Green thumb and greeting cards.

I notice in a lot of my entries, things seem to come full circle. This is another one of those.

 I am 31. For my thirty-one years on this planet, I have saved every greeting card I have ever received. It doesn’t start there though. Somehow, I have the cards that were given to my mom for my baby shower. Yes, they are old but they are a perfect addition to my collection! When my DH was in the hospital, we were sent a stack of prayer cards for him and a few days later, I was sent a bunch more except this time the messages were full of condolences. I have those too. I have the cards from wedding no. 1 and wedding no. 2. AND, I have all of the cards that were sent with flowers and plants up to the funeral home. Which brings me to the green thumb part.

My earliest memory of tending plants was probably when I was about 4 or so. My grandma had MANY plants. There was even this tiny greenhouse thing she had in her home where you had to take this belt contraption off to remove the lid and water the thing. I loved it! In college, I started my own plant collection. My husband did too. He bought this ‘manly plant’ that I am still tending to this day. I think he also bought a Venus Fly Trap but that thing is LONG gone. I may not know all the funny names for my plants but I love them just the same. I like to grow leaves into rooted plants in water and then transfer them to a pot. I like to prune them. I like to save dying plants and restore them to health. By the time we purchased our home, we had a small collection but nothing too impressive. Then it happened and my house became a plant oasis overnight.

Even though it was the beginning of October, it had frosted the night he died- enough that we had to scrape the windows on the car to go back home. When we brought the five million flowers and plants home, we had to put most of the flowers in the garage. They lined the walls. There were SO many. I knew they would keep longer in the cold but the plants I had to bring in.

Over the coming months I decided to give some of the plants away to family but many of them I thought needed to be separated into individual plants. I spent oodles of money on pots and soil and made a HUGE mess in my living room. My older friend and co-worker, also widowed, helped me. More on her some other day. My brother-in-law kept his arrangement altogether and the thing is fine to this day. I guess that was another one of my stupid widowhead decisions. Anyway, my house was full of greenery and had lots of oxygen to boot.

 Cards and plants. Even though he was gone, he still found ways to get meaningful things to me.  The cards I have as memories and the plants have given me something to look after and care for. Stupid that a plant can outlive someone you love though.

Love ya Bud.

TIRES.

You know how when you walk into a store that sells tires and you just get overwhelmed by the scent? Long ago, I used to LOVE that smell. Especially in a show room like Disco.u.nt Tir.e or Se.ars. Now, I avoid it like the plague. However, we have a membership to Sam.s Cl.ub and I am faced with this obnoxious odor upon every visit. It is yet another reminder of my great experience.

I met up with my husband’s family the day after he died. It was sort of weird that when he died we separated into two groups. Me, my family and my friends vs. his-entire-family. They gathered at his mom and dad’s house, my posse at our crib. Since he died at 4am-ish on a Sunday, our meeting with he funeral home was scheduled for Monday morning. When we arrived, they were there before me and I HATED THAT. We discussed the situation, the obituary, the casket. The guy we talked to had graduated from high school with my husband and he was quite taken with the whole situation as well. It seemed to go on forever and be over with in one second all at the same time. My mom had gone with me and I remember sitting directly opposite the desk while the fam was seated against the wall behind us. They kept alluding to stories they had shared the previous day and I couldn’t help but feel and still do that I was excluded. Chalk one up for their team.

You can bet your sweet patootie that the next day I was VERY early for the family showing. I wanted to be sure that I was the first one to see him. I spent a few minutes in the gigantic room alone with him- well the funeral home man stood at the back of the room- but as alone as I could be. As much as I don’t like dead people, it was comforting in an odd sort of way to be reunited with his embalmed, hardly looks like him, covered with freckles I had never seen before, crusty lipped, too flat chested/bellied him. Since the hospital had made me remove his wedding band when he was moved to ICU, I had the funeral home dude put a band back on him that day. It wasn’t his wedding band but a gold band I had purchased for him years before. I wanted to keep the actual wedding band with diamonds. Call me crazy-just something else I had to do.

After my time, I walked out to the hallway where his mom and dad had just arrived. I greeted them and that is all I remember. I don’t know what I did next. I remember the viewing and funeral in bits and pieces. Some funny stuff, some sucky stuff and some just plain out of this world weird stuff. After the funeral, the masses had cleared out and his family and my posse were left standing in front of the casket in a semi-circle. His brother had earlier touched his hair and that let me know that I could do it too so I was sure to only touch the hair part… After I said my final good-byes, I turned around and everyone in the room was staring at me. It was so weird. My reaction? SMILE. I kissed my husband on the forehead and left with my memories. They boxed him up, drove him to the hole and plopped him in after a small graveside ceremony in the pouring down rain. That is the gist of it but of course, there is always more.

Later that day I realized that I had this smell stuck in my nose or on my face. Yup, you guessed it, TIRES. Rubber… where might that smell have come from? I guess in his final bid for me to remember how much he loved cars my husband wanted me to leave with that scent. I am guessing it was the makeup, formaldehyde or some other dead person trick but it still grosses me out. Poor, poor buddy boy.

Grass

Back to band camp  I mean grad school…

During one of my courses, we had a discussion about different tools available to use with clients to help them with various things. One I remember quite clearly and still have a copy of is my anger bottle.

Mind you this was about 1.5 – 2 yrs. after DOD.

Since I like to keep it in my file of things to use at work, I painted it with white out to cover my answers. Last week, I pulled it out, dusted it off and turned it over. Turns out you can read everything quite well as long as you have a mirror handy or are very good at reading backwards.

My anger bottle was full up to the tippy top with things that were overwhelming me at the time. My things went a little something like this:

• Place of husband’s death
• Insert name of pathetic grad school internship here
• “Every other driver but me”
• “Inability to figure out me”
• Situation with in-laws
• GRASS

Yup, Grass. That ginormous mortgage I referenced earlier? It came with an almost fifty-five year old yard. That yard was unmistakeable hilly, full of overgrown trees and bushes and most importantly WAY too big to be push mowed. So these trees of mine, they kept the house really cold. They also kept the yard fairly moist and provided a spectacular home for all of the mosquitos in my county.

And the grass grew.

 I was suppose to cut it frequently to keep it short and easier to mow. Well, let me just say that it didn’t happen. I had a surprisingly small support group when it came to the maintenance of my home and lawn. In the first months I had help but after that- FAWGETTABOUTAAT. It would take me hours to push mow my lawn. Already being exhausted with grief and of course anger, I would wear myself right down. I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do! I decided to call a service so that someone else could toil over my grass – sounded like a fantastic plan. However, the estimate was shocking. Strapped for cash already, I didn’t sign on the dotted line. Then, the  new-a-year-ago mower decided it was tired too. I let it hibernate.

The grass grew.

My uncle decided to help me out and let me have my grandpa’s old non-motorized-blades-rotate-when-you-push mower. Um, that didn’t work.

And the grass grew.

Finally, I called up my father-in-law for help. He had purchased said mower just after DOD because the one we had was old, used and too hard for me to employ. He comes over, takes the thing and returns all fixed up. Then it breaks again.

This sad experience repeats itself until the rotten thing gets a non-repairable hole in the manifold something or other. I let the trash man take it home but shhhhh don’t tell FIL.

With the help of first runner up, we purchased a new LAWN BOY mower (love the thing) my last summer as the official worrier/cutter/hater of said lawn.  

Who knew grass could be SO overwhelming? Folks, it doesn’t take much for a newly widowed half crazy woman.

Always looking-

To this day I try to find him. Not just in the ways you might think either. I really look. Last week I saw a picture of some soldiers over yonder outside of a tent or something. It was a candid shot but one of the guys had similiar coloring to my husband. I thought, is THAT where he has been? He shows up in various stores too. One day there was this man walking around a Target I think and he was older and looked nothing like my husband but I ‘felt’ him in this man. The WEIRD thing was that when I pointed him out to the friend I was with and she said that she thought he looked like my husband and had just been thinking of this. Then he was gone.

I find him in his dad and his brothers too. I think that is more to be expected though. He looks a lot like his older brother but has many of the same mannerisms of his oldest brother and dad. It is also kinda freaky how they all sound just like him. Okay, not the dad as much but definitely the boys. It feels good to be around them but ever so painful too. I have to wonder if my presence for whatever reason reminds them of him too?

Sometimes I look for him in not so pleasant ways. Shortly after his death, I was told that they might have to exhume his body to do an autopsy (another story, another day). I became quite preoccupied with this horrific thought. I would think my life was destined to crumple around me even further so I just knew any crazy thing was about to happen. I dreamed about and then worried about finding something of his that he was suppose to be wearing in the casket, somewhere else. In my dream it was his underwear and I found them by the grave site. In real life, it was him I actually had to look for in the shower. I had to check because that image was enough to scare the crap out of me and I had to make sure it hadn’t actually happened. CRAZY sounding, I know but grief will get to you that way. Fortunately, I have not found him in my shower and haven’t looked for sometime. Obviously, the thought is still there.

Yes, I pretty much saw him die. I saw him after he died. I saw him at the funeral home looking not so great and for surely dead. Doesn’t stop me from believing and making up all kinds of stories in my head that prove he is actually somewhere, anywhere else. The logical side of my brain knows he loves/loved me. He wouldn’t/couldn’t just up and leave. That he is acutally dead.

It is my hopeful, sad, full of denial spirit that keeps him shopping at Target.

How can I help you?

I have done a lot of care taking in my day. You know, the kind of caring where you are always looking out for someone else. I do it a lot and it is sort of a bad habit.

Really, my husband died from sepsis and other neglectful treatment. The overview is that just before he officially died, they gave him something to paralyze his muscles so they could manage his respiration rate. I didn’t know that things were moving at such an urgent pace and didn’t get to talk to him before he couldn’t respond. The next thing I know, he is ‘coding’. I am waiting in the lobby and hear a voice on the floor intercom saying “CODE BLUE husband’s room number”. I ran down the hall but at that point I wasn’t allowed in. Toward the end, they let me come in to talk to him. I think, as a last ditch effort to make him come back. Oh, the sounds. The sight. They worked on him for 32 minutes. It didn’t bring him back.

Fast forward I don’t know how long and they want me to come and see him after he was de-tubed, de-lined and de-everythinged. So, I go in- my mom at my side. As I sat there trying to absorb it all, the door opens and my friend peeks her head in. The curtain was drawn so she can’t see my husband, and what do I do? I try and shield her. Telling her he doesn’t look good and she probably doesn’t want to see. I don’t even remember what happened next. I’ll take all the pain and misery. Just don’t let my loved ones be hurt.

Eventually I left. Left him, left the hosptial, left the wackyquack-poor-excuse-for-medical-staff, and went home. When I had left our home the last time with my husband we were newlyweds in our new home together. A place to make our dreams come true. To spend time together. Upon arriving there after his death,  home was no longer home. In a split second, our house had become an empty box. A box with an overwhelmingly large mortgage,  a container for questions, a sea I was sure to drown in, a place to store my tangible husband parts- all filled up with people- but the only one I wanted was forever gone to me.  

I am as bright as the sun.

In the beginning, everyday was tough. Those stupid firsts were even worse. I still have a horrible time with the anniversary that counts all the years since he has been gone. Looking back on it now, I know that those first years after he was gone I was making all kinds of terrific decisions. At the time, I thought I was making perfect sense and doing the best that I could. That is when I decided enough was enough with my job and threw it all out the window. The good money, the health insurance (because only children have after death insurance benefits, wives are not privvy- was my experience anyway). So, despite a hefty mortgage I quit and enrolled in graduate school. HMMM.

It ended up working out okay but that isn’t where I am going with this.

I thought it would be an excellent choice to take a class called Death and Dying or something like that. Just so happens that the class would take place in the semester during the dreaded time of year. Oh the fun. I was a horribly shy person and didn’t really care to bring up my experience but time and time again, we were asked to examine our thoughts and beliefs. I really should have just made something up. I left that class crying almost every week. One of our biggest assignments was a LONG paper about our own perspectives on death. I thought it was lovely. I remember starting it with ‘It has been 11 months since my husband died’ and feeling like a complete goon when the papers were returned because it had really been 1 year and 11 months. Yet another example of my hazy brain days. I did get a 4.0 on the thing but it still sucked.

Another task asked of us was to visit a funeral home to get the whole experience and even included a sit down talk with the mortician. Yah, I passed. The professor didn’t want to let me live this down though. Kept telling me I would have to do something to make it up. WAS SHE CRAZY? I had lived that experience. I never had a love relationship with funeral homes before and definitely didn’t after either. So, I ended up making it up by telling the whole class about my husband dying. I don’t even think I was still on my anti-anxiety/anti-depressant drugs at that point.  A miracle I am still here to tell about it today.

Traumitized? Check!

Oh, so many stories, so little time.

Young widows, come one come all.

I often find myself wondering about why it is I drew the lucky young widow card. Ironically enough, I have been obsessed with dying since I was young. I remember when I was about 12 I told my mom I thought I would die young. I was half right. My husband died  six weeks after we were married. That was nine days after we learned he had leukemia. Did I mention he was only 25?

Mostly I hope somehow, someway I can help someone else out there. I have forever thought about leading a support group or something but am fairly clueless at how to start something like that. In the beginning, I didn’t know where to turn. I desperately wanted to find someone that knew what it was like to be walking in my shoes. I searched for young widow groups and came up with nothing. Many of the groups out there were for older women or women who had children and I just didn’t fit. I wish I could have lived many years with my husband and had many babies. Just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.

If you have found me because you were looking for proof that you are not alone in your grief, I am happy you are here. That being said, I am so very sad to know that you too drew that unlucky card.