Survivor's Guilt and Carnivores

Painting by David Otto

Just when I start believing I’ve got nothing more to say about widowhood thoughts kick around inside my head that could shock the panties off a nun. Why do I do that to myself? The day started out happy enough. It was sunny and finally I was getting out of the house. Destination: the bookstore, office supply and post office, Hobby Lobby and Culver’s. Plus I wanted to buy a shower gift at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Most of these places have marvelous things begging for my attention and I was happy to give it to them. At the bookstore, for example, I spotted a book titled Vegan Cooking for Carnivores and for a few moments I was excited. The author is the personal chef for Ellen DeGeneres` but for some wacko reason lacking logic I didn’t expect all the recipes to use pretend meat. In the used book section I found a vegetarian sandwiches book and bought that instead. Pear and goat cheese grilled sandwiches? Who wouldn’t be fascinated by that…or dumb enough to think you’d need a cookbook to make one? (Wait! Did I just call myself dumb?) When I got to Bed, Bath and Beyond I found a five inch sandwich and panini griddle with a cast iron press---perfect for my learning to cook-for-one project. Things were going great.

Near the end of my shopping trip I was eating a delicious Culver’s butter burger and trying hard not to see the sad faced cow in my head that donated the hamburger when it hit me how much Don used to love the “trap line” of stores I’d just checked out. In the bookstore he’d sit in the coffee shop trolling for cappuccino fans that might enjoy translating his aphasia language disorder into English. I’d come back to collect him and he was never at the table where I left him. At Culver’s his silly, wordless antics would make me laugh and forget how much I love pastoral settings with cows grazing in the summer sun. In April I’m going to be the same age as Don was when he died and then the year after that I’ll be older than him. Darn it, that’s not fair!

Do you know what else isn’t fair? Gift registers.Yup, I’m on the Debbie Downer train now and it keeps right on rolling as I wonder why widows can’t register at Bed, Bath and Beyond for our transition from living in a two-by-two world to living alone. The widowhood required redecorating alone can cost a fortune! Some of the stuff young people think they need fascinates me, though. The bride I was shopping for wanted two silicone baking mats for $25 each. I’ve had my wire cooling racks since Ring was a pup and he died in 1978. They still sell those wire racks…right next to the silicone mats and they only cost $9.00 a pair. From my bad mood view, you’d better be baking cookies that could win an episode of Sweet Genius to make $50 worth of mats make sense.

But the world doesn’t always make sense, does it. Why do we humans keep thinking it should? We find love then lose it again and throw ourselves more than a couple of pity parties before shoving a steel rod up our backs and walking forward. It’s a miracle! No more tears. Then one day some sad soul is singing about lost love on the radio and we’re left wondering how the hell that guy got inside our heads to flip the Good Mood switch to Melancholy. In a flash our emotions go from holding on to reality to wishing for the past. Does it make sense that I should enjoy a leisurely shopping trip while Don is dead? Is this my new reality---feeling guilty for getting happily involved in retail therapy? The Debbie Downer train needs to pull up at the station and let me off so I can quit asking these beat-the-widow-up type questions!

One last question, though, I’ve got to ask. If there’s a heaven or a Great Unknown as I prefer to call it, do you think the cows up there are forgiving? I can’t help it. I enjoy a good, brown sugar and bourbon marinaded Black Angus steak once in a while. And I’m only exploring the worlds of vegan and vegetarian because I can’t eat a whole beef roast all by myself. Woo is me, the widow who thinks too much. ©

The documentation of my first year of my widowhood is now available in a book format that can be previewed and/or ordered here.

Widows on Diets and Lost Horizons

I have been dieting since I came here by way of the womb. Today I had to take a link out of my watch because it was sliding around too much. Darn it, who cares about my wrists losing weight! I didn’t give up Ben and Jerry’s American Dream ice cream for smaller wrists. How did that happen? Last week I shoveled snow 3-4 times a day for five days in a row and I was as so happy, thinking all that exercise was going to result in my pants feeling too big. Nope, it had to be my wrists that got smaller. I was so hungry last week with all that shoveling and cold air that I told the dog to stay clear or he’d find himself in the microwave.

Today I’m supposed to send my doctor another fatty-fatty-two-by-four Accountability Report and this month’s email can’t be written by my Ms. Sunshine persona. After a few ups and down I’ve plateaued with only a two pound loss for this month. How will he react? Will he let me slide by on my laurels? After all, over the past four months I’ve lost the extra pounds I put on in my first nine months of widowhood which is what he wanted me to do. But will that be enough to make him happy? Will he want to haul my butt down to his office to admire my slimmer wrists if I mention them in my report? I could just “forget” to send the email. He won’t miss it what with all the people coming in to his office for stuffy noses, acid reflect and cancer.

Yesterday I went to the first of six “cooking for one” classes that I signed up for at the senior hall. This month’s class was on making healthier deserts. The instructor, a wee-little dietitian from the health department, wasn’t the least bit intimidated by cooking in front of 15 women who all probably had at least 40 years of cooking experience under their belts----that’s 600 combined years in the kitchen! No matter what questions were asked the young dietitian had an answer and a lot of the questions went right over my head. I didn’t know, for example that good vanilla has alcohol in it let alone where to buy Madagascar bourbon vanilla in town. Nor did I know that vegans don’t use honey.

Apparently we’re going to use a lot of vegan recipes in these classes. After hearing that I decided to swing by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a couple of Black Angus steaks before the classes start making me feel guilty for eating things with faces. Today we got to sample vegan chocolate pudding made with avocados and she made fruit chai chutney that we’re suppose to use every which way except on Sundays. They both tasted great but I can’t picture myself making something that would tempt me to eat it all in one setting. How is that any different than having Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer? Silly question. Thanks to the class I actually know the answer---it’s all about the nutrient values in the calories we eat. If I’m going to live to be 100 I suppose I should start caring about stuff like that.

I started reading a book for the first time since Don passed away. I used to read all the time, belonged to a book club and couldn’t leave the house without a book for fear I’d have a spare moment and be caught without something close at hand to read. I lost my concentration for reading when grief settled in for the long haul but for some reason an old classic caught my attention last week---Lost Horizon which was written in 1933---and since I escaped reading it in the past I figured it was something I needed to do. I’m not enjoying the writing style and the character development was so slow in the first 50 pages I could have baked brownies in between descriptions of the main character’s facial features. I’m three-quarters of the way through the book and the only memorial thing the 200 year old High Lama of Shangri-La has said was, “Laziness in doing stupid things can be a great virtue.” Maybe more enlightening dialogue will come in the next quarter of the book. I hope so. What good is longevity if wisdom doesn’t come with it? If I had picked up this book while Don was still alive I would have quit reading it by page fifty. But I’m afraid if I quit the book I won’t pick up another for years and I don’t want that to happen.

I talked to a woman from my old book club recently and she said it took her five years to find the concentration to read again after her husband passed away. Sad, isn’t it, that widowhood affects us in so many imperceptible ways. Ways that are not like changes in our weight where a doctor notices and becomes a cheerleader to set our bodies back to square one again. No one notices lost concentration and if they did they wouldn't ask us to send an accountability report when we’re trying to get it back. No one notices or expects an accountability report when tingles of sadness come with signing up for classes on cooking for one. We widows move ahead in such tiny steps---like the character development in Lost Horizon---that we can look like we’re standing still. But we’re not and that’s worth celebrating with Ben and Jerry’s. Oops! You didn’t hear that. ©