WHAT ARE YOUR VALENTINE'S DAY PLANS?

"Embracing my singleness" was an answer option by AARP, who sent out a questionnaire asking what my plans are for Valentine’s day.  The question options were typical of what you would expect from such a questionnaire.  Sweets for the sweetheart or dinner for two, etc.  One answer was “Will embrace my singleness.”  After filling in my answer, AARP sent a follow-up message giving you the total answers to date.  I was struck when it showed that the number one answer was “Will embrace my singleness.”  Boy, there are a lot of us singles out there!

Valentine’s Day, along with New Year’s Eve remains the two hardest days to get through since Pat passed away.  Oh what we take for granted when we have it and what is missed when we don’t.  

What fills me during these times, is the reality of how much I miss the tenderness of touch.  I can close my eyes and still remember the moments, but it only succeeds in making me yearn for that long hug and warm embrace even more.  I don’t know if I will ever be able to say that to be without intimacy is okay, but I have to find ways to get beyond the ache.  

With so many single men and women out there, one would think some places would do something to create a welcome to those without partners.  

I have kept one promise to myself.  I have begun to invite friends in.  Oh not a big party kind of invite, but small, intimate groups so conversation and laughter can occupy the time.  I remembered, with my last invitation, how much I loved preparing the meal and planning for friends.  And when they came, the joy of conversation and the hugs hello and good-bye felt wonderful! 

I haven’t figured out what I will do on Valentine's Day, but I will do something…go to the movies, attend a show, have some friends over….something.  I refuse to sit home and endure the commercials on TV that remind me how alone in life I am.  So if you see me knocking on your door, remember it is just me looking for a little TLC.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!

LORD, HELP ME PRESERVE MY DIGNITY!!!!

Me as I start my new chapter in life!

I am in a new chapter of my life.  And the goal?  To keep my dignity about me!  The chapter you ask?  Surviving working with a trainer and physical therapist.  Beautiful people in body and spirit, both of them.  I especially enjoy the young man, Dean, who is my trainer.  A brilliant young man who takes his work very seriously.  But he puts my body in positions that I haven’t tried since I was six months old.

Age I could last lift my legs
over my head.

I mean, when is the last time you put your legs over your head?  You know the position.  The getting-ready-to-change-a-diaper position!   Okay…maybe six months is pushing it, but not more than two years old for sure!  The worst part about this position is the fear I will fart in his face as he pushes my leg toward the back of my head!!!!

I look around the room and there is a younger women who, laying on her back, brings her legs up over her head and reaches back toward the wall with her toes.  I think to myself, “My God what I am doing here?”

The work I do with Dean is not cardio…but it sure makes me sweat.  By the time I walk away from him I am sweating as if I was in a sauna and my face is as red as an apple.  From the outside it looks simple.  At least he makes it look simple.  

“Just stand with your back to the wall, open your arms to your side and your elbows at 90 degrees, hands up in the air….touching the wall with the back of your hands.”  He demonstrates and I think, ah an easy one.  Sure.  I stand with my back against the wall, lift my arms as if I am surrendering to the gunman, push my arms back to touch the wall…pushing…pushing…I can’t touch the damn wall!!!!  

“Don’t worry,” he says.  “You’ll get there, just don’t give up.”

I want you to know that standing in this surrender position and lifting my arms straight up and then back down is very hard for this 68 year old body!  

Balance is my weak spot.  I mean it is so bad that if a policeman pulled me over for a DUI, I would just have to surrender because I could not pass his “stand on one foot and lift the other” test.  I would fall over on my face and he would haul me in!

I'll always love to cook!

And can I ask, why the mirrors?  In this place there are mirrors everywhere.  I don’t even like to look at myself naked in the privacy of my own home and yet here I am in a room full of young sweaty bodies who seem to be able to tie their legs into pretzel holds, unable to move without catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror.  Do you know how hard it is to try and do these exercises while seeing my “old women’s body” flopping around on the floor?  Most of the time I just close my eyes…and that does not help either!!!

As hard as this is…and it is hard…I will not give up on working to get my strength back into my muscles.  There is so much I want to do and places I want to see, and all require a good deal of walking and hiking and damn it…I am going to do these things!!!  Until then, Lord, please help me preserve my dignity!

LAUGHING AT AGE

Getting ready for bed last night, I broke out into hysterical laughter.  What it takes to get through a regular days activities today as compared to when I was younger….well…let’s just say it is time consuming.  Doctor appointments, funerals, and dealing with an aging body is what fills the time of most seniors today.  Me included.

When i was young and had to go somewhere, I would just grab my keys to the car and take off.  Didn’t think about anything except to count the heads of the kids with me and go.  Today, I must lay everything out (so as not to forget anything), then make a potty stop just as I prepare to enter my car to leave.

With some luck, I might be able to do that errand and return without having to stop somewhere out in the world to do a potty stop again.  If I am that lucky I almost always find myself scurrying into the house with my knees tight together so as not to drip and race to the bathroom.  I remember Pat would often laugh at me as I would return from my errands, shouting, “I have to go will be with you in a moment” as I flew into the house, past him into the bathroom.  Now and then I wouldn’t make it and I would get angry at his laughter as I was making right the mess I had created.

Another discovery about aging is that things are not as tight as they once were, and our pucker power is not as strong as it once was.  Having gone in for some tests lately, I try and warn the techs who are dealing with me that my holding power is not as good as it once was.  They usually try and assure me that everything will be fine.  Inside my head I am thinking…yea fine…wait until you age!  So they fill me up with water, tell me to hold it for a lot longer than I am able, and even make me move, roll over and sit up…all with potential disaster as my backdrop.  It is embarrassing enough to have to get naked in front of these whips, but the torture chamber that I believe on some level they secretly enjoy putting us through is downright devastating to someone who is trying to preserve whatever dignity I may have left.  

I remember a couple of years ago having to have a barium enema and again me telling them to please work as quickly as they could as my holding power is not what it use to be.  Well they filled me up, let me lay on the table and with every muscle I had, I tried to hold it back while they snapped the pictures, rolling me on my left, then on my right.  In the middle of the picture taking, another technician walked in and a conversation ensued.  Not about me.  About lunch and who was going where.  All the while I was trying to breath slow and hold….breath and hold….deep breath….in and out….slowly….holding as tight as I could…and oh my God I am not going to make it!  Needless to say their conversation was cut short.

I remember the day when bedtime came I just went in, washed my face, brushed my teeth, slipped into a gown, sprayed myself with a bit of cologne for my best beloved, slid under the covers and drifted effortlessly off to sleep.

Now I have to plan when to take my last meds of the day (because I need to have a bit of food in the belly), prepare my CPAP machine, put in my mouth guard (because the CPAP machine is causing me to grind my teeth and I cannot afford to break my front teeth), prepare the water for my night time dehydration (due to the CPAP machine), wrestle with the pillows to find the sweet spot where the elephant attached to my nose can be out of the way so I can sleep.  

Oh how I miss the simple days…a youthful strong body, good pucker power, and the ability to move about the world with little thought except for where I was heading.  There is one bright spot in all of this…I have a sense of humor about who I am today that I know I did not have years ago.  Why if I didn’t enjoy a good laugh at all of this, then it would not be worth it!

GOOD-BYE SWEET FRIEND

1999 - 2015

I did not plan today to say good-bye to Chewie.  He was 16.  Blind, deaf, not eating, and seizures told me this day was coming.  Like any hard decision that has to be made, I procrastinated dealing with it until today when it became obvious I could not ignore the decision no more.

Chewie was the best little dog a person could have in their life.  He was with me through a lot of special and tough events in my life.  He watched over us, entertained us, cried for us and most important of all loved us…all.  

I’ll never forget the day Aaron showed up with him.  This little dog that fit in the palm of our hand, fell out the moving truck that Aaron drove home from New Mexico.  Small, deer-like in color and looks, he was a delight from the very beginning.  But oh how he loved Aaron.  When Aaron would come for a visit, Chewie would recognize the sound of his vehicle coming down the road and he would alert us to his arrival. Once inside he would plaster Aaron with doggie kisses.

Then my Dad moved in with us for the last 3 1/2 years of his life and during that time Chewie became Pop’s best bud.  Even when Hospice came in, Chewie would watch over what the nurses did while hanging out under Pop’s hospital bed.  Until the end, Chewie never left Pop’s room until the day he died.

Following the sun

Pat taught him to dance, sit, roll over and play dead.  During the 13 years of Pat’s illness Chewie kept us company, never abandoned us in need, and was always good for a cuddle and some laughs.  His seizures started before Pat’s death and I would say to Pat, “I don’t know which one of you is leaving me first…you or him.”  But Chewie hung in there.  He knew he had one more job to do before he could go... take care of me while I grieved the loss of Pat.  And take care of me he did.  That first year without Pat I was comforted by the company and love Chewie showed me.  I do not know what I would have done without him to look after…but I knew it was him looking out for me…at least until Joliene moved in and then he became her best bud.

I will miss you sweet friend.  Oh how I will miss you!

TIME TO OPEN THE DOOR AND DANCE

As some of you have noticed, I have not written in awhile.  Grief reared it's ugly head.  Grief is a funny thing.  Well not really funny, but it sure does not stop after a short time…you know what is said to those who are grieving…”give it time, this will get easier.”   Like anything else that haunts the soul, you think you are on solid ground one minute and then boom—-you fall down and for a moment do not want to get up.

That is where I was this Christmas season.  The first year after Pat passed away, I had expectations of these kind of emotions and reactions to his loss. They came.  They were felt. Expected. The second year I kept busy enough to not have time to think.  Holidays came and went and I kept running!  But this year, even though the summer found me going and going, this fall things came to a standstill and I collapsed.  

I did not expect this Christmas to be anything but a regular celebration as experienced in the past.  Some are good and some are….well they are tradition and that is good.  This year, for what ever reason, found me being slapped by my emotions every time I turned around.  I would pick up something and I would fill up with tears.  I would set something out, and my throat began to burn with me trying to stifle a cry.

That is when I stopped.  Everything.  I pulled in.  I wallowed.  I searched for an answer.  What really got me pissed was realizing that at my age, I thought I would be better at handling life situations…but I wasn’t.  Normally I am a very upbeat person.  Positive.  Jovial.  Happy-go-lucky.  A can-do personality.  Normally.  But not these past couple of months.  There is a new normal in town…look out!  And I hate it!

Reality set in.  He is never coming back.  Life will never be like it was.  I look in the mirror and find myself saying, “it’s just me kid.”  I don’t like it one bit!  

It has come to me that only I can change the way I approach life in this new realm of being.  I am not a part of anything now.  But I realized as I thought through all of this that I can be.  I just have to create it.  

The week between Christmas and New Year found me alone and very lonely.  No one called.  No one came over…..wait.  No one came because I did not invite anyone.  ME!  I need to open my door and let life in instead of wallowing in the idea that I wish my family and friends would reach out to me.

Yes sir….it is all up to me.  A high school classmate of mine visited me for a short stop over this summer and described the “me” during my school days as “she went through school trying to disappear.”

He was right.  I could not let people into my life.  Too many secrets.  So I went through school with my head down and worked every chance I could.  It was not until I met Pat a year after I graduated high school that life began for me.  And in that life, I was surrounded by a new family and later children, whose existence drew me out, got me involved, and without thought or considerations I kept our door open to the world and invited everyone in.  

Then Pat got sick.  Not for a short while, but years.  And the friends that once surrounded us slowly drifted off and once again in my life, I found myself isolated.  A comfortable place for me.  Familiar but lonely.  Then Pat died.  As the fog of grief lifted, and those that reached out early slowly drifted back into their own life, I found myself dealing with this unwanted loneliness….and I am not afraid to say I don't want to be this way.  It was another life lesson.  I recognize that it is up to me to break the isolation…to move on…to develop a new way of living.  Rather than sit here as I did  between Christmas and the New Year, alone….no one calling…no invitations…I recognized that I have to reach out—to call—to invite into my life like I did when Pat and I stood together. 

Yes grief is an uncomfortable place to be.  It is not linear, and it is a growing process…no matter the age.  I’m smart enough to know what to do…I just have to let my heart catch up so I can enjoy the days again. 

So you will find the door open….and a new me learning how to dance again!

LIFE LIES DEAD AT MY DOOR

I am coming up on year three of widowhood.  What a journey this has been!  Our youth allows death to appear remote to us unless it touches us close to home.  Preparing for this time I believe is impossible, and I believe surviving this time period is a test of one’s core.  We are all born into a family, never alone until for many, we reach this time of life only to find all those that started out with us are, one by one, leaving this earth, allowing for us to stand more and more alone.

Life today is a yo-yo for me.  I enjoy being with family and friends—really enjoy it. It is easy today for me to laugh and have a good time.  Then the moment comes when it is time to go home.  Oh how I miss those moments of conversation that carries the good times on the journey home…”remember so-and-so and how funny?” or “Wasn’t it a great night, boy it was so good to…”

In life as a single, the moment lies dead as soon as you walk through a door.  You go home in silence.  Once inside your own place, there is just you.  You close the door and all you hear are your own footsteps making your way through the house.  

When you have that someone to share those moments with, it extends the good feelings.  You get to travel in the air of good times.  There is a contentment that fills you.  

Finding ways to embrace this stage of my life is my biggest challenge today and the one hardest for me to overcome.  I must learn to live alone and be okay with it. I cannot spend the rest of my life running from the silence. I must find ways to explore it’s existence for it is with me everyday now.  I must seize this moment to find my creative soul.  I must make it a positive in my life.  I have to in order to survive….no not survive, but live.  Complete, with joy in my heart and wings on my feet.  That is my goal.

But not today…for today, life lies dead at my door.  

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

The day it all began.
Thanksgiving Day 1966.
Joe Hart, Lucyann Ford Eyre
and Pat and I.  

Thanksgiving Day.  It is, of all the holidays, my favorite.  It is a time to just hang out with family and friends, to laugh, share, and acknowledge that the best things in life are surrounding us in that moment.  Even with the mixed emotions of this day for me, I am still surrounded by the memories of a life well lived and one that continues to grow.

I love my family.  All of them…warts and all.  I love the diversity of personalities.  I love the laughter that sings through the air during our gatherings.  I enjoy just sitting back and witnessing the banter that flows between them.  A special energy that never gets tiring.  The truth is, I just want more.  Thank God for this holiday, when we can get together to just share time together.  

I know from my childhood, that all family gatherings are not perfect.  And when loss is on the table, there is a longing that is deep and painful.  

It takes hard work, forgiveness, acceptance, and a generosity of spirit to be able to have year after year, the opportunities to share what is the best thing in life…our family and friends.

I know for me, it helps as I walk this world alone after losing Pat, that I am not really alone when it counts.  I wish all of you the same opportunity to enjoy the family and friends that surround you in your everyday life.

Happy Thanksgiving.