It's The Little Things

Effort.

Ugh.  I'm exhausted just typing it.

If you're making the effort to do anything in life, that means that whatever it is that you're doing isn't coming easily to you.  Whether it's learning something new, keeping a friendship or relationship healthy, or just getting out of bed...you're concentrating on getting something done for the greater good.  Because you know what you want the outcome to be.

And in widowhood, sometimes the greatest effort comes from just trying to...well....

Live.

Years ago, before my husband died and I was at home with three toddlers on my own because he was out of town, my mother stopped by the house just as we were sitting down to dinner.  It was a beautiful summer evening and I had served dinner on the back porch, something that took a lot more effort than just plunking everything down on the kitchen table. 

"I think this is great," she said as she took in the scene outside.  "It's nice that you're making the effort even though you're husband's out of town."

I don't know why I did it.  I guess at that point, I just felt the need to do something that would make me feel good for a few minutes and a pretty table was what I had decided it was going to be.  But thinking back, probably part of what I needed was the whole process - the set up, the take down, and ultimately the distraction from the fact that I was lonely for my husband.

When he died, it took so much effort to do everything because it felt like everything I had in front of me was just so damn BIG.  Dealing with the paperwork, the millions of decisions that all came at once, and three children who had become my full responsibility...it took an enormous amount of energy just to open my eyes in the morning.  And as we began to get into the rhythm of our new life and I started getting used to the role I never wanted to play...I was just so bogged down with life that somewhere along the line, I forgot how to live.  

At some point, I started doing what I thought at the time were really frivolous tasks.  I've made no secret about my addiction to pedicures and for the first time in my life, in the months after my husband's death, I got my hair highlighted.  I threw the most enormous Christmas party for my friends that took weeks of preparation and probably wasn't completely cleaned up for days after.  I even remember an obsession with finding the perfect red purse.

Because...you know...every widow needs one.

Years ago, I thought all of these things were ridiculous and a complete waste of time.  But now I realize they were actually more significant than I gave them credit for.

I think I was somehow slowly practicing life again.  That when all of the big things got to be too much...it was the little insignificant things that got me through.  It wasn't just the fact of having people over - it was the preparation and the thinking behind it that had me blissfully distracted for a little while and concentrating on something other than how scary life had become.  That while the idea of a pedicure seemed inane, while I was standing there trying to decide whether I wanted my toes painted "Cancun Fiesta" or "Chick Flick Cherry"...I wasn't thinking about widowhood for a few seconds.  That while I was shopping for that red purse, I was envisioning what it would go with which meant that I was thinking about getting out of my sweats at some point and going out again.

We've all heard the saying, when it comes to raising children, that the days are long but the years are short.  That applies to widowhood, too.  One minute you feel like your spouse just died and then you blink and it's been 10 years.  Much of life happens in leaps and bounds, but sometimes it's the little things that get us from one big transition to the next.

And before you know it...you've bounded.



Widow Chick (aka, Catherine Tidd) is the owner of www.theWiddahood.com and the author of the upcoming memoir Confessions of a Mediocre Widow (Jan. 2014).  She is also a writer for The Denver Post's Mile High Mamas and a contributor to several books on grief and renewal.

The Unsaid

The Unsaid keeps me awake.

It visits me, mainly at night, as I'm trying to go to sleep.  Sometimes it's all of the things that I should have said when I'd had the chance.  But most of the time it's all of the things I should have said if I'd had the nerve.

It looms before me, this subconscious shadow, as I lay in my bed thinking about not just the day, but the weeks, months, and years before.  The few times when "I love you" should have been whispered and wasn't.  But mainly the times when "what you have done is unacceptable" should have been brazenly declared.

The Unsaid was born out of my need to avoid conflict and my overall belief that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But there have been times when I wish I had a little more vinegar in me. Because there is a difference between avoiding conflict...and allowing a swarm fed by complacency consume you.

Years ago, my therapist told me that I should eliminate the word "should" from my vocabulary - what I "should" have done or what "should" have been said.  Because in some cases that word self-implicates and implies that we've done something wrong.  And I can understand that we use it all too often in our thoughts and, therefore, are constantly condemning ourselves for things we "should have done."

But when it comes to the Unsaid...the word "should" comes back into my personal dictionary.  And sometimes it comes with a lot of regret.



It's strange to think that silence can be so peaceful and overwhelming at the same time, but it can.  Because I've come to realize that my silence has led others in my past to believe they were right to do whatever it is that they've done - and that I agree with the outcome.  When in reality, what they've done has hit me so hard it has stunned me into that hush.


And that means I've left things unsaid.

Widow Chick (aka, Catherine Tidd) is the owner of www.theWiddahood.com and the author of the upcoming memoir Confessions of a Mediocre Widow (Jan. 2014).  She is also a writer for The Denver Post's Mile High Mamas and a contributor to several books on grief and renewal.

The Memory Bomb

It's happening now like it happens every spring - I find myself cleaning out and cleaning up, getting ready for summer and usually needing some sort of a change.  This is usually the time of year I buy a new slip cover for my couch or new placemats or something equally frivolous just to make a room look a little fresher.  And it's the time of year when I look at all I've stored since last year and wonder, "Do I really need all of this junk?"

So it's no surprise that I decided to tackle my garage...again.  Seriously, this is about the fifth time I've tried to clean it out since my husband died.  And each time I do, I find myself feeling a weird mix of nostalgia and irritation at what was left behind by my loveable - yet packrattish - husband.

I've been through the tools several times, always wondering do I need that gigantic air compressor and four drills?  I've hauled out boxes and boxes of stuff and each time I feel kind of sad, but a little lighter...knowing that moving forward at a pace I'm comfortable with is okay.

But on Sunday morning, I started digging into a corner I don't think I've looked at since we moved into our house almost nine years ago.  Actually, I know I haven't because as I opened the boxes...I found things that I hadn't seen since 1996.

For you young widows out there...that was a loooong time ago.

That was the year my husband and I were married and that was the year I apparently packed a box filled with the letters I had written him during our year-long engagement while he was in Florida and I was in Colorado, some old sorority mementos, and all of the stuff that was bestowed upon me during my bachelorette party before our wedding.

I think it was the moment I pulled out the purple sequined bikini that I said to my kids, "Go inside.  Mommy needs to go through some stuff."

Almost six years - six years - since my husband's death and I am still experiencing the bomb that is boxed up memories.  We think we've been through it all - have purged, donated, trashed, and cried through mountains of stuff - only to find random things that have been left behind.

It didn't hit me as hard as it used to, but I did feel that slight sucker-punch.  That quick intake of breath and that moment where your mind tries to tell your heart, "It's okay, it's okay."  I think it was when I found all of the stuff that he had packed away from his first love - his Trans Am that he bought when he was at the Air Force Academy - that the lump in my throat began to form.

This is the impossibility of widowhood, isn't it?  The knowing that there are some things - some hurts - that will always be there.  It's such a sneak attack.  And even though those attacks don't feel as harmful as they once did...the sheer surprise of it is what gets to me.

I thought I had been through everything.  But I sometimes wonder if that's ever going to be possible.

I guess the good thing about being a more experienced widow is that by now I know it's okay.  It's okay to be sad for that minute.  It's okay to take a beat and hold those things in your hands as if you've just uncovered buried treasure.  And it's okay to put it back into the box and wait for the day that you're ready to either put it away for good, in a more permanent place, because you know that it's something that will always be important to you.

Or decide to let it go.



Widow Chick (aka, Catherine Tidd) is the author of the upcoming memoir Confessions of a Mediocre Widow (Jan. 2014).  She is also a writer for The Denver Post's Mile High Mamas and a contributor to several books on grief and renewal.