The Police Officer’s Widow

A cousin of my husband’s died, a super nice guy who’d been with the police department for thirty-two years. He was eighty-two. At the time of his retirement he was running the pistol range and teaching newbie cops how to shoot. The funeral service was in a church and I’ve never seen so many awards and recognition plaques in my life. They were everywhere---on the altar, a side table and every window ledge. He was a true, community service kind of guy who loved working with young people. When one of his daughters got up to read a list of qualities she admired about her dad I thought, wow, I could have written the exact, same list about my dad! Never raised his voice, wise, taught ethics by example, loyal, patient, could fix anything---right down to them both having a sweet tooth. When his grandson described how his grandpa taught him how to fish and row a boat it was exactly what one of my nieces said at my dad’s memorial. No wonder I always liked this guy!

His widow greeted everyone coming in and when I said I was sorry to hear about his passing, she replied, “Don’t be! He lived a full and happy life.” She was so ‘together’ I was actually shocked. They’d been together fifty-nine years and had a best-friends-and-soulmates kind of marriage that was obvious to anyone in their presence. I was also shocked to learn that they were founding members of their church and very active in it. It was one of those churches that believes if you haven’t accepted Jesus as your savior, there’s no way in hell you’re getting into heaven but in all the years I’ve known this couple they kept their faith close to their vests. You have to admire people who live their faith but don’t try to push it on others. I couldn’t say the same for their minister---duh, that’s his job to push and preach---who’s theme for the day was “only Jesus can complete you.” I didn’t enjoy that part of the service and I wish he had explained why it ended with five gunshots and an equal number of bells ringing out. There were uniformed police officers there, so I do get the gun salute part, just not the significance of the bells or the number five.

At the luncheon that followed I sat at a table with five rabid Trump supporters---nephews and nieces of Don’s---who’d been posting anti-Hillary, pro-Trump stuff on Facebook throughout the primary and general elections. Even the morning of the funeral one of gals posted a meme about how Trump was going to "heal our nation and bring us all together" and I cynically thought, what kind of a fairy tale do you live in? Wouldn’t you know it, she wanted me to sit next to her at the luncheon. It helps, sometimes, to be an old person wearing hearing aids because you can get away with ignoring directions you don’t want to follow. No one brought up politics, thank goodness, although there is one person in the Gang of Five who is notorious for doing so at family gatherings…while his wife kicks him under the table. I must be a bad person because I can’t wait until these people figure out that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are one and the same. Several of them were able to get insurance for the first time in years through the ACA resulting in them getting some much need medical care and surgeries. Ya, I know someone reading this is thinking that the Republicans will pass a replacement bill that will be better and I’m thinking that I get to use the words “fairy tale” twice in the same paragraph. 

Back to the police officer’s widow: She asked me what I do to keep busy and I told her about being embedded in the activities of our senior hall---she lives nearby---and she said she’ll call me later to talk about her getting involved because she wants to stay busy. If she doesn’t call by the time the April/May newsletter comes out, I’ve already penciled a note in my day planner to drop over to her house with a copy. ©

Mini Trip: Part Two

 

Serendipity is a great word. It means ‘happy accident’ or an accidental finding of something good that you weren’t really looking for when it came across your path. That’s want happened to me on the trip I took that was organized by my local senior citizen hall. Here’s the details: After the fish boil and before the sand dunes ride I was shopping in a gift shop attached to the herb garden labyrinth (pictured above) when a woman walked up to me and asked if I remembered her from the Red Hat Society chapter I belonged to a decade ago. Sure I did! In fact, couple of months ago I even tried to find out if the group was taking new members but the national website said that particular chapter had a full roster and was closed. Then the woman called over three other Red Hatters and come to find out, they do have an opening in their chapter. I was ecstatic when they asked for my contact information. It was a fun loving group and I was sad when I had to drop out due to my husband’s failing health.

One of these women had gone all the way through grade and high school with my husband and she got to telling the others about Don’s funeral, and how “it was the best funeral she’d ever been to in her entire life.” That made me beam with pride. I love being around people who knew Don before his stroke because having known him explains a lot about me and how I spent most of my adult life. Anyway, what are the odds of a car load of women from my past and me crossing paths so far away from home and right on the heels of when I was trying to reconnect with them---a million to one? The fact that it happened is serendipity.

Since the main reason I signed up for this trip and other activities at the senior hall is in a quest to find friendships, I was ready to call this trip a success after this chance meeting but serendipity wasn’t going to let me go of me that quickly. When our two buses pulled into the rest stop for a coffee and donut break a woman from the other bus and I struck up a conversation and in ten minutes we learned that we both love art, both quilt and craft, both have no children, grandchildren or husbands, and that we are both looking for someone to pal around with. We exchanged contact information and made plans to be seatmates on the next senior hall trip in September.

On the bus ride home I was thinking about how hard it is for some of us widows to form new friendships in our newly acquired single-hood world. My best friend and confidant was my husband. For 42 years I really didn’t need anyone else to fill that role and it’s been lonely without a sounding board in my life. Sure, I have my blog for sharing my thoughts but it’s too often a one way conversation and blogs can’t hug you hello and goodbye. Blah, blah, blah you’ve heard it all before.

When I’m in the mood to be fair to the universe I have to knowledge the fact that when Don first passed away other people did make overtures of friendship---the phone numbers written in condolence cards, the whispers of “call me if you want to talk” and the invitations to lunch or movies I passed up, etc., etc. Back then I was still living in that mollusk-like shell we widows draw over ourselves when mourning our losses takes over our lives and we play act otherwise. Yes, some of us play act. We walk around like we’re okay. We even carry on superficial conversations all the while wishing they would end so we could get back to our ‘poor me’ thoughts. By the time we get our heads unscrambled and we can drop the play acting, the overtures of friendship had flown off on the wings of time. It’s the way of the world. But it’s also the way of the world that serendipity brings them back again like a summer breezes brings delightful spicy aromas when we’re standing in the middle of a gorgeous herb garden labyrinth. ©

The Last One to Go – A Tale of Friendship

Once upon of time there were four people who managed to stay close friends their entire adult lives and then some. The last one to pass over to the Great Unknown did so this week at 93 years old but what she and the others in the foursome left behind will endure for generations. Among their individual accomplishments in life, together they all modeled for their families a flawless example of what true friendship is all about.

Betty, her husband Harold and my folks met before I was born. For years they spent New Years Eve and Day together, took part in many social activities together and both couples built cottages on the same lake. In the summers our families intermingled almost daily. We kids swam together, played cowboys and Indians together, walked to the store for ice cream together, built forts together, and on rainy days we’d all sit around Betty’s huge table playing board games or poker. How did Betty put up with a gang of kids bringing sand and too much youthful energy into her house, not to mention our need for an endless supply of drinkable liquids? She put up with us with a warm smile and a heart that was always looking for ways to make us more comfortable in her presence. And no one ever went hungry at Betty’s house.

When I was young and still trying to figure life out I asked my dad why Betty and Harold and my folks were such good friends. I wanted to know what held them together because they all had such different personalities---even held different views on politics and social issues. Dad told me if we’re looking for friends who think just like we do then we’re not going to have any friends. “Friends,” he said, “are for having fun with and to respect for their uniqueness without trying to change them.” Oh, and did these four friends have fun. When they’d get together there was always laughter and lively, easy-going conversations. There were summer parties, too, where the foursome could be found singing, dancing, or just sharing a work project and making it more fun with a picnic thrown into the mix.

Betty’s service is the first I’ve been to since Don passed away and they say that first funeral post a spouse’s death is hard for a widow, often bringing flashbacks and tears for the wrong deceased. Betty’s service wasn’t like that for me. Not even for a second. It was a celebration of her life, filled with joyful tales about how upbeat, positive and giving Betty was. I could tell by the memories her family shared that Betty in her later life hadn’t changed much from the Betty I’d known in my youth.

Once upon a time there was a woman named Betty. She was a loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and a dear friend to both of my parents. She knew how to love, laugh and enjoy life. She knew how to make everyone around her feel special and welcome. She knew how to work hard, knit, play cards, cook for a crowd and dozens of other things too numerous to list. But she probably never knew that she was part of a foursome who taught the world around them about the power of deep and lasting friendship.
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As all stories go, Betty’s had to end and in my imagination she now lives happily ever after with her family and friends who’d passed over before her. My parents, I have no doubt, have been saving a place for her to sit at a gold-gilded pinochle table. Rest in peace, Betty, you deserve it. It was a privilege to have known you.  ©

“Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things.”

Author Unknown

The Eulogy

Eleven years, eight months after Don's stroke he passed away after a brief hospitalization for pneumonia with respiratory failure. It was a tribute to the kind of man he was both before and after that stroke that his service was packed with many people to help give him one, final goodbye. It was a very upbeat service with many bursts of laughter as several friends and family members stepped up front to share memories of Don. My contribution was the eulogy that I wrote and is posted below. Don loved the Old West so I tried to put a western twist to his service. With that in mind the reverend used the Lone Ranger Creed in place of reading scriptures and used stories I had told him to illustrate how Don tried to live up to the creed. At the end we played the Randy Travis version of 'Happy Trails to You.'

****** ******* *****

The Eulogy

The purpose of a eulogy is to share a person’s life in one single speech. How do you do that for a man like Don ******* who in many ways lived an unconventional life? We could say that he was born April **** 19** and that he grew up on a farm just outside of **********. We could share dry facts that many of you already know like he had three brothers, graduated from ****** High, and was in the Army Reserves. We could tell you that Don worked nights as a die maker at General Motors and he had his own parking lot maintenance business. Or we could talk about the fact that when ever anyone tried to get him to explain why he didn’t get married after dating and working with Jean for several decades he’d say, “Why, we hardly know each other!”

There are three themes that ran throughout Don’s adult life: collecting, snowplowing, and hunting. You didn’t have to know him well to know that these were his main passions. Before his stroke, eleven and a half years ago, he could tell endless stories about being an American Picker long before there was a TV show by that name. Also in his storyteller’s trove were tales of plowing the Big Blizzard of 1978. And when the topic of hunting came up, Don often told the story about the time his friend shot his brand new truck and then put a Band-Aid over the hole to cover it up. In all the years Don owned that truck he never got the bullet hole repaired because he delighted in telling people about how he got that hole in the hood. He loved to tell long-winded stories. So much so that friends used to tease him, saying they had all his stories numbered and memorized and all he really had to do was shout out a number and it would save everyone a lot of time.

That all ended the day Don had a massive stroke that not only took his mobility away but it also took his speech. Even then he still found ways to be a storyteller. One way was to put Jean in a position where she had no choice but to explain what was on Don’s mind. Like the day he parked his wheelchair right in front of the door to a store selling cigarettes and he wouldn’t let anyone in or out. In a militant way only an x-smoker on a mission could do, he held up three fingers while repeating the word “three!” over and over again. This forced Jean to tell Don’s story to the gathering crowd about how he used to smoke three to six packs of cigarettes a day and he blamed the habit for earning him heart by-pass and a stroke. 

There are other labels besides stroke survivor, storyteller, collector, hunter and snowplower we could apply to Don that helps define who he was as a man: brother, uncle, neighbor, co-worker, friend, boss, and landlord to name a few. He was also loyal to his friends, honest to a fault, and he was especially kind to old ladies which might explain why he finally married Jean when she was nearly old enough to collect Social Security. 

Don was also courageous for the way he faced the challenges brought on by the stroke. His special shorthand story for all he’d gone through was to hold up two fingers and say the word “two!” This was Jean’s queue to explain that two neurologists had told the family he’d be a vegetable for the rest of his life. Most people, upon hearing this, would respond the same way: “You sure fooled them!” And it was true. To friends and family who spent time with Don after the stroke, it was clear that despite his disabilities he was still the same, intelligent and caring person he’d always been.

Over the years Don and Jean had talked about the kinds of funerals they wanted, usually after going to one they didn’t like. He even worked in this very funeral home when he was in high school. And through the experience he came to appreciate the value of a good send off. One thing Don wanted at his service is a western twist. So with that in mind we’re going to end this eulogy by reading the Lone Ranger’s Creed. The Lone Ranger, many of you will remember, was the original good guy of the Old West dating back to the days when kids listened to his serialized stories on the radio. Don was a good guy, too, who not only had a copy of this creed in his collection of western memorabilia but he also tried to live up to it his whole life.

The Creed 

"I believe that to have a friend,
a man must be one.

That all men are created equal
and that everyone has within himself
the power to make this a better world.

That God put the firewood there
but that every man
must gather and light it himself.

[I believe….]

In being prepared
physically, mentally, and morally
to fight when necessary
for that which is right.

That a man should make the most
of what equipment he has.

That “This government,
of the people, by the people
and for the people”
shall live always.

That men should live by
the rule of what is best
for the greatest number.

That sooner or later...
somewhere...somehow...
we must settle with the world
and make payment for what we have taken.
That all things change but truth,

and that truth alone, lives on forever.

[I believe…]

In my Creator, my country, my fellow man."

******************

Goodbye to Don, my own special Ke-mo-sah-bee.

Why can't I join the Red Hat Society?