Aging Like Fine Wine or Stale Crackers

I’ve told this story before so I’ll give you the abbreviated version today. When my husband turned fifty he told everyone he’d just turned sixty. I think that birthday bothered him more than he let on but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the comments people would make about him looking so much younger than his (fake) age. This went on for several weeks until he tried it on a girl taking money at state park and she looked him square in the face then gave him the senior discount. That was the end of his telling anyone he was sixty until he had actually achieved that distinction. I re-tell this story not because I’m old and people my age have been known to repeat themselves but because I find myself doing the same thing. Sometimes I present myself as being eighty when I’m far closer to seventy. And I use the “I’m old” line all the time. Why do I do that? I must get a kick out of being told, “No, you’re not!” Or maybe I need the affirmation that follows when they tell me words to the effect that I’m too sharp "to be old." Note: no one ever tells me I don’t look my (fake) age which probably is a silent condemnation of my choice of going full-out gray on top. I tried doing the low lights during my Pamper Myself Period after Don passed away and people actually did think it made me look younger. So did I, but I got sick of the ever present process of keeping it up. I’m old, why can’t I be proud of that fact? Old people get gray hair and wrinkles and need hearing aids. So what.

One of my favorite bloggers (also named Jean) is a recently retired sociologist with a thirty year history of teaching college courses. She’s responsible for me thinking about this topic today. She had commented on her blog, Step into the Future, that: “It seems to me that if organizers of events like this one worry that ‘only the old’ are attending, they have fallen victim to the widespread denigration of aging and elders in our society.” Oh, my gosh, I thought when I read that, am I adding to the denigration of the elderly when I play games with my own age? After thinking about it awhile I wondered if it isn’t more of defense mechanism for me---joke about being old before someone else dismisses me because of my age. Growing old and irrelevant is my biggest fear in life. There, I said it out loud. Darn it, I think I've written that before in my blog! I really am starting to repeat myself.

My determination to stay home alone this Thanksgiving was part of an experiment. (On aging, on widowhood? Does it really matter which?) The point was: 1) I didn’t want to be someone’s charity case, an old person/widow only invited because others felt sorry for me being all alone on a holiday; 2) I actually wanted to see what it felt like to be alone on a holiday. And you know what, it turned out fine. I didn’t wallow in loneliness, self-pity or memories of happier times. I didn’t go hungry as an elderly relative predicted I would, forced to eat stale crackers for dinner and I didn’t treat Thanksgiving like any other day on the calendar. I planned a big meal with a few comfort foods from holidays past. I cooked, cleaned up and froze my leftovers for Christmas dinner. I also realized that I do have a post-Don Thanksgiving tradition---watching the annual National Dog Show with Levi. We saw it last year and this and that dog actually watches the TV, barking and whining at his favorite canines on the screen. He is my core family now that my husband is gone.  

Even though my experiment turned out fine, that’s not to say I will stop accepting invitations for future holiday dinners. There are nieces and nephews on both sides of my family where I can go and not feel like a fifth wheel. But what I won’t do in the future is go to a place on a holiday just because I dread being alone. Been there, done that since Don died. There’s a reason why the phrase, “lonely in a crowd” sticks around. What my experiment reminded me of is that 'alone' does not translate to being lonely. I also realized for an old lady with no kids or grand-kids I fared pretty well in the invitation department. I got two formal invitations, and I got three you’re-always-welcome invitations that I would have gladly accepted if not for the unpredictability of winter roads.

Oh, cripe, I got side-tracked from the topic I intended to write about—aging like fine wine or stale crackers. Although I guess facing our vulnerabilities as we grow older could be a sub-topic under a stale crackers umbrella. I wanted to write about is how the older I get the more I value myself in terms of how my brain works. I know stuff. Good stuff. Jeez, for a would-be writer you’d think I could express myself better than that. What I meant to say is the older I get the better my world view gets, the better I get at being a well-rounded human being, and I don’t waste time cluttering up my brain with stupid stuff. Stupid stuff like wondering why big butts have gone from women loathing having them to desiring big butts so much that people are willing to enhance theirs surgically. Okay, maybe I’m not the age-induced “intellect” I'm painting myself out to be because I really do want to know how that astounding butt evolution happened and seemingly overnight when measured in old people time. Light bulb moment here: If that transformation in attitude about big butts can happen maybe we can apply the same formula to making old people a cool commodity. Are you with me? Can we start a movement? ©

The Ramblings of a soon-to-be Crazy Widow

There is something about my life right now that makes it feel unmoored or anchorless. Perhaps having my physical world capped in ice so shortly after a record setting snow storm has made me feel this way. When you have no choice but to stay at home it feels so different than staying home by choice. Perhaps it’s the coming holidays which accents my lack of family living near-by to share them with that is painting my world in a blue, transparent haze---the language of a would-be artist. Yup, I can be overly dramatic when I ramble-write. Perhaps it’s the fact that this will be my third holiday season without my husband; that’s a long time to go without the intimacy of being with someone who knows you better than you know yourself. Or perhaps I’m looking for reasons to feel sorry for myself. But really, what do I have to complain about? My life is stable and secure and in between the end of the snow storm and the beginning of ice storm I was able to run some errands. So what if the most meaningful conversation I had that day was, “I would like a cup of chili and a grilled cheese sandwich” and the drive-through speaker answered back, “That will be $5.28.”

I dreamed about fried chicken and chocolate malts a few nights ago. Oh, boy, you know what that means. It means I’ve been dieting too long. Not only that, I was reading The Hunger Games and the first few chapters of that book talks a lot about food. Decadent food of all descriptions. The chili and sandwich was a splurge directly brought on by my food dream and that book. I’m just glad it wasn’t a sex dream or I might have been arrested for molesting the drive-through speaker pole and that would not have been a pretty sight. Okay, that sounds desperate. The cold, hard fact is lust at my age goes down the Ice Cream Road more often than anywhere else.  Speaking of lust, right now the 12 Men of Christmas movie is playing in the background. It’s about these guys who get badgered into doing a naked calendar to raise money for their rescue squad. Let me tell you, the casting director had a good eye for eye candy but as Christmas movies go it’s a far cry from It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Steward. “Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence! Save me from stupid Christmas movies that air on an endless loop designed to get us in the mood for Black Friday shopping."

I’ve planned my Thanksgiving dinner. I bought a package of frozen turkey legs, a can of cranberry sauce, a small package of King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls---I would kill to eat those rolls before the 27^th---a squash and a frozen pumpkin pie. When I got the pie home I was bummed out that I have to actually bake it. I had it all planned out how I’d cut it into ten slices and defrost one sliver every three days. I’m afraid if the house fills up with pumpkin pie scents it will kick start some binge eating and I’ve come too far with my current diet to want that to happen. When I was growing up, my mom baked a lot of holiday pies. Her mincemeat pie filling marinated in a basement crock for weeks and was like no other you can buy today. Me? My only claim to culinary fame around the holidays was I could make a great pecan pie. Jeez, I can feel a roll of fat stalking and circling my waist just thinking about holidays gone by. But traditions are traditions and I will enjoy my drumstick and I might even make a green bean casserole with mushroom soup. I will Martha Steward it up by using fresh green bean---assuming I can get back out to the store.

Can you believe it, I’ve never once in my entire life hosted or cooked a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner? I’m actually looking forward to doing it this year, however abbreviated and filled with cooking shortcuts it will be. In the early decades of Don’s and my relationship we’d always go to my parent’s house but after Mom passed away no one felt like celebrating. She was our holiday anchor. Then one of Don’s sister-in-laws started included us in with her large family. Both places were warm gatherings and at mom’s house we’d go snowmobiling or sledding with my nephew and nieces after dinner. With Don’s family, board or card games followed dinner and he talked so much he had a reputation for never knowing when it was his turn to play his hand. People would fight over sitting or not sitting next to him---depending on the game being played---so they could use that quirk to their advantage. Big sigh here. To paraphrase an ancient Ann Landers quote, “Old people reminisce about the past because they have no futures and young people dream about the future because they have no pasts.” How true that is in my crazy, widowhood world where I don't even know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. I need an anchor, a place to moor my scattered thoughts so I don't turn into a forgotten marshmallow, harden by time. ©

Pass-Around Widows, Easter Traditions and Other Stuff

 

For a week now my urine smells like fried chicken and I haven’t eaten any in months. But every time I pee lately I want to go to KFC. At first I thought I’d finally contracted some dreaded disease that only effects widows who don’t eat enough fried foods but a quick internet search leaves me believing I either have a urinary tract infection or Maple Syrup Urine Disease. (Yes, that’s a real disease. I’m not making that up for your amusement.) I’m voting for the UTI. MSUD is an inherited disorder and growing up, I don’t recall anyone talking about maple syrup as they came out of the bathroom. Not to worry, tomorrow I’m going to the dentist which means I have to take a heavy round of antibiotics so the germs from cleaning my teeth don’t settle in my artificial knee joints and I’m hoping some of those antibiotics find their way into my bladder. If not, I’ll have to go pee in a cup at the lab and hope they don’t leave it out in the elements this time. Last year when I had a UTI they accidentally froze my specimen and I had to go back and do the pee-in-a-cup trick all over again. I hate that trick. There are some things guys are just better equipped at doing and this is one of them.

My nieces threw a surprise 75^th birthday party for my older brother a few days ago. (He canceled the one he and his girlfriend were going to throw together.) It was so good to see everyone in the family except my brand new great-great nephew and his parents who live out of state. My brother was thoroughly surprised and everyone loved the photo book I made and had printed at Blurb. It’s going to be a good summer for family get-togethers---two showers and a wedding invitation are already filed in the pages of my day planner and I’m working on a cousin’s get-together at the cottage where I spent all the summers of my youth.

Easter was good, too. The night before I got a call from my niece-in law asking me to join her huge family for dinner out in the boondocks. It was her mother’s first Easter without her husband and I think the invitation had something to do with that, but she was fine---seemed to be holding herself together pretty well and enjoying herself with all her kids and grandchildren around. Most of the adults in attendance and I have crossed paths for 42 years of going to weddings, showers and funerals so I didn’t feel entirely out of place.  At one point in the afternoon five of her grandsons packed their babies up in their strollers, grabbed a beer or wine cooler and off they all went for a walk around the lake while we women folk sat in a sun circle talking. If someone 40-50 years age would have told me how much attitudes about fatherhood joys and duties would change I wouldn’t have believed it. But I think all the hands-on stuff is good for guys, their families and society. Why should women get all the fun and bonding time with their kids? Time to share, ladies.

As fellow blogger Belle Rum over at Cul-de-Sac-Chronicles recently wrote: “We make traditions and we keep them for years. Then things change. Kids grow up and move to another city, loved ones die and we are left to celebrate even when it doesn’t feel like a time to celebrate.” My own family’s holiday traditions fell apart years ago when my mom died, new ones were born, then reborn again and again---the last time to fit my husband’s disabilities. (Wheelchairs limit your invitation venues big time.) This is my third Easter without Don and new traditions have not yet been established, so I was grateful to grab a little holiday spirit, even if vicariously through someone else’s family. These past few years since Don died I’ve been the elderly aunt passed around on the holidays, never quite belonging anywhere yet never quite an outcast or third wheel either. Life is full of mystery and sometimes I wish mine was like a book and I could sneak a peek at the last chapter to see if holiday traditions ever find me again. Or is this it, the new normal for me? Am I now officially living in the land Pass-Around Widows, never knowing from one holiday to another where we’ll be next? ©

The Widow's Christmas Letter

In my family I have a bit of a reputation for writing self-deprecating Christmas letters. It started on a whim a dozen years ago after I had gotten a holiday letter from an acquaintance who had listed month after month of things like: “In January we spent several glorious weeks on the French Riviera where we ____.” (Fill in the blank and let your imagination run wild when you do. She claimed to have done just about everything a tourist could do and then some.) By the time I got to December my eyes were crossed from reading about her “fabulous” travel adventures, her “fabulous” new house and her “fabulous” fashion finds. I can’t say I was jealous---that’s not in my nature---but I did find the comparison between her life and my newly acquired caregiver life to be laugh-out-loud funny. So I sat down and dashed off a letter that went something like this: In January we were pleased to host a gathering of red cardinals at our bird feeder and in February we were SO excited that we were able to get the oil changed on the Blazer then dine across the street at Burger King.

I sent off copies of that letter to a few people in the family who I knew had a good sense of humor and thus my annual holiday letter was born. My mailing list, since then, has grown every year and I didn’t even miss last year, my first Christmas without Don. I duped that letter’s theme to be: "sharing what I’d learned about widowhood." I won’t reprint the whole thing here but the next paragraph will give you an idea its tone:

“I’ve also learned that many widows have an overwhelming need to review their entire relationship with their dearly departed and to talk endlessly about their suddenly single challenges. And since so many people around us get alarmed (or bored) when we appear to be locked in the past and/or locked in the process of grieving, we either start bottling our words up inside or we talk to ourselves or we write. I did the latter and started an online, public blog/diary titled The Misadventures of Widowhood. Okay, correction aka confession here. If total honesty is required in Christmas letters---and I think it is, Christmas being a holy holiday and all---I’ll have to admit that I also spend a great deal of time talking to myself, to the dog…and to Don’s ghost. Yes, call me a crazy old lady but I do think he’s haunting the house. How else do you explain things like a battery operated candle that sometimes turns itself on and, no, it doesn’t have a sensor eye to activate it. I’ve looked for one a half a dozen times. Maybe a vibration from a truck going by causes the battery and bulb to make contact? I don’t know but why accept logical explanations when ghost guessing is more fun?”

Back to 2013. For contrast and tracking widowhood progress, here’s a short excerpt from the letter I mailed out a few days ago with my Christmas cards, my second holiday season without Don in my life:

“Summer put me in overdrive trying to find a social life that didn’t involve coupon clipping and double checking the thread count in my bed sheets. I went on several day trips through the senior hall where no one really cares where we’re going so long as the bus has an on-board bathroom. I joined the Red Hat Society, the Sculpture Park and Gardens, the Historical Society, several senior hall groups including the Movie and Lunch Club, the Life Enrichment Lecture series and their monthly luncheon/entertainment programs, plus I joined the Crusade Against Injustice for Fruit Flies.”

Christmas letters are a little like "literary fruitcakes." They aren’t everyone’s cup of tea---to write or receive. I don’t blame any first year widow who doesn’t want to send out cards, let alone include notes or letters inside. You have to be true to yourself. If you can’t do it, don’t. But I’m a letter writer by nature and last year I felt like doing a little sneaky educating about the grieving process---at least about MY grieving process. And you know what, I think it made a difference to let my family and friends know that it was perfectly okay to mention Don around me, that I actually craved those conversations. Over this past year, no one treated the topic of Don like an elephant in the room nor did they look at me cross-eyed or with pity if I brought him up like so many other widows report happens to them. And that was a wonderful gift I accidentally gave myself via the power of a widow's Christmas letter. ©

The Holiday Blues in Widowhood Land

It had been four days since I’ve talked to another human being so today I decided to go to the gas station and while I was pumping gas I saw my first 18 wheeler full of Christmas trees, going through town on their way to some southern state. It happens every year about this time, of course, but seeing them today sent me instantly to a place of pain. For the past twelve years we had a tradition of counting all the Christmas trees we’d see on the top of cars during November and December. On the weekends after Thanksgiving we’d even grab a coffee at Starbucks and sit at an intersection where there are Christmas tree farms in three directions. It started out to be a speech class exercise, for Don to get out numbers, but it evolved into a wheelchair friendly activity that we could do to get us in the mood for the holidays. Most years we chalked up on our little chart, over 125 trees. Seeing the 18 wheeler today made me realize I need to avoid the “tree farms” corner until after Christmas. I don’t need 125 reminders that Don is gone and I’ll need to build new traditions.

The last day of October I sent an e-mail reservation in for a Christmas luncheon at the senior center next month and I got a message back saying, “Sorry, we’ve filled our quota of 115 reservations already.” I didn’t think going to that party meant all that much to me until I got the rejection. Damn, it’s going to be a lonely season! At least the pet store won’t let me down. I can still put ‘reindeer horns’ on Levi and take him in for their humane society fund raiser and photo shoot with Santa. He will snack up and down the aisle of bulk treats that I’ll end up buying, pick out a new toy for his Christmas present and greet the other dogs all doing the same things.

I was looking at a photo album a week or two ago and found an old black and white of a Christmas tree with presents underneath. It was taken back when I was six or seven years old. At the side of the tree was a child’s table and chairs my parents got at the Salvation Army store, plus a doll with her array of homemade clothing. Can you believe it; I still have all that stuff! I’ve been planning to put a new coat of paint on the table and chairs so I can use the set as a coffee table combo and to frame a few of the doll’s clothing for my dream condo when I downsize next year.

Fast forward to one of the first Christmas’ after Don and I met. His idea of decorating back then was taking a full string of Christmas tree lights and making a ‘crown’ for the deer head hanging on his front porch. This was at a time in my life when I was spending 14 hour days decorating rich people’s houses and clubs for their holiday parties. I guess the point I’m trying to make to myself is this: time marches on and holiday traditions change---sometimes by happy choice, other times out of necessity. Traditions this year will be non-existence in my widowhood world so I’ll need to ‘cowboy up’ to get through the season. Can I do it without spilling a few tears? Heck yes! Whenever I feel those pangs of regret and missing Don coming on I’m going to pretend I’m Daron Norwood and start singing at the top of my lungs: “I can make it on my own. These can't be tears in my eyes 'cause cowboys don't cry. Cowboys don’t cry.” ©

Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you're home.

Carol Nelson