%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  The latest Life Journey of Nada, widowed, now married! Blog #4 |
|
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I'm no longer a single widow. I found true love again. Call me Lucky! |
| My heart is full, even overflowing with the memories of love my husband lavished on me in creative ways. I share myself, my experiences, because I am a writer, observer, but what is even more important is the realization I am a participator in this thing we call life. I have always been a participator, a documentarian through my words. I’m rarely at a loss for them, especially during the past twelve days. TWELVE DAYS? It feels like an eternity already. I have done more in the past two weeks than I have done in years. I am writing a lot, not all of it is public, but all will be...to be told once filtered through green eyes that have seen less than two weeks without him by my side. By my side...literally and figuratively for so long; just under half of my life, by only days on the calendar. I suppose it is why some people expect “widows” to wear black and mourn for...exactly how long is it? They would dare ascribe a spoken or unspoken time-frame on how I should or should not be. They couldn’t possibly understand the non-stop adrenaline rush, the highs, the lows and the toll it takes on your very being. I feel as though I am a deer caught in the headlights of death. Yet even while frozen in the moment, all around me is whizzing by. I understand now. I make a bubble of positivity around me, to protect me. It’s nothing more than a defense mechanism, but the one I think will cloak me best against the swirling vortex of negativity which has tried to burst my bubble. Hey...not going to happen losers. Back off. My husband came home on Saturday, delivered in a fancy, sage green paper shopping bag, probably inscribed with some impressive looking golden logo (I’m not sure, I didn’t pay attention). Inside the bag was a non-descript gray...ironically looking like a miniature file cabinet, box. It struck me; my superman came home in a gray suit. No cape though. Handed over to me like it was a gift. In my head I heard him say, “Hi Honey, I’m home.” He was but weirdly so. You see his mother wanted a piece of him. My sister-in-law wanted a piece of him, all wrapped in shiny brass engraved small boxes. I got what was left. I like to think it was his heart, and soul, every last bit of it. I know why they wanted some, it’s just hard to know he was split up. But then I realized I would be doing it myself. One part in the garden where he loved to sun himself, one part in the shade under the tree outside my bedroom (so I could visit during daytime with my sun allergy and all), and then I was planning to drop a few in the Caribbean on our cruise..and in... gulp...the Panama Canal. I understood even more now. However by four o’clock on Monday I had lost him. Yes, earlier in the day, during a mad frenzy of cleaning because of a door that had opened, I took him from of his temporary place on the mantle and put him somewhere not so, well, in your face. After a whirl of excitement (caused by an effort to honor him in a way he would adore and approve of) I couldn’t remember where I placed him. Now what? The thoughts running through my mind. How can I scatter his ashes now? How can I explain this to his family? Think back. I remember I contemplated putting him in my newly unlocked safe. The same one I had begged him to get a locksmith to open for two plus years. There wasn’t anything of huge importance in there because I anticipated the eventual problem. But still two plus years was a bit much. I had it opened on Saturday. Okay, putting him in the safe was out, besides being dark and confined it was little. Nope. Then I blanked. Maybe...the armoire, where I could “hide” the things and close the door. No, he hated messes. I looked anyway. Not there. Then I thought of our closet. Our split-down the middle closet. His side customized for his control in the wheelchair, mine not so important when you can walk you know? I smiled. Yep, that’s where he would be. I got the key and unlocked the door, flipped on the light and was greeted by many more things reminding me of him...the things I will not detail to protect dignity...but more than that his clothing. The shirt cubbyholes were filled with his chosen fabrics carefully cleaned and in the dry cleaner’s plastic bags with cardboard collars...the stacked sweaters, the rack of his suits and sports coats made perfectly for the raconteur and bon vivant he was...I didn’t see the dull gray box. I sigh. “Hoh---ney. here are you? Come on out!” I say aloud smiling, in my best “I Love Lucy” style voice. He was my Ricky Ricardo, I was his Lucy. Then I got down on my knees to look under his hanging clothes on the floor. I pulled back a few sports coats...then his black velvet smoking jacket hanging next to his green one that he wore only on Christmas Night with the black and green Glen Plaid tuxedo pants....yep, there he was, cloaked in one small, dull gray “suit” which was holding my baby, hidden underneath his tuxedo jackets. Exactly where he felt so comfortable. I know he was laughing with me as I carried him back to the mantle, now to ironically to be hidden from my sight by the big plasma television he so loved. I push the red power button on the remote. “You Donkey!” Why...is that the “Hell’s Kitchen?” A-h-h-h he loved Chef Ramsey. FLIP. “André Ethier is up next...” Yep. Now I feel sort of normal. The sound of the clickety-clack of my nails hitting the laptop’s keys, reassuring, if not downright normal. |
| My dear friends. I'm beginning a new blog now as I begin to learn to live life without my companion, friend and lover of thirty years. I don't know what the journey will be like, but you have all seen me through every major upheaval for about five years now. I can't imagine not going through this journey without you by my side. You give me safety when I feel none, a sense of stability when there seemingly is none. I can’t begin to tell about the past few days, it will have to wait awhile. But, I can tell you all this is an amazing journey I am starting. The color blue has been a recurring element in the past eleven days. This is my story of the first incident. Until recently I didn’t realize I had cassette tapes going back to 1970. Not just any tapes. They include two tapes of four songs I wrote, sang and recorded on cassette. A mere couple of months ago I had found the bag full of tapes. I had to go to Ebay and buy a new, unused cassette player. I had to hear me talking about my life, and boy did I. When my husband and I were first together...I am unclear of the exact time-frame, except it had to be during the years of 1975-78. Each was written at a different date, for different reasons. I wrote one song I called “Blue Jay Way”, because we lived on the street...and yes, there were many Bluejays. The song expressed my joy at the nature of our progressive relationship. We called each other “Knucks”, short for knucklehead...sometimes we said “buzz-knucks” instead, named after the Three Stooges knuckles to the top of each other’s heads. Lance was a great fan of physical comedy. Me...not so much, but the laughter they could solicit from him was well worth watching those shows with him. I watched Lance watching them, not Larry, Moe and Curly. Okay, maybe a little. Nyuck...nyuck... nyuck. I had written and recorded it one day so when he came home from his job I’d just hit the button and play... me, singing the song. So my song’s opening lines were; “Just a couple of knucks...on Blue Jay Way.... Givin’ each other yucks all the night and the day....” We had a red and black Oriental cabinet in our entry hall. He always put his car keys on it and checked the mail. I placed the recorder on it, and when I heard his car pull into the carport I waited like the hunched cat, ready to pounce into action. When finally I heard his key in the large, carved solid wood door, and he pushed the door open. I stood in front of the cabinet...then turned around, hit the play button and skipped over to kiss him “hello”. The reaction? His laughter was so infectious, so genuinely thrilled it made me laugh along with him as I then began to sing a duet with myself. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me close...we stood close, an intimate moment that lingers forever. Kind of like the smell of fresh baked cookies long after you ate them hot from the oven hunched over the counter. Don’t you love that smell? Cut to August of this year. He lay in the hospital for two weeks and a day. I sang, “Blue Jay Way” to him each day. I leaned close and sang in his ear, or I stood at the foot of the bed, and belted it out...not giving a shit who heard. It only mattered that he would. My fondest hopes were that he would get tired of it and say, “Are you going to ever stop singing? You’re a writer, not a singer.” Sadly I never got to hear him say it...but I gave it my all to “annoy” him well, in the sweetest way possible. I know kinda like holding a chocolate chip cookie under his nose. I just found the the tape of me singing this.... |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
. Cute pictures! I'm so glad you have found a new and different, but still beautiful, life.