SLEEPING, EATING, PLAYING ALONE


After Christmas Eve Services, my ten year old grandson came home with me to take care of my dog and get the presents at my house and my overnight bag so I could be with them on Christmas morning. On the way to his house he said: “Grammy, you have to spend a lot of time alone now. Does it get boring?” I knew he was sincere in his question and I would not think of answering him with anything but the truth so my answer was “Yes.” We had a conversation about some of the things I am doing and actions I will be taking to impact that. He had a suggestion of his own. He thought that the Tulsa branches of the family should create a schedule that included me in some way every day so that I would not be alone and bored. It made my heart smile to know that he was concerned for me and that he was thinking of ways to make it better particularly because I don’t talk about being alone or bored – he just noticed and wondered.

Now, my husband has been gone for over six and a half years and this little one sees things that most people do not notice. He sees me alone a lot of the time. He wonders about that and how I am coping with all that time by myself. For him, the changes in my life are not necessarily good for me. About a year ago he told me that I don’t have enough human contact every day. Of course, at that time he also did not want to ride the bus home from school and was suggesting that I pick him up every day. He thought that in the five minutes it took to go from his school to his house, the human interaction I had with him would be good for me. Frankly, he was so original in his thinking that I agreed to drive the 30 minutes from my house to his school twice a week to do just that – take him to his home 5 minutes away.

I have always been very independent and self-sufficient. That did not change when Ned died. I am still very independent and self-sufficient. For the most part I am fine being by myself. If I need help with something, I know how to ask for that help but I work hard to find a way to “do it myself.”  However, there is no way to really know what it will be like to sleep, pray, eat and play alone uninterrupted until you start to live life as a widow.

My family is great and they too are busy with activities and lives that matter and make a difference. Most of the friends I have are married and they have no way of knowing what life is like for the widow among them. I am truly glad for that. I hope they never have to know that although odds are that they will. We do outlive men most of the time.

It is hard to know when to speak up and when to just admit that things are different and it is up to me to get used to the changes and find new ways to engage on my own. I have taken up crafting projects that I put down years ago. I have started new projects and found some new interests. And, as I said, I like being with me. I don’t really have a problem being alone. It is just that as a widow there is a lot more alone time than I counted on. Sleeping, eating, playing, and praying alone are just the beginning. There is also watching TV alone, cooking alone, shopping alone, doing chores alone that were once shared - alone. Decorating for Christmas alone and that includes buying a tree and getting it in the stand – alone. There is taking care of car maintenance – alone and carrying in the firewood – alone. It is all done alone now and that is a very different life for us than we ever had when he was alive.

If there is a widow in your life, from time to time ask her to join the festivities no matter how mundane they may be. If she is looking for some of that “human contact” my grandson was pointing to, she will take you up on the offer and join the festivities. If not, she will decline but I can tell you for sure she will appreciate that you asked. She will be moved that you noticed she is once again alone and offered to share some time with her.

Happy New Year! I hope that 2018 bring joy, love, peace and prosperity to each and every one of you.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE ONSET OF WIDOWHOOD

On March 23rd, 2011, my husband of almost 45 years died suddenly in the early morning hours when a pulmonary embolism took his life in an instant. In one moment I went from "until death do us part" to being parted from the man I had lived with and loved for two-thirds of my life for the rest of my life. What I did not know at that time was that I had also just entered an alternate universe - one that I had no idea was there and no idea how to navigate. The next few days were filled with family, arrangements, tears, laughter, decisions about things like embalming and how many police escorts and limos were needed. The story of those days brings tears, smiles, pain, and comfort all at once. In some ways the busyness of the time between Ned's death and the funeral postponed the realization of just how much my life had changed. And then, on Saturday afternoon, just three days after Ned's sudden death, everyone went home and I found myself in a new reality.  For the fir...
Read more

REINVENTING EVERYTHING

Somehow I was not prepared for the fact that I would be called upon to reinvent virtually everything in my life. Of course there were some constants but frankly, as it turns out, those things were few and far between. In fact, the only things that remained constant were those things directly connected to my business. This process was sometimes challenging, sometimes fun, and always surprising. Looking back, it seems strange to me that I did not see this coming. After all I was very clear that our lives were inextricably intertwined. Perhaps the surprise was more about the reality that our life before his death was no longer “the reality.” As relates to these issues and situations, widows, widowers, and divorcing couples face similar experiences. When a relationship ends we suddenly are confronted with how much our lives are bound together with the person we are married to and what it takes to disassemble that system or untangle those wires. The unique aspect of this particular ...
Read more

BEING FOR ONE ANOTHER

Today I had a call with another widow who is confronting what society and the culture tell her she should be doing. She is dealing with the challenge that most of us face over and over and over again as we deal with how others relate to us and what they expect of us.  There is no "bouncing back" here. Bouncing back is for recovering from an automobile accident or a battle with a scary disease that took us out temporarily. It is for those times when we lost a job, or a promotion, or perhaps an election. It is for those times when we put our heart and soul into a project or an event and the weather rained it out, or nobody came, or something else undermined the success we worked hard to achieve.  Bouncing back has nothing to do with surviving and thriving after the death of a spouse. It has nothing to do with getting 'back to normal" when widowhood has taken from you the one person that was woven through the fabric of your life. There is no "getting back to no...
Read more