Soulmates, Reoccurring Dreams and one Regret

 

I've had the Winnie-the-Pooh quote at the top of my blog since sometime in 2012, the year my husband died. "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard" made sense back then on a widow's blog but lately I've been think about giving my blog a makeover to better reflect where I'm at in life now. But a quote or meme of a grim reaper peering down my neck would scare off too many people. Except for Dawn, of course, author of the Bohemian Valhalla blog. She has what she herself describes as gallows humor and her images often have me scrolling as fast as my little fingers will go to get past the sculls and other dark-side photos she shares. We live entirely different lives but she's one of my favorite bloggers. 

But I'm getting off track because today I want to explore the idea that maybe I still haven't said goodbye to my dearly departed husband? And do people in the form of their soul-energy stick around after they give up their physical bodies? Enough things happened in the first couple of months after Don died that had me convinced souls to have as much trouble letting go as those of us left behind do. For example I rarely wore my wedding ring when we were married. I kept it hanging on a pin inside my computer wardrobe and Don would remind me to put it on when we'd go out. In all the years it hung on that pin it never fell off…until the day a minister came to the house to help me plan Don's service. After the minister left I found the ring on my keyboard, right in front of the monitor. It fell off that pin several more times under similar circumstances in the first few months after Don died. How could I not believe in signs from the other side after that? It was either believe in and be comforted by the signs or use my sense of logic which finally kicked in and told me to suck it up, that I was slamming the computer door harder and faster for the first time in over a decade and that was causing the ring to bounce off the pin. Still....

In the past few months I'm getting signs again that he's close by and I'm wondering if this is common with widows this far out from Death Day or could it just be common with people who are entering the dying process. (No, I don't have an expiration date prognosis, I'm just feeling old and worn out.) Maybe our dying is more than just the dying of the physical body. Maybe the body and soul parting is a reversal of our nine months in the womb sort of thing? Back when Roe vs Wade was debated in the Supreme Court I followed the testimonies of leading scientists and scholars from the major religions in the world that helped the justices decide the case. None of those experts could agree on when life begins and when a soul enters a fetus to make it human was a big part of the discussion. Scientists have a better understanding on the physical side of the equation now but religious leaders still don't agree and they never will because they are basing their opinions on various ways to translate the Bible. So it stands to reason no one really knows when a soul departs our bodies at the end of life either. And whose to say that it happens at the exact same moment for everyone. 

My dreams about Don are increasing in frequency---almost nightly. But I don't know if that means anything because I'm also dreaming about the dogs I've had over the years as well. I get the dog dreams. In my daytime hours I find myself longing for the companionship of a dog. I watch too many Facebook Short Reels of dogs and I have five dogs living in my building that I see daily from a distance. My next door neighbor has a dog that looks similar to my Levi. He was a Schnauzer and Robbie is a Scottie Terrier. But it breaks my heart that Robbie doesn't like me. To be fair he doesn't like most people but he literally leaves the room when I come into their apartment. Maybe the reason I've started reading romance books again is a longing for the found-your-soulmate vibes you get from those kinds of books? Two people fitting together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, what's not to like? Don't read that as I want another man in my life. No! Way! Jose! Great relationships take time to build and I'm running out of time.

Sometimes when you read a widow's blog you can get the impression that the marriage was all hearts and flowers and hand holding. I call it the 'Pedestal Versions' of the marriages that widows tend to present. And I was guilty of doing that, of writing mostly about the peaks and ignoring the valleys. But damn it, in our defense those of us with Pedestal Husbands found out that when our guys were alive we often took them for granted and all those annoying things we might have complained about simply were not important in the grand scheme. (Let that be a cautionary tale if you still have a spouse.) My husband was far from perfect. He did stupid guy stuff like hold the blankets over my head while he farted in bed. I read a scene like that in romance book last month and I burst out laughing, then I almost cried. Who would have ever guested you could miss a fart! 

But the worst guy thing Don ever did was once he yelled at me (instead of a neighbor) when the neighbor backed his car into my parked car, doing hundreds of dollars worth of damage. “You should have known better than to park directly across from a driveway!” Don shouted. The next day when I called him out on the fact that I was legally parked he said words to the effect that he was just trying to use it as a "teachable moment" for the teens who were helping us paint a house that day. "Sure, Don," I shot back. "You just taught them its okay to raise your voice to a woman, you yo-yo! And for a stupid-ass unfair reason!" Those teens were fatherless boys who looked at Don as a role model. And to this day I regret that I didn't defend myself on the spot and that he unfairly pinned the blame of the accident on me in the first place. I console myself with the fact that for three years we could barely ever leave the house without those neighborhood boys tagging alone and with a few notable exceptions, we role modeled the hell out of them as to what a healthy male/female relationship looks like.  ©

Day Trips and Metaphors for Widows

I knew this week would be exhausting but what are you going to do when you don’t want to miss anything?  Besides my Fun with Metaphors class, I went on a long day trip this week and to an oriental restaurant with my Movie and Lunch Club. (I skipped the movie because I had to pick the dog up from a boarding kennel out in the boondocks where he stayed for two nights and a day.) Tomorrow I’m going on a Red Hat Society walk-about to a deer park whatever that is, I shall know soon enough.

The day trip was billed as a Brown Bag Mystery Tour, an annual event so named because only the senior hall director, the bus driver, a fancy-shmancy restaurant and a handful of merchants know our destination until we get there. We took 150 people (three buses) staggering our stops in four small towns in mid-Michigan so we wouldn’t overwhelm the stores like a bunch of locust wanting the freebies they were waiting to put in our brown shopping bags. I’m not fond of mindless shopping without a list and a mission but I did manage to buy a jar of bourbon molasses mustard and---of all things---a bed spring turned into a note holder with the help of small, painted clothespins. After lunch, where I had the best cream brulee in my entire life, a guide from a small Presbyterian college hopped on our bus and gave us a presentation about the campus while our driver took us around. I’ve lived in Michigan my whole life and never knew we had a college so close by that has a Scottish Highlands dance troupe, a pipe band and its own registered tartan. Even their marching band wears kilts and the college hosts traditional Scottish games and revelry every summer. How cool is that!

A “cultural stop” is a part of these mystery trips, too, and this year it was a two hour stop at an educational center and museum of the Saginaw Chippewa and the Great Lakes Anishinabek Indians. It's a wonderful museum with a history lesson taught from the Indian point-of-view. I thoroughly enjoyed it but there were a couple of people on my bus who said they would have preferred to spend the time across the street at the Indian Casino. With that said, I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me when our museum guide asked for a show of hands on how many of us had heard of the Boarding School Era of Native American history and I was the only one who raised a hand. I came by that nugget of history through the back door, so to speak---by reading historical romances and wondering if this or that really happen. Back when I was hooked on the genre, I often did my own research and learned to trust the accuracy of the historical settings and events the authors’ had based their stories around.

In my Fun with Metaphors class I got my homework critiqued and if you’re not into discussing writing techniques you might get bored out of your tree by what follows so keep reading at your own risk. Those who are interested in what the professor had to say, keep reading. First, as a reminder, The metaphor I had written was: Widowhood is a vacuum sucking tin soldiers off the floor swirling them around in a dark void while other tiny souls still in its path of wrath struggle to pull its life-line from the wall.  The professor loved the last part but thought I needed to find a way define that the vacuum was a vacuum cleaner and not the other kind of vacuum. I was confusing readers right out of the gate. Then she asked what the tin soldiers represent which hadn’t even occurred to me to ask myself but I blurted out, “Parts of myself, my past and future.” Who knew! Then she asked who was pushing the vacuum and I answered, “No one. Widowhood was the driving force with no one in control.” I guess her point was that I need to learn to dig deeper when writing metaphors. Readers will asks these questions while trying to find the hidden meaning in what we write. Anyway, the changes in my re-written metaphor are subtle but they do make a difference, shoving the metaphor more into the realm of free-verse poetry. Here’s the version I’m handing in next week:

Widowhood is a vacuum thrusting forward

And sucking up tin soldiers off the floor,

Swirling them around in a dark, deep void

While more tiny souls, still in its path of wrath

Struggles to pull its life-line from the wall.

Also in class we were all given index cards with writing prompts on them to finish with a metaphor. After five minutes of writing about half the class read theirs out loud, myself not included. My prompt was: “His mind is___” And I wrote, His mind is a steel trap, leading you in with a tempting bite while you’re unaware of the game he is playing. You hang on every word of his bait. You are mesmerized, not seeing the cage door about to slam shut. He’s a storyteller, a gamester, with a purpose and you are his prize. Other writing prompts that people drew from a basket were: My house is___, my life is___, my past is___ my friend is___, and so on. The morning class went by quickly and I can see how a group like that can get to know each other on a deeper level than, say, a group of senior citizens going on a field trip. ©

Note: The photo above is of an Indian boarding school that operated in Michigan between 1893 and 1934 with the federal government sponsored purpose of assimilating the children away from their culture and traditions. The kids were forcibly taken away from their tribes and never allowed to go back home. Harsh punishments were given to any child who was caught speaking their native language.

Tall Tales and Little Fish

My husband was a born storyteller. He honed the skill at an early age by listening to his dad who had a reputation for telling long-winded stories that often left his listeners laughing. Like father, like son. It was also a rare occasion that anyone could pull one over on Don when it came to telling the difference between a tall tale and a truth filled story. Then I entered his life and I believe one of the main reasons Don fell in love with me was because, when we first met, I was able to hook him into a fairytale about my career choice that I dragged on for 3 or 4 weeks before I finally told him the truth.

To this day I don’t know what made me tell Don that I raised tropical fish in my basement and shipped them mail order for a living---probably I didn’t want to tell this stranger I’d just met at a bowling alley/bar where I actually worked for fear he’d turn out to be a stalker or just plain not my idea of a date-able guy. But I kept in character and answered his many questions a lot easier than anyone who values Truth should have been able to accomplish. I didn’t even own a goldfish at the time! I had been researching the idea of setting up a fresh water tank so I had some useful facts and fancy fish names stuffed in the corners of my brain. The rest I just made up on the fly.

Week after week he’d come by when he knew the women’s league I was bowling on would be finishing up and he’d talk me into having a drink with him and his friend. I had a crush on his friend so it wasn't a hard sell. Always, Don was full of fish questions: How did I get customers? How did I ship my fish across the country so they wouldn’t die in route? Would I help him set up a tank? What was my favorite species of fish? “Oh, I couldn’t choose a favorite,” I told him “but the Crowntail Bettas and Black Moors sell the best.” When I finally decided the joke had gone on long enough and I told him he had fallen for a fairytale hook, line and sinker, he got a sheepish look on his face that, at the time, I couldn’t interpret. And the rest of the night he was uncharacteristically quiet so I thought that was the end of it. No more stopping by the bowling alley for this guy.

I found out later on that his friend, who was at the table when I made my confession, had told their fellow co-workers in the diemakers department that a girl had pulled one over on the King of Storytelling. In GM factory talk you can read that as: The king of bullshit just got out bullshitted big time! The following week Don showed up at the bowling alley, again, and he decided as a punishment for my big fish tale we had to go out on a date the following afternoon. Guess what we did on that date. He dragged me to a dime store where I helped him pick out two goldfish and all the supplies that went with the happy couple. The rest, as they say, is history.

This story came out of my memory vault today because I was trying to come up with a theme to write about for one of my infamous (and usually tongue-in-cheek) “Sunday Sermons.”  I had goggled ‘inspirational topics’ but I couldn’t get in the mood for serious thought that might come off sounding preachy if I didn’t write it right. Then I goggled ‘Toastmasters Club topics’ and---bingo---there, I found a suggestion to pull something out of your past that changed your life and work your speech around that memory. One thought led to another and I got to wondering if I had told Don the truth that first night we met---that I worked in the floral industry---would my life have turned out differently? He might not have been intrigued enough without my “unusual career” to keep coming back. He certainly wouldn’t have been kidded unmercifully by his co-workers for being bested by a woman. The King of Bullshit lost his crown! We've gotta meet this girl!

If this blog entry were the bones to a speech I’d written for a Toastmaster’s Club the finished product might hold an audience’s attention, but as a Sunday morning inspirational piece, it falls flat. Instead of teaching the value of being a person of high morals, it holds up an example of where telling a whooper of a lie led to love. Sunday mornings should be a time to reflect on the intrinsic values that hold civilizations together, shouldn’t they? A lie, fib, practical joke---whatever you want to call what I did---is not one of those intrinsic values, so I hope no one with a young, impressionable mind is reading this. It's bad enough that the Angels who look out for soul mates are up there laughing at my hand-wringing dilemma on whether or not I should seek out a confessional booth this fine Sunday morning or to sing their praises for letting a tall tale and little fish bring two people together so many years ago. ©