DIARY OF AN UNWILLING WIDOW
January 14, 2014
Day 589
I'm tired today. We're back into early wake-up times now to
get Ben off to school. Maybe after all
that wonderful sleeping in during Christmas break and the late starts and snow
days last week, my body is rebelling against finally having to awaken early
again.
I woke up with a nightmare this morning. And then as soon as I awakened, I realized I
had a migraine. Ugh. I dreamed that the bus came for Ben and he
was nowhere to be found. I was
screaming, "Ben - the bus is here!
Benjamin!" and he didn't answer.
So in my dream I scrambled outside with his backpack and gave it to the
bus driver, assuring him that Ben would be out in just a second. I came back in the house, still yelling for
Ben, only my hollering came out as squeaks, so of course, he couldn't hear
me. I finally located him in the
basement and he was oblivious to the time and circumstances (that part is true
to life) and I became very upset that he didn't have his shoes on. So, then I had to go back to the bus so I
could retrieve his bag and tell the driver I would just take Ben to school and
I couldn't keep my balance and so had to inch across the yard to where the bus
sat at the end of the alley. What a
nightmare! I was telling David this
later and he said, "Only a mom would think that dream was a nightmare!" Probably.
*************************
I had to take the girls in for check ups today
- only so I could get IDs made for them so I can obtain social security cards
with their new names. It's been an
ordeal. So, we saw the dr. who has seen
my other kids, but not the girls. He
wanted to know all kinds of things about them.
I finally had to tell him I know nothing about their medical
history. We'll have to be surprised
together.
I had forgotten that he plots the height and
weight of his pediatric patients and then predicts their adult size. I remember he told me, years ago, Ben would
top out around 5'10" and he was pretty close to that. Ben's at 5'11" and I am getting
suspicious he is pretty close to being done growing.
So, he told me Lizzie will probably be a large
woman. He's predicting she will grow to
5'10" or 11" and weigh about 200 pounds. This is if she continues growing at the same
rate she is now. But Ellie is going to
be smaller. He thinks the tallest she
will hit will be 5'6" or 7" and won't weigh more than 130 pounds or
so.
None of the girls' biological brothers are all
that tall. Birth mom was maybe 5'4 at
the most and she was tiny. I never met
the bio father but was told he was short and round. So I really wonder where Lizzie is getting
this height - must be some recessive genes that showed up in her. Too bad one of her brothers couldn't have
gotten them instead! Oh, she'll be
fine. There's nothing wrong with being
tall and even a little overweight (although I don't think 200 pounds is
unreasonable for a woman pushing 6 feet).
But if she's going to have a more petite sister, I need to make sure we
have lots and lots of talks about how beauty comes in all different sizes.
I became a little suspicious that the dr.
thinks Lizzie may have ADHD or something like that. He commented a couple of times on how
"lively" both girls were. They
were pretty much bouncing off the walls by the time he saw them - messing with
the roll-around stool and chair, climbing up on the bench, trying to scale the
wall, (Ellie), messing with his tools, and both chattering away wildly. I commented that I am considering enrolling
them in school next year and he looked at me almost gleefully and exclaimed,
"Oh, I'm so glad! You have got to
take care of yourself!" Later, he
said we'd need to keep an eye on Lizzie and if she continues to be so outgoing
or whatever we'd need to consider some options.
Like what? Drugging her? I'm more concerned about Ellie, to be honest. She is such a little live wire and doesn't
have half the common sense Lizzie does.
But she's only three, too.
We finally got out of the doctor's
office. I had to run to one store, which
was another opportunity for the girls to demonstrate their complete lack of
sobriety. I grabbed some lunch for all
of us and as soon as we walked in the kitchen door I shooed them off to bed and
collapsed briefly. No wonder I feel so
tired!
****************************
Something happened to me a couple of weeks ago
I forgot to write about. Really, it
should be on my list of THINGS THAT STRESS ME OUT but I didn't feel a bit stressed
when it happened. I suppose it was
because I was in no real hurry. I was
going to pick up the Littles from Merritts a couple of Saturday afternoons ago
and as I travelled up Hwy 65, to turn off onto I-80, traffic came to a halt. I mean, a complete stop. Both lanes.
I sat there for 45 minutes, along with everyone else. Eventually, my heat gauge began to climb a
bit so I turned off the van and then realized that everyone else around me had
already done the same. I don't know what
you're supposed to do in situations like this.
Maybe that's Traffic Jam 101 - turn off your vehicle. People were getting out of their cars, trying
to see what was going on. One lady in an
SUV drove through the median but it's rather steep and I was pretty sure my van
couldn't do the same trick. Really, I
was ok with the whole thing. I had a
book so I had almost an hour of uninterrupted reading time. No children were in my van. If they had been, it would have been a
different situation because they all would have needed to go potty/eat/pick a
fight with their seatmate/ask 300,000 times, "When can we go?" "What's happening?"
Eventually, a couple of tow trucks drove
breathtakingly close to the side of my van on the shoulder and awhile later we
finally got to go. It turned out it was
an accident between a pick-up and a full-size van. One of them was hauling a small U-haul
trailer, which became disconnected in the wreck. But neither vehicle looked smashed to
smithereens. Just another afternoon in
the big city, I guess.
************************************
Just now Ellie asked for a couple of cookies,
like Sam and Lizzie had a few minutes earlier.
I replied to her what I had told her siblings - that I would let her eat
the cookies, but she had to promise me she would eat all her supper
tonight. I didn't want to hear,
"Oh, my tummy is full!" when I finally serve them in another hour or
so. I'm saying that because I'm fairly
confident not one of them is going to be overly excited by tonight's menu
(layered one dish dinner - stew beef covered in veggies and soups). Ellie replied earnestly, "Oh, I promise,
Mommy! I will stick a needle in my
eye!" I don't need quite that level
of commitment...
Earlier today she was looking at some pictures
on David's camera taken last May at Mount Rushmore. She squealed, "Mount Marshmallow!"
*********************************
I'm going through a little booklet in my
devotions by Adrian Rodgers called, How to Keep Your Spiritual Fire Burning. I like just about anything that man recorded
or wrote. Today I was reading his
explanation of what happened at Pentacost and he was covering the whole
speaking in tongues thing. I liked this,
The true mark of
spirituality is not that you speak in a foreign language or speak in an unknown
tongue. The true mark of spirituality is
that you control the one tongue that God
has given you!
Simple. True.
*****************************
I went in for my second opinion this week on
my tooth. I immediately liked the office
because it looked old - like something from the 80s. Very unpretentious. Slick, modern waiting rooms are fun, but not
so much when you remember that they have to pay for them somehow - and that
somehow will probably be through you!
This dental office is a father/son operation
and just seemed very relaxed. I saw the
son and he was all for just pulling my tooth.
He says, down the road, I may want to consider a bridge because, sooner
or later, one of the filled teeth on either side of the broken one I have now
will break off and I probably won't want to be minus two molars right next to
eachother. I had asked my regular
dentist when this happened about pulling what was left of the tooth and they
acted like I had spouted dental blasphemy and wound up their
you-want-to-keep-all-the-teeth-you-have spiel by muttering that besides, then
all my teeth would fall over sidewise, trying to fill that space. Well, I sure don't want that to
happen! But this dentist I saw
emphatically told me that will NOT happen.
I'm going with his opinion because pulling my tooth is going to cost a
whole lot less than the implant or bridge they wanted to sell me. I get it out on the 28th.
I was also really impressed when he took the xray of my tooth. All my adult life, dental xrays have been horrible events because, "You have the smallest mouth!" they all exclaim and then insist on jamming a wad of cardboard full of sharp edges into my too-small mouth. This dentist started to try that and then stopped and said, "You know what?" And then he instructed me to just hold the piece of cardboard in place with my finger and he got the picture just fine. I didn't even know that was an option! He won my devotion right then and there!
*************************************
I find that I am doing a lot better this
month. I suppose some of that is just
natural relief that the holidays are over.
But, also my schedule has been a lot more relaxed this month. Granted, this week I have had somewhere I
have needed to go every single day - but they haven't been all-day
endeavors. I'm getting a lot of things
crossed off on my to-do list, I'm actually educating my children, I'm cooking
real meals instead of throwing an (industrial sized) package of corn dogs in
the oven, and my house is no longer in a condition to warrant a visit from the
state health department. I'm thinking
that this is the pace at which I optimally operate. But you know me - pessimist to the core. I can't be content with what is at the
moment. I need to borrow from the future
and worry over that! So I am. I'm finding myself getting anxious about three
years from now when I probably should be entering the work force. How will I manage? How will I cook and clean if I'm at work all
day? What about when my kids need to go
to the dentist? Will I have to take off
work? What if I get fired because I take
off too many days from work? Since
they'll be in school they'll probably be exposed to all kinds of germs which
will mean they'll be sick and what will I do when they are too sick for school? I'm trying to tell myself to stop and
just enjoy this moment - this January, this year...
But I'm not very good at that.
***************************************
I had my mp3 player going in the kitchen this
week. There have been a number of songs
I've avoided listening to since Paul's death - romantic songs, songs about marriage, etc. Well, I was busy doing something and the next
thing I knew, Steven Curtis Chapman started crooning loudly, "I-I-I-I I will be here..." And what did I do? I yelled at him and said, "Well, you're
NOT here now, are you?!" Maybe I'm
entering the "mad at the dead person" stage of grieving.
Maybe.
I finally figured out this week what the
hardest part of widowhood is. ( Hint: it's
not hearing Christian romantic songs in my kitchen).
The other night I went to tuck Sam into bed
and he started asking questions. He
wanted to know why God decided his daddy had to die. Why couldn't God have just let him live,
instead? His little lip started to
tremble and my heart just broke to pieces.
Sam rarely ever cries. Maybe he
was extra tired. A friend suggested,
when I told her later, that he might have been feeling Will's return to college
after having been home for a month. That
could very well be. But soon he was
sobbing and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Oh, I said all the right things. I assured him of God's love and
provision. I reminded him of how much
his dad had wanted him and loved him. I
even told him I don't know why this happened. I told him, "You're right - this was
never supposed to happen. It's not fair
and it's not right!" And then we talked about God's original plan for
mankind where we were never supposed to feel the sting (such a mild word for
what feels like utter agony at times) of death.
But in the end, I had a little boy who cried himself
to sleep that night because his daddy is dead.
I went upstairs and fell apart.
This is the hardest part of widowhood, hands-down,
bar none. I would gladly bear their pain
myself if it meant they didn't have to.
This is one of those areas where older widows have no understanding of
what it's like. When they lose their
husbands, it's generally more expected.
Their children are grown and usually busy with families of their own -
and know that at some point, they will be burying their parents in the years to
come.
They don't have to try to fix broken hearts of
children too young to understand why they don't have a daddy anymore.
I can't fix their hearts. I can't even mend them.
All I can do is cry right alongside them.
I'll take the financial burdens, having to
learn things I never wanted to, the lonely nights, the silent phone, the sad
Valentine's Days, and the bare ring finger.
I can do those things.
But I can't do this.
No comments:
Post a Comment