The Holiday Ups and Downs - A Widow's Sadiversary

Over Christmas I had one of those deep cries that leave you feeling exhausted to the bone. Not to worry, it was a good cry with happy tears mixed in with a tinge of regret. It came out of the blue in an unexpected way and place. I was sitting by the fireplace in our lobby waiting for my dinner reservation time when I opened a Christmas card from a great-nephew on my husband's side of the family. I haven't seen or talked to Mike in probably five years but I have dutifully sent my annual Christmas letters to him until I stopped writing them last year. Out of his card to me fell a two page typed written letter, the first letter I've ever got from him. In part it said…

"I personally want to thank you for all that you did for Uncle Don after his stroke. I know that's it's not something you need to be thanked for, as you loved him and that's what we do for those we love. I personally have always recognized how much effort you put into those years of care that you provided to him. You will always be my Aunt Jean and if at any time there's something that you ever need help with, I want you to never hesitate to reach out." Then he gave me his phone number and email address and then he went on to write about some of his favorite Uncle Don stories and I read them with tears streaming down my face.

The stories could only have come from someone who loved and respected Don. And it was clear that Don's and his grandfather's gift for storytelling was passed down to another generation. Mike's humorous stories came from sharing many years of deer camps. Don had taught him and his two brothers to hunt and Don was dead serious that the teens learn to be safe, lawful and ethical sportsman above all else, but they also swapped practical jokes and tall stories in the evenings. After Don's stroke when I got Don involved in an organization for wheelchair bound hunters Mike volunteered to be his deer camp guide. Each disabled hunter had to have a personal 'guide' to help with urinals, medications, snacks, coffee, etc. I was going to do it before Mike heard about the program and stepped up to the plate. After Don could no longer qualify on the shooting range to go to deer camp Mike kept on volunteering to help the organization and other disabled hunters.

I like where I live but once in awhile I'm reminded like with Mike's letter how much I miss being around people who knew my husband. I don't know if all widows and widowers feel this way but I don't think anyone can ever really know me who didn't know me when I was half of Team Don and Jean. We took unconventional paths through life and they didn't take us past the same benchmarks that most couples find. People who knew Don and me back during the 42 years we were together see ME and dare I say anyone who follows my blog sees me, too. People who came into my life after he died see the bare bone facts of my life but they don't match up with the accomplishments and contributions I see in myself. Does anyone's? 

A couple I often sit across from at the Monday farm table dinners don't see the real me for sure. They were high school and college sweethearts, married and had two children. She picks at me all the time while her husband sits there with a smirk on his face that seems to say, "She never listens to me either." Week after week she tells me I'm too shy and I should volunteer to help her do crafts over in the Memory Care building or teach a painting class, etc., and I'll say, "NO, no and hell no!" "But you'd be so good at it." And I'll reply, "Being good at something doesn't mean I want to do it." "You're just shy and I'm going to help you get over that." If Don were sitting in on those conversations he'd tell her to knock it off, knowing that that kind of pressure has the opposite effect. (My mom didn't call me 'stubborn' without cause.). God, does that make me a woman who needs a man to define her? I meant to write 'defend her' but maybe that spelling error fits too so I'm keeping them both.

The first day after getting Mike's letter I felt euphoric but the second day at the lunch table I crashed into feeling alone in a crowd. It was the day of Christmas Eve and people were talking about their plans with family. Everyone was so happy. So-and-so had borrowed wine glasses from someone and someone else was borrowing folding chairs and it hit me that I was feeling lonely. I'm not a recluse around here by any stretch of the imagination but I'm also not as interwoven into the micro-cosmo here as others are. I don't borrow or loan things. I don't exchange baked goods or recipes. I don't go off campus shopping with others. It was a conscious decision when I moved in to hold myself back a little because I've always required a lot of alone time for art, crafts and writing, but at times like that I have questioned if I'd made the right decision---if I shouldn't have tried harder to make a few close friends. On the other hand, six people have died since I moved to this CCC and that predictable statistic was the other rationale I used for not getting too close to others. Some people living here----maybe 15 of the 75---have gone to all six funerals. You live in a place where everyone is old, they're  going to die. I've lost enough important people in my life, thank you very much.

In all honesty I think the loneliness has been creeping up on me because I've been dreaming a lot about Don lately. Typical widow's  dreams of him getting lost and me not being able to find him. He died in mid-January and every since then I've gone through a funk the first two weeks of January. I call it my Sadiversary Season and I think Mike's letter just started the downward spiral a little early this year. If the past is an accurate predictor of Jean-ism by the 15th of the month I'll be my old self again.

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm off to our big fancy-pants dinner followed by game night and a ball dropping at the ridiculous hour of nine o'clock. ©

Until Net Wednesday. 

 

After one of Don's post-stroke days of hunting when the guys all came back to the staging area for a meal and an evening around a campfire. It's quite the operation to get wheelchair bound guys out into the woods. Along with the above mention personal 'guide' two other volunteer help get the guys in trucks and hunting blinds. And a nurse is also only a walkie talkie call away. They had great fund raiser parties during the year, too. I have nothing by great memories of the Wheelin' Hunter's non-profit.

But this is how I remember Don's hunting days the best---with a long lens camera in hand. Every other year for decades I'd go out west hunting with him and he never shot at an animal while I was with him because he knew I wouldn't want to see one die. On opposite years he'd go with a friend or family member.

The Widow and the Window Peeper

I was prepping vegetables for dinner when realized I had a window peeper pressing his nose up against the glass door on my sun porch. I was shocked. What the heck is that? I thought. He was tomcat big, brown and fat with an slight overbite and he was only 15 feet away. When I moved closer to the door, he didn’t move. It crossed my mind that he was a monster rat but his tail was hairy and in the moment I thought rats all have flat tails void of fur. I’m not sure if that’s true but the part that freaked me out the most---after the rat thought passed---was it wasn’t afraid of me. Is he rabid? I worried. Back and forth between my dining room and sun porch glass doors he went, like he was determine to get inside. If he had a key, he would have used it, but foam didn’t followed in his wake. Nope, not rabid. Thankfully, Levi the Mighty Schnauzer was guarding the bedroom windows so I didn’t have to deal with his and my own freaking out at the same time. 

The window peeper hung around for a four-five minutes while I scared myself over how often I leave those doors wide open. Ohmygod, if the window peeper had come by the day before, he could have walked right into the house! Finally, he found his way down the steps to the dog yard where he searched for and found a place by the gate where he squeezed through the slats to freedom. I ventured out on the deck and watched him move along the lattice work at the bottom of the deck, me standing less than three feet above him, until he disappeared under my Blue Spruce. 

I hopped on the computer and located a website with videos of various wildlife of Michigan. My window peeper was a woodchuck! I didn’t see him the rest of the day and Levi didn’t get his backyard run that night. But from a woodchuck website I learned that harassment is a good way to get them to move their dens and it recommended dogs to do the harassing. Levi will be happy when I tell him that. Also under the heading of harassing techniques is to plant garlic around the opening of its burrow or pepper the area with talcum powder or blood meal. Traps, of course, and poison bait were also mentioned. It’s possible to co-exist with a woodchuck living close-by, I read, as long as it doesn’t undermine your foundation or steps---or in my case, the Blue Spruce. I’m glad I was able to identify the window peeper and it wasn’t a monster rat. If it had been a rat, I would’ve dialed 1-800-WILL-KILiT so fast the phone would have been smoking.

The idea of killing the woodchuck just because he doesn’t pay taxes where I live isn’t in my DNA and according to what I read if I’m going to harass the critter to move out of his burrow the ideal timing is now through September. He’ll still have time to settle into new digs before winter. You also can’t harass or bait them in the winter, the website said, because the females will have a litter of babies down in the burrows and it’s inhumane to kill the adults and let the babies starve. In the spring I’d have to wait until three weeks after seeing the babies above ground before I could start harassing the happy family. I have no idea what blood meal is but talcum powder sounds less Stephen King-ish so I’ll start with that. Jeez, and I thought chipmunks are a pain-in-butt for the way the taunt the dog. Wait until he sees the window peeper up close and personal. It's almost as big as he is. Operation Harassment will begin tonight when I will let Levi inspect the burrow. I hope he marks the place with pee-mail that says, “This is your eviction notice. Get out!”

It’s interesting the wide range of opinions people have about killing wildlife. When Cecil the famous lion was killed recently it was a hot topic at a debate website where I go. My husband was a life-long hunter. I understand the science of game management to protect the health and size of the herds out in the wild. I understand the ethical differences between a hunter with honor and those without---the ones who poach or take part in canned and big game trophy hunts. In my opinion, the latter categories of 'hunters' have scum-filled testicles. Sorry, if you’re someone with a dead-head from the Serengeti hanging on your wall. I’m not impressed.

Don was a hunter with honor. He followed the laws to the letter, never took a shot that wasn’t guaranteed to be a kill-shot, and he never baited game animals. He didn’t believe in those things and his manhood-ego didn't depend on him coming home with a dead animal strapped to the hood of his truck. In the last decade of my husband going out west during hunting season, he got a bigger thrill out taking award worthy photographs of wildlife using a telegraphic lens that would have been the envy of any paparazzi. It happened to my dad in his last years of hunting, too. The older they got, the less they had the heart for bringing down an animal that was minding his own business. The older we all get the more we appreciate the frailness of life and the senselessness of not co-existing with nature. If my window peeper could talk, he'd probably say that's why he moved into a widow's yard. He knew I'd be too old and soft to have 1-800-WILL-KILiT on my speed dial. ©

Who Shot the Cheyenne?

My husband had a couple of life-long friends and when they got together the stories would fly back and forth, laughter would bounce off the walls. If you look up the word ‘buddies’ in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of the three of them. That’s how close they were. Back in 1978 Don and one of those friends went out west together on a hunting trip in Don’s brand new pick up truck with duel gas tanks and a custom leather interior. And when I say it was brand new I mean he literally picked it up from the dealership a few hours before picking up his friend.

Every where they went since they hit the state line of Wyoming people were staring at them so they decided to scout out a western clothing store. As naive as it sounds now they thought leather cowboy boots, Stetson hats and western cut shirts was going to change that. It didn’t, of course. They were Easterners who walked and talked too fast compared to the locals and new clothing wasn’t going to mask that. They might as well have bought t-shirts imprinted with the words: Two Guys on a Holiday!

After hunting a couple of days without success they decided the reason the antelope weren’t impressed enough by their marksmanship to do more than just look at them with amusement was because they needed to sight their rifles in for longer distances. So out in the middle of no where, with no witnesses around, Don sighted in his Winchester then stepped aside for his friend to do the same. Ron placed his Browning 30.6 across the hood of Don’s truck ever so carefully so he wouldn’t scratch the finish and then he pulled the trigger.

“Did you see where the bullet hit?” Ron asked.

“Right there,” Don replied in a deceptively calm voice as if what had just happened was an every day occurrence. He was pointing to a bullet hole in the hood of truck. Then Don did something that drained the color from Ron’s face and frozen him in place. He slowly drew his .38 pistol out of its holster and for a few seconds Ron saw his life flash before his eyes. Damn, he’d shot Don’s brand new Chevy Cheyenne and he was going to die for it! But Don had other plans. He plucked the new Stetson off his friend’s head, threw it up in the air and deftly put a bullet hole in one side of the crown and out the other.

“I’m just getting even with you,” Don said and if he was mad he sure didn’t show it. Then he put his pistol back in his holster and after some blustering and teasing back and forth Don told his friend not to worry about it, the dealership could fix it.

Ron, of course, was embarrassed and offered to pay for repairing the bullet hole---many times---but when they got back home Don had one excuse after another for not getting the body work done. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. And it wasn’t until Ron ran into a guy who was a co-worker of Don’s that he learned the true reason why that bullet hole never got repaired. Everyone who’d see that hole in the hood and would ask about it was an opportunity for Don, the master storyteller, to be at his best. The story of who shot the Cheyenne had become a legend, the ultimate hunting trip tale. With his great comedic timing and ability to turn a five minute event into a half hour hilarious story, the tale of the wounded Cheyenne always had Don’s listeners splitting their sides with laughter.

When the truck finally out-lived its usefulness and was loaded up on the back of a flatbed truck ready to go off to the junkyard it was missing a chunk of the hood. Don had cut a piece out, memorializing the bullet hole that inspired so many how-the-heck-did-that-happen questions.

The thing that was so amazing about my husband wasn’t his ability to tell a good story—although that was pretty amazing---it was his ability to adjust to not having any speech at all. In the 12 years after his stroke his working vocabulary consisted of a couple of dozen hard-earned nouns and the phrases, “Oh, boy!” and “Oh, Shit! and Oops!” But he didn’t let his losses him turn him bitter. He stayed good-natured, and he especially loved it when his life-long friend would come over and tell their two-buddies-on-a-hunting-holiday story. Over the years Don, Ron and I had all put our own spin on the minor details but one thing remained the same: none of us ever got tired of hearing the story about the day the Cheyenne got shot. ©