Happy new year!

Welcome to 2022!

 

The past few days have brought shootings and fires and ice storms and blizzards to ring out the Dumpster fire that was 2021. I am grateful that everyone I know made it through these devastating events safely, if not necessarily whole. (I know many who are without power, water or gas.)

When I started this blog, I planned to write a post at least once a month, on the “monthiversary” of Vic's death, to let people know how I was doing. I know many worry about my well-being—thank you—and I want to allay their concerns. I also thought I might write an additional post in between with whatever topic struck me at the time.

Well, I missed both of those milestones this month. The mid-December post was waylaid by ... whatever. (How can I remember that far back?) And the post on the 27th was hijacked by Verizon, a two-day 10-hour ordeal that nevertheless had a totally positive outcome and was worth every moment I spent on hold and getting transferred around.

Over the course of the month, I was pondering a post for folks who don't know what to say to a grieving person, a post about the many ups I experienced this month (from Susie, Donita, JB, Amy, Chandra, Alice, Seth, Julie, Amy [yes, there are two Amys], Anne, Annie, Kristi and Paul, Nancy, Cathy, Larry and Paulette, and Michelle, to name just a few), even a post about how grateful I am that everyone who knew about Vic changed their address books and sent Christmas cards addressed just to me. (I twinge every time I get a piece of mail addressed to both of us—especially if the organization has been notified of Vic's death.)

As separate posts, each of those topics would be long, but imagine if I tried to write all three topics plus a “how I'm doing” in one post? Yowza, what a long, boring post that would be!

So instead, I'm just going to throw in some random thoughts and slap up few joyful pictures at the end.

• “The holidays” were not worse for me than other times of the year. A lot of people appended “... especially at this time of year” to their statements of support. But holidays didn't really have special meaning for us. <Sappy Patty alert!> Every day was a holiday with Vic. (OK, not every day—every couple has a few rainy days.) I can't count the number of times I have said this—even on this very blog: a wedding is a day; a marriage is every day. And Vic showed up every day. So it's that everyday presence that I miss the most, and it doesn't matter whether it's Christmas or Tuesday.
• Also, I've been channeling Barry Manilow since Thanksgiving. His song “It's Just Another New Year's Eve” is the best song to play for any day that you feel sad for any reason:
  
  Don't look so sad
  It's not so bad, you know
  It's just another night
  That's all it is
  It's not the first
  It's not the worst, you know
  We've come through all the rest
  We'll get through this
  
  
• That said, the amount of support I received this month—from the widest variety of (and often unexpected) people imaginable, in the widest variety of forms—was astounding, and I'm sure that made the season easier to bear. A picture of an 11-year-old under the baby blanket I made for him. A package of sweets from The New Phantom. Editing services for The Scallion. An original piece of artwork from an artist friend. A baby Christmas tree—a real spruce tree!—complete with decorations. A well-timed “You are normal” email. Homemade treats. Store-bought treats. Homemade treats for Bella. Store-bought treats for Bella. (We are not picky.) A bell with angel wings. An exquisite quilled hummingbird ornament, a gorgeous glass hummingbird and an adorable hummingbird wind chime. The “can you help me with a quick favor?” friends. And one of the most beautiful tributes to Vic I've ever read.
• That said, my random experiences of sadness this month included driving home from events (driving to an event doesn't bother me), going to the Butterfly Pavilion without Vic and the song “Merry Christmas, Darling.”
• Speaking of music, I listen to it a lot. In the car by myself, on my walk with Bella, in the shower, while I'm working to help me focus. One day on my walk with Bella, I started out sad for whatever reason. (How can I remember that far back?) Barely a minute in, a groovy version of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by Ray Charles came up on my Christmas Walking playlist, and I just started dancing. I mean, walking, but also dancing. (It's a thing. Look it up.) I'm sure anyone watching was laughing. Hard. Later, “Elf's Lament” by Barenaked Ladies (feat. Michael Bublé) popped up, and I sang along. Loudly. While I walk-danced. Music, for me, is healing. I can be sad while listening to music—I'll listen to a break-up song on repeat all day long if I need a good cry—but put a peppy, jazzy, fun, catchy or danceable song on and I am transported to another world, even if only for 3 minutes and 39 seconds.
  
• I took a few more steps away from Vic this month. I made the macaroni and cheese Vic always made me for Christmas. I cut the long hair that he loved. I disconnected the home phone we had for 37 years. I took him off of the cell phone plan. I got rid of the packages on DirecTV that he watched—including the channel that aired the Rockies games, which broke my heart just a little. I discontinued the DVD Netflix plan. (Yes. We still got DVDs from Netflix.) I took his name off all our memberships when I renewed them. These were painful but necessary steps.

So now it's 2022. I couldn't imagine a worse year than 2019, when I lost my dad, or 2020, when I lost my mom and we had a global pandemic, but 2021 definitely has its place in the pantheon of abysmal years. (Ooh, someone broke out the thesaurus!)

What's in store for this year? In the words of the great Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle):

I’m gonna get out of bed every morning … breathe in and out all day long. Then after a while, I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out. And then after a while, I won’t have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.

I don't make new year's resolutions, but my intention (a word I hear a lot in my morning meditations) is to just take every day (humming)bird by (humming)bird (apologies to Anne Lamott) and make the best of whatever life throws at me. Bring it on, 2022! I choose joy! 2021 will not defeat me!

As usual, I end the post photographically, and these are just a few (OK, a lot of) pictures that have brought me joy in the past few months.

Not long after he passed away, I gave one of Vic's telescopes to my niece and nephew. Within days, they had it set up and were looking at things far, far away.

Xan and Will looking at ... a neighbor, maybe?

Madi looking at ... Jupiter? Venus? Something cool, for sure.

Halloween is almost as festive in our neighborhood as Christmas. I posted the pirate house, as I call it, in October, but this bicycle built for two always made me giggle when I walked by.

Vic received a number of quilts over the years to help him during his various medical ups and downs, and my dad had a quilt top my grandma made finished into a full quilt for me. This year, I bought a quilt rack to display them all. Thanks to Cara, Chris and Alice for Vic's quilts. 💕

Hey! I never posted a picture of the finished square shower! Even though it was Vic's shower and it made me sad that he never even got to see it let alone use it, it does bring me joy because it reminds me of Vic.

One day, on my way home from lunch with a friend in Westminster, I went through Broomfield, so I thought I'd take a brief detour by the house where we got married. When I saw it, I was immediately transported back to 1988, when a (fairly) young woman married a (much older, if you talked to my mom) man under the bluest Colorado sky.

2021

1988

The whole backyard from the neighbor's house

Couldn't resist including the cheesy “kiss the bride” shot!

And finally, a few of the things mentioned above.

A boy and his blanket

A package from The New Phantom

The New Phantom also included treats for Bella

The New Phantom even knows what box The OG Phantom used!

Some inspirational artwork:

© Julie Leidel, The Bungalow Craft

 My new baby tree, decorated and lit:

 Butterflies and ... other things ... at night:

... from other guests? I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stay six feet away from this guy!
(Just kidding—he [or she] is harmless to humans.)

 My angel bell:

“Those we love don't go away. They walk beside us every day.”

A few more hummingbirds for my growing collection:

“The little hummingbird reminds us to savor the sweetness in every moment.
Their delicate grace and beauty make us realize the miracles in life.
Hummingbirds symbolize joy and inspire us to open our hearts.”

And Bella. Always Bella.

Happy new year, everyone!

My four-month report on how—squirrel!

I had a hard time writing this “it's been four months” blog post. I just couldn't decide what to focus on—Ups and downs? Been there, done that. Something I did this month? Nope—a pretty uneventful month all in all. Thanksgiving? That seemed promising.

But in fact, being unable to focus has been a hallmark of this stage, which is foreign to me. One of the things Vic always said he admired about me was my ability to focus. He bounced from thing to thing, and it often took him a week to perform the smallest of tasks.

That's where I am. As I described it to my stepmom on Thanksgiving, I have a hundred five-minutes tasks on my to-do list. I made a small donation to my alma mater, and now that my company does a charity match, I have to file the paperwork to get them to match that donation. It's just a download of the receipt and an upload to our charity match vendor. It practically took me longer to type those two sentences than it would take me to do the work. I have to put my thyroid medication on a 90-day fill through my company's prescription vendor. Again, it's just going online and filling out a few form fields, but there it sits, on my task list, undone.

Every time I sit down to work on my task list, I start by checking my email. And there the rabbit hole begins.

Oh, there's a new part available on the crochet-along I'm following—I'd better go download it. Here are some notifications from PayPal about money I spent. I should put those in Quicken. And as long as I'm in Quicken, I'll sign on to the credit union and my credit cards and my HSA and make sure I've entered everything from those accounts into Quicken. Wait, I can get AMC+ for $2 a month for a year? I'll go sign up for that so I can watch The Discovery of Witches. I wonder if there are any sales on for Christmas music in iTunes? I should check. Speaking of that, I should check my wish list on Amazon and see if anything on it is on sale. Oh! I have to check Zillow to see if any new houses have been added to my search criteria. Boy, I really need to sync Vic's iPad to his computer before I update it to the new operating system.

Next thing I know, it's 7 p.m. and I haven't taken Bella for a walk and I still haven't done my charity match (or anything else on my to-do list).

As I've said many a time, I'm riding out every stage of grief without trying to change it. I'm getting the important things done—I'm paying all my bills on time (now that I have them synced up), I'm getting Bella fed, I'm getting important appointments made (note to self: car needs an oil change), and so on.

And I was very diligent in putting up all the Christmas decorations on Thanksgiving day, so now the house is a Christmas miracle. But you know what? It's not the same. I think what I loved about Christmas decorations was how they came to be. One day I would leave the house for work (remember those days? When we left our houses to go to work?) at 6:15 a.m. (remember that? Getting up before the crack of dawn to get to work?), and when I got home at 6:15 p.m. (remember that? Getting home from work after the sun set?), the house would be completely decorated—tree up, lit, ornamented; music boxes spread around the house; mantle cleared and ready to display our Christmas cards; stuffed bears and moose and pillows strewn about. The only thing I had to do was pick out a wreath and hang it on the door.

Vic didn't love doing any of that by himself, but he knew I didn't love it either, and he knew I was working and didn't have as much time as he did, so he did it for me. He loved my coming home and seeing me admire all his work. Every few years, there would be a new music box. He bought all of them because he knew I liked them. And he always wanted me to approve of where he'd placed the ornaments.

And oh, those ornaments. We long ago got rid of the generic ornaments we bought at Target when we were first together. Now, every ornament has a special meaning. One ornament for each of our pets. The “first Christmas together” ornament from my mom. Several ornaments that I made as a child or were old family ornaments. Many, many souvenirs from our travels and those of his sisters. A ceramic “Dad” that Vic's daughter made.

I don't know how he decided where to put them, but I started with that ceramic “Dad” and put Laurie and Bryan's bears next to it. (Along with the Wags ornament.)

Then I put up our bears, with Bella between us. Next, I put the cats together. Then I went through the ornaments and picked all the ones from our trips plus a few of his favorites from other people's trips. This, from his sister Patty:

And these from his sister Alice:

The next thing I knew, I had a tree (complete with presents, sent early by Vic's daughter so I would have presents under the tree and know I wasn't forgotten).

I also put up the ornament tree from Alice, which houses all the White House Christmas ornaments she's given us over the years ...

... as well as all the music boxes, stuffies, bubble lights, and things I stitched (most of which aren't pictured because I ... you know ... forgot to take pictures).

So the house is festive, even if I'm not quite there yet. It was a lot more work doing it myself than it was when I left in the morning with a plain house and came home to a snazzy one. And Vic always turned on the tree and the stair lights (the lights he wrapped around the stair banister so I would have Christmas lights in my home office) when he got up in the morning, so I woke up to lights. I loved that. I didn't turn on the tree lights until around 6 p.m., and I still haven't put up the stair lights.

So having Christmas decorations around the house isn't exactly bringing joy to my world. And when I took Bella for a walk, the sunset was gorgeous. I took a picture, but it was with my iPhone, and it didn't capture the subtle beauty that Vic would have gotten if he'd taken a picture—so that made me sad. (In fact, a lot of astronomical things make me sad—there was an eclipse Vic would have gotten some great pictures of; Jupiter, Saturn and Venus are aligned, and the full moon swept past them with nary a picture taken; and there's a comet coming that would certainly be visible through Vic's long camera lens.)

I keep a list whenever something strikes me. Last month, I used that list to make my “Ups and downs” blog post. This month, I don't see a single “up” thing on the list. I finally took all his winter clothes to the OUR Center to donate. (An “up” for the people who are getting them, a “down” for me.) I came across a picture of the macaroni and cheese Vic made for my last birthday—the last time I'll ever get Vic's mac and cheese. (Yes, I can make it. I'm not helpless. But I want Vic to make it.) As I was doing laundry one day, I remembered that Vic used to put a quarter in the watch pocket of his jeans when he put them in the hamper. I mean, I was never gonna get rich from those quarters, but I kept all of them. And now there won't be any more. One of my favorite things about special days (like Veterans Day) was going to Facebook to see what pictures Vic posted. No more of that. I dropped his cell phone from our plan yesterday, and I teared up talking to the agent when I told him I wanted to remove it. (Honestly, I should have done it weeks ago—he wasn't getting any calls or texts, I hadn't needed it for two-factor authentication since August, and I'm saving $75 a month by removing it and going to a much smaller plan. Your head is on the chopping block, home phone line!) And the saddest thing of all, the husband of a dear friend of mine entered hospice this month, so she will soon be where I am. I don't want that for her. So, lots of sad things this month. (Not to mention that I also missed my mom on Thanksgiving because she used to come over to breakfast every year.)

And yet.

In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, a lot of people said to me, “Probably not a lot to be thankful for this year.” So after I wrote that bummer paragraph above, I thought about it for a minute. And in fact, I have so much to be grateful for. I always start with the obvious “friends and family”—but it's more than a flippant remark.

I'm spending time with friends I haven't seen in decades. I'm making new friends—the neighbor two doors down previously known as “Sonny's Mom” (because we only knew her through her dog, Sonny) has become “Anne” (because that's her actual name), and she takes walks with me and Bella a few times a week. And of course my “regular” friends—the ones who texted me on Thanksgiving to see how I was; the ones who just treat me normal, as if I'm not grieving (trust me—you need those friends); the ones who laugh at my jokes because they actually think they're funny.

My family continues to be a source of great support, whether it's my sister coming up to help me sort through Vic's things, Vic's sisters inviting me places to make sure I know I'm still part of their family, Vic's kids and our grandkids texting me and sending me pictures, all of my nieces and nephews who check in from time to time, and all of my steps—mom, sisters, brother, in-laws and all their extended families—texting, calling, e-mailing, Facebooking, always reminding me I have more than just my birth family.

How do people even get out of bed in the morning without this kind of support?

When you start thinking of what you're grateful for, you start seeing those things all around you. I am grateful for sunshine. For music. For yarn. For my iPad. For popcorn. FOR BELLA.

And although he is gone from this earth, I am eternally grateful that I had nearly 37 years to love and be loved by Vic.

I leave you this month with a video of Vic's favorite Christmas decoration, the Bandstand Bears. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you find peace and contentment in this holiday season.

How's Bella?

Virtually every time I talk to someone, they start by asking me, “How are you?” It always seems genuine—they always want to know the truth. And the truth, as I mentioned in my last blog post, is, “I'm OK. Ups and downs.” Sometimes accompanied by the Tom-Selleck-on-Friends head bob.

And I'm getting a lot of Facebook support—lots of like, love and care reactions to my posts, usually from a wide variety of friends and family and almost always one or two who are a happy surprise—as well as email and text messages, often just when I need them.

But what I didn't expect was the number of people who ask, “How's Bella?” I don't know why this should surprise me. People know how close Vic was with all our animals as well as how much they loved him. Here, too, I have my standard answer: “She's OK—she was always more my dog than Vic's.” That, too, is also true. In the beginning, she seemed to like us equally, but over the years, she got much closer to me. So she doesn't have any behavior changes—she eats, sleeps, poops, walks, just as she always did—but I do think she misses him (especially when I forget to check her water bowls 🙄🥴).

Shortly after he passed away, I noticed she would spend part of every day sleeping on his bed.

She did that for about a week, and then she just stopped. The next day, a friend spent the day with me cleaning out Vic's closet and drawers. I was trying to get through as many of his things as I could so that people who were coming to town for the service could take anything I wasn't keeping, and I was going to donate the rest to the OUR Center. Unfortunately, the OUR Center wasn't taking clothing donations at the time, so I just left all the clothes on the bed.

One day a few weeks ago, I heard Bella flap her ears around midnight. She does that when she wants to go outside to do her business. So I yawned, pulled on my robe and slippers, and went out into the hallway. But no Bella. I turned on the stair light and looked for her in her bed. No Bella. I turned around to see if maybe she had slipped into my bedroom unnoticed and something caught my eye. It was Bella, standing in the middle of Vic's clothes on his bed. She looked very guilty, as if she thought she wasn't supposed to be there. (Sorry, no pictures—did I mention it was midnight?) Anyway, she jumped down, and I took her outside.

When I came back upstairs, I moved all of Vic's clothes off the bed and put up a blanket he liked to use when he was cold at night. She didn't go up there that night, but the next day while I was working, I noticed she wasn't sleeping in her bed behind me. I leaned back to see if she was in her bed in my room. No Bella. So I grabbed my phone (it wasn't midnight), and there she was, on Vic's bed.

Since then, she has been on Vic's bed at least once a day. Usually it's late at night, and I can hear her flap her ears, jump off the bed and come get me to take her outside. (Vic used to take her when it was the middle of the night, and I wonder if she's remembering that?) Sometimes, I don't see her at all, but I know she's been there because:

Blanket as I put it on the bed

Blanket when I wake up in the morning

I really love seeing the evidence of her on Vic's bed, because even though she was always my dog, I know she loved him too, in her own “special” way. 😂

So thank you for caring not just about me but about my beloved Bella. Since I have been so self-absorbed in my last few blog posts, I'll cut this one short and just leave you with some of my favorite pictures of Bella over the past few months.

Why are you so close? Please, back up.

Tummy tickle, please

That was such a hard day, what with all the sleeping

That treat looks delicious!

Are you going to give me that treat, or not? I am being extra cute.