Because Awesome Friends are Awesome

I don't have a whole lot to say today. My posts have been a little darker as of late. What can I say? It's been a rough go of things for the last couple months.

But I've started settling back into the routine of school and for some reason (clearly magical in nature) I actually feel like I'm not drowning this go around. I like my classes. All of them. Well. Except one where I have to do group work every day. Note to course developers: accountants don't like playing with others. That's why we are accountants!

I have a few exciting projects on the go that I'm actually looking forward to. One is a competition for a summer internship at Husky. Shameless plug: Please visit this website and vote for me! http://nexttopaccountant.ca/?p=70

But more than that I have two great buds suffering through the workload with me this semester making my classes a heck of a lot more fun. Yes, we are that obnoxious trio at the front of the room constantly giggling and talking about eating cake. Normally after class we head home but get stalled right before leaving campus and end up yakking for an hour in the freezing cold because we just can't shut up long enough to actually get going. Besides, we are all way too interesting and funny.

Suffice to say, after the way I struggled last semester, having someone to giggle with innapropriately during lectures and share notes with makes it all a lot easier to deal with.

And did I mention they don't get weird when I talk about Craig?

Yeah.

They are awesome.

So here's to awesome friends being awesome!

(but don't let it go to your heads guys... I'll mark you down on peer evaluations if you get too cocky)

The Trade-Off

I read an interesting article this week that cited a survey done amongst widow(er)s who stated, almost unanimously, they would give up an entire year of their life for one more day with their deceased spouse.

At first, I found this statistic rather jarring.

I have no idea if they posed the question outright or if "one year" was simply one of the options to choose from, but I found the very idea bizarre. Had any of these widdas come up with that on their own? Is this part of the bargaining process we go through when we lose a spouse? Dear God, I promise to die a year earlier if I could just have one more day with my husband.

The thought had never really occurred to me before. Largely because my bargaining process went a little more like this: Dear God, thanks for nothing. Please help me survive this now. Help me find a way to pay next month's phone bill. Help me get to work without getting in an accident. Help me survive my coworkers and their misguided attempts at helping. Give me someone to talk to. I promise I'll stop hating everyone. Why did you do this to me? How could you? I hate you... no wait, I don't. Please don't smite me.

Suffice to say the idea of bargaining a little more time with Craig has been working it's way through my brain all week. What would I give up?

To throw a year out there seems almost too glib. Which year? The last year of my life (preferably at 95 or something) or some other random year? And is it unfair to A to throw out what could be one of our years together for someone who is already gone?

Then I thought, what would I do with that one day, anyhow?

I can't imagine taking Craig somewhere or trying to show him what my life is like now. What a waste of time.

Would I cook him dinner or would we go out for McDonald's just to keep things quick?

What would we talk about?

I think I realized I don't really have a whole day's worth of things to say to Craig anymore, assuming he'd just sit there patiently listening the entire time.

And I don't really have things to say.

More like yell.

I'd probably scream my head off at him for leaving me, for making everything so hard. For not paying more attention when he was driving. I'd probably interrogate him about what happened and then not even listen to what he was saying because it still makes me so mad. I'd yell at him for the family mess and everything that has happened with them since.

Somewhere among this obsessive train of thought I realized one very important thing:

I'm still pretty mad.

It's been almost 2 years and I love Craig as much as I ever did and want to yell at him as much as I did the first day. I kind of figured that would have changed by now.

Which inevitably brought me around to one rather depressing thought: How much have I healed, really?

Not nearly as much as I thought I would have.

And the only person that really leaves me mad at is me.

You see, Craig's death involved a lot of trade-offs. I had to swap out my job to go back to school. I have less debt but somehow more financial insecurity. I have a house but I lost our home. I have a new car but now I hate to drive.

I used to have a laundry list of things I wanted in my life that would make me "happy". Craig always gave me a hard time that for every thing on that list I checked off, I'd somehow find a new one to add on.

Now it seems I've checked the majority of those boxes (ok, I still haven't won the lottery) but that "happy" feeling is still eluding me.

And I think it's because I'm disappointed in myself at not getting as far as I'd planned.

I didn't quit my job because I found something better. I quit because my brain stopped working right and I couldn't stay sharp and focused anymore and it was only a matter of time before I flubbed something up beyond repair.

I went back to school but I stuggle with it constantly. It is too hard for me sometimes. Most times, in fact.

I still don't have it "emotionally together" and stay home at least a couple times a month because I just can't will myself to get out of bed and pretend to be a normal human.

I haven't finished my book, reached enlightenment, or changed the world.

I'm still carrying those extra pounds.

I'm still just boring old me, only slightly more defective.

This, more than anything, depresses me.

To think that my life was somehow traded for Craig's and I really haven't done much of anything with it. And the worst part of that is, I've been trying my hardest.

I know all about survivor's guilt - I'm a walking billboard for it. You will tell me that there was nothing I could do, that I couldn't trade places with Craig anyhow. Maybe you'll tell me it was his time to go, not mine. There is a greater cosmic plan at work.

You can tell me all these things.

But I can't make myself believe you.

Every day I walk around happy, I think perhaps I shouldn't be, it's not fair. Every time I try to achieve something, I drown in guilt that I should get something that he should have had. Every minute I get to keep going is a minute he didn't get.

I wish I had a magical answer or perhaps that awesome machine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where I could just brain wipe whatever sucked in my life. So I could unknow the things that make me immobile.

I think perhaps THAT would make me happy.

Maybe The Grinch Had It Right

This year I've decided I'm not doing Christmas.

Not at all.

Officially I am removing myself from this holiday.

Seems weird and grinchy and all those other things, I know, but I have a few perfectly good reasons.

It started about 10 years ago when my super sweet boyfriend became the first boyfriend any of us girls had dated to come to a family holiday. And before you roll your eyes at that one, remember that I come from a family with four sisters so this was no small accomplishment. I'd jokingly throw in that my dad was lurking near the door with a shotgun only it's not really a joke.

Craig was charming and funny and perfect. I proudly paraded him around like some sort of prize turkey.

He never missed a Christmas after that.

Until last year.

To say it was the hardest holiday of my life would be a gross understatement. Throw in some insane family drama and hitting a deer Christmas morning and I think you've found the cause of my hair falling out (please God let me not be bald by the time I'm 30).

There is something about this holiday that has the ability to kick you in the gut emotionally like nothing else.

Maybe it's the sappy Christmas tunes (which, yes, I used to love singing off-key as loud as I could with Craig in the kitchen) or the excess of booze removing the filter ability we normaly work with every day (hello holiday egg nog!) or perhaps it's the constant smell of baked goods drawing us back into warm and fuzzy childhood moments. Whatever the reason, this holiday manages to sucker punch you on all five senses.

This year my family is heading out of town which certainly casts an additional "lonely" glow but, in truth, I know it's really all about Craig for me.

The first carol I heard on the radio a few days ago (yes, a miracle, but I've been avoiding those Christmas carol playing stations like the plague knowing it would come to this - only upbeat pop garbage for me!) I got hit with a wave of nostalgia so strong I just about had to pull over. Since I was in the middle of rush hour traffic I opted for sobbing like a lunatic instead (no tissues in the car made for one dribbling mess).

I hate that Christmas used to be my favourite holiday. I would nag Craig from about August onwards about putting up the tree. Normally he'd throw his hands in the air in disgust sometime around mid-November and finally relent. I would always start my Christmas shopping in September and Craig and I would waste hours on overly-detailed wish lists and fantasty purchases. Christmas baking was done weeks in advance and definitely added to my traditional 'holiday 10' with the overabundance I'd prepare (normally gifted to any and every family member I could find).

We'd watch every holiday movie under the sun, curled up on the couch in blankets drinking eggnog with the tree all lit up. We even had a tradition of buying a new ornament every year to commemorate whatever big event happened for us that year - when we got married it was a shell ornament from Maui, when we got Pocket it was a little kitty.

Last year I took the dried flowers from the funeral and strung them up in glass baubles.

They weren't really all that festive.

And of course there was the fire channel. A favourite of Craig's that drove me around the bend. He'd always want to put it on and I'd always holler at him to quit being so cheap and just buy a real damn fireplace. I'd rather be watching the Simpsons. A couple months after his death I was going through his things and found a video tape labeled "Craig's Hot Video". Naturally I was horrified figuring it was something illicit I'd rather not see. Naturally this made me want to watch it more. Two and half hours of the fire channel, taped through his VCR. Presumably so he could rewatch it all year round. I cried for three days. I'd have given anything to see him siting on the couch, watching it again. I promise this time I'd let him.

These are just a few of the thousand tiny moments that made Christmas for me. There were others, just as sweet or just as sad. All perfect. Opening special gifts, laughter, fighting over the remote, teaching our sisters how to play Mario brothers, lying on the floor to play trucks with our nephew... the list goes on and on and on.

Only every single part of Christmas doesn't feel like much of a celebration to me anymore.

It feels like a painful, heavy reminder of what I had and what is now gone.

It makes missing him unbearable.

It doesn't feel light and happy to me. It feels heavy and sad.

You could argue that these are things we need to face, to move on, to come to grips with it. That hiding from a holiday is hardly the grown-up approach.

The thing is, I'm not sure I can.

Even if I could, I'm not sure I'd want to.

I don't feel like pretending to be festive when I'm not. I hate the idea of forgetting all these special moments. It is suffocating to pretend that nothing has happend, when it has. To act like nobody is missing, when they are.

That, to me, feels like the greater injustice.

A Little Excerpt

For those of you curious about The Bad Widow's Handbook, I thought I'd post a little piece from what I've written so far. I'm almost halfway there (22,966 words as of right now) and it's finally taking some shape!

Anyway, thanks for all the encouragement I've received from everyone. Hope you enjoy!

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There should really be some sort of course you have to take before becoming widowed.

They have them for driving cars and doing taxes, so why not dealing with death?

Most of us are woefully unprepared and, sadly, do not realize it until it’s way too late. By the time you get around to trying to figure out what in the heck you are supposed to be doing, it’s been over a year and you are still climbing into bed with dirty laundry at night and putting your keys away in the fridge when you come home after work.

There should be tests you need to pass before they let you go back to work or re-enter society to prevent you from doing crazy things like sobbing in the middle of the candy aisle at the grocery store and driving around all night without headlights on while belting out Christmas carols through the driver’s side window in the middle of April.

You should have to wear some sort of t-shirt or nametag or flashing neon sign that identifies you just like a new driver sticker on the back of a bumper. On second thought, there should be one on the back of your bumper too. The way I figure it, the rest of the world should be given the heads up for both your benefit and theirs. It could read something like:

Warning: Newly widowed. May randomly burst into tears at inopportune moments completely unprovoked.

Or perhaps:

Hello, my name is Widowed, please do not become alarmed if I randomly hug you.

Or maybe:

Beware of widow. Batshit crazy.

It would neatly take care of the problem of people having no clue what is going on with you and, as a result, giving you strange looks in public for blubbering on park benches while eating three cheeseburgers and wiping snot across your sleeve. It would also lessen the burden of having to explain, between gulping sobs, why you are wearing two wedding bands, only one shoe, and a sweater spotted with unidentifiable stains reeking of cologne.

There should be little flashcards with tips on what to say that you can hand out to family and friends during awkward moments like when your five-year old nephew loudly questions whether he will see Uncle Craig at Christmas this year or when you announce at work you will be dealing with “death stuff” for the weekend but that they should definitely enjoy the sunshine.

A widow license declaring your current status would sure speed things along when you get pulled over by the cops for sitting in the middle of an intersection sobbing uncontrollably while traffic is forced to re-route around you or when you have to go pick up your husband’s ashes from the funeral home and nobody believes you that you are his wife and not his daughter.

Much like the home security systems that put the little sticker up on your front window, you should be able to get one that warns there is a widow residing within. The pizza man might stop making remarks about how often you order and the mailman could finally begin to understand why there always seems to be promotional envelopes for pickup with “sorry, dead” scribbled viciously over your husband’s name along with “return to f*cking sender.” Maybe then your neighbours might feel sorry for you and offer to cut your lawn instead of just sitting there drinking lemonade while you stumble about for hours wrapped in lawn mower cords and grass clippings, screaming obscenities at the heavens and cursing your husband’s name for never teaching you how to turn the damn thing on.

Along with the visit to your office to tell you your husband won’t be coming home, the cops could provide an automatic key finder so instead of searching every corner of the house before finally happening upon them when reaching for the bottle of wine you keep on hand, you could just head straight for the fridge (or your pair of winter boots or recycling bin or couch cushion) where you left them last thanks to the incessant beeping they now make. They could supply you with a handy dandy checklist on what happens next and how to do stupid things you never imagined you’d have to like putting windshield washer fluid in your car, killing spiders, or picking out music for your husband’s funeral that somehow exemplifies his life without resorting to gangsta rap.

You should be assigned a 24-7 friend/confidante/babysitter/ass-wiper who can come over to clean your toilet for you, make sure you eat something other than pickles, and listen to your insane rantings at 3 a.m. Preferably someone who will look the other way when you don’t shower for a week or eat ravioli straight out of the can while sitting on an entire box of crushed Cheerios scattered across the kitchen floor. Their primary responsible would be the procurement of hot beverages for comfort and alcoholic beverages for, well, also comfort. They’d help you track down that one stupid photo of your husband where he’s actually looking into the camera and smiling from last year’s Christmas party to be blown up for the obituary and would fill in the endless mounds of paperwork that you’ll need to submit to the government so they can tell you that you are too young to qualify for widowhood and receive the normal death benefits that accompany such a status. They could make sure you wear clean clothes on occasion and act as a bodyguard to protect you from the nosey neighbours who accost you every time you go to the mailbox, demanding to know whose car it was parked near your house the day before. They could write thank-you cards for the funeral and negotiate with insurance companies and reassure you daily that you are not crazy, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

And much like any other professional certification these days, you should get little gold stars and letters after your name for managing to continue to earn a paycheque despite now having the attention span of a two year old, for remembering to pay your bills even though they are trivial and stupid in comparison to your new life, and for somehow managing not to smack others in the face for rather insensitive comments like, "Must be nice to finally be single!"

For some reason, nobody has ever bothered to do this sort of stuff, despite the growing market for death thanks to drunk drivers, homicidal maniacs, and idiots who fall asleep at the wheel.

I’m going to write a letter to the government to get this going.

Just as soon as I climb out of bed.

Later this afternoon.

Maybe.

NaNoWriMo

Well folks, it's November again. And that means National Novel Writing Month!

This is one of those crazy, hair-brained contests for pseudo-writers like me. The idea is to quit making excuses and putting it off - to get down to business and hammer out a book. The objective is 50,000 words in one measly month. So totally ridiculous.

Of course I'm doing it.

It's one of those always-wanted-to-try things that I never quite got around to. But this year is the year! I'm kicking my own arse and putting pen to paper. Well. Fingers to keyboard. Who writes by hand anymore? I'm pretty sure I'd get a cramp.

They say to write what you know and there's nothing I know better than... me! So I'm pulling together a book that is sort of an extension of this blog entitled The Bad Widow's Handbook. Basically a more or less true account of my life over the last couple years and the craziness that is being a young widow.

I'm only a week in and have made a good dent in my work but my focus is starting to drop a bit. I've realized sitting down to write an actual novel takes a lot more work than this lazy blogger imagined. It requires thought. And attention. And focus for more than five minutes. Something my A.D.D. combined with my Widda Brain just doesn't really allow for.

But I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. I'm hoping throwing this out there into cyberspace will help force me into knuckling down to get some actual writing done. Embarassment over not finishing can be a good motivator too.

This has been one hell of a journey and I'm hoping putting it all together into something coherent will help act as some free therapy. Except good free therapy instead of the crazy-hippy-in-a-tent-on-the-side-of-the-road-who-smells-like-patchouli free therapy (yes, I had to google how to spell patchouli).

So help me out with some motivation here - harass me, remind me, throw sticks at me... whatever it takes!

50,000 words, here I come!

My New Garden

For the first time in my adult life, I planted a garden last week.

It was arduous.

56 feet long, 2 feet deep, you do the math.

Nothing but cracked, dry ground. I had to fight for every inch. I turned it all over by hand, de-weeded, made a beautiful border, mixed top soil, planted, watered, and then collapsed into an exhausted heep. Two days of work. My quads will never be the same.

Now normally I have a hate-on for all things creepy crawly but for some reason, while gardening, my girly squeals are somewhat manageable. There were worms galore, spiders, and even a ladybug I managed to not freak out over.

I love my garden.

And just the other day, the first few teeny tiny little buds began to break ground. Then I allowed myself to squeal like a girl. In delight, of course.

Gardens and spring go hand in hand, don't they?

Renewal, rebirth.

I love the symbolism in this.

Because at its core is the idea that no matter what, anything can be made new.

No matter how broken, no matter how wretched, no matter how hopeless... everything can be made new, can be made better, can be made beautiful again.

It has been over 15 months since my life imploded. It feels like 15 years.

Hours spent trapped in loneliness, isolation, and heartache. Sorrow covers you and swallows you up, leaving no room for anything else.

But time elapsed.

Slowly. Very, very slowly.

I had to put in so much work. Fight for every inch.

I was lucky enough to have some wonderful people in my life to pluck me out of my grief and set me shakily back on the ground.

I even had one close friendship that sparked into a wonderful new relationship, my future husband.

My life is changing, being made over.

New experiences, new places, new people.

I feel like a different person now.

New.

And it feels really good.

To A Very Special Nurse

I don't post nearly as much as I used to. Some of that is not feeling like I ever have time and some of that is just being in a place in my life where I am starting to have peace again.

But I was reminded that this week is National Nursing Week and it occurred to me to write a little something about a nurse I am truly grateful for.

She was a neighbour of ours, on her way to dropping her kids off at daycare. Hectic morning, hectic life. She crested that little dip on 84th and there was Craig's car and the wreckage from the collision only minutes prior. She was the first person on scene.

Her training kicked in and she called her husband to come meet her and get her kids out of the car and away from the whole scene. She checked the other driver and headed straight for Craig's car. It was so badly damaged she had to crawl in through one of the windows and all she could reach was his hand. She was scratched up by the broken glass and shards of metal and still sat there for over ten minutes until the police arrived, holding his hand and praying for him.

It took me months to be able to speak to her after his accident. I was so grateful for her honesty, her ability to recount all the worst parts of the story, no matter how painful it was for either of us. She was one of the few people who knew enough to refrain from trying to coddle or protect me, that the pain was in the details and I needed all those details.

She told me Craig was not conscious, that he was struggling to breathe, that she could see slight movement under his eyelids. She described to me the last few moments of his life - a time I would have given anything to be there for.

In some ways I experienced a lot of anger over not being the person to be there. I felt it was my responsibility. That I was his wife and I NEEDED to be there. This is something most people may not understand, but however traumatized I would have been, I would still rather have been there to hold his hand and tell him everything was going to be ok, than have been sitting at work, chatting with a friend, completely oblivious.

I was told later that the police all but dragged her out of the car, that she refused to leave. She was crying and praying and insistent that someone stay for Craig.

I often wondered what the chances were that a nurse would be the first to show up. Pretty rare, right? But given how horrific the accident was, I'm not sure someone else could have handled it as well. It took almost six months for her to be able to fully recount the story to me and for me to be able to hear it. It is something that stayed with her, that affected her in a huge way.

But because of her someone was there to hold his hand, to pray over him, to show him that he was not alone. I hope that he was aware of her there and that he was not afraid. I like to think she was at least a comfort to him in those final moments. And what an incredible gift that is.

So this week I just want to remember that nurse, and all the wonderful nurses out there, and say thank you for doing what you do, saving lives, and taking care of our loved ones when they need it most. You are all amazing.