Storm of Confusion

 

Back in 1967 a book came out titled Coffee, Tea or Me. It was about the escapades of two airline stewardesses and it was originally published as a memoir, but about ten years ago it was revealed that the book was actually a work of fiction. It had a ghost writer and the publishing company just hired a couple of stewardesses to go around on a book tour and do interviews posing as co-authors. I don’t even remember if I read the book but I sure do remember that title because some of the girls I ran around with back then used to jokingly say it while serving coffee at a service sorority I was in at the time.

Fast forward to yesterday when I spent two hours manning a refreshment table at the senior hall. After repeatedly saying, “What can I get you? We have coffee, tea and water” I was absolutely shocked when out of the blue the words, “We have coffee, tea or me” came rolling off my tongue. It was embarrassing, of course, but I laughed it off. That didn’t stop those words from popping out two more times! I was mortified and thankfully half the people in ear shot were hard of hearing and probably thought they miss-heard what I said. Needless to say, it will be awhile before I volunteer for that job again! I did have a revelation, though. People now and in the past who want to be friendly (or flirty) at a refreshment table all come up with the same opening line: “Did you girls make all these cookies?” And yesterday we replied: “We sure did, we stayed up all night.” Back in the ‘60s, though, we actually did stay up half the night baking.

As I recall “coffee, tea or me” was a great pick-up line back in its day. It was a flirtatious code for if-you-ask-me-out-on-date-I’ll-go. Those were the good old days when girls were still half way coy and boys didn’t shout about your body parts as they passed by in a car. “Nice rack!” “Bodelicious butt!” And they wonder why old people get flaky as we age. We have decade’s worth of memories that merge with our present day adventures to form a perfect storm of confusion. Now, when guys in my peer group say, “Did you girls bake all these cookies?” I am left wondering: 1) if they can’t tell store bought from the real thing; 2) they can tell, but they think cookie humor is clever; or 3) they still flirt 1960's style. Just as long as they don’t say something like: “Your rack has fallen below your waistline” I guess it’s all good.

The lecture/slide show I was serving refreshments at featured a father/son team of photographers from up state who had spent every Tuesday for a year going around Michigan photographing nature. Those Tuesday trips resulted in a 400 page, eight pound book that sold for $95.00. I could not believe how many of those books they sold after their breath-taking slide show ended---dozens of them. There will be a lot of cat food sandwiches serviced in my neighborhood between now and Social Security check deposit day. But I found it mildly amusing that a few of the elderly people in the crowd had to ask for a “carry-out service” to get their books to their cars. Lord, I hope that’s not me in ten years but after today, when I had to ask the grocery cashier not to pack my reusable canvas bags so heavy, I'm not so sure I will be lifting any coffee table books in my future. ©

One Widow, Two Thanksgiving Invitations and a Bunch of Other Junk

There is a new generation of robocalls out there and I’ve gotten a few that reminds me of Apple’s Siri. They sound so much like a live person talking that when you interrupt with the question, “Are you a real person?” it gives you an answer something like, “I’m a computer aided communicator using a script. May I continue with the script?” If you’re in the mood to play with the system, like I was today, you can reply with something like this: “Do your scripts come in Chinese?” and it will say, “We have English, Spanish and French on our menu.” A few months ago I finally registered both my cell and landline phones on the National Do Not Call List but I don’t think it’s done a bit of good. I still get too many junk calls. But I must admit I might actually miss these interactive robocalls. One time I barked like a dog at the communicator and it said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Can you repeat your question?”

I wish they also had a National Do Not Mail List. If they did, I’d be a happy camper. I am so sick of getting hearing aid information and other stuff designated for “old people” in the mail. You turn a certain age and the whole world thinks you need a security system, an emergency dialer, hearing aids, and estate planning advice, plus information on picking an independent living home and your final resting place. I have a security system. His name is Levi the Schnauzer. I have an emergency dialer, hearing aids and a gravesite, thank you very much, so stop reminding me through the daily mail that I’m getting old!  And if I start going on the tours of independent living facilities or sitting through estate planning seminars you can bet I’m going because I need the free meals that comes with them.

It’s been a busy week here on Widowhood Lane, staring Monday when my friendly plumber spent the morning in my bathroom and me having to wait around all afternoon for a delivery. (I replaced Don’s 14 year old shower chair with one of my own.) Tuesday was a Thanksgiving dinner luncheon at the senior hall where I learned that old women who talk about the good old days of baking and cooking this or that are boring. No wonder no one wants to sit next to grandma at family parties. Wednesday was a Red Hat Society tea where a new member shocked the heck out of me by announcing that she was a church pastor about to retire. My image of pastor ladies needs adjusting because I think she’s going to be a lot of fun. Thursday I went to a lecture at the senior hall given by a woman who had walked a total of 2,000 miles around selected shorelines of Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes. Man, I have to push myself to walk two miles on a nature trail. What drives someone to take on such an ambitious trek?  She said she was having a mid-life crisis and here I thought all mid-life crisis’s involved a pair red high-heels and a mini skirt for women and a sports car and chest waxing for guys.

Friday the plumber had to come back so I can use the shower. Ya, I know all about sediments that can get pushed through the pipes when the main water line gets turned off, then back on again and the sediments can get caught in filter screens, cutting off the water flow, but why do things like that always happen to me? I had just put shampoo in my hair and I had to finish my ‘shower’ in the sink. Well, I could have used the guest bath but at the time the thought never crossed my mind. That room is off limits to me and the dog---always has been, and apparently always will be. While I was doing my ‘shower’ in the sink I asked myself the is-this-a-disaster-or-an-inconvenience question in an attempt to talk yourself down off the window ledge I was clinging to in my head. And the answer came back that I’m lucky I at least have a house and a shower and the money to fix what gets broken. Crisis averted. Chalk another one up for common sense.

I thought I’d be spending Thanksgiving alone this year but I finally got two invitations, two days apart. One was from a niece on my husband’s side of the family that I’ve spent many holidays with over the years. This year they are going to a restaurant. And the other invitation came from my nephew’s in-laws for a big gathering of their family. I’m going to feel out of place with my nephew’s in-laws---I don’t know them well---but they asked first so I’m going with a Mary Poppins smile in place and my store-bought tiramisu in hand. First I have to study up on appropriate dinner table conversation. My Victorian era etiquette book says not to talk about politics, religion or finances in mixed company---a rule I’ve always agreed with at party format events---and I’m adding cooking back in the good-old days to that list. What’s left? Twerking? All I can think about when Miley Cyrus does that is how easy it is to accidentally fart in that position…and I seriously doubt THAT’S a proper topic for conversation with a table full of near-strangers. Who would have ever guessed my Thanksgiving, this year, is coming with homework in advance? ©

The Bad Girl Widow

In one of my very first blog entries I wrote: “Oh crap, widowhood is going to be fattening!” And I was right. At the doctor’s office today he pronounced me six pounds tubbier than I was six months ago at my last visit. He didn’t, of course, use the word ‘tubby’---he’s a nice guy---but my weight gain prompted a long “bad girl” discussion that ended with me having to sign a pledge to add 30 minutes of exercise to my day, journal my food intake and e-mail him an accountability report once a month. Tools for losing weight. Whoop de doo!

The report thing was my own fault. He wanted me to come back to the office in three months for a follow up but I pulled the Old People Card and said I wouldn’t do that in the winter months for anything less than a heart attack. “Spring will have to do,” I said, thinking I had out-smarted a guy who soaking wet couldn’t weigh more than a bale of hay. I didn’t count on him standing his ground and pulling the accountability pledge out of his bag of tricks to use on stubborn patients who won’t do follow up appointments if it’s snowing. He even had his nurse register me for an interactive website where I can view my medical test results, send Mr. Doctor my monthly reports, and ask his nurse questions like, “If I just broke my big toe will I need a cast?” When I send in my first tubby report I’m going to sign it, “from fatty, fatty two by four.” Damn it, it’s going to be a long winter without my comfort foods to keep me warm!

During the “bad girl” discussion I confessed that I’m an emotional eater and the doctor asked, “Is there something special going on in your life that is causing you stress?” If looks could kill, he’d be dead. I had a hard time not calling him an idiot for not remembering that---DUH!---my husband died nine months ago! But deep down inside I wondered if 10 years from now I won’t still be using the same excuse if I don’t get my bad girl eating binges under control. So I put my strong widow lady face in place and as sweet as marshmallows in cocoa I explained what I’ve been doing since Don died.

Near the end of the visit the doctor left the room to get me a flu shot injection and he came back with a nurse in tow I hadn’t seen since before Don passed away. She’d just heard the news and was upset that she didn’t know before. He was her favorite patient, she said and “I just loved Don to death.” Oh okay. It’s a common expression and at first it went right over my head but when it hit me I had to concentrate on stopping the full blown pucker up and cry that was forming in my head. Meanwhile, the nurse realized what she said about loving Don to death and like a slow motion video you could see a pucker up and cry washing over her face. The next thing you know we were both crying and Mr. Skinny Ass Doctor was standing in between us with one arm awkwardly around each of us. And for this surreal hug fest I wondered how much extra Medicare would get billed.

On the way home I had the Prime Country station playing on the radio and Dan Seals was singing One Friend:

Sometimes the world was on our side;
Sometimes it wasn't fair.
Sometimes it gave a helping hand;
Sometimes we didn't care.

'Cause when we were together,
It made the dream come true.
If I had only one friend left,
I'd want it to be you.
Someone who understands me,
And knows me inside out….

Well, isn’t that just like a country singer, I thought, playing my emotions like a violin and making me wish I could write like that. Then I pulled over to the side of the road and cried the color right out of my irises. Don was that one friend in my life who knew me inside out and now his spirit is off doing what ever spirits do in the Great Unknown and I’m stuck writing fatty two by four letters in my head. I’d call him an ass-breath for dying and leaving me alone but I’m trying to quit swearing. And Dan Seals? Well let’s just say I’m still mad at him for making me late for dinner. ©

Interring the Ashes at the Grave

I woke up before the robins this morning with a dream still hanging around in the corners of my mind. I was searching in vain for Don’s phone number because I knew he’d overslept and wouldn’t be able to wake up without my help. My deceased parents were also in the dream and not at all concerned that I couldn’t find the number I was looking for. “Leave him alone,” my mom said, “He’ll be fine.”

It’s not unusual for me to wake up with a fragile dream hanging just out of my reach and sometimes I try to will myself back to sleep so I can finish the work my subconscious mind was doing in the night. But this morning I couldn’t drift back to sleep because I remembered this is the day Don’s ashes get interred at the gravesite---at least most of them. Some I’m taking to Lake Michigan this summer. I’m having trouble fighting the compulsion to divide his remains even more so I can leave some of his ashes at the farm where Don grew up and also take some ashes out during a bad snowstorm and let them go in the wind. (Don loved snowstorms and the plowing that took place after.) I’d also like to put some of his ashes in our backyard, at the house we built together. It’s a place he was immensely proud to live in and the first thing almost every morning that he lived here he’d sing, “Beautiful, beautiful!” to the walls. I can think of a dozen places I’d like to leave part of his ashes and burying them with a headstone is not one of them. 

But he wanted to be interned in this cemetery, in the town where he went to school, and where he once spent the summer mowing the grass as a punishment from the local judge. (Kids today are still messing with the city sign but few are as creative as Don and his friends who managed to change some letters around and create a swear word.) Don picked out the gravesite based on the fact that his life-long friends owned the site next to ours. That tickled his sense of humor on one hand, but on the other hand there was something deeply sentimental about his choice. Don was more sentimental than a lot of people would have guessed. 

At the cemetery the sexton asked me if I wanted to be at the foot or head of the gravesite because Don’s ashes would be placed at the opposite end and it struck me that these three guys---two sextons and the funeral director---would probably judge our entire marriage dynamics by the answer I gave. I went back and forth trying to figure out a logical choice and finally I decided dead is dead and what difference could it possibly make what I picked or what these strangers thought. They call it widow’s brain when you can’t make decisions and this decision made me feel like a driveling idiot. I did, however, decide quickly that I wanted a rock that the sexton unearthed while digging the hole for the box of ashes. Don and I never took a vacation that we didn’t haul a few rocks back home. 

I had the dog in the car and after the ashes were in their final resting place I took Levi down the near-by nature trail and I picked a spot by the river to sit down and reflect on the finality of getting buried in the ground. It was cold and windy with the smell of rain pushing in with the dark clouds over head. No other people were in sight but the sounds of nature were all around me---the trees rubbing against one another, a pair of broad-winged hawks soaring above, the current of the river making its way south---and surprisingly Levi sat quietly watching a chipmunk balling up a dried oak leaf to carry home. If it had been a bird, he would have barked. 

I don’t really believe that our dreams are anything more than our own thoughts, memories, fears, and imagination all twisted together and processed in the unmapped parts of our brain. I used to wish our dreams are windows into a parallel universe where we’d all go at night to live. I still believe that great movies like What Dreams May Come (about the hereafter) are born in a person’s nighttime dreams. But today the only thought I had about dreams is this: if there is even the slightest chance that some dreams are spiritual signs from the other side then my mother’s words when I woke up this morning are the greatest comfort I could have asked for at a time like this, that “Don will be fine” where ever he’s at in the great unknown. 

Note: The photo above is the rock from Don's gravesite. It measures nearly five inches across and if anyone knows what kind it is will you leave me a note? The photo below shows some of the rocks we've brought home over the years.

 

The Widowhood Train

If you’re reading this blog you’ve probably been in the circle of people who’ve been standing at the station waving ‘goodbye’ as I board the train to Crazyville. That’s the place where the insurance companies, Social Security, the pension administration, loan departments, and credit card people all conspire to send recently widowed women. “All aboard, ladies! Leave your marbles with the agent as you board the train and have a nice day!”

Today I got two letters in the mail from Social Security. One says, “We checked our records due to the death of your husband. We found that the benefit amount we are paying you now is the only one you can receive.” The benefit they named was the amount I’ve been getting right along since I retired. The other letter says, “You are entitled to monthly widow’s benefits beginning January 2012. This is in addition to the benefit you receive on your own earnings record.”

What the heck am I suppose to do with those conflicting bits of information? Pick the one I like and throw out the other? Pin them both to the wall, tie on a blindfold and throw a dart in their direction? "Yes, madame, the first letter you hit with the dart determines the quality of the rest of your life.”

Obviously, both letters can’t be correct so which one am I to believe? There’s no date in the headings of these letters and no time stamp on the envelopes. No clues except for the damn ticket to Crazyville that magically appeared on the table as I tried to figure out what to do next. If this happens to other widowed people no wonder the wait times on the phone to Social Security are so long. It’s a good thing I have the weekend to practice my sweet, little old lady routine before I call S.S. because women on the train to Crazyville can be, well, CRAZY! If I called now the person on the other end of the line would get an ear full of freshly gathered dog do-do. ©

Married or Single

Yesterday for the first time I had to pick between checking a box for "single" or "married" on a form. I sat there staring at it for the longest time. I couldn't decide what I am! No choice for "widow" was given---isn't that kind of in between being married and single? I still feel married and committed even though I'm alone in the world now. I still feel half of a whole. One pea in a pod made for two. But there were no gray areas on that form. I had to choose. I planned every detail of my husband's funeral with the determination of a five star general, I wrote the eulogy and picked out the headstone all with no hesitations and with the conviction that I knew exactly what the right thing to do was. But it took me twenty minutes of hand wringing to decide how to fill out a damn form!

I remember one time before were we married when some anonymous person taking information for a form asked Don if he was married. “On the weekends,” he said while dramatically hugging me closer. He didn’t embarrass me often but he did that time. Everything I do now brings up a silly or sweet memory like this. I’m sure that's just my inner self’s way of reminding me to find the balance. The balance between grieving a loss and savoring a shared history. My inner voice can be such an annoying twit when she's right.

“Don’t take little hiccups like picking a box to check on a form so seriously!” that nag of an inner voice repeats in my head as if I didn't hear her the first time.

And to that, I yell back: “Go away!” You’re going to get me committed for inappropriately talking to myself!” ©

Sweet, Little Old Widow Lady

On the agenda for today was ordering the stone for my husband’s grave. Or I should say our grave stone since eventually both our cremated remains will reside in the same place. That was a surreal experience, walking into the monument company and seeing all those beautiful tombstones in their display room. For several years my husband had wanted to order a stone and I’d been the one dragging my feet. There’s something special he wanted to make sure got etched in marble for all of eternity but I was a little creeped out by the idea of seeing my own name on a grave. But “Some day” finally got here, and the job couldn’t be put off any longer. What my husband wanted and will get is a line from a Roy Rogers and Dale Evans song: “Happy trails to you --- until we meet again.” Yup, he was a bit sentimental about some things.

After the salesman wrote that line down and assured me there would be no problem using the copyrighted lyrics, he asked for my husband’s birth and death dates. I told him. Then he says, “And what dates should be use for you?”

From out of no where I snapped back: “If we knew that, I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you.”

People in the ‘death and dying’ business are so serious and somber and ever so worried about offending someone whose emotions are close to the surface. The look on his face was priceless until he noticed that I was smiling and then he cracked one, too.

“Let me rephrase that,” he said, “when were you born?”

Talk about being serious, somber and afraid of offending a client, the woman at the funeral home had put the wrong picture on the remembrance card and when I pointed that out she looked so stricken that I glanced down at her feet, half expecting to see pee running down her leg and filling up her shoe. I don’t remember ever having that kind of power over another person and it was fascinating. I suppose it had something to do with me raising my voice just a tiny tad when I told her that she, herself, had confirmed that I had e-mailed two photos---one for the obituary and one for the card. Fortunately, in time of the service, she came through with a corrected version of the card and as a reward I didn’t even yell at her when the video they taped of the service crashed half way through. After all, I had to start somewhere practicing to be a sweet, little old widow lady. ©