A Quilt Full of Memories, Restaurant Hops and Moving On

The weather on Thursday was cooperative for a day trip to a tourist town on Lake Michigan. It was sunny, warm and the clean smell of the Great Lake was in the air. Grand Haven is known for its summer Coast Guard Festival but I was there for a restaurant hop organized by my local senior hall. (There were four busloads of us who went, spread out over several days.) If you ever get a chance to go on one, try it. We started out with soup or salad at a place with a great ambiance, then we shopped our way down to a gorgeous turn-of-the-century bank-turned-restaurant where the main course was served followed by an hour where we could do more shopping or check out the nearby marina and lighthouse. I did the latter. After that, we met for dessert and drinks at a third place. The best part of a restaurant hop is we pre-order and pre-pay for our choices so we have don’t waste time looking at menus, waiting for our food to be prepared or standing in line to pay. I had a shaved fennel and apple salad, a Stony Creek salmon dinner and tiramisu for dessert. All gourmet. All yummy! 

This week I also went to see a woman who does long-arm quilting for those of us who have made the tops of quilts, basted the batting and back panel in place and then left the project hanging in a closet for too long. That’s what I did with the queen-size quilt pictured below. I call it my “sanity quilt” because cutting and hand-sewing all those quilt pieces together literally saved my sanity in the first year following my husband’s stroke. We were stuck in a one bedroom, wheelchair accessible apartment while our two houses were up for sell and I was taking him back and forth to therapies four days a week. The lady will have the long-arm machine work done by the middle of July, she promised. I can’t wait. I’m thinking of redecorating my bedroom to match the quilt. She said when it’s finished I “must” take it to a quilt shop to show her friend who owns the place. She supposedly will “appreciate the artistry and craftsmanship.” 

I’ve only made two handmade quilts in my life and taking my “sanity quilt” in to be finished off rekindled the bug to try another one. Like I need another project, says the woman who still has some unfinished designer-type teddy bears sitting in a box from my pre-caregiver days. Heck, let’s be honest here. The entire contents of my old sewing room from my old house has never been unpacked. Still, when the big summer fabric sale starts I’m going to check it out. I really do wish I could get my creative flare for working with fabrics back. It got lost when I finished that "sanity" quilt top and I got busy settling us into our new “normal” life that lasted for twelve years. Defining moment. When Don acquired a major disability it sure changed the trajectory of our lives. It changed him. It changed me. I’ve written about defining moments in this blog before. Once I wrote: “Sometimes we need the distance of time to recognize our defining moments.” And another time I wrote, “It's not always what we do in life that gives us our defining moments, sometimes it's what we don't do---the roads not traveled.” I'm thinking that getting the quilt finished will put a period on that caregiver part of my life?

With the exception of these past three years as a widow, I have not traveled life alone in a very long time. Now, there is nothing holding me back from doing whatever I want. “If only it was that easy,” a choir of widows is singing in my ear. I read in a grief recovery book that for every year a couple was together it takes one month to recover after one of them dies. For me that translates to three and a half years. Drum roll please. I’m three years and nearly four and a half months into that professionally predicted grieving and healing period. Can you believe it, I still have forty-eight days to go before anyone has the right to say, “It’s been long enough. Move on woman!” Of course, no one is going to say that to me. They see me going here and there. They think I have moved on, and on the surface they have good reason to believe that to be true. 

Forty-eight days, or not, who knows if ticking off that time will actually matter. All I know for sure is when the dusty light of dawn creeps into the my bedroom and I'm just waking up I feel empty inside---even on days when I’m going on a day trip. That feeling doesn't recede until I'm in the kitchen drinking coffee and the dog is barking at something moving in the yard. Still, that’s progress. I remember when those empty and alone feelings used to last all day long and into the night. ©

You can right click on the photos to enlarge them, if you want to see the details on my quilt.

Widowhood Evaluation Time

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

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

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

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

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

Picking out my Future

"It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, 

the greater our capacity for waiting." 

Elizabeth Taylor
 

This past week I’ve been touring condos on the annual Parade of Homes. I can’t say that I like the new trends in home décor but it doesn’t matter, I don’t plan to buy brand new next spring when I’m ready to move. Ideally, I’ll buy something 5-6 years old where I won’t feel guilty about replacing carpeting and wall colors to something more in my desired color palette. Did I mention that I hate dark brown floors and brown marble countertops? Call me crazy. Call me old fashioned. I still like the ‘light and airy’ look. I dream of beach cottage décor and pastels.

On one hand it seems strange to be planning a new life in a new location that will entail leaving behind many of the things in our present home that represent a blending of tastes and years of joint decisions. On the other hand, the artist in me is looking forward to building a new ‘nest’ and hopefully a new life that sheds the loneliness that Don’s passing understandably dumped in my lap.

I just discovered I have mole growing deep inside my belly button. Don’t ask me how. It’s a long story. Since I’ve already had a couple of cancerous moles removed I suppose I should get this one checked out before my ‘innie’ becomes an ‘outie.' It would be embarrassing to have my obituary read: Cause of death---belly button gone wild. Since Don’s death I’ve become somewhat paranoid about my own death coming sooner rather than later. If I died in this house, for example, no one would notice until the mail carrier couldn’t stuff one more thing in the box and then she’d probably think I was on vacation and rudely forgot to notify the post office. I don’t want to be that old person you read about in the newspaper whose dog ate the corpse because there wasn’t anything else eatable left in the house. I don’t want to be the person who slides off the highway into a river and isn’t discovered until their license plate is too rusty to read. A condo in a Baby Boomer community, I’m thinking, will resolve all those worries because there is bound to be a least one nosy neighbor near-by who will memorize my comings and goings and start asking questions when I don’t show up. Who knew having a nosy neighbor could serve a useful purpose.

One of the condos I looked at had a to-die for patio that was totally private. Along the tall white fencing was an area where I could plant stuff, have a bird bath and other things to entertain the dog. He loves to decapitate pansies and pick the potted strawberries on my deck and chase the birds away that are dying of thirst. I want a condo patio like that but alas I must wait until my period of mourning is up. That’s the rule: don’t make any big changes until you’re a year out from your spouse’s passing. I know that’s good advice and after a lifetime of following the rules of life I’m not going to go start ignoring them now. So while I wait and plan and dream I will continue meditating while contemplating my navel. Oh, crap! That reminds me I have to call the dermatologist tomorrow. ©

 "...If we learn to think of it as anticipation, as learning, as growing, 

if we think of the time we spend waiting for the big things of life as

an opportunity instead of a passing of time, what wonderful horizons open out! " 

 Ann Neagle

P.S. The photo above is of a print I just bought to inspire the color palette for my next house.