The right obituary.

Never knew how the whole obituary thing actually worked. I have long enjoyed reading them. Weird, I know. My friends say I am like an old person. That is true in so many ways-  another story, another day. Well, the day we went to the FH to do the FH sorts of things, the guy who was helping us (went to school with buddy boy) started asking for the facts and so forth for the obit. Lovely. I have always hated how they say so and so died. It makes you wonder, WHAT FROM? HOW? Buddy Boy’s ended up being no different. I told them I would supply the picture for the paper. That is where we are heading today.

I figured I would use one of the pics from our wedding proofs since they were pretty much the most recent phots we had. I found my fav of the 2 of us and asked a friend to take it up to the paper. In all my anger and sadness, I decided I wanted them to run it as it was- both of us. I thought since we never got to put our marriage announcement and pic in the paper that this was the next best thing. I was pretty excited to see it actually. So, someone brings it up to me at the FH the first day (viewing). I was SO ticked… they had cropped me out entirely. Oh my. It was like a whole can of salt being poured into my bleeding open wound. Somehow someone took care of it and the next day the obit pic was changed to the one of us both. I felt better about it but still. I bet people probably thought I was off my rocker. Made perfect sense to me at the time and I don’t regret it now.

Oh the sadness.

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.