Day 37

DIARY OF AN UNWILLING WIDOW

July 13, 2013

 

 

Day 37

 

I am so-o-o tired tonight!  Our church had a work day out here.  I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by the outpouring of love we continue to receive – but I am.  So many guys showed up!  Friends came and whisked away Ben and the Littles, another friend came to help keep things moving in the kitchen.  It’s like I have a whole new property now.  For nine years our garage accumulated and accumulated…Paul greatly desired to get that thing cleaned out but his time was so limited and the house needs were so pressing.  Also, he was a saver, just knowing he was going to need whatever for some project someday.  I think it physically hurt him to throw things away!  I, on the other hand, get a rush from throwing things out!  We threw out a lot today.  I would have thrown out more, but Will is his father’s son…

 

The garage is completely cleaned out.  So is the shed.  The dog kennel was torn down.  Weeds were ripped out and whacked away.  Scrap metal was loaded into a trailer.  My weeping willow tree was trimmed.  A few missing pieces of siding on the house were found and nailed into place.  Wood was split and stacked for the winter.  I may have enough out there for the entire upcoming winter; I don’t know.   We burned SO much stuff.  The baseboard trim was put up in the kitchen and our old couch was moved into the basement.  The extra tv and kitchen cabinets came up out of the basement.

 

My hips hurt, I broke most of my nails, and dirtied my favorite Toms shoes, and I’m so tired I can barely think straight, but I feel so, so good!  At times I wondered today if Paul would be protesting at all his stuff we were throwing out.  That’s kind of a moot point since he’s not here and that’s why we got rid of so much.  But he wouldn’t have been surprised at the turn-out we had.  He would have said simply, “This is what the church does.”  And he would have been right.

 

Mid-morning it got to be a bit much for me and I had to escape to my bedroom for a good cry.  While I’m thrilled to finally have my place cleaned up the way I’ve always wanted it to be I just hate that this is the reason it had to happen.  I would have happily lived with his messes forever if it meant I was still living with him. 

 

But I probably would have still been complaining about his stuff!

 

 

Will has officially decided to not attend college this fall.  Yesterday we drove up to Faith and let them know of his decision.  They were very understanding, of course.  A year from now I would rather imagine that his mental state will be a lot more stable.  And, this gives him a year to really pray about God’s direction for his life.  Plus, Will is kind of excited about the idea of being able to pay cash for his first year of college, which he’ll be able to do after working full-time for a year.  I want Will to be able to enjoy his year(s) at Faith.  While he will never, ever be the same care-free, happy freshman that he would have been had his dad not died, a year from now I think he’ll be a little more prepared to actually have some fun, as well as to be able to focus on his studies a little bit better.

 

While up there I visited the Faith bookstore.  I had a purpose in mind.  Paul bought me a McArthur study Bible a few years ago.  It didn’t hold up that well, to the point that he performed “surgery” (he called it) on it awhile back.  He used epoxy and a vise clamp to hold it together.  It’s worked pretty well since then.  But he ever since he died I’ve been using that Bible a lot more than I used to.  And it completely fell apart.  I was distraught at first because he had inscribed the front very sweetly to me and I didn’t want to lose that.  But I bought another McArthur yesterday (and they were 40% off, to boot!) and when I got home I took an exacto knife and cut out the inscription page from my previous Bible and glued it onto the same in the new one.

 

While driving up there Will and I were talking and I was telling him about someone who had tried to assure me quite earnestly this past week that “Paul is still here!”  She had gone on to tell me that wherever I go Paul is with me and watching out for me.  It’s not quite as bad as the person who exclaimed to me shortly after Paul’s death, “Now you have your own, personal angel!” but it’s close.  I was telling Will that even if that were true (that Paul was with me) I wouldn’t want him to be hovering around.  Heaven is so magnificent and wonderful that nobody would ever want to leave that splendor for even just a moment to flit back down to earth, with its sin-cursed drudgery and pain.  Perhaps God “rolls back” the floor of Heaven from time to time in order to give glimpses of His children's earth-bound loved ones' big, earthly moments – I don’t know.  I like to think that happens, but I have no way of knowing, of course.  But Heaven is too glorious to want to spend any time around the earth.  But then it hit me – that’s what God did.  Jesus left the splendor of Heaven for dreary earth.  And even now, God sends the Comforter to be with us in our sorrow.  How much He loves us!

 

The other day I wrote about the statistics of friend loss after death.  I learned about this in my current widowhood book.  I forgot to add something important, though.  The author points out that when Jesus fed the 5000, he was at the height of his popularity.  Theologians estimate there were probably more like 12,000 people in the crowd that day.  But by John chapter 6, Jesus had lost so many of his followers that He even asked His disciples if they, too, wished to go away (v. 67).  When we’re told that God understands our every hurt, He truly does.  He has experienced every emotion and pain known to man, even the loss of friends.

 

 

 

Earlier this week I had the self-pitying thought of wondering who would bring me flowers now that Paul is gone.  He was such a romantic man and I received flowers pretty regularly throughout the 23 years we were together.  But things have changed now.  Yesterday three older ladies from church came to visit me; two are widows, as well.  They brought me chocolate cupcakes and candy for the kids…and one, perfect rose.

 

Have I mentioned lately how much I still adore my kitty?  Of course, she was Paul’s last birthday present to me.  He hated indoor animals and I used to (ironically, now) think that having a house cat would be a perk of widowhood someday.  Little did I know…But he got me that cat in March and she has been the best animal.  She never tries to go outside, never bites the kids and they are quite rough with her.  In fact, one of Ben’s teachers commented to me this week that I will never want to get another cat because there will never be another  one as calm and gentle as Bella.  She has been a comfort to me the last 37 days.  I think she lost one of her nine lives the other night, though.  I am still amazed by this.  Sam took a bath and forgot to drain the water.  I was on the computer until quite late, uploading two and half months worth of pictures to Facebook from two different computers.  What a job!  Around 11:30 I went into the bathroom to take my bath an was horrified to find Bella in the water!  She had fallen into the tub and was just holding her little head above the water, thoroughly soaked.  She wasn’t meowing (she only ever meows if someone steps on her), just standing there, bravely waiting to be rescued.  I’m guessing she was probably in there a good two hours.   I scooped her out and dried her off with a bath towel.  She then made a bee-line for her litter box!  What a good kitty!  I felt so bad for her.  I thought cats were total spazzes when it came to water, but I guess they all aren’t.  At least Bella isn’t.

 

I was thinking about my heart last night, which made me think of my uterus.  Yeah, I know – that sounds kind of weird.  But I was thinking about how I ended my last post, with the word picture of God carefully and deliberately mending broken hearts.  Nearly 17 years ago my uterus rupture during Ben’s birth.  Even with an epidural, that was a mind-blowingly painful experience.  In all my life, I have never experienced that degree of physical pain as I did that long-ago Sunday morning in the delivery room.  When ruptures happen, it’s not uncommon for doctors to then remove them, depending on the severity of the rupture.  But Ben was so bad off following his birth that he was not expected to live.  My dr. was fearful that if she did a hysterectomy we would be left with one live child and no chances of having more.  So she took that broken uterus and carefully sewed the edges together.  It was shredded in some parts and she had to re-form the back side, overlapping the pieces.  She used the tiniest, most careful of stitches and spent a great deal of time with her repair in hopes that someday we might be able to use that uterus again.

 

Of course, we did – twice more, in fact.  I remember after my c-section with David, my doctor took that uterus completely out of my body and laid it on top of my abdomen.  I had requested mirrors to be placed above the operating table so I could see David’s birth (only another dr. stepped into my vision path – grrr…) and I was able to see my uterus sitting there on top of me.  As I recall it looked like a cooked chicken…But I will never forget my dr’s clucks of satisfaction as she examined the organ.  She then told me that my uterus was now stronger because of the repair job than if it had never ruptured in the first place.  The repairs she did increased the actual strength of my uterus.

 

Suppose hearts are like that?  I rather imagine so.