Life after two-and-a-half (almost) years

So here we are. Today is two years, five months since Vic went to be with Wags at the Rainbow Bridge. My old standard response to “How are you doing?” (often accompanied by the sympathetic head tilt) was “I'm OK, ups and downs.” My new response is, “Not great. I'm fine.” Think “Sorry/Grateful” from Company:

You're sorry-grateful
Regretful-happy
Why look for answers where none occur?
You always are what you always were
Which has nothing to do with
All to do with her

“Nothing to do with, all to do with [him].” Yeah. I mean, things are actually pretty good, right? Food on the table. Roof over my head. Bella by my side. Friends and family who care. There's just that one thing that isn't great. My husband is gone. Just that one little thing. But it isn't a little thing, is it? It's a big damn thing that is always there. Usually underneath, sometimes on the surface, but always there. So I can be “not great” and still be “fine.”

Certainly I'm “fine” because I come from sturdy, resilient pioneer stock. I'm a latchkey kid who had to learn to do things on her own and play by herself. I am a realist who married a realist who knew this scenario, widowhood, would come to me before it came to him, and we prepared for it together, with love and humor. (Please, please tell me you have not forgotten the “I'll love you 'til I croak” card he gave me on our first anniversary only a month after he “died” in the Apple store.)

But as surely as I know that, I know this: I am “fine” because of you. My friends and family who lift me up. The friend who comes over for walks with me and Bella. The friend who comes over and lets Bella out when I have to be away from home for more than four hours. (The importance of this cannot be overstated.) The friend who started crochet date night for me and helps me make the appetizers I take to Christmas dinner. The friends who come to crochet date night and chat with us while we do this—and while we all sit around crafting for three hours every other Friday night.) The friends who check up on me when something happens that they know will probably have some kind of effect on me. The friends who check up on me for no particular reason. (I mean, other than the obvious reason.) My friends who help me do things around the house—especially “man” things. (And I can say this without being sexist, because although I call them “man” things, it is not always men who help me with them. I get it—women know how to wield a hammer.) The friends who don't give up on me when I don't answer their invites for lunch for six months—or more. The friends who take my hard-to-recycle items and my compost to the Waste Diversion Center and set up my electronics. My manager and my teammates who are all also my friends and have helped me in countless ways both professionally and personally. I'm in a widows/widowers group on Facebook, and I can tell you that not everyone has that support at work.

And I know some of you will see yourselves in this description and think, “Meh, I'm not doing that much.” And it may not seem like it to you, but it is. From this side, it's everything.

As I was going through my pictures for the 2023 not-Scallion, I came across two pictures that reminded me of things that deserved special mention, and I wanted them here, on The Widow's Peek, because they're more about my life as a widow than my life as a person—and those are two very different things..

One:

Shortly before Vic passed away, his sister, Alice, showed me a pillow she'd found that was made out of the clothing of a person who had recently passed away. I'd seen things made out of clothing—a wall hanging made of ties, a blanket made of skirts—and always thought that these were meaningful ways to use things that you didn't want to give away but you didn't want hanging in a closet. Alice asked if she could make a pillow for me out of Vic's flannel shirts.

Oh, Vic and his flannel.

If you ever met Vic in the winter, chances are you saw his flannel. He loved those shirts, and he wore them until they were threadbare. But before they became threadbare, they became soft as butter.

So my answer was, immediately, yes.

I hadn't thought much about it—I'm the kind of person who isn't going to pressure someone when they're doing something nice for me; it'll come when it comes—but one day, Alice came up with not one, but two pillows made out of his favorite favorite flannel shirts. (Yes, he had some that were his favorites, and he also had favorites out of those favorites—he had a whole shirt hierarchy.)

This one has her favorite e.e. cummings poem embroidered on it as well as two camera pins.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

This one just shows all the wonderful things Vic was to people. 

I love these pillows. They have been hugged, cried on, and hugged some more.

Alice didn't end up using all the flannel shirts, so she brought the rest back to me. One day, my friend-through-Laura, Chris, was at the house. Chris is also a quilter, and I wondered whether she could use the flannel shirts. They are cotton, after all, and she knew Vic, too. He thought she and her husband, Larry, were the bee's knees. My intention was simply that she might like some cotton fabric for her quilting. She, of course, asked me what I wanted her to make for me. I feel like this is a very quilter thing to do.

I have (almost) given up talking people out of doing something nice for me, so I tried to think of something that would be simple. (To be clear, people who don't do a craft do not know what “simple” is. Something that looks simple can be quite complex, and something that looks intricate could be easy as pie. Which, side note, is not necessarily that easy. Have you ever made your own crust? Pie can be very difficult!) Anyway, I selected a table runner—straight edges, probably a lot of patterns available. I thought I could drape over the lateral file that sits by the desk in my office. I'm there a lot, and it would be nice to see it every time I walk in. Chris took some measurements and the bag of flannel and went on her merry way.

Once again, I didn't give this a second thought. Then one day, I got a text from Chris wanting to confirm the measurements for the table runner. Exciting!

Two weeks later, she and Laura came to the house. She gave me the table runner, and it was magnificent. Click on these pictures—you'll want to see them full size.

Front

Back

Things to notice:

• Some of the strips have the buttons from the shirts on them, and some are made of the cuffs or collars or even the seams.
• The denim—I had forgotten that there was a pair of his blue jeans in the bag with the extra flannel.
• That classic Levi size tag is attached to the front side of the runner.
• The binding around the outside—it's made of little strips of all the shirts and the jeans.

But that's not all. Chris then presented me with this:

As you can see, this little dog is also made up of scraps of flannel and Vic's jeans. This fella—whom I have named Patch—also has the watch pocket from the jeans, into which is tucked one of Vic's handkerchiefs.

Where Alice's pillows comfort me at home, Chris's Patch comforts me on the road. Although I don't mind going places alone, I don't like going home alone. If we drove home at night, Vic would drive because he knew I didn't like driving at night. If I was driving, he might pick songs off the iPod to play if I was getting sleepy. We would talk about the movie we just saw or the dinner we just had or the people we'd just seen. In the later years, when I went to more things by myself, I was driving home alone, but he was there waiting for me when I got there, eager to hear about whatever I had done. So I often take Patch with me, because feeling that flannel ... it's almost like Vic is there.

I think Vic would approve of what his flannel shirts and jeans have become.

Two:

(Remember waaaaaay up at the top when I said there were two things that deserved special mention? This is the second thing.)

This actually deserves its own blog post, but I know Laura would be the first person to say, “Don't waste your time on a blog post all about me.”

That's right. The second “thing” is a person—my sister, Laura.

We have always loved each other. We weren't the inseparable sisters that twins might be, or those closer in age. She had her friends and I had mine, but we also did a lot of things together. (I'm looking at you, Grease seven times and a Lifeguard/Orca double feature at the drive-in.) I feel like we might have fought a normal amount, but I honestly don't remember our relationship as contentious. And how we happened to end up in Colorado from Nebraska at virtually the same time is anybody's guess. We saw as much as you can see of each other when you both work. We saw each other a little more when the kids were born, because I made it a point to go to Denver once a month. I wasn't going to miss out on a growth spurt!

But when the kids got older and we all got busier, we didn't hang out as much. And in the days before cell phones and texting, it was harder to stay in touch.

It was Mom, Laura's retirement and cell phones that brought us back together. The kids had moved out, Laura was retired, and Mom needed help. Laura and I coordinated our activities to provide the care Mom needed (as well as some care for Dad). We talked more. Texted more. Did more things together. Grew closer.

And then Vic died.

And there she was, getting me hot chocolate. Helping me sort through things and making lists of all of Vic's possessions that I wasn't planning to keep so that Bryan, Laurie, Patty and Alice could take whatever they wanted to remember him by. Taking household donations to ARC, books to the library, recycling to the recycling center—whatever I needed. But also staying away when she knew Vic's sisters and I needed to do things together, like planning the service. She came up once a month for several months to help me do the chores I didn't have time to do after I went back to work.

Then I put the house on the market. Even though my Realtor told me in February that I needed to “declutter” (whatever that means—I 100% did not have clutter!), including taking down the Christmas tree (yes, my first post-Vic Christmas tree was still up in February—you wanna make something of it?), I did not. I mean, when am I going to have time for that? I'm now holding down a full-time job and running a house where before I was only doing one of those—Vic did everything else around the house.

So up came Laura, pulling down the Christmas tree while my friend Paulette came over to “declutter.” Then they both decluttered—taking three days to do what I should have done little by little over three months—while Alice worked on my planters and ground cover garden to improve my curb appeal. And what was I doing? Working, of course. New client + big project = no time for Patty.

When the house sold, Laura came up to direct the movers or the carpet guys or the guy who came to take away my junk—whatever I needed. She didn't laugh at me when I said I wanted to go through each room in the old house and thank it for giving me a home for all those years—in fact, she went with me through the rooms and made it a solemn occasion. She stayed with me on overnights so she could be here first thing in the morning to get started and last thing at night so we could get as much done as possible. We didn't even watch much TV!

Things wound down, and I didn't need as much help. I went into the abyss and didn't tell anyone. Laura got back to her life and took care of some health things that had taken awhile to get diagnosed.

But one day, she said she missed me and we should do one of our overnights. I had the first week in September off, so we decided to do it then. I still had two major chores that needed to be done: My books had been unboxed, but I hadn't put them in any kind of order. (What, you don't put your books in order?) And the storage area was a hodge podge of stuff that, when I moved in, I said to the movers, “Just put that in here; I'll take care of it later.” I even went downstairs to start on both chores, but when you don't know where to start, you just throw your hands up and watch Schmigadoon. (No? Just me then?) So I sheepishly asked Laura if we could do one of those chores on her overnight.

Did she sigh in exasperation and say, “Fine,” dripping with sarcasm? Did she say, “Sometimes I feel like you only love me for what I can do for you”? Did she refuse? No. She said, enthusiastically, “I don't see why we can't do both!” And both we did. I wish I had taken before and after pictures, but I didn't. Just the after ones:

And now, every time I go downstairs—every time—I see those neat bookshelves and that spacious, organized storage area, and I see love. The love of a sister. My sister. Like I said, I could devote a whole blog post to her, but I have bills to pay, and Bella is nudging me to take her for a walk. Time is no longer an infinite resource for me.

Thanks for traveling this road with me, Lau. I could do it on my own, but I'm so grateful I don't have to.

I'm also grateful to have all of you on this sometimes bumpy, sometimes up a steep hill, sometimes slippery journey.

And chocolate. I'm grateful for chocolate.

But mostly for all of you.