She Is Me

 

My cousin sent me this and the more I see it the more I know this is me. I have gotten through, I did not know there was a choice.  One cannot just lay down nor wallow, nor give up.  Humans are not like a flower done blooming that can wilt away although I sure have wished I could at times.  

Overall I am doing quite well since Jerry passed in December, medically the stress of all this has not harmed me, my doctors are pleased.  My annual cardiologist check up went very well,  Those are good, I am somehow working it through.  But the last couple days, for no particular reason, I seem to backslide.  I have read/heard that grief is like that, just about the time you think you are in smooth waters, smooth easier sailing, watch out here comes a wave.  Strange feelings, for me as I am noticing this aloneness.  When I come in from outside weeding and trimming, there is no one to say, "ok, you have done enough for one day, done now.."  so I have to tell that to myself.    I think about my friends who were single and who lived alone, the closest are gone now too.  But they managed OK.  How did they do that?  Was it because that was ll they knew.  They had nothing to get really used to.  One lived with her aging parents and after they passed she stayed in the family home and continued on with life.

Maybe if you are not used to someone else being part of life, considering and  making decisions, companionship, comfort, love and 53 + years together being solitary does not seem different.  But for me it's major.  I miss him at pre dinner cocktail time when he'd have a beer and I'd pour a glass of wine.  Yes, I still pour myself that wine.  But no one is here to ask, "what's on the menu?" or, "let's go to Schmitty's and eat.."   No one is here to eat with.  I still cook, I always will.  I prefer my own food, I am just like my late aunt, "eat at home you know what you have then".  It is a challenge to purchase and cook portions to single, other than a chop, burger or small steak, so I adjust to having left overs.  Some I do not mind, left over salmon, chicken, even steak, cut or  diced into a salad make a good meal for me, especially on these hot days we have endured since June.   But this post is not about how I am cooking...it's about noticing how alone solitary life is.  

My cousin, the retired Monsignor who lives alone now in PA in his family home tells me that he is by himself and I will adjust. I suppose I have to,  there is no choice.  I am not the  one to start going out for fast food or  eating out alone just to sit alone in a restaurant.  

When I am overly busy with chores, errands or when I was so preoccupied selling the coach and pick up I didn't get this wistful.  So the grief wave right now will pass, I tell myself, It came to pass not to stay.  Doesn't mean I have to like it.  Just tolerate and accept..

Getting along but it sucks

2017 FL  Jerry found the
castle he wanted

 What another week but through my prayers , angels and my Tribe Beyond  I made it.   What I can say is this business of widowhood sucks,  just plain sucks.    I do not like it yet it is, I can do no more than what I do.  I am still in the lousy process of selling our dream castle on wheels, our motor coach, a lifetime to achieve that luxury level and then crap!  Never got to enjoy it.  It was Jerry's pride and joy.  It was to be our winter home as we'd snowbird.  So much was  to be, but then life twisted upside down, sideways  and inside out.  He is gone and here I am. It sucks. 

 I go along but I am so damn lonely.  I have lost more people than I know alive.  Some days I am just at home and never see or hear from anyone. I would like to have people pop in, stop by but that is not happening.  I have no one like that around here.  

3 to back up,  Jerry did alone

 This week I had to have Freon added to the front air conditioning system as I try to have it all nice for the  buyer. I am thankful for another local acquaintance who referred me to a very decent diesel service locally. It is tricky to pull into and out of its house, shop here, but Jerry did it himself always.  Well the techs did it too but they said "tricky".   Because the friend who drives it for me is off on their annual family vacation I needed someone to drive it there.  The shop was so gracious to me, they came to pick up and bring back, checked it all out and despite my worrying all was good.  The price was reasonable,  Surely a blessing.  The guys were very nice.  It had to be kept overnight  because they were busy, so that day until I heard that I stewed imagining the worst things wrong. 

 That is what I hate about the way I have become in widowhood,  I seem to always imagine the worst.  I was never that way before, I was always hopeful.  I used to be optimistic.  Will I never be that way again?  I hate being frantic, on edge, gloomy.  New me.is not me, awful.   

Coach has to fit  between rafters and
snugly into back bump out.  Tricky

I like the people who are buying it and I wish them the happiness with it that we looked so forward to and never got.  They are financing and the process has dragged on. I have had so much paperwork and I'm selling, sigh.   I will cry when this leaves yet I will be so thankful.  This has been a huge burden on me.  It will soon be over. It has been exhausting beyond what I could have ever imagined.  So much responsibility alone. 

 Through all this ups and downs and worries that all worked out I have missed Jerry more and more.  Being alone without anyone to talk things over or share hurts.  I am very disappointed in so called friends locally. I have no family. The  few who are afar do not care.   I know now people go on their own way,  they do not care about me and my trials, feelings.  They are on with their lives.  So I endure and with much prayer I get along.  But it sucks. 

 I laughed the other day ,thinking   if just  a few of the phony FB friend requests I get from men were real, I would be flattered,  in a more optimistic mood.  But I ignore all those, wisely,  nothing but trouble. Despite their claims to be widowers, and good looking, hah!   At least I am not that gullible,  and I am not looking for a man.  I only wish I had real friends who came by and or called.  I wish I had someone to talk to, to listen to me.  I miss Jerry. 

2017 into the shop he had it shining

Fake it until you make it.

 I do not know where I heard that or if I made it up, but yesterday it came to me  clearly.  I am doing just that.  When moments come, I push through and let them pass.  Now that the weather is warm and spring appears here to stay I can work outside, dig in the dirt and keep busy that way.   Dandelions, first bursts are showing in nearby fields, seems like overnight after just with a couple warm days, thankful we have a lawn service that sprays our yard to prevent these prolific weeds. I snapped these alongside the school on my walk yesterday.  

 

Yesterday I was busy, bought rosemary, basil and parsley at Home Depot and planted them.  Love that scent of rosemary which I pot each year.  Really enjoy cutting my own fresh herbs to use in my meals..

Dirt digging lifts my spirits I have been doing it all my life, early memories  with my granpap Teofil digging in the dirt, maybe I was 4?  And this year is no different.  I resisted a  temptation yesterday to buy more roses  for the very diminished front rose garden, but going along the aisles I talked myself out of it.  Jerry was better at digging the deeper holes for rose bushes, here  and I worry about their winter survival.  I have lost most of the ones I started with. In summer we get the dreadful Japanese beetles here and they have no repellant so that means I have to catch them by hand, usually early in the morning and drown them in a jar, just like my grandma Rose did except her jar had kerosene and I use only detergent in water.  I guess I will have to be content with my memories of my 400 roses in CA.   

Yesterday our snow plow guy stopped by with his bill for March and said he was done with snow but I should not worry because if we get a storm he will plow me out..  I agreed I am very done with snow too and now that I have dragged the furniture out onto the deck from the season room, it is done.  I now have reclaimed the season room for living in.  I like to sit there the few times I do sit down thru the day.  It is peaceful,. An afternoon glass of wine goes perfectly there.  

Being a local friend too he asked me how I was doing and getting used to being by myself.  I told him it is not easy after 53 years this is a new routine  but I am not the only one living alone and I will fake it till I make it.  He said, Well you might not always be alone, you are a good looking woman and some guy will come around."  To which I almost shouted, "not for me never ever.."  He laughed and said he knew he'd get a rise out of me that way.  I suppose it was a complement as well as a tease, but  I still miss Jerry and know I will forever,.  I cannot expect different after 53 years.   No one will ever replace him.  I am financially ok and do not have to  move nor adjust my lifestyle downward, do not have to work, did not have to make anymore quick decisions changing things.  That is positive, many are not so fortunate, but we planned carefully and I worked at my career 34 years, and we saved.  So here I am faking until I make it.     

Grief stages and reality of aloneness

Before mass the other Saturday evening, our deacon  asked me how I was doing and said he thinks about me frequently.  I  replied, "I am doing good, I think,  and others seem to say so too.  I have my moments but I expect them and I let them be."   He asked how long we had been married and when I told him 53 years, he replied, "when you share a lifetime together like that and that is a lifetime for many and beyond a lifetime for others, you can expect to grieve.  It is absolutely perfectly natural."  I shared with him that I think I am at peace, if this is peace because I know I did all I could for those months and the last hardest weeks, when I so worried about how I would continue to care for him as he became weaker and could hardly get up out of bed.  All I could do was pray.  But God was with me and still is always. I knew Jerry despised becoming frail and feeble, his main complaint was he hated not being able to do anything, he would say, "I can't do anything."  He had always been strong, healthy. He had overcome and survived. At Jerry's last breath when he gasped and was gone immediately and I saw the peaceful look of comfort that came all over his face immediately, I knew he was better off, that his struggle ended with victory of eternal rest and that we will be together again, that we will be together in my heart here on earth as long as I live."  "  He agreed that my faith is my great sustainer and I replied, "yes, I know ...it has held me through the loss of my only son and others...it is all I have left and it will just have to be there for me.  Somehow I always suspected I might become4 a widow because Jerry was 7 years older than me, but with his health and the longevity of his family, his genes surely meant a long life ahead.  He would tease that he would see 100 and surely he could have if those lungs had not been ravaged." 

Later, after mass, at home, I pondered  if all the practice I have had these past few years in losing  my dearest to deaths has numbed me or prepared me.  I have been blessed with little despair, not the  weeping and sobbing as some do at all.  The losses may have helped me to realize that death is the end of this life for each and every one of us, no one gets out of this life alive. It certainly has required me to become resilient, but then I had Jerry alongside me as my rock, now  just me and God.  I have had plenty of grief rehearsals. 

Currently a longtime friend from PA is grieving  and marking her first a month loss of her husband.  But she has family and  from her FB posts her daughter stays the night with her,  she does not face aloneness and seems to be unable to cope.  She is truly mournful to the depths.  I feel sorry for her and yet, I feel a bit annoyed.  I think, "get a hold of yourself, you have support, family people right there....and remember you are not the only widow in the world."  But I do not say that to her,  I  only do as others, offer a few encouraging words and  will send her another card soon.  And yet I compare to myself and my situation.  I know we are different people and perhaps I am super strong because I have to be. There is no one who will shoulder this with me.  There are days when I hear from nobody and on gloomy cold wintry days I keep myself busy inside doing something, any project, because I have no human contact.  I can make phone calls and I do.  I can post to FB and talk with others and I do, but it is not the same as having another person around.  But I just have to get used to it,  Jerry is not coming back.  This I know.  

t is now just me and I must do my darndest no matter what.  I must take care of me.  I promised Jerry I would.  In fact I think once I got it into his mind that I would be ok and he believed that he was free to leave this earth.  The last week he would say, "you are strong, you will be ok, and I will always watch for you." This little cartoon I saw years ago is so appropriate, . 

 

My mother and father 
 1943 Charleston, SC

I  think back over my family and all the women who became widows, not a one of them sat around and wept nor carried on.  It just is not our way, not that they did not grieve, they too were hurt, devastated, but they knew life must go on. I think of my Mom, pregnant with me,  WWII era and my father a B24 pilot in the Army Air Corps.  He and his plane and entire crew disappeared into the Atlantic.  No trace ever found.  Mom was
young only 20 and alone there in South Carolina when she got that dreadful news, her mother, my grandmother went to her on the train and brought her back to PA. Mom always said, "life is for the living."  She did remarry and life did go on.  My grandma became a widow later in life and then immediately moved into our house.  Years later when she came out to CA to help me, a dumb young, struggling single mother, she said that she wished she would have had a way to keep her own place instead of moving in and  cautioned me to always be able to take care of myself.  Life was different then for her, she had no income. She said back then that "you never know what life will throw at you so just be sure to keep your hands folded to the Lord.  

Something else that has given me strength is my foundation in change management in career days, way back when I was implementing quality teams, etc.  Part of the training focused on the stages of grief based on the  research work of Elizabeth Kubler Ross into deaths.  Death is the ultimate change.  We learned about DABDA, and how some people cycle back and around and may become perpetually stuck in one cycle or another.  She asserts there are  5 stages of grief, reflected by the first letter of each, and peoples reactions vary.  They may not  smoothly flowing from one stage to another.  They may not move through the stages in a linear way.   

• Denial   What?  Can't be.  Will not happen.  No way
• Anger   How can this happen.. I do not deserve this. This is not fair. Where's God?
• Bargaining  Just another month, year, day, etc.  I will be a better person.  I will do.....
• Depression  My heart is broken.  I can't go on. I want to die.   
• Acceptance      So this is the end.  Let me be still.  I can go on.  I must persevere

I feel blessed and that my faith has me at acceptance.  That my faith and life brought me to this.  And though I do not like it,  I wouldn't have chosen this, it is now here .And I must go on, alone.  And keep my faith.

 

Half after being whole and learnings

2014 Us on October cruise 

  I love this photo from our October 2014 Cruise  along the Eastern Maritimes and to Quebec.  It was over our 47th anniversary.   The last  cruise we took It shows how we adored each other, we really did  and now I so miss that.  I miss the hugs, being the other half of a whole and the companionship that was the normal for what was us. I know I can treasure the memories and rejoice that we had each other  for 53 years but that doesn't resolve feelings of loneliness.  Something I have never before truly experienced.  A feeling I do not like, not at all.  

 I am learning about being alone, nothing unique just to me I am sure. So many  have warned me about with this widowhood, singlehood.  One is that folks really go there own way about their own business or on with their own lives and  so here I am.  I was somewhat stung by Jerry's son's comment on the phone last week overlooking something that concerned me,  "life goes on."  Yes it does, indeed and although I have often said that,  I thought, " how smug, oh you just wait."  Wait until you have a good solid tragedy and you will no longer spout trite sayings.  How easily these adages slip out of the mouth of the unaware.  Yes life does go on.  Mom always said so and having been widowed young, pregnant with me as my father lost his life in WWII, she knew tragedy.  But someone who brushes everything off with this casual remark will have their day.  

I lament wintry days if I do not get out of the house because  I may not hear nor see another human being.  Although people say call if you need anything, how can I call and just say, "hey I need to just hear someone." This is what happens without family.   Things happen and I realize I have no one to discuss them with. I can talk to myself and so far myself is putting up with me.  What if myself gives up too?

Last night the cable box on the tv in the living room quit, as I discovered when I tried to turn on the tv and no reception.  I had vacuumed earlier so thought perhaps I had loosened a plug, but not so.  I discovered the reception box had no little red light as do the others for the other tv's.  Jerry would have known this right away, but  I never paid attention.  So fortunately this morning I called our provider which is also our local phone, internet and video service provider,  a co-op with good local service.  Yes she acknowledged, the box likely was no good.  Then she asked if I felt comfortable replacing it myself or would I want the technician to install it.  Yes,  although I could see the box, I prefer someone to install who knows what to do.  I made an appointment for Thursday although they could have come this afternoon but I had another appointment for this afternoon. I thought at the time.  It is not urgent because there are 2 other tv's I can watch.  One in the kitchen that I have on when I'm out there, fixing dinner, etc.  And the big nice screen downstairs where I have begun to retreat in the evenings just as we used to do.  But I didn't have Jerry to talk to.  I had no one to talk to when today's appointment had to be rescheduled, when they called and asked for tomorrow, well I'd already booked the TV service for morning and so who knows how long these things can take.  So now today's appointment will reschedule to Friday.  This is all just routine stuff, but stuff we would have talked about or handled differently.  Jerry would have installed the tv box himself,  I wouldn't have even had to be here.  But most of all there was no companion to talk with. The aloneness of it is haunting at times and it will always be. 

I received a grief newsletter from the hospice service and one coping strategy they recommend is to journal, daily.  I am using this blog for that as my grief journal in away.  Well since I had ceased blogging and lost all followers, several of whom passed away, I can write here.,  No one will read it anyway.  I used to keep journals for years but no longer.  In fact I  will soon be destroying those because the entries are truly personal and I have no one that I want reading them after I'm gone or even while I'm here. 

I stumble around some days without anywhere to go, so I go to mail something at the local post office just to get out of the house for a minute or two although I could easily put it in the mailbox and let the carrier pick it up.  I need very little at the store so no need to  go to the grocery store.  In fact I must begin to use the multitude of food stored up here on hand.  I do not need that much for just me.  So that eliminates another activity, grocery shopping.  Not that I've done it that frequently during this pandemic and with Jerry's illness.  But still I realize now the need is less.  

Emptiness, nothing I need to do.  And while I am grateful to not have pressing needs days are wide open for what?  Something else I  have confirmed is that just because you hire someone and pay them to do something for you does not make them your friend.  This I learned because a local friend who has done work for us and who still does snowplowing, etc called to ask if I wanted to sell a battery charger because he needed one.  I do not know much about  the many tools and equipment Jerry had so told him he could come and look down in the shop himself.  That was a mistake because while down there although there was  no battery charger, he got ideas about other tools he spotted and asked about my selling them.  Right now all I  am trying to do is sell 2 snow blowers that I will  not use and without any luck whatsoever.  So I told him I was not ready.  did not know the value, etc.  The next weekend he called again and came with his adult son whom he'd told about the air compressor.  He asked if he could show it to him so again I gave him the keys to the shop and let them go down there.  Now I know they would not take anything  and it was too cold out for me, but I regret playing into this.  Here is where I  confuse friendship with other motives.  When they came back up the son casually offered me $100 for the air compressor.  But at least my inner self, stinkometer,  or maybe it was Jerry's protective spirit told me, "not so fast.." I replied I did not know the value and was really wanting an inventory and appraisal but I would think of it and get back to them.  I googled and laughed,  the model Jerry has is heavy duty nearly commercial grade if not commercial,  valued over $1000.  And Jerry took pride in all his tools and equipment, everything was top notch and in pristine condition.  So although I know I will not get full value, it is worth more than $100. Do they think I am that naïve or are they dumb?  Or were they just trying to pull a fast one on me? He commented that Craftsman was a cheap brand  and I knew that was not at all true so I was on alert then. Jerry had nothing cheap.  I could hear Jerry saying, "see I told you not to blindly trust people, just because they say something..."  I called another local good friend who laughed and told me, "oh no,  not on your worst day, that is worth way more than $100."  Besides he agreed I would be  ahead to go with a professional appraisal and inventory and pro to hold an auction.  That is what I will do eventually.  I have learned that they haul the stuff out and sell through their warehouses and online.  That is preferable to me.  Don't want throngs of people coming around here.  But back to the friend who caused me to feel uneasy, I called him the next day after fussing with myself,  I hesitated to say too much but merely repeated that I was not ready and wanted  get appraisals, etc.  I refrained from saying more.  I was somewhat concerned about offending him ?  What?  But yes I was.  I resent that I trusted someone I though to be a friend, and now wonder, what is the motive? Is it innocent as I presumed or wanting to take advantage?  I have learned to  be cautious.  And again thankful I do not need to rush to make decisions.  This solo life has challenges.  That is how my days go.  I miss Jerry.  . 

It has only been a month now since Jerry passed on.  I am sure I will have even more revelations.  I suppose I will go along and learn, but I will be cautious.  As many warned me, be careful because  people try to take advantage when they can..  .