Widow Takes Wrong Turn

I have kept a log of my dreams since 1991, just after I met Ken who I would marry in 1993, and who I would lose to cancer in 2006, fifteen years and two young children later. So much good stuff in those dreams and scary stuff too.

With two miscarriages under my belt (so to speak), in 1995 I recorded a dream of a glowing presence in my uterus. Turns out, I was pregnant when I had that dream and that dream would become our real-life daughter. After Ken died, I dreamed a giant, gaping hole in the foundation of my house. Hmm. What could that mean? Some of the scariest, nightmarish dreams I've recorded repeatedly through the years involve me driving alone on dark roads late at night feeling lost, being carjacked by scary men, walking along the side of a pitch black road, or driving off the road altogether in a plume of flame. In waking world,  I don't like feeling lost and I'm a lousy navigator. Getting lost somehow strikes at the heart of my deepest fears.

You lose a lot when you lose your partner. Some of your losses are very deep: like losing your best friend and most trusted confidante. When I lost Ken, I also lost my navigator and my traveling companion. I lost the dream of trips we'd take together with our kids or on our own. The idea of losing all those future travels together still makes me wince as I think about it now. I am wistful about all the travels we won't ever take together.

What to do? Still need to find my way in the world. So way back then after Ken's death, I got a GPS which is no replacement for a husband while traveling, but definitely a pretty reliable navigation tool. That device allows me to venture out without fear of getting lost. I've been able to take some good road trips with the kids, feeling confident as I go.

This past weekend, we drove to Indianapolis. My son was playing in a tournament there and I used the opportunity to also visit a college with my daughter. The GPS, as usual, allowed me to get where I needed to go with complete confidence, navigating about Indiana. There we were together in the little cocoon of our car. Laughing. Singing along to the radio. Making fun of the billboards.

Until...

On the way back to Chicago I made the wrong turn somewhere around Gary, Indiana in a rotted out looking industrial area. It scared me to the the core, to the point of hyper-ventilating. It was dark. It was raining. The windshield wipers were working away. I was scaring the kids. I was talking aloud to Ken: why have you left me alone to drive around by myself? For a while we drove through a very foreboding and lonely looking beaten down place where I did not see one soul and did not know if I wanted to either. We were in some netherworld that was part desolate industry, part dilapidated residential area, until I found an entrance to a highway which I took and where we were the only car driving. There were no signs, no cars, no lights. I actually wondered if I was on an operational roadway. Dark, rainy, lonely, mother with two kids, lost. Did I mention it was nearing midnight and I had been driving for several hours that day already? Do you see that this was just like my scariest dreams, only it was really happening? Lost. Alone. In the dark.

Then, suddenly, a few cars started appearing up ahead, with their red taillights like welcoming beacons of joy. There was a sign for I-90 to Chicago. There was the tollway booth. I could breathe again. We could laugh again. I wasn't lost anymore. We were OK.  Disaster would not strike. I was jittery and alive. The whole episode lasted 12 minutes.

What am I trying to say here? Our fears can be so powerful. They can feel so real and so immobilizing, especially at night.

And fears pass, like cars in the night.
And then you take a deep breath.
And then you keep on going.

The other night I had a dream about a dead hibiscus plant. The real life almost completely dead hibiscus plant is in my house. It was Ken's and he had nurtured it for years, maybe 20 years. He was so pleased every time it produced one of it's magnificent red flowers which only lasted for a day. But now it is dying and I don't know if I can bring it back to life. In my dream, I saw the dead hibiscus plant. And on one of it's branches, a sweet little bird was singing.

Help Wanted: Just a LIttle

I am 49 years old yet I had never filled my own car tires with air until today. In fact, I asked my 28 year old niece to accompany me to the gas station before I got on the highway with my kids to go home. I was nervous about my big, bulging back tire and I didn't know how to fill it. I imagined the flat I might get on the road, and how I'd be alone with my kids in the evening on the side of a Chicago highway if it got any worse. She showed me how to do it so that the next time I won't need any help at all. So thanks to her for not making me feel like a big idiot for not knowing how to do something so simple. Something that my husband would have taken care of had he been here.

Something else I don't know how to do? I hate machinery and I have a really hard time pulling the cord that gets the lawnmower started. I also have zero interest in maintaining the lawnmower from year to year, zero interest in shopping for a different kind of lawnmower, and if I never again touch another lawnmower I'll be perfectly happy. I'm in the process of completely eliminating all need of said machinery. Two years ago I took all the grass out of my backyard and replaced it all with low maintenance plants, trees and shrubbery. Front yard grass? Watch out. You're a goner in the next couple of years. Cause get what else I really don't feel like learning how to do? Growing grass in the shade. Just not interested.

I felt a little stupid today watching a bunch of relatives listen to me say that I didn't know how to put air in my tires. But when my niece so kindly offered to help, I looked at my father-in-law and said,

"Well, I do a lot of things all by myself."

Married people get to lean on each other all the time. If you're married (to someone with some degree of competence, initiative, pride, or kindness, not to mention love for you), you can partially eliminate whole categories of activities you have no interest in mastering from plumbing to cooking to planning trips to arranging classes and activities for your children. The social schedule? Your investments? Budgeting? Picking up your own underwear? Playing catch? Finding the leftovers in the fridge? Leave it to your spouse. He or she is good at it anyway. Does Mary need help with her homework. Your turn, babe. I did it last night. Johnny has a soccer game? I'm going out with the girls. Can you do it tonight honey? And, by the way, thanks for putting that chicken on the grill!

When people in a well-functioning marriage lose their spouse, they have to be responsible for so many things all by themselves that they never intended to do all alone, sometimes for years and years. Sometimes for the rest of their lives. Some of those things are very big and profound like dealing with your children's emotional highs and lows,  or guiding and advising them as they grow to adulthood, college selection, planning weddings, or facing frightening health matters or important financial decisions.

Some of the tasks you now have to do on your own are very small like making school lunches, driving your children where they need to go, moving a heavy object, unplugging a toilet, cleaning up a wet basement after a storm, showing up at school or sporting events,

or filling a leaky tire.

When somebody steps up to help with something very small, it's like a vent opening up in a lone self to let out some of the pressure that comes from living life widowed, from living or parenting on your own when you had intended to do it in a pair. This is a long and windy way of saying thank you to my niece for helping me with something small today. Many times small is bigger than you realize.

Who Will Be There For Me?

A really good friend of mine had a bad bike accident a week ago. It had started raining during the ride. While going down a hill, she started thinking to herself, "I'm going too fast, I'd better do something."

The next thing she remembers is her husband at her side crying while she lay in a hospital bed.

Here's what she said to me while convalescing at home from a head injury:

"You're married to this guy all these years. Something like this happens. I just NEEDED him so much."

That really got me thinking. First, I felt so glad and relieved that she has such a devoted, loving, good husband, especially at a time like this. But I also couldn't help thinking a few other things.

Of course, since this is The Heartbreak Diary where I hope to inspire others to write about their loss, I couldn't help but come up with a new writing prompt for you to try.

AFTER LOSING MY HUSBAND TOO SOON, I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN

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After losing my husband too soon, I don't know if I can:


Count on someone to be there for me if I ever become really sick or incapacitated.

Ever again allow myself to need somebody and to believe that they will be there. Because, hey, they might not be!

Trust in more than just today.

Go back to a time where I felt as safe as I did with Ken.

Allow myself to depend on somebody else.

I Wish My Dead Husband Had.....

Dear Ken:

Even though I am eternally grateful for your being such a truly excellent husband and father during our 2 year courtship, or 13 year marriage and our 10 years of being parents together, there is one thing we forgot to do during the 4 years you were sick. Gosh, we had so much time sitting around in doctor's offices and hospital rooms...I can't believe we didn't put this together.

(Eternal hope for recovery down to the last minute can really screw up one's efforts to plan for the dying part!)

We forgot about putting together the handbook on how a mother can also be a father. This handbook would have had the following chapters:

Chapter One:

Fun activities and Games to Play with Your Son at ages 7 thru the rest of his childhood and adolescence

Chapter Two:

How to talk to your daughter so that she grows up feeling that she can do anything, be anything and feels as though she is the most cherished girl/young woman/woman in the whole world

Chapter Three:

How to Teach Your Son the Secret Essentials of Manhood

Chapter Four:

How to teach your son, left fatherless at age 6, that life can be trusted, people won't leave you, you're not weird because you don't have a dad, and you will somehow fill the gaping hole that is the absence left by your father's death and find fulfillment and satisfaction in your own life.

Chapter Five:

How to ensure that your daughter will be able to trust a good man's love.

Chapter Six:

This chapter catalogues every single parenting situation that I will ever encounter in my whole life and what your response would have been had you still been alive and actively fathering our kids

Chapter Seven:

How to teach the kids that mommy isn't trying to hurt them, annoy them, or trying to replace you by having a new man in her life. Within this chapter you would have written a paragraph on how to show the kids that they might even be able to get something positive themselves out of mommy's new boyfriend because he's really a good, loving guy. This chapter will remind them that you can never have too many people in your life to care about and love you.

Chapter Eight:

This chapter veers off into the supernatural/spiritual dimension. This is where you promise the kids that you will meet them in their dreams on a regular basis and just when they need you for advice or angelic guidance. (Feel free to stop by and visit me too if you get a chance.)

Chapter Nine:

In this chapter you leave the recipes for potions that all of us left here on earth can ingest to take away the acute pain that comes at select times because of your absence: holidays, graduations, birthdays, weddings, visits with old friends, trips, all that good stuff.

Chapter Ten:

Here you remind the children how much you love them even though you left too soon. Uh...you know what? Redundant. Let's scrap this chapter. You did a great job loving all of us. I think that's been done already.

I Can Get Some Satisfaction

Ken taught me a lot about satisfaction, in so many ways, many of them I am realizing now, while I couldn't while he lived. Nice, right? It took the death of my most excellent husband to teach me something about true satisfaction.

While he was alive, by my side, I didn't need to care so much about satisfaction. He had enough for both of us and everyone around him. I was "content" to be the one who always wondered if I was meeting my potential, doing enough, accomplishing enough. I was often filled with doubt about my purpose. I flustered easily, got excited about what was happening around me. Sometimes the excitement was positive and vibrant, sometimes it was just nervous, scattered, wasted energy. I was always scanning the horizon for the next event, opportunity, crisis. I was alert, ready, prepared, on the lookout for potential trouble. My to-do list bossed me around. I was on time. Not late. Punctual. On deadline. I was seeking the next moment instead of enjoying the one that was before me. Trying to be perfect, and failing perfectly at that.

Ken's stillness, his calm was always present for me. All he had to do was put his hand on mine and I'd get that transfer of warm, steady, calm energy. No matter what he was doing, the task was right. On the phone for an hour with Apple Computer? Why not. Has to be done. Balancing the Quicken account? Deeply satisfying. After all, it's a life task that needs doing. Children fussy for hours on end? Why not? That's what children do sometimes and that's why parents are there, to absorb and deflect. He was like a worry stone for me...make a connection with him and my blood pressure would plummet, heart rate decrease, perspective widen.

Ken lived in his own time zone, a mysterious, calm, cool, rock of assuredness and understanding. In Ken's world, all was as it should be. Things were meant to be understood, not judged. He could get an angry note from his boss ALL IN CAPS and shrug his shoulders. He could run late without sweating. At his memorial service, a friend told a story of sailing on Lake Michigan with Ken in a sudden squall. One of the passengers fell off the boat and as the distance grew between them, Ken surveying the surroundings said, "Wow, it's really windy out here," while turning the boat to retrieve her.

Today I'm the one in the water. Ken is gone, years now. Fortunately, at the moment, I'm not in cold, windy Lake Michigan. I'm alone in a warm Caribbean sea, all by myself, floating way out from the beach. No one knows I'm here but me. The water is clear and body temperature. I want to share this peace the way Ken shared his with me. But it's quiet out here and I'm all by myself. I can't see anyone. I splash every now and again enjoying how it feels and sounds. I'm sending out ripples.

Me Alone

No one is coming for me. At least no one I can see right now. It's like I'm waiting for a taxi to take me to the airport for a long awaited adventure; I'm standing in the street, a little desperate, as my window for catching the plane grows smaller and smaller. I contemplate missing the plane altogether.

Once upon a time, we loved to go biking in Wisconsin, just the two of us on road bikes in the beautiful countryside of the Kettle Moraine. We were happy buzzing down the roads, endless fields of corn and soy beans growing beside us, red-winged blackbirds chirping on the wires. 

The stones on the road crunched and danced under our wheels until the time my tire blew out. There was nothing to do but wait for you alone on the side of the road with my lame bike while you rode yours all the way back to the house to bring back the car for me.

It would take a while for you to come back to me sitting there all alone on the dusty, quiet, lonely road. It was a lovely solitude knowing you'd soon be back. I could look down the black top and see you coming long before you were even in sight because you always came for me, patched my tires, heard my cries, saw my view.

You're not coming this time. The scared feeling I woke up with this morning is all mine to tolerate. I'm alone on this road as far as I look down.  I'm the one who's coming for me now.

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Try this:

Imagine a moment in your life when you felt completely cared for by another person. What did he or she do to make your needs met, to make you feel secure?

Now remember a time when you made yourself feel comfortable, strong and safe in your world. What were you doing, thinking, and feeling?

What action can you take now to make yourself feel safe?

What thought can you hold in your mind to encourage and remind yourself of your own strength?

How does it feel to be here to take care of yourself?

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Now I Will Be the One

I will be the one who is here

Now I will be the one who is

coming when I call now I will be

the one I depend on when

scared or sad or nervous or

inspired now I will tell my story

now I will speak aloud now I

will be heard now I will help

others alone in pain now I will remember

you now I will know you

are not coming for me

now like you did back then

now it's me not you anymore

now I know it's true it's me

Now.