, too, if she hadn’t turned around as she was leaving to ask, “Do you need a hug?” I thanked her for listening while wiping tears from my cheeks.

When Don drove up alongside me in the dream—now that has a scary interpretation. Was it a death wish? Just hop in the car and go to the Great Unknown? Or a comforting thought that I won’t be alone when I do die? In the back of my mind, the predictions on the insurance actuarial table still weigh heavy: that my time in Independent Living will be up by October, when I’ll be moved to Assisted Living. Being a two-person lift in a place like that would be fertile inspiration for a horror movie plot. And that thought is what my mother used to call “borrowing trouble from the future.” I may not have mastered putting on compression stockings, but I am a master at borrowing trouble and trying to prevent it from happening. She may have called it borrowing trouble but I call it long-range planning. Tomato, tomatoes.

According to the online Dream Dictionary, “Dreaming of the dead can be both rewarding and terrifying depending on the context of the dream. There seems to be a fine line between actual contact or repressed memories or emotions that have come back to pay you a visit...” Are they coming for me? That was my first question. My second thought was that my dream was expressing my anxiety over running out of quality time. (Most likely the best explanation.) But my third thought—the Little Miss Mary Sunshine version—put a smile on my face: If I had hopped in Don's convertible, I would have been able to tell Mom that I finally learned to enjoy tea as much as she did. I probably wouldn’t tell her I make it the English way, with cream in the cup before pouring in the properly steeped tea. She drank it straight.

Our brains, especially during sleep, are mysterious places. They spin stories vivid enough to feel like time travel, dredge up fragmented memories we thought were long settled, and nudge us toward truths we’ve been avoiding. They can scare us or thrill us to death—a figure of speech. And maybe that’s the real purpose of a dreams like this one: they are a reminder that even in the strangest corners of the mind, something is still trying to move us forward. ©

See you next Wednesday! 

If you have fifteen minutes for something upbeat, inspiring and fun, watch this video of Kermit the Frog at the University of Maryland giving their commencement speech. Several Fox News reporters were bashing it but Facebook was showing this video along with Trump's commencement speech video at West Point where he talked about getting bored with trophy wives and owning big yachts. Kermit's speech ended with the entire audience singing the Rainbow Connection.

Armageddon, PAP Machines, and Other Bedtime Stories

 There are seasons in life when the practical and the existential collide in the oddest places—like a hospital sleep lab, a mortality table, or a phone that won’t stop ringing because someone you love remembers the past more clearly than the present. What begins as a simple medical test can open a trapdoor into bigger questions: how we measure a life, how we outlive the people who shaped us, and how memory—our own and others’—keeps tugging us backward even as time keeps pushing us forward. This is a story about breathing, dreaming, aging, and the strange comfort of knowing that even the actuarial “house odds” can’t quite account for the human heart….AI

 

Tomorrow I’m spending the night in the hospital for a sleep study. I flunked the at‑home test—apparently I’m not breathing in the “safe zone.” My sleep doctor said I stop breathing or am breathing very shallow on an average of 64 times an hour. 30 times an hour is considered severe and over 60 times is considered life‑threatening. (And here I though I'd slept exceptionally well the night of the test.) Several times after surgery, anesthesiologists have told me I’m a shallow breather, so I’m not surprised to learn I sleep the same way. I’ll be getting one of the PAP machines—whichever kind the test tomorrow night determines I need. I just hope I can actually sleep in a hospital setting so they can get what they need.

On one hand, I’m looking forward to getting the machine, knowing I’m less likely to die in my sleep. On the other hand, it’s oddly empowering to know that if Armageddon breach our shores—perhaps in retaliation for us electing a president who brought his own version of Armageddon to so many other countries—I could simply refuse to use the machine, pulling my own plug so-to-speak, and cross my fingers I don't wake up. (Can you believe what the U.S. led oil embargo is doing to Cuba? Last I heard Mexico and China were both attempting to deliver ships full of desperately needed food and medical supplies, while our president seems to be waiting to sweep in like a vulture to pick the bones of the died.)

Back on topic: Thinking about sleep inevitably leads me to thinking about dreams. Will the machine affect my dream life? I dream of my husband so often that some mornings I don’t want to get out of bed, even when my bladder is telling me I'd better get up if I know what's good for me. He’s been gone fourteen years, but with his nightly visits it doesn’t feel that long. He was the best friend I ever had—and that includes my best female friend since kindergarten, who has been calling several times a day since her family moved her into memory care a few weeks ago.

She lives in another state, and before her move we touched bases maybe seven or eight times a year. From what I can tell, she has major short‑term memory issues, but her memories of our childhood friendship are still intact. It’s been fun to revisit our past antics with her. But I’ve had to start turning my phone off at night so her early‑morning calls don’t wake me. She’s called as many as seven times in a day, just like we did when we were kids, but now she doesn't remember talking to me earlier in the day. And I’m not sure if she remembers her husband who died a few months ago.

Memory is funny that way—what stays, what slips, what returns in dreams. Many widows (myself included) remember our spouses vividly, but we tend to put on rose‑colored glasses. Disagreements tend fade, and what remains are the character‑revealing moments: the times they stood by us or held us together during the hard times, the times we laughed, traveled, made love or simply sat together in companionable silence. Sunday mornings with newspapers and coffee were always special, even when the dog decided to lay down in the middle of the spread-out paper. At least that’s my experience. When I’m awake, I remind myself Don was nowhere near perfect. Even in my dreams he’s not Princess Charming rescuing me from my daytime woes. More often than not I’m chasing after him and our last dog, begging them not to leave just because I have to get up and pee.

And once you start thinking about the people you’ve lost, it’s hard not to think about how we'll eventually go. We’ve all read stories about spouses who die within hours or days of one another. Recently I saw a story about a man and his dog who died together. Their son found them side by side in a La‑Z‑Boy and thought they were sleeping; he even snapped a photo. Near the end of my dad’s life, I did the same thing—only I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. He looked so peaceful, but so old, and his memory was unreliable. I remember thinking that if he had to die, doing it in his favorite chair with that peaceful expression was the way to go. When he finally did die in a hospice home the last thing he said was, “Am I there yet? Is this the Pearly Gates?” which made me laugh so hard I couldn’t stop. It was Christmas Eve at midnight and organ music was blasting from his roommate's TV. Aging has a way of turning these unexpected moments into mile markers.

When you get to my age every birthday is a mile marker and you can’t help wondering how and when you’ll start that journey into the Great Unknown. In my case, a young salesgirl once showed me the actuarial projections my continuum‑care facility ran on me before accepting my down payment. She wasn’t supposed to show them to potential residents and she may have lost her job for doing it. I had asked if she was absolutely sure I’d have enough money to live there, and she said, “Oh yes—see this mortality table? It estimates your life expectancy based on age, health and other factors. You’re going to live five years in independent living, two years in assisted living and two months in skilled nursing.”

In October I will have lived here five years, and don’t think that fact doesn’t weigh on me. The computer programs that make those actuarial projections keep the insurance industry thriving. In other words, the House always wins… unless it’s a Trump casino, which he managed to bankrupt along with a dozen other businesses. I just hope he doesn’t do the same with our country.

And now here I am, circling back to that sleep study. I’m wondering if they ordered a new mortality table that factored in a PAP machine, would it change anything? Will it help me beat the House odds? Or am I just grasping at straws? In the end, none of us really knows how long we get — we just keep breathing, dreaming and hoping the House doesn’t call in its chips before we've checked everything off our Bucket Lists. ©

When Gerald R. Ford Shows Up in My Dreams (and Brings Idioms Along)

Jean’s dreams are the ultimate mash‑up artists. They splice together antique booths, travel trailers, and idioms like “cloud nine” or “pissing contest,” then they hand Jean the footage at 8 a.m. with a note that says: “Good luck making sense of this.” What follows is her attempt to decode the subconscious circus — with a little help from etymology, memory, and one very insistent dream‑dog. AI….

I’ve always been intrigued by my night‑time dreams. Some are so “out there in left field” they’re impossible to figure out. (I’ve used that idiom all my life and only realized recently that it's a baseball reference!) Some dreams are easy to trace back to their source, while others are—well, as I started to say before I interrupted myself—truly “out there in left field.” 

This morning I woke from a dream that was “as easy as pie” to interpret: I was in a vintage travel trailer with a shirtless stranger, tying ribbon bows onto merchandise for a vendor booth in an antiques and collectibles mall. The ribbon was the kind with wire running along the edges, and the trailer itself was a 1950s model with a desk inside instead of a bed. A collie I had when I was a kid was with us, too, whining at the door, and when we let her out she left a huge, yellow puddle in the mud.

And here we go again with idioms: “as easy as pie” first appeared in Zane Grey’s 1910 novel The Young Forester, though a variation—“as nice as pie”—was documented as early as 1855. I’ve always found it fascinating how certain phrases catch on and stick around for centuries, serving as a kind of lazy shorthand for self‑expression. Probably because it's easier to say “as easy as pie” or “out there in left field” than to come up with something original so it makes sense.

Back on topic: the day before my travel‑trailer dream, I attended a lecture here at my CCC about Gerald R. Ford. I went in feeling pretty cranky—so much so that I almost skipped it—but when it was over I walked out “on cloud nine." Sitting in that lecture I kept wishing I had a paper and pen with me to take notes because the speaker was so inspiring. And yes, I’m going to tell you about the origins of the “cloud nine” idiom. It comes from the U.S. Weather Bureau’s cloud classification system, where the highest, most majestic cloud is #9. The phrase entered everyday language in the 1950s when movie star Betty Hutton said she was “hovering on cloud nine” after landing a major film role.

The trailer in my dream resembled the one Gerald R. Ford used as his “traveling office” in the 1950s, back when he was a congressman in Michigan's 5th District. During the Q&A, I asked the speaker—the director of the Ford Foundation—if they still had that trailer. I then shared how Ford would park it near my home, and my dad would take me (age 10 or 11) along to talk with the congressman. Constituents like my dad lined up at the camper door, waiting their turn to enter Ford’s customized office with its plywood paneling. My dad, a union representative, would discuss worker concerns while Ford listened and took notes. A mobile office that was moved every day was novel in those days, and I suspect Ford’s accessibility contributed to his longevity as a congressman. He served as our representative for twenty‑five years. After the lecture, four or five people told me they enjoyed my story or were glad I shared it. The word “sweet” came up more than once. 

The antique‑booth in my dream came from an email I’d received from a friend in my old neighborhood. She still runs a booth in a mall, which brought back memories of when Don and I were vendors too. I miss having that 'booth owner' label as part of my identity. I should write a post about all the labels we lose and find as we age.

The ribbon with the wire in it came from one of my fellow residents, who was having a hissy‑fit over how many bows she had to make for our annual “Decorate for Christmas” event here at the CCC. She worried she couldn’t finish before going to the hospital for a medical procedure. She’s one of the reasons I don’t participate in that event. The first year, I actually planned to help. It’s a big place, requiring many hands to put up the Christmas tree, decorate the fireplace mantle, swap out a row of two dozen green plants for poinsettias, and hang wreaths, garlands and bows throughout the public areas. But that first year, she and an ex‑florist and two other women were locked in a “pissing contest” over creative control. It was clear there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians and with my twenty year history in the floral industry, I knew I wouldn’t have the patience to work that way. Watching those four people debating where to hang a single ornament on the tree was my breaking point. I left and have avoided the event every year since.

And if you think I’m going to let the “pissing contest” idiom slide without background, you’d be wrong. It’s been used metaphorically since the 1940s, originating from boys literally competing to see who could urinate the farthest. Over time, it came to mean any pointless rivalry or public dispute. But here’s a curious fact I uncovered while researching: in 17th‑century Irish and Belgian literature, there’s a story about women competing to see how deep in the snow they could urinate. Now, aren’t you glad you stuck with me until the very end to learn that utterly useless tidbit?

By the way, that dog whining to go out was simply my unconscious self telling me it was time to get up and use the bathroom. Oh, and the shirtless stranger was Dayan Kolev, the "gone vital" jump rope guy from Bulgaria. With him in the trailer with me is it any wonder it took me so long to wake up when nature called? 

One last parting thought: the term "gone viral" has not yet been established as an English idiom. It takes ten years for something like that to stick around before it's consisted to be dictionary worthy. ©

Soulmates, Reoccurring Dreams and one Regret

 

I've had the Winnie-the-Pooh quote at the top of my blog since sometime in 2012, the year my husband died. "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard" made sense back then on a widow's blog but lately I've been think about giving my blog a makeover to better reflect where I'm at in life now. But a quote or meme of a grim reaper peering down my neck would scare off too many people. Except for Dawn, of course, author of the Bohemian Valhalla blog. She has what she herself describes as gallows humor and her images often have me scrolling as fast as my little fingers will go to get past the sculls and other dark-side photos she shares. We live entirely different lives but she's one of my favorite bloggers. 

But I'm getting off track because today I want to explore the idea that maybe I still haven't said goodbye to my dearly departed husband? And do people in the form of their soul-energy stick around after they give up their physical bodies? Enough things happened in the first couple of months after Don died that had me convinced souls to have as much trouble letting go as those of us left behind do. For example I rarely wore my wedding ring when we were married. I kept it hanging on a pin inside my computer wardrobe and Don would remind me to put it on when we'd go out. In all the years it hung on that pin it never fell off…until the day a minister came to the house to help me plan Don's service. After the minister left I found the ring on my keyboard, right in front of the monitor. It fell off that pin several more times under similar circumstances in the first few months after Don died. How could I not believe in signs from the other side after that? It was either believe in and be comforted by the signs or use my sense of logic which finally kicked in and told me to suck it up, that I was slamming the computer door harder and faster for the first time in over a decade and that was causing the ring to bounce off the pin. Still....

In the past few months I'm getting signs again that he's close by and I'm wondering if this is common with widows this far out from Death Day or could it just be common with people who are entering the dying process. (No, I don't have an expiration date prognosis, I'm just feeling old and worn out.) Maybe our dying is more than just the dying of the physical body. Maybe the body and soul parting is a reversal of our nine months in the womb sort of thing? Back when Roe vs Wade was debated in the Supreme Court I followed the testimonies of leading scientists and scholars from the major religions in the world that helped the justices decide the case. None of those experts could agree on when life begins and when a soul enters a fetus to make it human was a big part of the discussion. Scientists have a better understanding on the physical side of the equation now but religious leaders still don't agree and they never will because they are basing their opinions on various ways to translate the Bible. So it stands to reason no one really knows when a soul departs our bodies at the end of life either. And whose to say that it happens at the exact same moment for everyone. 

My dreams about Don are increasing in frequency---almost nightly. But I don't know if that means anything because I'm also dreaming about the dogs I've had over the years as well. I get the dog dreams. In my daytime hours I find myself longing for the companionship of a dog. I watch too many Facebook Short Reels of dogs and I have five dogs living in my building that I see daily from a distance. My next door neighbor has a dog that looks similar to my Levi. He was a Schnauzer and Robbie is a Scottie Terrier. But it breaks my heart that Robbie doesn't like me. To be fair he doesn't like most people but he literally leaves the room when I come into their apartment. Maybe the reason I've started reading romance books again is a longing for the found-your-soulmate vibes you get from those kinds of books? Two people fitting together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, what's not to like? Don't read that as I want another man in my life. No! Way! Jose! Great relationships take time to build and I'm running out of time.

Sometimes when you read a widow's blog you can get the impression that the marriage was all hearts and flowers and hand holding. I call it the 'Pedestal Versions' of the marriages that widows tend to present. And I was guilty of doing that, of writing mostly about the peaks and ignoring the valleys. But damn it, in our defense those of us with Pedestal Husbands found out that when our guys were alive we often took them for granted and all those annoying things we might have complained about simply were not important in the grand scheme. (Let that be a cautionary tale if you still have a spouse.) My husband was far from perfect. He did stupid guy stuff like hold the blankets over my head while he farted in bed. I read a scene like that in romance book last month and I burst out laughing, then I almost cried. Who would have ever guested you could miss a fart! 

But the worst guy thing Don ever did was once he yelled at me (instead of a neighbor) when the neighbor backed his car into my parked car, doing hundreds of dollars worth of damage. “You should have known better than to park directly across from a driveway!” Don shouted. The next day when I called him out on the fact that I was legally parked he said words to the effect that he was just trying to use it as a "teachable moment" for the teens who were helping us paint a house that day. "Sure, Don," I shot back. "You just taught them its okay to raise your voice to a woman, you yo-yo! And for a stupid-ass unfair reason!" Those teens were fatherless boys who looked at Don as a role model. And to this day I regret that I didn't defend myself on the spot and that he unfairly pinned the blame of the accident on me in the first place. I console myself with the fact that for three years we could barely ever leave the house without those neighborhood boys tagging alone and with a few notable exceptions, we role modeled the hell out of them as to what a healthy male/female relationship looks like.  ©

Dreams, Nightmares and Jigsaw Puzzles

My eyes were nearly crusted shut, I had to pee but the tail end of a dream kept me in bed as I tried to stay in the dream for as long as I could. Usually when a dream wakes me up it’s one about a hallway or alley of doors and I’m trying desperately to find the bathroom. It’s a common dream of mine and one time in my dream I actually found what I was looking for. Oops! 

But the dream that woke me up this time was of my husband. He’d come back from a long separation---like death in my awake life, duh--but he’d been lost in the wilderness in the dream and it took him a decade to get back, but he couldn't find me right away. We only reconnected after he'd finally bought a house. He took me to see it but in the dream I was obsessed with writing down the address so I could find the house again and I desperately wanted a key to that house but I was debating in my head: Should I ask one or wait for him to offer a key? It was similar to a dream I had the end of summer about finding my long-lost husband in a match box and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find him again. I don't think it's a big leap to conclude that in my subconscious mind I believe we'll reconnect in the afterlife...if there even is one...but I'm worried that we've changed so much we won't stay connected after we do find one another. A few days after Don died my sister-in-law said she could picture him in heaven holding court with a bunch of adoring women sitting at his feet listening to one of his long-winded stories. 

I was hurt and replied, "Thanks a lot for planting that image in my head." 

She laughed, "Don't you want him to be happy in the afterlife?"

"Not that happy!"

Finally, I had to answer nature’s call but then I went back to bed. It was 5:30 and I tried to let sleep wash over me again, hoping to see the ending of the dream. But that never works. I laid there with tears in my eyes, feeling lonely and alone. No one knew me as well as Don did and no one ever will. Poor me. I’m surrounded by friendly people and I don’t let any of them in past the metaphorical front door. When you meet someone at 27 and spend 42 years sharing secrets, hopes and dreams and building memories together there’s no time left to replace that kind of trust in another human being when you meet at 80. People do it, I know. But it often makes the media when geriatrics meet and marry and half the time they knew each other before they both took other spouses. I’m too cynical to buy into that plot line of life. That’s like saying you’re the same person at 80 as you were at 20 something. I’m certainly not and I wouldn’t want to be. 

Related question to ponder: If there is an afterlife and Don died at 61 and I die at 80+ will the same cynicism apply? Does the key in my dream represent this dilemma, the uncertainty that we'd still be together? Will I just be another one of the ladies sitting at his feet being entertained by one of his stories? Life lesson here: Be careful what you say to widows about their spouses being happy in heaven. It's been ten years and I still can't dismissed that image planted by my silly sister-in-law.

Another new topic: Did I mention we got our big community table back? If so, I have to tell you it only lasted a week and a half before the two tables for six were separated and turned back around. The timing for when we had our fun table back suspiciously coincided with when the director of marketing was out sick with Covid. She’s the same director of marketing who had a fit over us having a jigsaw puzzle table in the main lobby/hub and she’d had it moved to several different places before a bunch of residents went over her head to the CEO and got it put back into center of all everything.

The puzzle table is a popular gathering place, even those who don’t work on the puzzle come over to see it’s progress or we use it as an excuse to talk to someone who is working on it. Me, I’ll go to dinner fifteen minutes earlier than my reservation and work the puzzle while I wait, others do the same before classes that they’re attending or to wait for the mail truck. One couple practically lives at the puzzle table, and while four people can easily work at one time, I avoid them. From my living room window I can see into the lobby across the piazza and I have a clear view of the puzzle table. It’s rarely without someone sitting or standing in front of it. I’ve even seen the security guard working the puzzle in the middle of the night when dreams wake me up and I can’t fall back to sleep. If it didn’t require me getting dressed to building hop, I’d be at the puzzle table along side him when I can't sleep. He's my prototype for a leading character in the murder mystery romance book I'm writing in my head. ©

Sleep Apps and Weird Dreams

I’ve been trying to improve the quality of my sleep. Nothing new here. I’ve played that game off and on for years. My latest attempt started several months ago when I gave up on my then new $129 Fitbit from ever talking to my android cell phone and I got a cheap $35 fitness watch that does sync properly like two old friends at a back street bar. I had an older model Fitbit that worked as it should with non-Apple products and every morning when I sat down to my computer I could view my sleep pattern on my monitor. Until I couldn’t anymore. Fitbit did a firmware update and there was no going back. Not only do the new Fitbits not work peacefully with computers but they don’t like androids cells phones. Trust me, I’ve investigated the depths out of that quagmire. 

Before I bought the second Fitbit I, of course, checked its compatibility with my android phone and supposedly it would work with an abbreviated app but pairing and syncing them up only works when you cross your fingers and toes during a full moon and you're headed south in a slow moving brown van. In two months of trying I was only able to do it three times. I hated abandoning that second Fitbit but it was time to call “Uncle” which I should have done before the cut off date to send it back for a refund. Yes, I’m stubborn; I hate it when tech stuff gets the better of me. It makes me feel old which I am but let's not talk about that. Let's instead bask in the glory of having a dependable sleep app back in my life again.

When I get up, the first thing I do is make my bed---well, it's the second thing I do if you count peeing as the first. Then I put on the coffee pot and walk to my office where I’ll open my sleep app and wait for it to download a night’s worth of stats. Last night, for example, I got up three times to pee, had an average heart rate of 65 and a stress level of 30. It took me ten minute to fall back to sleep after my trips to the bathroom and I got 4 hours and 48 minutes of light sleep and 2 hours and 44 minutes of deep sleep. My sleep quality score was 89 which was in the ‘good’ range and in the past 60 days I’ve only made it into the ‘good’ range four times---all with the aid of an ambient sleeping pill. In June I averaged 6 hours and 3 minutes of sleep a night and so far in July I’m up to 6 hours and 41 minutes a night. People who get less than five hours of sleep a night are twice as likely to get dementia according to lots of sleep studies like this one from Harvard. Sleeping pills aren’t the answer, either. You don’t get the right kind of sleep when you take them. I only take them when I toss and turn for more than two hours and haven’t fallen asleep yet.

Not surprising is that my longest stretches of uninterrupted sleep are towards morning and often times I wake up with a dream hanging around. Sometimes----like today----I’ll jot down a few notes before walking to the bathroom. (It’s the only thing that works to help you remember dreams and I’ve been doing it off and on since Kennedy was the president.) Today I wrote down: Tiny Don. Matchbox. Swamp. Boat. Map. College kid.  I was dreaming that I found my husband in matchbox where he was all eyes and grinning when slid it open, as surprised as I was at our reunion. The matchbox was on an old Army cot and the cot was in a cottage in the marshlands only accessible by boat. Last week I’d seen the movie Where the Crawdad Sings so it was easy to figure out why my brain came up with that setting and at one point in the movie the main character opened a matchbox just like in my dream. Her’s was empty.

They say the actions in our dreams--not the settings---are the important part, telling us something that our conscious minds don’t/won’t and if that’s true the fact that in my dream I didn’t take the box with my husband inside with me when I left speaks volumes. It’s a sign that I’ve moved on, right? Instead I promised to come back to visit. The dream ended when I got upset because I didn’t think I could find my way back through the marshland to visit but a college kid on the dock promised to buy me a map at the campus bookstore and mark the cottage’s location. That’s when I woke up. 

Sometimes I do miss my husband even thought he’s been gone ten years now. I think it's because there are couples here at the CCC who occasionally remind me of my caregiver days. Like yesterday a guy was trying to help his wife transfer into a car---she'd recently had her foot amputated---and I came close to saying he'll have to bite the bullet and trade that car in for something easier for her to do transfers in and out, but I didn't. When the time is right an occupational therapist will suggest it if one hasn't already done so. Watching them struggle brought back a day at a car dealership, trying transfers to find the right combination of seat height and grab bars for Don's transfers.

It’s a process of letting go in steps to see your spouse’s mental or physical health deteriorate. At least here, those caring for their husbands or wives are never far from supportive words or kindnesses shown. It might be just a brief meeting at the trash room or at the formal, monthly caregiver support group. I’d call it a blessing that they don’t have to experience the caregiver loneliness that I went through but ‘blessing’ is not really the right word. They chose to move here; it’s not divine intervention. They took control of what little they can control. And in at least one case, a terminally ill guy insisted on getting his wife 'settled in' where she could make friends before he left this earth. He lived a month here before passing away and our widows rallied around her just like he figured we would. ©

Naming the Place and the Dreams Attached

 

The past few days were a blurb of moving related activities and I hope to write about them for Saturday's post. In the meantime this post was written recently, after my last tour of my new digs...

I need to name this place, this place I’ve been calling my unit. If I were on the lake side of the building it would open up all kinds of cottage/beach/lake theme names that might sound pretentious as a sign labeling the door to my unit. But what the heck, lake and boating people can be like that. I mean people into other kinds of recreation don’t, say, name their golf clubs or their favorite running shoes but people who love the water do tend to name their dwelling place and water craft and from day one I’ve thought of this place as my artist’s cottage on a lake. A place where I am no longer a slave to the rhythms of home maintenance and I’d finally be able to be creative without feeling guilty because something else needs doing. I visualized myself painting, knitting, writing or quilting with a regularity that makes new rhythms in my weeks that are independent from whatever Mother Nature has going on outside my window panes. 

When someone here asks me what unit I bought on this campus I usually joke that I’m in the cheap seats which I am. There are far fewer units in my building with under 1,000 square feet than there are the larger places with lake views. And if I was not on the main floor the view from my side of the building wouldn’t be so bad. From the two floors above me you can look past the parking lot to the woods where our recreation building/library is located. I love those woods. There’s a couple trees along the walking path that I’ve never seen before and one day I’m taking my Michigan Tree book out to identify them. That walking path is no more than two shortish blocks long but I love it and the best part is I don’t have to rake the leaves that fall this time of the year or pay someone else to do it.

My Artist’s Retreat or My Writing Cave both have a nice ring but then people might expect to see some of my work. It will be months if not a year before I’m ready for prime time with painting, if I’m even able to get my skill levels back which is doubtful. I’ve never been great with mixing colors but I’m hoping that getting my cataracts removed will help with that. Sounds good in theory but its really closer to the old joke about the guy who asks the doctor if he'll be able to play the piano after his brain surgery and the doctor says "Yes" then the guy says, “Great! I never could before.” Back when I breathed, ate and dreamed art 24/7 I had better dexterity, too, for detailed work so I’m thinking I'll need to develop a whole new style and quit obsessing about being a portrait painter. I’ve decided to start with the basics---values, shapes, shading, lines and textures---like a beginner, and see what I can do with simple exercises before I try to metaphorically sky dive without taking the time to pack a parachute.

As for revealing that I think of myself as a would-be writer or that I spend so much time in front of my keyboard trying to hone the craft, I seriously doubt that will happen anything soon. The kind of stuff I write takes trust to show it to people in my off-line life. I don't show my underbelly to people I've just met, who might not understand my sense of humor or they turn out to be laced up tighter than a girl in a Gone With the Wind era corset. If you’ve been reading me for very long you’ll know my inner thoughts are not always chase, charitable and demure. But I also never looked for sinners around every corner like the Church Lady crowd did when I was growing up and who still occupy too much space in my head. It should be easy to figure out who is on the Church Lady List on this campus and I’d tell you my secret Litmus Test but then you’d think I’m as bias and judgemental as those I’ll claim are too pious to like me. 

Having a space for painting that has north-facing light is a biggie in the art world. When I first saw my big windows facing north I’m not going to lie, I felt a chill run through my body. I dreamed of a studio with northern light so much when I was young that it was almost like walking into an Old Master's painting. They all painted their studios at one point or another, even if it was just as background to a naked lady on a settee. There will be no naked ladies (or gentlemen) on my settee but seeing my north light on a sunny afternoon was almost orgasmic. Please note: I've taken a lot of nude figure drawing classes back in my heydays and orgasms just don't happen in nude figure drawing classes; it's very serious business with no lustful thoughts or conversations going on.

Robin Williams did a fantasy movie about traveling through heaven then Dante’s hell to save his wife and bring her to heaven. What Dreams May Come had the most beautiful special effect of walking into a wet oil painting of a lake and becoming part of the actually painting when Robin's character died. It’s the way I want to go, using my imagination to transport me to another time and place. And that's a strong possibility if you believe---as I do---that our heaven and hell are whatever we believe them to be. God, I'd like to see that movie again but I'm almost afraid to. Have you ever felt that way about a movie that touches you deeply, that you 're worried a second viewing will break the magic you felt the first time?

How about Jean's Hobby Den or My Hobby Cottage? They're whimsical without giving anything away. Dreamer Inside might also work or The Daydreamer's Den. ©