Because It Makes Me Laugh

So a million years ago, give or take, Craig and I finally got all grown up and decided to get an apartment of our own.

Well, technically I got tired of living in a basement and got an apartment of my own, dragging Craig with me.

We were finally grown ups and loved every minute of it. At least for that first week. The rent was a mere $700 a month for 546 square feet of pure... bliss? Ok, so the bedroom was too small to fit a bed (which we didn't even have) and with no couches we were forced to watch our 14" tv while lying on blankets on the floor. Oh and that 14" tv? It was too old to hook our dvd player up to so we were forced to watch beta. For those of you who don't remember beta... well... good grief I'm old.

Only one person could be in the kitchen at a time and you couldn't load dishes into the dishwasher while still in the kitchen so you either had to, a) wash them by hand in the teeny tiny sink, or b) stand outside the kitchen to load the dishwasher while someone else stood inside the kitchen passing you the dishes that had been sitting on the counters, stove, or in the oven (when we ran out of room on the counters... pretty much every day).

We didn't have a dining room or a table - just a sort of breakfast bar that became a pseudo shelf for our desk since we had nowhere else to put stuff. Those first couple weeks we ate dinner off of ice cream bucket lids and tupperware.

The washer and dryer were stackable which is just a fancy way of saying you could only wash about two pairs of socks at a time. We did have a deck, though. All ten beautiful square feet of it. The dust from construction in the area was so bad if you went out there you usually left footprints akin to those after a serious snowfall. Whenever the global fireworks festival came in August we would scrunch ourselves up against the far corner of this deck and catch the left 50% of the show. It was magical.

It only took about a year for the nerves to fray and my patience to run out. I'd found us a nice little place for not much more a month, down the street from my parents, that had not one, but TWO bathrooms. This, I knew, would be the secret to matrimonial success - no more sharing sinks or having to wait for someone else to finish in the bathroom. We got three good sized bedrooms, an actual place for a table (which, ironically, took us over a year to buy anyway), and a real kitchen with cupboard doors you could open and everything. I was only too thrilled to dump that apartment and head for our new life, never looking back.

It actually shocked the heck out of me when Craig became all nostalgic about that shoebox of an apartment. We bickered there constantly and always seemed to be crawling on top of each other just to get anything done. For some reason he saw this as "being close". While I complained about having to try to cook in a cramped kitchen and was forever bashing my head on cupboard doors and low-lying light fixtures, he watched wistfully as his wife made him a home cooked meal, marvelling at my "cuteness" (read: clumsiness). While I hated dragging groceries up three flights of stairs because of an elevator that never worked, he relished the exercise and would take them full speed, two at a time, grinning with glee.

When it actually came to moving day, I couldn't have been happier. Craig, however, was sad. He wanted to remember those days in the crummy apartment for the rest of our lives. Some thing he could tell our grandkids about and remember fondly in our old age. I, of course, wanted no part in this.

So, oblivious to my disbelief, he decided to run around frantically and catalogue as much as he could of the old apartment. These photos are a few of the ones he took that day. They are my favourites, obviously:

Now I look at these and I can't help but laugh. Instead of the two of us on our rockers perusing memories of our "first crappy apartment", it's just me. I don't love these because I loved that apartment. Far from it. I don't think I could ever have the affection for it that Craig did.

Instead I love them because of what they represent. Craig's enthusiasm for cataloguing our lives as though someday we might forget. He was meticulous about keeping old cards, notes, photographs, and trinkets that held special meaning to him. Like a magpie he would squirrel away these tokens like shiny objects, taking them out from time to time to reminisce.

I always loved that about him and was delighted to uncover these treasures, one at a time, after he passed away.

In the end, he didn't just catalogue our lives for himself. He catalogued them for me.

They became a way for me to remember. To pick up these trinkets and photographs, turn them over in my hands, and smile about where they came from.

All the little pieces of our lives, neatly wrapped up and ready for me.

And though he may never know this, I am truly grateful for this gift he left me.

I do take them out and remember these moments in our life. Sometimes it's like he's looking at them with me, hovering just over my should to point and say, "See, Sal? Look at how skinny I used to be!"

How Valentine's Day Really Looks

When you are first widowed, the pain is so big and so real, it manifests physically. I remember having very severe chest pain (first time I actually took "die of a broken heart" as more than an overblown cliche), back aches, constant nausea (good for weight loss, bad for being social), and no ability to sleep on my own whatsoever. Everything hurts. Not just emotionally, but your whole body too.

Then time marches on and that pain begins to ebb. It fades, slowly, so very slowly you don't even notice it happening at the time.

Eventually it turns into a big empty space where the hurt used to be.

You walk around with this. A big empty bubble, ready to burst at any moment from the slightest provocation. When it bursts... well, duck and run for cover because the hurt comes back tenfold.

It's been almost two years now.

This time of year is hard for me. It has a lot of memories. Mostly I associate it with this sick feeling of dread. That something bad happened/could happen/might happen/did happen. It makes me reflective. Probably unecessarily so.

This time last year, Valentine's Day made me sick. Not because my boyfriend wasn't great (he was... and is) but because it still remains a fixed point in time that I actually remember spending with Craig. You see, most days drift by in your life without you even noticing. A million little things that slide by, some funny, some sweet, some sad. It's like the little ripples in a wave. You see the bigger wave, but the little ones, no matter how special or beautiful, sort of slide by.

But big days, days like Valentine's Day or anniversaries or Christmas, stand out because of their fixed date.

So those I can remember.

I remember exactly what we did.

I remember what we said.

I remember how it felt.

I've told the story of Craig's lack of Valentine's Day forethought before and the resulting Coach bag I love so much, so I won't bother recounting it here. Last year, the one year anniversary of that date, was thick with heartache for me.

This year, with more time having passed, I feel less.

This is not to say it doesn't make me sad or make me miss him. It doesn't mean I love him less than I ever did. It just means that I feel... less.

I try not to let myself get too carried away on what-ifs anymore. I know that once I allow myself to follow a train of thought, like "I wonder what we would be doing today if he was still here..." there will be no stopping the hamster wheel in my mind that can race for days, round and round, obsessing over the possibilities.

I've learned from experience how this can create someone new to mourn. Because as time goes on, you inevitably imagine the person with the slightest of alterations, so small you barely notice them at the time. Before you know it, that person you are remembering isn't the same as the one you lost. And I'd much rather keep those memories of Craig intact, preserved, exactly as he was.

This Valentine's Day I'll be rocking out alone, studying for exams, probably finishing off the night with a glass of wine. Or bottle. Depending on how things go.

I can't promise dinner won't be McDonald's accompanied by a box of Kleenex.

Or I might just laugh my way through some old emails.

I might take Coach out to look at, I might not.

Either way, I think I'll feel a little calmer, a little softer, a little less sad than last year.

And that's progress.

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!