Hollywood

You know, it’s interesting; I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  Hollywood has the wrong idea about widows.  They treat it like it’s this glamorous thing:  “We have this love story to write, and we need this tragic woman character who’s going to meet this man…I know!  We’ll make her a widow!” 

I was watching “It’s Complicated” the other day, with Maryl Streep.  Mary Kay Place has a small role as one of her girlfriends and they say to her “You’re so lucky John is dead, so you don’t ever have to run into him.” That really pissed me off.  Oh yeah, she’s lucky.  I wouldn’t wish widowhood on my worst enemy.  They SO have the wrong idea.  

They don’t ever show the real “widowness” of the widow.  It’s always just the set-up.  It’s just the part of her that makes her tragic and somehow more appealing to the new man.  The reality is, how could that be appealing to any man? 

I always gave Sawan lots of credit for loving me, because I’m a difficult woman to love.  I told him regularly that I was thankful that he loved me because I knew how difficult I was.  I was strong willed and not teachable and independent and I came with lots of baggage.  I used to make jokes about my “baggage,” that if I had to have some I liked to picture it as being cute little suitcases…probably polka dotted with my initials monogrammed on them.  Now add to it that I’m a widow…and I think there’s no suitcase big enough to hold this baggage.  I come with so much baggage now that it would maybe fit on a barge, and maybe the tugboat that pushes it around is cute? 

I wonder how any man could feel like he was anything other than second choice?  I actually had someone tell me in the first few months, in a very sweet way, trying to comfort me, “Don’t worry, you’re going to meet the love of your life.”  I didn’t know how to respond.  I already did meet the love of my life. 

So I try and do this:  I try to stay away from the “hero worship” as I’ve heard it called, the remembering only the best things about him and pretending like he could do no wrong.  Because the reality is, I probably will meet someone else someday and I don’t want to constantly be comparing him to Sawan, and there’s no way that a real person can measure up to the fake person that I could make Sawan be in my mind.  Just having them measure up to the real person that he was is going to be hard enough.  He was an amazing man, he loved me well, and he could parallel park like nobody’s business.

I suppose no one really wants Hollywood to make a story about actual widowhood, because it would be incredibly boring.  Cry, grieve, watch TV to try to get your mind off of crying and grieving, eat sliced turkey standing in front of the fridge, cry, grieve, repeat.  And also, I have never been less glamorous than I am now.  I just bought my 3^rd pair of black sweatpants.

Arthur

So I want to be really real here.  That’s part of what this whole thing is about for me, being honest about what it’s really like being a widow and dealing with life now.

That being said, I am afraid to let you all in to how dark it can really be.  This has been an incredibly hard week, with it just being the anniversary.  For my 5^th ever post I’m just not quite ready to let you all see that. 

I have been trying to think about all of the things that I’m thankful for in an effort to cheer myself up in this dark place.

I thought I would share with you one of the big ones. 

I have a very special little dog, his name is Arthur.

We got Arthur two years ago.  I begged for a dog the whole first year we were married.  For some reason, this was a battle that I was unable to win for awhile, which was surprising, because I always won.  But every time I would bring it up there was something that needed to be done first, like cleaning my room (I’m not kidding).  Plus, it’s expensive to have a dog and we didn’t have ANY money.

So, I won an Iphone from KBCO.  Fortunately for me, they gave me the money rather than the actual phone, and I wanted to spend my prize money on a puppy.

Two years ago in August, both my sisters moved away from Denver in the same week.  Unprepared for how sad this would make me (I woke up crying every morning for a couple of weeks), Sawan said “I think we should get a dog.”  I was of course overjoyed. We called every breeder in the paper and found one that had one male puppy left from their last litter.  We had to drive all the way out to Burlington (almost to the Kansas border) to get him, but it was worth it.  He was always meant to be my dog, but I didn’t get to go to pick him up, and by the time the drive home was over, he had wrapped himself securely around Sawan’s little finger and he was most certainly his dog.

Sawan did all of the training (well, most of it), spent the first few nights with him crying on the couch (the puppy, not Sawan) and we loved being dog parents.  He went with us everywhere. 

Now he is just my dog, but he is my constant companion and I don’t know what I’d do without him, not sure how I would have made it through this last year if I didn’t have him.

He is a Westie.  He looks like a white Scottie.  He answers to all manner of names, given my family’s penchant for nicknames.  Sawan and I always called him “the Fella,” so he answers to that, as well as Phil, a derivative of that, and Artie, Arturo, Tudie, Artie Mortie (a reference to a hilarious Michael Caine movie, called “Without a Clue” that’s a Sherlock Holmes spoof and I highly recommend) and Chavez, his new one, that my cousin Nick has given him.

He follows me everywhere, including the bathroom, and our door doesn’t close (see landlord issues in previous posts), so he pushes the door wide open, which has never really been an issue, due to the fact that my roommate is my sister and she’s never really home at the same time as me anyway, but recently gave me pause when I had a houseguest…

He knows when I’m sad and immediately comes to comfort me, by licking my tears, then laying his head on my chest in a “hug”.

He sleeps with me in my bed, and it’s a huge comfort to know that I’m not alone there.  He is the cutest thing in the morning, waking up and kissing my face, then doing his downward dog yoga stretching, then making his loud yawn and sticking his tongue out, Snoopy style.

He begs by the door to go with me when I leave, and on the occasion that he doesn’t get to go, he runs to the window and sticks his head out of the blinds to watch me leave.   When I come home, often 8 hrs later from work, he’s sitting there with his head out of the blinds watching for me, prompting me to hope that he wasn’t waiting there ALL day. 

He lets me hold him like a baby and smother him with affection and I am just so thankful for this little bundle of comfort.

August 24, 2009

It’s August 24, 2009.  Nearing the end of our enchanted summer, so many big dreams coming up on the horizon.

The salon, the sort of albatross around our neck, was under contract to be sold.  We were set to close next week.    

Two weeks before that, we had had a frank conversation that finally led to us agreeing that it was time to have a baby.  Me finally making him understand that the reason I wanted a baby so badly was  so much about him.  About me loving him.  About wanting to have something that was half him and half me.  That I wanted to have a chance to have a family to somehow right some of the wrongs in how he had been raised.  Give him the chance to be the father that he never had.  We had set the goal for “pulling the goalie” September 1^st.  I had been making phone calls to get insurance changed.  Called my doctor to find out if I had my IUD removed how long we could expect to wait before being able to get pregnant, and then waiting to make the appointment until I heard from insurance.

Sawan got up early for school that Monday.  He had started real estate school a week earlier.  This was the beginning of week two.  He had a big test that he had been studying for.  He was finally excited about a new career.  This was something that he was passionate about, something that we both thought that he would be good at.  We loved walking through neighborhoods, looking at old construction versus new construction, who had done it right, who had done it wrong.  We obsessively watched HGTV.  Just last night he told me, as we were watching “design star” “I fuckin’ love being married to you.”  We just did dumb stuff like that together and totally enjoyed it.  We were such nerds and didn’t care.  We just loved each other.

It was my day off, technically, but I had a big day planned, and was expecting to hear from my mom at any point that my Grandfather, Papa Howard, had died.  So there was no sleeping after he woke me up when he was getting ready for school.  I got up to be with him a little bit before he left for school.  I made the coffee.  I was standing in the kitchen in my too-big t-shirt that I put on after I got up to walk around the house in and was still wearing my mouth guard that I need for TMJ.  He scolded me…”Baby, what are you doing up?”  I told him that I needed to get started.  I had acupuncture, a haircut with Dani, and I was going to have to get to the shop to move clients around to deal with going to the funeral and also that I would probably have to go find something to wear to the funeral because none of my clothes fit me.   “Ok, baby.  Have a good day.  I’ll call you later about the game.”  We were supposed to go to the Rockies game that night.  He was still feeling under the weather, though (he had had a low grade fever all weekend) so we weren’t sure it was going to happen.  I told him good luck on his test that morning. 

He kissed me goodbye.  He never kissed me well when he was sick, always afraid that he would get me sick and so they were chaste little pecks.  I still had my mouthgaurd in anyway, so it was a funny, sort of sad little kiss goodbye, love you baby, have a great day, see you later.

I got ready for my day, took a shower and got dressed.  I put on my denim capris and my black old navy puffed sleeved t-shirt that I never realized I was putting on for the last time.  How I’d never be able to stand to see those clothes ever again.

I got the call from my mom as I was leaving the house.  I was just pulling out onto Colorado Blvd.  She told me that Papa had died at about 3 in the morning.  She had been with him all night.  She knew that the time was coming and so she had just gotten to stay with him, singing to him and holding his hand.  It was so beautiful to hear the story.

I called Sawan to tell him the news.  I relayed her story and he said that it was so amazing that they got to have that time together.  What a gift.  For anyone to get to die that way. 

I told him I was going to go to my appointments and then try to start making arrangements.  He was going to finish up at school and then see if there was anything he could do to help.

He finished school around noon and we had just texted back and forth a bit.  I actually talked to him about 2 and he said he was feeling pretty bad, did we still want to try to go to the Rockies game that night?  I said that I was feeling pretty stressed out with everything that I had to get done and maybe we could just skip it?  He liked that idea.  He told me to just take all the time I needed, he was feeling pretty bad and was going to just rest.

I made all the phone calls I needed to move my clients around after booking my ticket, then set off to buy something to wear for the funeral.  I was making pretty good time, it was only about 5:30.  I called him and we talked about my haircut.  He hated it when I tried something new.  He hated it when it was short.  So I warned him.  He said that as long as I liked it he would like it, too, which I knew wasn’t true but was sweet of him to say.  He said he was so sorry but he just didn’t feel good enough to get something together for dinner.  I told him it was no big deal, I should be taking care of him and I was so sorry that I wasn’t home doing that.  I would come home and bring him dinner just as soon as I could.  I had one more stop after this and then I’d call him on my way to Target and see what he wanted for dinner from the store.  He said not to worry about me not taking care of him.  He was a big boy, and he and Arthur, our little dog, were going to lay down and take a nap.

Made my quick stop, headed to Target and picked up the prescriptions, but when I called him to see what he wanted for dinner he didn’t answer.  I figured he was still sleeping.  I didn’t worry about it, but I slowed my pace a bit.  I picked out chicken soup, the good kind from the deli.  Then I got stuff for his lunches for the rest of the week, since he wasn’t feeling well I figured he hadn’t gotten that done today.  I bought him lunchmeat and bread and chips and string cheese.  I bought coffee.

Then I headed home with my groceries in my recyclable bags. 

I made the illegal turn at 11^th.  Not sure why I did it that way that day but it always sticks in my head.

I pulled into my parking spot, grabbed my groceries, and headed upstairs, so glad that this never-ending day was finally over and I could just focus on my poor, sick little husband and maybe have him hold me and comfort me over the sadness of losing my papa today.

I open the door to the condo and Arthur is freaking out.  He always freaks out when I walk in.  Jumps up, is excited to see me, but in hindsight, this was a different kind of freak-out.  He was barking a shrill, high-pitched bark that I had never heard before.

I greet the dog, put down the groceries, and with all the commotion that the dog and I have made, expect to see some stirring from naptime at one of the napping locations.  I look first on the living room couch.  That’s spot number one for napping alone.  I glance over in the evening light and don’t see him.  I’m calling him at this point.  “Baby?” 

I look in our bedroom, but the bed is empty.  Baby?  I call again.  Now I’m starting to panic.  I turn on the hall light, calling for him, “Baby?” and I walk toward the guest bedroom.  The office.  We use the computer in there but the bed is really a catchall for dirty clothes and fishing gear.  But I see him lying there.  Relief spreads over me.  Oh, there he is.  Instantly, the relief is gone as I process that he hasn’t responded to me calling to him.  I walk into the dark room, lit only by the hall light, and call to him again.  “Baby?”  I feel his leg.  Stiff.  Oh, God, Baby.  I say.  I turn on the light and go back and look at him and realize that he’s not breathing.  I run into the other room to find my purse with my phone and then I’m that hysterical woman on the 911 call that you see on TV.  I told them that I didn’t think my husband was breathing.  She got my address and information, and remarkably, I knew it.  She asked if I knew how to do CPR.  I didn’t.  She said she’d tell me how.  She asked if he was on a bed and if I thought I could move him to the floor.  I didn’t think I could.  Ok, we’ll just try from there.

Then I lost connection with the 911 operator and had to do the whole thing over again.  She starts explaining how to do cpr to me, and I start doing compressions.  When I first press on his chest a breath comes out but it sounds all rattly.  His eyes look like they’re wrinkled.  His mouth is open and his tongue looks pruny like fingers look when they’ve been in the bathtub too long.  My mind already knows what my heart doesn’t believe yet.  I get about 15 sets of compressions done before the paramedics get there.  They were really fast.

I’ve watched enough ER to know to stay out of their way, so I go out in the hallway to call my dad.    I can’t get service.  I knock on every door to try to borrow a phone and no one is home.  Finally, I get a signal and make the call to my dad.  Mom is in Oklahoma City still dealing with the stuff with her dad.  I tell dad what’s happened and ask him to come over.  He tells me to call 911.  Yeah, dad, the paramedics are already here, I just need you to come be with me.  So he’s on his way.

The dog keeps going into the room, though, and I can’t go in there to get him, so I call Dani, one of my best girlfriends and also a downstairs neighbor to just come up and get Arthur.  She arrives seconds later but won’t leave.  She thinks she needs to just be with me.

Next thing I know the paramedics are coming in and telling me that they can’t get a rhythm.  They’ve tried.  They can take him to a hospital but it will only cost more money and they’ll tell me the same thing there that they’re telling me here.  I have to ask her, “So you’re telling me that he’s dead, then.”  And she says, “Yes.”  I hit the floor.  Aren’t they supposed to tell you that stuff sitting down?  In that moment, I felt that I saw my future.  I saw myself on the lonely nights, waking up freaking out about being in bed alone.  I saw myself in so much pain with arms empty of man and baby.  I saw myself trying to learn to live without him and knew how long and painful the rest of my life was going to be.  I knew that this was the beginning of life number two for me.  That the charmed life number one was officially over.

Suddenly we were in decision mode.  Organs.  Could they be donated if they took him to the hospital?  No, because there was never a rhythm and they don’t know what’s wrong with him.  Police show up.  Because of his age they want to have homicide come take a look.  Ok, whatever.  I think back on it later, realizing that the wife is always the first suspect and think about how weird it would have been had they actually shown up.  I was such a mess.  Dad shows up and he’s the first one I have to tell.  I just shake my head and dad hugs me.  We both just sobbed.  I think it’s this point that the realization comes to me and I say it out loud…”Oh my God, dad, I’m a widow.”  And the policewoman doesn’t want to let him see the body.  I was furious.  It may be weird, but this is still my house and he is still my husband and if my dad wants to see him, he can.

Then the phone calls.  All the people that had to be called.  Siblings.  I sat down and made a list.  I called Karen, my co-worker first.  I needed her to handle stuff at the shop.  I have no idea what I said to her, how coherent I was.  She told me to just get off the phone and she would handle everything.  Proof positive that Sawan was right.  If there ever was a candidate for cloning it would be Karen.  Next I called Ellie.  I didn’t prep her at all, just blurted it out.  She puked while I was on the phone with her.  After I hung up, Dad and I talked for a minute.  He gave me a little coaching on how to share that news.  Next I tried Cori, but she was in England and she didn’t answer.  So I called Gabe.  He said he’d start working on flights to get out there tomorrow, but we had to call the Red Cross.  All kinds of hoops had to be jumped through to get special leave for military guys.  Dad took care of that.  Next I called Sawan’s sisters.  I don’t remember whom I called first.  I was so sad to have to make those phone calls.  To have lost their mom so early in their lives and then to lose a brother so early in his is just more than one person should have to deal with.  To have to be the bearer of that news was really, really hard.  Next I tried Cori again.  This time she answered.  I remember this call more clearly than any of the others.  I told her that she needed to prepare herself because I had some really bad news.  I had come home and found Sawan not breathing, and had called 911, but even with me doing cpr and them trying, they were unable to save him.  Cori asked me, “Noey, are you saying that Sawan is dead?” and she tells me that I just sucked in air for what seemed like an eternity, and then I said “Yes.” And she just said “Oh, baby, baby baby.”  Over and over again.  When I think back on that memory, I think, and she just held me.  Which is impossible, because she was in England and I was in Denver, but that’s how it felt.

After all the phone calls were made, Dad convinced me that I needed to come to his house to “sleep” for the night.  I couldn’t leave the house in the shape that it was, with Sawan’s cereal bowls still on the coffee table and cans of half-drunk Fresca littering my living room. 

So I went in and stripped the bed that he had just died in.  I carried the sheets straight down to the dumpster.  I took a big black garbage bag and threw away all of the groceries that I had just bought him.  Then I threw away all of the trash that had any marking of him on it.  Dad did the dishes.  I just couldn’t wash out his cereal one last time, so dad stood at the sink and sobbed as he loaded the dishwasher for me.

When we finally left my condo, dad drove me to his house in his car, Arthur on my lap, shock on my face.  We headed down 8^th avenue, and when we turned onto York, a fox ran across the road.  Dad pointed it out.

My whole adult life, the fox has been a spiritual thing to me.  Like a physical reminder of a spiritual presence in my life.  It was God telling me, “This sucks.  But I love you, and I’m still here.  I’m for you.  Don’t forget.”

Starting "the Rules"

Any NCIS fans out there?

I've become obsessed with this show recently and have watched every episode.  It's pretty great.  Cute boys, strong women, and they always get their man.  It's all tied up in a very neat one hour episode.  Lots of closure.

Well, Gibbs, the main character, has these rules.  I have no idea how many there are, but all of his team has to know his "rules."  They refer to them all the time, by number.  The only example that I can give you is a bad one, but it's "Never Apologize.  It's a sign of weakness."  While I don't agree with this, it's one of the rules that he sets out for his team to live by.  I have no idea how he came up with the list, and I'm pretty sure that the list has developed over time, and that they're not given in order of importance.

This brings me to my point.  There is no widow handbook, or a handbook on how to deal with widows, or people that are grieving, for that matter.  So maybe I can help you all know what is helpful by making my own "Gibb's List" of rules, or maybe we should call them suggestions, for things that you should never say to a widow.  We're all figuring this out as we go, so this will be the first one, but it does not necessarily rank highest in order of importance.

Suggestion, or rule number one:  Never tell her that you understand what she's going through.

Here's the thing:  everyone has had grief in their life.  We're all on the scale.  All grief and loss is important and sad.  I think that it's amazing that people want to empathize with me.  I know that most of the time, people who say these things to me are trying to love me.  I choose to focus on this, but this definitely takes a lot of grace.  We all deal with grief in different ways, and grief is so multi-faceted, that it's just different for everyone.

Even with other widows, even young ones, our experiences are all different.  Some lost their husbands to cancer, so they had time with their husbands to plan what life would be like without him, making their loss different than mine.  Some had children, which for me makes me jealous, that they'll always have a piece of him, but for them maybe has been a huge hardship.  At any rate, we can't compare grief.  We can't keep score (because if we did, I think I obviously would win, but then, when you're in the middle of your painful experience, you probably think that you'll win, too, which is why I think we shouldn't keep score).  But we also can't know what a person is going through, and it's extremely painful when people tell me that they understand.

A friend of mine sent me this quote from Henri Nouwen:

Our brokenness is always lived and experienced as highly personal, intimate and unique. I am deeply convinced that each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers. No doubt, we can make comparisons; we can talk about more or less suffering, but, in the final analysis, your pain and my pain are so deeply personal that comparing them can bring scarcely any consolation or comfort. In fact, I am more grateful for a person who can acknowledge that I am very alone in my pain than for someone who tries to tell me that there are many others who have similar or worse pain.

New Adventures

Ok, this may sound silly, but here's some major triumphs from the last few months.

People tell me all the time how brave I am.  It actually drives me crazy because I don't feel brave.  I always thought that brave was a choice.  You know, you are in a certain situation and you choose: either be chicken shit, or be brave.  So what I'm doing now, facing life, I don't feel that I'm being brave, but I'm also not being chicken shit... so it's just confusing.  I don't feel that I ever made the choice.  Yes, this is going to be hard, but I'm going to be brave and do it anyway.  I don't know.  Maybe I need a better definition of brave.  I'd like to let that be a word that I used to describe myself.

But I digress.  There have been a few small, seemingly silly things that I can own that I have bravely conquered.  This is something that I choose to think of as the adventure of my new life, and meditate on that, rather than thinking of these things that I have to do now and how bad life sucks.  Sometimes the adventure thoughts win out.  Those are the good days.

I mowed the lawn.  I bought a condo when I was single.  This was a very intentional choice.  It had a huge balcony, a pool, and someone else was responsible for snow removal.  The big thing was, though, there was no lawn to mow.  I had no desire to have to take care of one.  I stopped living in the condo when Sawan, my husband, died, and rented a duplex with *gulp* a yard.  I'm responsible for mowing it.  I dreaded it and dreaded it and finally bit the bullet and just did it.  I called my dad for a refresher course, I hadn't mowed a lawn in 15 years, give or take.  Then, I went out there and mowed it.  Honestly, it just wasn't that hard.  The hardest thing about it was grieving for the husband that I wished had been mowing it for me, but I can still do it.  I see women mowing their yards all the time and they can't ALL be widows.  I cried a little, but at the end of my sweaty chore, I couldn't figure out why there wasn't a band playing or a ribbon to cross at a finish line...I had done it, I won!

I pulled the meat off the bones of a whole chicken.  I am totally sicked out by this process.  Sawan always did it for me, and somehow he always did it really cleanly and perfectly.  I thought that I would never have to deal with it in my whole life.  Not quite how it turned out.   So anyway, I needed some chicken.  I bought the rotisserie chicken from Safeway and brought it home and pulled it off as best I could.  I gave myself lots of grace to throw away the stuff that I couldn't handle, but the fact that I was doing it instead of having Sawan do it for me was a big fat deal.  That chicken never tasted so good.  It tasted like triumph.

I replaced the handle on the toilet.  Now, this is actually something that our landlord should have done, but that would be a whole other blog.  At any rate, the toilet handle had gone un-fixed for way too long and I thought I could figure out how to do it, so I replaced it myself.  Once again, would have loved for my handy husband to have done it, but I'm learning that I can do things myself.  And it mostly works, too, you just have to jiggle the handle after every flush to make sure it won't run.

We Come In All Shapes and Sizes

What do you think of when you think of a widow?

For me, it was always a sweet, soft word.  Widow was a grandma.  She has gray hair and she knits.  She and her husband were lifelong companions.  They were married for 40 years.  They had two grown children together, and several grandchildren.  With her at his side, he dies peacefully of "old age."  Though she misses him terribly, she is now free to do the things that she always wanted to do, but couldn't because she was taking care of him, and she takes trips to Europe and visits the grandkids.  

Wrong.  The reality of the word widow for me is just so different.  It never occurred to me that widows were young.  I guess I knew a few, but it never changed the image for me.  The word is so strong and harsh and painful.

I'm here to show you that widows come in all shapes and sizes.  Some of us are cute.  I'm 31 and a half.  I have blonde curly hair and a curvy figure.  I'm a little fluffy in the middle but I'm working on it.  There is nothing grandma-ish about me... 

I'm almost a year into my journey.  It's been amazing to me all of the things that I've learned.  As an American, we have so few customs when it comes to grief.  There is no structure to our grief.  There is no manual for how to be a widow or how to handle one.  I was thinking that I would use this to share what I'm going through.  Maybe it will be helpful to other widows and to people who know widows.