Month: June 2019

Reflection of a Decade

On By drwiebIn Being a widow, Self-reflectionLeave a comment

On June 26, it was twelve years since I last saw Randy breathing. I’ve come a long way in my life since that day, although Grief does its best to dismantle everything I’ve done. It doesn’t get better or easier; it will never be better or easier that Randy is gone. It just becomes the New Normal. The pain has become a dull ache that sits in the corner of my heart and waits for the right moment to strike. I know I should expect it; I know it still happens at the odd moment. The mistake is forgetting it’s there. The forgetting just makes its reappearance all the more jarring, and no less painful.

Imagine being attached to a retractable leash, but free to roam anywhere you want, as far as you want, in any direction you want. The leash is invisible, and you can’t really see what it’s tethered to, so you tend to forget about it. You go about your daily life, being happy, or sad, or bored, or exhilarated, or expectant, or any number of ways that mean you’re alive. Except, at odd, unexpected times, that invisible leash snaps you off your feet and in the space of a heartbeat, you are a thousand miles away, curled in a fetal position from the intensity of your memories, wondering what the hell that was all about. After you’ve gotten your breath again, you dust yourself off, check for injuries, realize it’s just your heart that hurts, and continue on. Cautiously, you go back to making this new life, gaining courage and confidence the more space you put between you and the whatever-the-hell-THAT-was and…WHAM! There goes that damn leash again, snapping you right off your feet. It is unpredictable, it is fast, and it hurts.

I have learned quite a bit about myself in the years Randy has been gone, and about judging the people in my life. I have found out just how truly human we all are, no matter how hard we try to rise above that. We handle pain in so many different ways, and we should never assume someone’s pain is less just because they don’t wear it on their faces like a neon sign. Judging someone else’s journey is not only useless, it is monstrously egotistical, and while we are all harboring varying degrees of monstrous egos (because we are all human), we also each have our own invisible leash.

I remember when I was among the “newly widowed,” how I would look to those further out in the grief journey, needing to be sure I could survive this. I wanted assurances that I would be able to weather the absolute agony that my life had become, that there was a reason to keep breathing. Now that I am further out in the whole process, I avoid giving any advice to the newly widowed. I have no assurances to give, because I haven’t survived it yet. I am still surviving it, each and every day. I have no idea when it’s supposed to get easier or, god forbid, better, because it has only become different.

On the positive side, I no longer feel like The Only One. I don’t have that Why Me? feeling so much anymore, because there are too many versions of ‘Me’ I’ve met along the way to feel particularly special. I can think about Randy without doubling over in pain, and he’s no longer on that pedestal where I first planted him, on his way to heaven. I can remember his faults right along with his best qualities, knowing they all made the entire package, and I loved him just the way he was. The sharp pain of seeing married people, happy couples, intact families has lessened to a subtle twinge, and the selfish whine of “why not us?” has faded to a wistful sigh. It is what it is.

I did adjust to this new life. There were challenges I really liked, and memories that still give me secret smiles, and possibilities that I seriously want to explore. Somewhere along the line, I found that by pretending to be a positive person, I became more positive. By putting a daily smile on my face as the last act of a morning makeup routine, I started smiling more easily throughout the day, even when the makeup was gone. I returned to enjoying the speed of my thoughts and ideas zooming around inside my head, grabbing one as it flew by, releasing it back to the melee to chase after another. I always enjoyed the organized chaos of my mind, and I lost it there for quite some time. Thinking was not only a chore, it was painful, so I just didn’t do it. I once again enjoyed creating whole worlds in my imagination, and the possibilities of those worlds kept me moving forward. I found myself heading into the future with small steps, and then with longer strides. I am pleased to feel as though I’m actually finding my way through the new normal that is my life.

That is, until a certain memory intrudes at an unpredictable time, and the leash snaps.

Once again, I am back on the ground, bewildered and broken, wondering where the hell I am, and how I got here, and Where is Randy? The grief comes roaring back, consuming everything as it scours me with heat and fire. It takes my breath away, and it takes my thoughts away, and it tries to take my hope away. I have learned to stay curled up, protecting my heart from the fire, and just wait for it to burn itself out. It doesn’t take long these days; it is more of a flashfire than an inferno, but it still leaves scars. It still leaves me shaken and unsure in the immediate aftermath. It leaves me tentative, and I so detest the fact that it has once again taken some of my confidence and reduced it to ashes.

At one time, I was a self-confident, assured, whole person. I was married to a man that pushed me to be my best, who loved me despite my challenging ways, and who taught me to stand up for myself. For the first several years after his death, I felt like I was so much less. I had earned my confidence through life and love with him, by believing in him, and being amazed that he also believed in me. Without him, my confidence lost one of its architects. While I have built it back somewhat through determination and hard work, that damn leash takes its due each time it snaps. I try to believe in myself, but Randy is not here to believe in me, and so there is less mortar holding those bricks together. Grief crumbles another brick here or there, and I am more tentative, and I do not like it.

People would ask me “How are you? No, really, how are you?” The truth was, and still is, this: I am sad; I am happy. I am stuck; I am hopeful. I am bewildered; I am curious. I am tired; I am grateful. I am…me, whoever that has become, whoever that will be. My grief is never completely gone, but I have learned to build around it. It is what it is. I am what I am.

The only thing I know for absolute certainty is this: I really, really, hate that damn leash.

I Love My Daughter

On By drwiebIn Pet lifeLeave a comment

I’m sure we’ll get into my journey with  my oldest daughter a little more later…I’m still recovering from last year and so is she, so we’ll just move on for now.

Suffice it to say, she is making better choices and turning her life around and I’m very, very proud of her. She found a good job WITH benefits, found a good guy that has some of the same qualities of her dad (FINALLY), and moved out of the House-of-Nothing-Good-Can-Come-Of-This in order to make a home with her boyfriend and his daughter.  The heights she has climbed in the last year would make any mountaineer dizzy. In order to accomplish that last part of her plan, I’ve been in possession of my Grand-pup since March. Buster’s a good dog—a spoiled dog, for sure—but a good dog. The problem is that he has two feline aunts that are NOT happy with his presence. It’s been a fur-filled–I mean, fun-filled–couple of months.

54255672_10156289174007898_213552040314404864_o-1.jpg

Firstly, I obtained both cats from a cat rescue group and they are “special” in more than the loveable sense of the word. Clint, an orange tabby, has extreme social anxiety and an obsessive need to open doors/drawers. He spent every Sunday on display at Petco from 12 to 3, which in his  mind meant he stayed under the blanket in the corner of the cage until the madness ended. He spent the first week at my house in the laundry room in the basement, all of his own design. The only time he left that room was to climb up into the ceiling tiles and subsequently fall through the bathroom ceiling next door…only to streak right back into the laundry room. In his defense, I had two greyhounds at the time. Both were nothing more than couch ornaments, but he didn’t know that. Even after he acclimated to the house, to us, and to the dogs, he was a ghost whenever we had visitors. That cat has a bladder like no other, I swear. I wouldn’t see him for days.

3507_10153503929547898_1221173503327185073_n-e1561472465121.jpg

He has since become very comfortable at home, and even welcomes strangers very warily. Once he knows you’re not going to take him back to Petco, he’s all over you. He also regularly turns my bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen into a scene from Poltergeist. He’s obviously male because he never shuts the cabinet doors when he’s done doing…whatever. I have two very heavy, solid oak dressers. He opens these drawers any time he wants, in any order he wants, for however long he wants. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m not arm-wrestling him. I have no idea what he’s looking for, but he obviously hasn’t found it yet.

He’s also very, very needy. He will follow you from room to room, meowing loudly, only to trap you on the toilet or the couch or in bed, and begin aggressively rubbing his head all  over you. If that’s not doing it for him, he’ll grab your hand with his two front paws and determinedly drag it to his head in a not-so-subtle hint. His favorite perch is on your chest, as close to under your chin (or maybe over your nose?) as he can get, where he starts purring loud enough to drown out the TV or whoever is on the other end of the phone. If he feels his needs aren’t being met properly, he pouts like no one’s business.

My other special cat is Pooki, a blackish-grayish furball with a hint of tabby stripes underneath. There are no words to describe Pooki that fit as well as “Ten Second Tom.” His memory isn’t very long, or even present at all. In the beginning, if I left for a weekend, he would avoid me for days, giving me the evil eye and generally exuding “who the hell let YOU into this house??” Eventually, he would realize I was the one who knew where the food was kept, and all would go back to normal. He would walk across the top of my 40 inch TV, jumping lithely away as I  was screaming and grabbing for the swaying appliance. Then he would sit calmly to lick one paw and swipe it over his head, saunter back into the room and look at me like “What? What are you yelling at ME for? Here, you must be sad I haven’t sat in your lap recently. Let me rectify that right now.” After four years, it takes him hours instead of days to remember me. His best defense mechanism against his constant follies is to run three feet, drop to his side, and mew at you. I swear he does this because he’s completely forgotten what he’s just done, and since he doesn’t remember what he was just doing, a nap sounds good. He is also very needy, but prefers head-butting as hard as he can to rubbing and will at least settle next to me instead of trying to smother me.

11666148_10153000655872898_294023860550512706_n

The one thing these cats do very well is play. They have mastered the ability to turn any area into a race track. If you happen to be anywhere near that course, you become part of the hazards-to-be-conquered. They are not lithe, silent predators during play either. They are lumbering, loud, novice Cirque de Soleil performers who have actually shaken the walls with their antics.  They race from room to room, tackle each other into rolling balls of fur, yell at the other for not playing fair, and see how high they can jump up the door jams in a can-you-top-this contest. They leave proof of the current record in the claw marks two-thirds the way up the door frame. Their favorite time to play is just after I’ve gone to bed. And their new favorite potential playmate is….my grandpup.

Buster trotted into my house with a “well, I guess I live here now so, here I come” attitude. He was very spoiled and assumed he had another territory to rule at will, which was his first mistake.  He’s met the cats before, on various brief holiday visits, but he preferred to pretend they didn’t exist and they preferred the same, so all was good. This time around, Clint still hid from him. Pooki, not remembering who the hell THIS was, stalked him from several feet away. Buster spent the first couple of days just trying to adjust to the fact that the bed was MINE and he didn’t get a treat after every bathroom trip and staring at me while I ate got him nothing but a squirt from the water bottle. Once he realized this was now home and not a vacation spa, he began to settle in. Once the cats realized this was now his home and he wasn’t leaving anytime soon, he became fair game.

Clint still prefers to ignore him, mainly, but will now and then take after him, puffy tail and all, just to remind him that both the water bowl and the at-home daughter are feline territory.

50472056_10156181638432898_2739814635174625280_o

Pooki is determined they will be playmates, no matter how often Buster vocally refutes it. Pooki sneaks up on him when Buster’s back is turned, and bats him on the head or hind end, whichever is closest. This scares the shit out of Buster, who immediately howls in terror and then turns to confront the intruder. Pooki interprets this as “the game is afoot” and bats at him again. This usually works with Clint, and starts the whole-house free-for-all. Buster is not Clint. Buster tried flight, so now he goes into fight mode and snaps at Pooki. Pooki takes umbrage at this and the claws come out. This is the point I am grabbing the water bottle and attempting to drown them both. This only happens, once, maybe twice, a day. Pooki is nothing if not persistent. Ok, and maybe a little dense. And forgetful.

53492938_10156277178112898_210682684333096960_o.jpg

Over the last four months, I have learned to close my bathroom door whenever I’m not in it (Buster has a taste for whatever is in the trash), pull up my bed covers when I leave (he also subscribes to the “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy when it comes to the no-dog-on-the-bed rule and I detest fur on my sheets although I still refuse to actually make the damn thing), keep the animals separated whenever I leave the house (which is how my bedroom now smells like “dog”), and keep the water bottle filled and within reach at all times. My cats are really good cats…mostly. Buster is a really good dog…mostly. All together, they are chaos.

It’s a good thing I really love my daughter. And my grandpup.

 

 

Everything is Relative

On By drwiebIn Self-reflection1 Comment

 

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”

― Leon Trotsky

As a widow, one of my least favorite sayings is “you’re so strong.” I’ve heard it a lot since Randy died. It always confused me before it started to anger me. Strong? Because I can’t will myself to stop breathing? (Believe me, I tried—no luck.) Because there’s only so many days I can wear the same clothes before they crawl off to the washer, themselves? Because eventually I have to get out of bed to pee? Because once the fog cleared, I realized that the earth was still turning and my children were still here and that meant I still needed money and food and shelter and my job? I don’t consider that strong. I consider that life. You do what you gotta do.

I read something (on Facebook, surprisingly) about how people try to downplay their own pain, which hampers the grieving and the healing processes. It really spoke to me at that time, because I felt there were people in my family who didn’t quite get what it meant to be a widow and a mother, and expected far too much of me. Since I was raised to do what I should, it was hard to put my own needs in front of their expectations. While I may not have had the energy to live up to those expectations, I simply exchanged that for guilt at not being enough and anger at not being understood. Guilt and anger: what a lovely, isolating, self-destructive combination.

What I got from that article was this: everyone’s pain is relative, because everyone’s history is unique. What was my “worst” could pale in comparison to someone else’s “worst.” Conversely, someone else didn’t need to experience my “worst” to have their own version of “worst.” I have my unique moment that is the lowest point and others that represent the high end. It is my relative scale against which I gauge all other moments. It is ok for me to feel pain at my worst moments, even if I can objectively see that others have had moments that may be worse, because this is the bottom of MY scale. And it is ok for others to not quite get my own worst moment, because their scale may not go down that far. It doesn’t make their scale “less than” mine; it just means they have a different scope of experience.

I have always marginalized my own experiences. The bad is never as bad as others act like it is. I have the curious ability to pooh-pooh my own memories. I wouldn’t exactly call it sexual abuse by a neighbor’s son, but if it had happened to one of my kids, I’d be screaming sexual abuse. I definitely call it years of physical abuse from a sibling, but I survived it, so let’s move on. It’s an amusing story now about how I was left at a store when I was 4-5 years young as my parents continued with their Saturday errands and how I remember every second of searching the store and sitting in the window staring at the parking lot for an hour or two before their car raced back into view. I didn’t know it was ADD and just dealt with the “stop daydreaming” admonishments my entire life. I can laugh about being 6 or 7 and watching my dad steal a hubcap from a car in the bowling alley parking lot and then the harrowing ride home at speeds up to 70 mph on winding roads after a Friday night Men’s League (which meant lots of drinking on the Men’s part). I know I was leaning strongly towards alcoholism, myself, in college and have many, many things to regret there, but so do many others, right? That’s just college. And yes, I lived with an alcoholic for 7-8 years and dealt with car accidents and DUIs and screaming matches and separation and at least one incident I will never ever ever talk about, but he became a Recovered Alcoholic and things improved phenomenally for the next 13 years. He was everything I knew I would love about him after that and gave me a life & family I could only dream about before. So he started drinking right before he died, and we’d already had one major argument concerning the drinking, but I never got a chance to find out how that would play out because, well, he died suddenly. And yes, he and my heart died when he was 48 in the span of 3 days from leukemia. I’ve since met many widows/widowers with stories much sadder than mine. My experiences with childbirth may be others’ visions of hell, but they’re all I know about bringing my children into this world, and I wouldn’t begrudge their entrance for anything. My youngest may have spent 4 days in a psychiatric hospital and for years suffered from extreme anxiety and depression and bipolarism, but just look at her now. She’s healthy and happy and working full-time at a job she loves. And the oldest daughter distanced herself for over 10 years, just so I wouldn’t be able to see how her boyfriend/fiance/husband was whittling away her confidence and self-esteem. And I’ve had to watch her go through a divorce, a new romance with someone I really disliked, and then become a widow, herself, after less than a year of that marriage. And I had a ring-side seat as she descended into alcohol and depression and refused to let me be a parent again. And even though I jumped into that ring to battle it out more times than I can count, she has found her way back to life and love and I can breathe again. And yes, I packed up and moved across states to be closer to a family that never seemed to understand me, but I figured it out after 5 years and my mother’s death and moved back to my friends. And ok…it’s been 12 years and I have yet to work up the courage for even a first date in spite of the daily loneliness that permeates my life. I won’t even address the years of pain and “oh, you’re too young for that” related to arthritis and other health ailments, or the laundry list of surgeries to try to correct joint and stomach issues. Everyone’s life is tough. Suck it up and move on.

I don’t want people to think bad about people who I feel may have wronged me, because that’s just my opinion and I’m sure they had good reasons and I’m sure it’s not as bad as I remember and I’m sure I played a large part in what happened to me. Seriously, I am responsible for my own actions, and reactions, and the consequences of both.

I know what my worst moment is, and I can rate all the moments from that point up. It’s amazing how the “best” is not one single moment. “Best” appears to be relative, also, within my own experiences. There are moments that are “best” as a child, and “best” as a sibling, and “best” as a wife, and “best” as a mother of this child and then mother of that child, and “best” as a professional, and “best” as a friend. This scale appears to be an inverted triangle, with many points along the top of the scale whittling down to one single point at the bottom. I’m going to assume that means I have had more happiness than sadness, and so it is harder to pinpoint one single moment of extreme happiness.

I don’t consider myself stronger than the next person. I don’t consider myself weaker than another person. I only know that I have catalogued my worst moments and my best moments. As long as I’m breathing, I’m hoping the upper end of that inverted triangle continues to expand faster than the lower. I’m not strong. I’m just balancing as best I can, just like anyone else. After all, everything is relative, including triangles.

 

I am still learning. -Michelangelo, age 87

On By drwiebIn mental health and parentingLeave a comment

In the 59 years I’ve been on this Earth, I’ve lived by myself for maybe almost a year, broken into two segments; nine months here, 3 months there. I went from home to college to marriage to children and finally, to widowhood…still with children.  At the end of this month, I will be on my own.

My youngest has been with me consistently, except for those two solo periods, which is when she moved out for college. She moved back in fairly quickly each time, and I didn’t object. She has had some mental health issues and I have had some personal issues and some maternal issues and neither of us has minded the company. My oldest moved out for college and never came back.

I watched my youngest go from an exuberant, engaging, extroverted little pixie to a withdrawn, fearful, frozen young woman. When she was young, she never knew a stranger, which was sometimes frightening. She talked to anyone and everyone, sang when she wasn’t talking, never stopped moving, and grabbed the world around her with both hands. She bounced and sashayed and hugged and rambled and you could almost see the energy just pouring out of her. Then, one day in middle school, she walked into her bedroom and never came out.

The change was jarring. She stopped making eye contact, and it was maddening to watch her eyes flit to every object behind me, instead of actually TO  me.  She developed a giggle that served as a buffer between asking her a question and having her actually answer it. She slumped. She slunk. She turned away or hid behind me. She let clothes and books and drawings and pencils pile up in her room so she had somewhere to burrow. Shrugging became her main communication tool. Where my daughter had once stood now stood her shadow.

I tried to attribute it to adolescence and hormones. The oldest had gotten moodier around this age, too.  The oldest hadn’t disappeared inside herself, though, and I knew it. I come from a long line of treating depression and any other mental health issue with a firm “snap out of it.” I knew there was more to it than that, as I was already on anti-depressants. I had been given them when I was in my forties, when I was sent to the doctor to figure out why I was so angry all the time. The doctor asked why I was there.

“Because I think people are so incredibly stupid and why they’re breathing my air is beyond me.” She nodded, made a note, and asked how long I’d been depressed.

“I’m not depressed. I’m pissed.” She explained how depression manifests in different symptoms with different people and handed me a prescription. “Fill it on your way home,” she insisted. I huffed my way out of her office, through the drug store, and all the way home. In a couple of weeks, I emerged from my pit of rage, and realized how far down the hole I’d fallen. I spent a while apologizing to people, especially my family.

So why didn’t I see that Hayley was suffering not from puberty, but from something much more serious? I know there’s a part of me that did see, but didn’t want to admit it. She had just started weaning down from her suitcase of allergy and asthma medications. We opted out of ADHD medications because if we had to choose between her breathing or her energy level, we chose oxygen each and every time. I didn’t want her to face a lifetime of SSRI medication and their side effects and the haughty looks from the “snap out of it” people. I’m amazed at the number of people who think people should just “stop being sad.” No one batted an eye when I started medication; maybe they were tired of the duck-and-cover routine they had to do whenever I approached. I can guarantee not one single person told me to “snap out of it” when I was on a rampage. They were too busy trying to save their own ass. 

When she hit high school, she started questioning her sexuality a little more blatantly. I suspected her truth and her dad turned a blind eye.  (I silently supported whatever she decided, while he was figuring out how to support his daughter when he didn’t exactly support her new category. He could be Catholic at the most inopportune times.) I assigned this traumatic, personal examination as the source of more of her moods. She was no longer extroverted, but who wouldn’t be introspective if they were juggling these types of questions?

I cringe when I think of how much I turned into my “just snap out of it” mother during some of her most trying moments. She was  as smart as her father, but couldn’t present her work in class without becoming physically ill. We spent many nights at the kitchen table or in the living room, her in tears and me in frustration because she KNEW this stuff forwards and backwards and why was this so hard?? I conveniently forgot how I went through freshman speech class in college with a script for Valium firmly in my hand. I forgot how I knew all the answers in high school but rarely raised my hand and spent most of my class time silently praying “please don’t call on me; please don’t call on me.” I forgot how I spoke to few people outside my inside circle of friends, at least until I discovered my first Happy Hour at the bar that allowed 18 year olds to buy alcohol. I forgot a lot of things because I didn’t want her to go through all those terrible memories. And so, I let her go through a lot of her own terrible memories because I just wanted both of us to “snap out of it.”

Then her dad died, and I stopped being a mother. At that time, my world had imploded and I had nothing to stand on. I could barely take care of myself, much less anyone else. Oh, I covered the basics: I went to work, I paid bills, I made sure there was money. I did see when she was visibly upset and shaking and could help through those times. It was all the other times that she silently suffered that I glaringly missed.  I, myself, was severely depressed and there weren’t enough anti-depressants in the world to mask my symptoms. Since I didn’t manifest depression like most people, I managed to use my anger to keep many  people at bay….including my daughter.

She hit bottom about a year after he died, and luckily, we had people around us who recognized when she landed and got us the help she needed. After that, it was a long, hard, exhausting climb back from where she had spiraled. I was determined to be a better mom from this point on, but hit my own bottom with this one afternoon, sitting behind the broken dishwasher with Youtube and some wrenches. We had  moved recently, and she had yet to find a new therapist. As she frantically waved a red flag under my nose, I snapped.

“I can’t be your mom AND your counselor. I can’t give you advice and watch your health and do all of this objectively for your own benefit because I AM NOT objective. I am your mom. You have to find a new counselor.” Then I gathered all her medications and locked them away, turned on the computer, and started compiling a list of therapists in the area. We both knew, from experience, we had to shop for the right one, and we knew it would be a process, one we should have started even before we unloaded our furniture from the moving van. Better late than never, I guess.

Thank god, she found the right one. Then we found a really good physician’s assistant to a psychiatrist who actually knew her medicines, and the uphill climb became slightly less vertical. It took years….years….but she made it completely out of that hole. My effervescent toddler who turned into a shadow-person has finally found herself. She’s not done with the hole, by any means. She stands at the edge every single damn day. She lives with the constant reminder that one slip and whoosh! It starts all over again.

The good news is that she’s also learning how to cope with this constant threat. She’s learning that a slip can be just that, a slip, and not a slide, if she’s ready for it. She’s learning that EVERYONE slips and it’s ok to be mad and it’s ok to be sad and it’s especially ok to be happy. She’s learning how to balance on that edge and I’m so incredibly proud of her, because I know how many times I failed her as she was learning. Maybe I was learning too, but the mom in me won’t let me off that easy. I should have known. I should have done more. I should have listened harder. I should have…I just should have. It’s ok, though….because she’s learning anyway.

And at the end of the month, we start a whole new learning process. We start learning how to live apart. She’s ready. I’m ready. She’s more ready than I am. I need to be on my own again. I need to figure out how much of my life I’ve actually rebuilt and how much I’ve hidden behind the guise of parenting. Then, I need to fill in the holes I’ve let her cover for me. She needs to be on her own, too. She needs to know she can be on her own, and how much she’s already learned and how far she’s come and how far there is left for her to yet explore.

I will miss her, but I’m so excited for her. I’m proud of her.  While I’m rediscovering my life, I want to watch as she builds her own. I will always be there for her, but I know she needs me less and less. I hope I need her less, too. Regardless, it’s time.

I wonder what we’ll learn next.

The annual widda-bago

On By drwiebIn Being a widowLeave a comment

I just got back from my annual Widda-bago. Every year for the last 10 years or so, a group of widows/widowers have gotten together to hug, drink, cry, and grieve.  We met on an online young widows/widowers message board. We came from all over the world: Missouri, Idaho, New Jersey, Florida, Washington state, Canada-by-way-of Cayman, even Germany. It started with just 9 of us, drifting on rafts down some river in middle Missouri on a  hot August day that I thought would never end. I was sure when we finally climbed off our rafts, we’d be speaking Spanish down in the Gulf of Mexico. We were together for 2 days; four of the “originals” are still going strong each year.

After that first year, we opted for nicer accomodations at the Lake of the Ozarks and rented a couple of houses right on the lake. The number of people who attended each year grew quickly. One year, there were probably close to 50-60 people at the Lake. It was too much for me. I need more in common with friends than a dead spouse, and I needed some space when the grieving became too personal. I knew the Lake trip was coming to an end.

I wasn’t alone in how I felt. There were a  handful of people who quietly arranged for a different kind of ‘bago the following year. Now there are 8-10 of us who gather each June for a week at a beach…somewhere. The prerequisites for the spot include: ocean, sand, sun, enough bathrooms & bedrooms to accommodate this number of women, restaurants within walking distance, shopping within driving distance, and airports that are somewhat reasonable in service to the Caymans.

We started in Wrightsville Beach (North Carolina), then headed to Tybee Island (Georgia), off to Emerald Isle (NC), then Anna Marie Island (Florida), and this year—St. Augustine (Fl). Each June, it feels like coming home to see these people with the seabreeze in their hair, the week goes by too fast, and it’s hard to walk away again for another year. We pick up right where we left off, and then let the ends dangle in the waves until the next time we gather them up.

I have logged so many hours in the sunny sand, splashing carefully in waves that started somewhere in Europe, and lounging under beach umbrellas that may or may not cooperate by staying right-side-out. I have toured a battleship, walked a pub ghost tour, wandered into the ocean bed a half-mile or more as the tide went out, watched dolphins frolic and lizards mate, gathered shells of every shape and size, ridden in a trolley and in a horse-drawn carriage, peddled my way through Savannah while imbibing heartily, and sat in Atlanta’s airport for more than half a day waiting for my flight. I have laughed and cried and simmered and empathized and taken more pictures than my family and friends would EVER want to sift through, if they had a choice.

And I have done all of this because Randy died.

It is one of the oddest, most jarring feelings to realize that if he were still alive, I would not know any of these people. I would have none of these memories. I would have visited almost none of these places nor taken any of these pictures. I owe these vacations to the fact that I lost my husband so suddenly. How do I reconcile the wonderfulness of these places and people with the pain of losing the love of my life? Seriously…I’m asking, because I have absolutely no idea.

I can be sitting in one of the most breathtaking spots on one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen, laughing heartily with someone over something inane or insane, and it hits me right in my heart: if Randy were still here…  Everything stops for that brief moment in time–the waves, the wind, my laughter, my heartbeat. In the beginning, things wouldn’t start back up so easily. Many tears were shed. Many more were swallowed behind the facade of a smile. I often had to take a moment to grieve again for my loss, and could only come back to the present somewhat guiltily, feeling like I was betraying his death with my life. 

It doesn’t get easier, in much the same way I assume it doesn’t get easier once you’ve lost a limb. You cry. You curl into yourself and try to disappear. You scream. You throw things and break things. You adapt. You improvise. You eventually accept a new normal. The one thing you never do is forget what it was like “before.”

This widows group has been described as “the best group of people you wish you’d never met.”  As odd as it is, we are all in complete agreement that, given the choice, we’d trade each other in a heartbeat if it meant we got our spouse back. It’s not that we don’t like each other; in fact, there are several that I love as if they are family. I cannot imagine my life without them now. I would, without a second breath, assign them all to being nothing more than a bad dream if Randy were standing next to  me again. I’m not sure how I’d do that, wiping them from my memories when they’ve meant so much to me. I do know I’d find a way. I also know that not one of them would begrudge me that opportunity.

I also know, after 12 years, that Randy’s probably not coming back to me. He really is gone, and this really is my life, and I really do know and love these people. On one of my first widda-bago trips, there was a memorial service, complete with flowers that we tossed into the ocean at the end of the ceremony. I remember standing in that circle in the sand, looking at these people I had just met, people who knew this part of me better than even my daughters did, and realizing these people were Randy’s last gift to me.

They will never replace him. They will never fill the void that was created when he was taken from  my life. They will, however, give me one reason to live again. They will be there for me each year, for one week in June, to hug me and laugh with me and cry with me and understand that no matter how far I have come, it all started with the worst day of my life. They know that all of these memories are built solidly on my grief, sliding formlessly into the cracks and gaps left when my world shattered into infinite pieces and I began trying to put it back together again.

These people and these memories have given me so much beauty and vibrancy, all as part of his gift. While I wish I’d never had cause to meet them, I am oh-so-grateful for how they are intrinsic to the mosaic of my life. Thank you, Randy. I love you, forever and always.