Keeping Busy, Keeping Sane

Oh, my God, I thought I was going to pee my pants sitting at my computer this week. I was so wrapped up in debating politics on a message board that several times I didn’t want to leave the keyboard to answer Nature’s call. I used to frequent the political message boards for a couple of hours every day before Don passed away and this is the first time since then that I’ve gotten my old fighting moxie and tolerance for the trollers back. Nothing like a national convention of politicians to draw me back into an activity I used to love. In college I was on a debating team and taking part on political message boards reminds me of those days with the added benefit of keeping the wheels in my old brain moving, like exercise to prevent Alzheimer’s from setting in. If this week is any indication, part of my pre-widowhood personality is returning.       

A couple of days ago I got a call from a woman who’d lost her husband about a year before Don passed away. Her husband and mine had a lot in common. Both had strokes in the same time frame that left them right side paralyzed and with extreme language disorders. They both worked hard at therapy and had positive attitudes. The four of us attended speech therapy classes together two days a week for several years plus we did a little socializing with the entire class of eight as well. You get to know a lot about another couple when you go through something like that and it didn’t surprise me when my friend said that she still cries almost every day. Widowhood is hard.

After that phone call I couldn’t help wondering why I’m not crying every day. At a widowhood support site I go to on occasion, other women further out than I am report the tears are still coming frequently. I decided it was partly due to the fact that I’ve been keeping myself insanity busy. Busy with downsizing Don’s stuff and daydreaming about what I want my next transformation to look like. I’ve turned my sun porch into a sort of hope chest; squirreling things in the corners that will fit the new décor of the condo I hope to buy next year. The antique gas pumps in Don’s collection are up for auction right now---the last of the big things to go---and his sign collection is gone. I did keep one sign from the bus company his father started back in the 1920’s. A beach cottage décor can always use a sign or two.

My speech class friend still has her husband’s clothing hanging in the closet. Hearing that made me so glad I bit the bullet early on and cleaned the closet out of all but a half a dozen of Don’s shirts. Maybe walking by a closet full of your deceased husband’s clothing keeps you from moving forward? I don’t know, but all widows have a hard time with closet purging. I had a hard time, that’s for sure. I blogged two entries about the process but looking back, for me, it was the right thing to do at the right time. Still, it seems to me the widows who are still crying daily after two years are the ones who haven’t dealt with their husband’s clothing. But could this be the classic question of which came first---the chicken or the egg? Do they cry daily because the clothes are keeping them struck in the beginning stages of grief or is the daily crying an indication of a deep depression that is preventing them from purging the closet?

I don’t have a good ending for this blog entry so I’ll just share the fact that my beautiful dog now has green feet. I made the mistake of taking him out to run in the back yard just after the grass had been cut. It was still wet from morning dew and it stained his white paws up high enough so it looks like he’s wearing socks. I know how to get grass stains out of clothing but I don’t know how to get it out of Schnauzers which just goes to show that no matter how old you get there is always something new to google.  ©

Please Remember Me, Don, and Johnny Appleseed

Lake Michigan Shore

It occurred to me recently that I’ve been “Johnny Appleseeding” Don’s ashes over two counties and seven places. Half were buried in April at a cemetery in a little town he loved. But this week---at seven months out from his passing---I scattered a quarter of Don’s ashes at Lake Michigan. Also this week I scattered smaller amounts in two other places: 1) under the white pine trees we planted right outside the window where I sit at my computer, and 2) along a nature trail. The nature trail runs close to the back side of the 160 acre farm where Don grew up. A month of two ago I poured some of his ashes in the river in the heart of Rockford where Don grew up. It was near the dog park where we used to take Levi. Then there are the ashes enclosed in a four inch tall ash urn kept in a velvet box, plus the tiny amount enclosed in my sterling silver ash urn locket.

In the 1800s Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed had a purpose when he went across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania planting apple trees but I have no clue what my purpose was in dividing Don’s remains between so many places. Maybe I really believe that out of the ashes new life grows and I wanted be sure at least one of the places I deposited them will remain undisturbed until that new life comes forth. (It’s never been my style to put all my eggs in one basket.) Or maybe I just like the idea that Don gets a choice of places to haunt until his soul gets tired of hanging around earth. And then there is the strong possibility that I just didn’t like the idea of having to go to a cemetery to remember Don on days when we’re supposed to honor the dead.

It’s a popular myth that Johnny Appleseed randomly planted trees in his travels as a missionary but the fact is he actually planted nurseries and built fences around them. Back in his days on earth, there was a law in the Midwest that required people who claimed frontier land to plant orchards to hold on to their claims and that made the land around Johnny Appleseed’s little nurseries popular plots to homestead because bargain priced nursery stock was close at hand. When he died his sister inherited 1,200 acres of his apple saplings, and to this day several locations claim Johnny’s gravesite. I can see how my decision to strew Don’s ashes over two counties could cause confusion over Don’s final resting place so maybe someday Johnny and Don will have a where-is-he type dispute in common.

The day I spread the ashes at Lake Michigan with my oldest niece and her husband in tow it was a beautiful, sunny day. We went to Don’s favorite antique mall, had lunch where we could watch boats going by and, of course, we drove down to the beach. From there, we walked a short distance down the shoreline where we left the ashes---some in the water and some at the top of a sand dune that is near where the burnt remains of a small town is buried underneath the sand. Mother Nature took what the fire didn’t and now Mother Nature will have her way with part of Don. Don loved the folklore of that old ghost town and he had read everything ever written on the subject. I still have $3 Banknote issued in 1837 from the bank in that ghost town---Singapore, Michigan.

All of Don’s ashes have been spread now but I had a hard time stopping myself from dividing them even more. On the way home from Lake Michigan I was trying to figure out why it was so hard to bring an end to my Johnny Appleseed-like mission. Did I do the right or wrong thing leaving Don in so many places? Imagine my surprise when just after that question entered my thoughts I got a sign that I took as a seal of approval. As I turned a corner a rainbow, big and bright appeared in the sky and at the same time Tim McGraw was on the radio singing the song, Please Remember Me. ©

 "Remember me when you're out walkin'
When the snow falls high outside your door
Late at night when you're not sleepin'
And moonlight falls across your floor….

 .....please remember me.”

Top of the Sand Dune

The Last One to Go – A Tale of Friendship

Once upon of time there were four people who managed to stay close friends their entire adult lives and then some. The last one to pass over to the Great Unknown did so this week at 93 years old but what she and the others in the foursome left behind will endure for generations. Among their individual accomplishments in life, together they all modeled for their families a flawless example of what true friendship is all about.

Betty, her husband Harold and my folks met before I was born. For years they spent New Years Eve and Day together, took part in many social activities together and both couples built cottages on the same lake. In the summers our families intermingled almost daily. We kids swam together, played cowboys and Indians together, walked to the store for ice cream together, built forts together, and on rainy days we’d all sit around Betty’s huge table playing board games or poker. How did Betty put up with a gang of kids bringing sand and too much youthful energy into her house, not to mention our need for an endless supply of drinkable liquids? She put up with us with a warm smile and a heart that was always looking for ways to make us more comfortable in her presence. And no one ever went hungry at Betty’s house.

When I was young and still trying to figure life out I asked my dad why Betty and Harold and my folks were such good friends. I wanted to know what held them together because they all had such different personalities---even held different views on politics and social issues. Dad told me if we’re looking for friends who think just like we do then we’re not going to have any friends. “Friends,” he said, “are for having fun with and to respect for their uniqueness without trying to change them.” Oh, and did these four friends have fun. When they’d get together there was always laughter and lively, easy-going conversations. There were summer parties, too, where the foursome could be found singing, dancing, or just sharing a work project and making it more fun with a picnic thrown into the mix.

Betty’s service is the first I’ve been to since Don passed away and they say that first funeral post a spouse’s death is hard for a widow, often bringing flashbacks and tears for the wrong deceased. Betty’s service wasn’t like that for me. Not even for a second. It was a celebration of her life, filled with joyful tales about how upbeat, positive and giving Betty was. I could tell by the memories her family shared that Betty in her later life hadn’t changed much from the Betty I’d known in my youth.

Once upon a time there was a woman named Betty. She was a loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and a dear friend to both of my parents. She knew how to love, laugh and enjoy life. She knew how to make everyone around her feel special and welcome. She knew how to work hard, knit, play cards, cook for a crowd and dozens of other things too numerous to list. But she probably never knew that she was part of a foursome who taught the world around them about the power of deep and lasting friendship.
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As all stories go, Betty’s had to end and in my imagination she now lives happily ever after with her family and friends who’d passed over before her. My parents, I have no doubt, have been saving a place for her to sit at a gold-gilded pinochle table. Rest in peace, Betty, you deserve it. It was a privilege to have known you.  ©

“Friendship isn’t a big thing. It’s a million little things.”

Author Unknown