Life Force

Dear friends have given me help and encouragement to keep going.

There is a transition that happens after you become a widow or widower. Before then, when someone you know loses a spouse, it's easy to believe they will "get over it" AND you are thankful it is not you. That thinking changes the day you recognize neither of these are true.

Yesterday, a friend told me that her husband had just finished his 12th chemo treatment after surgery that removed part of his colon and a lymph node. His prognosis is excellent. Jim had over 30 chemo treatments and at one point it looked like we might escape colon cancer. Today I learned that another friend's husband died unexpectedly a week ago. In both cases my heart dropped: I relived in an instant the day we first heard Jim's doctor say "stage 4 cancer" and I recalled balling up in a fetal position the day after he died—unable to imagine living anymore myself. Deep inside I know the confusing emotions and physical sensations my friends have and are experiencing—and those yet to come. It is a sort of PTSD-laced empathy. 

In a similar vein, I've also become friends with two recent widows. We give each other space without judgement and can laugh and cry at the insanity of grief and how grievers are regarded. Nora McInerny has become one of my favorite authors on widowhood as she understands having lived grief on multiple fronts as well. She first became known for the New York Times obituary that she and her husband wrote before he died. She went onto give a TED Talk, write a book, found the Hot Young Widows Club, and produces a podcast "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" that shares the perspective of others going through tough times—and she does it all with truth mixed with ironic humor. Her TED Talk, "We don't "move on" from grief, we move forward with it",  is really worth watching both to support those grieving and for oneself. 

Unlike those who are in the first weeks and months of widowhood, the thing I have learned, the thing I am now, is patient with myself. I am more compassionate with myself. I've learned to roll through the waves of grief, to roll with hardship, to try to accept them like Scarlett O'Hara believing in tomorrow. I'm more personally familiar with deepest grief, able to hold without surrendering to the searing pain that came with watching my soulmate suffer with cancer, with worrying and caring for him, with watching him wither away, with changing bedsheets, diapers, and catheters, giving morphine, and blessedly holding him one last time. I'm familiar with my nightly experience of going to bed no longer in Jim's arms, no more good night kiss, of staying up much too late no longer settled to sleep by hearing his breath, with experiencing the ache of daily reaching out and no longer finding his hand, or walking by his favorite food in the grocery store, of arising wishing we could plan bike rides together on beautiful days or anticipate anniversary dinners and then realizing once again, Jim is gone. I would like to say that is the whole extent of my grief and widowhood. But it isn't.

It's the eve and tomorrow I'll mark the 16th month since I felt Jim's spirit leave his body in a rush, an upwelling that left me wailing—my voice following his soul upwards wanting to call him back.

And as many of you know that week my physical world began falling apart too. With time, I've come to realize or perhaps imagine for my own self preservation that our once shared physical world falling apart was due to the immense spiritual energy required to pull Jim from this world into his next. He was so full of life, why shouldn't this be true? A cyclone of energy strong enough to pull him from here? Like Dorothy's family home being sucked up to Oz. Makes sense to me, as much sense as Jim dying. And as if side by side, this cyclone would require me to learn to do what he did best—fix things. Like a turtle learning to fly, I've been on a steep learning curve since but now know I can take care of this house and property. For the record and my recall, I need to list what I've had to do to put everything back to rights. And as Tegan had onetime suggested I need to check off each that has been remedied. Incredible to think this is all in the last 17-18  months. It's a funny thing, one of Jim, Tegan, and my last times together was Memorial Day 2019. Due to Covid, Tegan would not enter the house so she set-up a projector, a screen and streamed a movie out on the back deck. It was all very cosy under blankets, all masked up. Jim called it his favorite Memorial Day ever. What was prescient was the movie Jim picked out and we watched. An old favorite of his, "The Money Pit". Even now I'm not sure if that was an omen or a curse!

The porch and footing drain repaired, regrading around the house, then replanting.

Prior to Jim's death:
Jim had been trying to resolve an issue that first occurred when Jim was sick from chemo in 2018. The complications were negotiating with the HOA and the developer regarding drainage from the adjacent HOA field next door flooding our property. Jim had reached an agreement with all the parties involved but they pulled out a week after Jim's funeral. This week is a personal celebration of sorts as I am happy to report FINALLY that 14 months after hiring a lawyer and an engineer, with a lot of help from friends, these are almost all resolved:

1. Porch pulling away from the house. FIXED last week!
2. Footing drain breaking. FIXED last week!
3. Electrical conduit sheared. FIXED last week!
4. Regrading and drainage ditch required around the house. FIXED last week!
5. Drainage solution between the properties. Hopefully underway
6. Replacement of driveway. Hopefully underway next Spring
7. Repair of sidewalk. Crossing fingers.
8. Interior house damage including shearing of walls from ceiling on both floors. I paid to have FIXED this fall.
9. There was also a mysterious spotting on the downstairs ceilings. Our friend Cal discovered that it was due to condensation and he managed that repair (as well as was incredibly valuable in all of the above—thank you Cal and Carolyn). FIXED this fall.

The problem—run-off from the neighboring field

Tore the porch off the house along with causing other problems

As Jim was dying, other mysterious things occurred:

The floor started coming up in the studio Jim built for me exposing rot!

Which was found to be because of the roof not having underlayment between the roofing and the wood!

1. First symbolic ending, as I've written before occurred when Jim's strength disappeared and I had to assist him: "the clock my mother gave to me 45 years ago to go to college with and keep me on time for 8:00am classes just stopped working. It began slowly enough this week, first being 15 minutes fast, then 30 minutes, then an hour, and finally gave up when it was 4 hours fast.
2. Then the floor tiles in the studio began to buckle and come up when Jim took to bed and was too ill to advise. REPLACED thank you Dave and Diana!
3. Of course after he died, with the help of friends, I came to realize that our 14 year old roof was leaking! It was the first major project I had to undertake before winter set in. REPAIRED
4. Outside, I couldn't get our camper to close. Due to Covid, it was where relatives were staying. I  repaired a leaking seam, installed a new battery, and hired a company to repair a broken piece that expanded and contracted allowing the camper to open and close. FIXED
5. Our microwave died just when my sister Mary came up to support me, knowing Jim had little time left. Along with it, the dishwasher and refrigerator stopped functioning correctly. All were REPLACED.
6. Monumental was the freak summer storm that came through just as Jim's sister Mary arrived. Only lasting 15 minutes or so, yet it was so powerful that it took out all the power on our street. Folks weren't allowed to come or go. Luckily Tegan and my sister Mary were able to get help from the fire department to get the generator going. We ran electrical cords across the house and up the stairs to keep a fan on Jim and the room lit so I could give him his medications around the clock. And it took out my water tank! Luckily Ezra from hospice helped us locate Spafford & Sons who came out and replaced the water tank a day or two before Jim died.
7. The storm also took down the STOP sign at the end of our street which may sound like not a big deal but every day that Jim and I had walked the dogs, he would jump up and leave his fingerprints on that sign. Now when I walk them, I stop short of the new sign.
8. And of course, hours before Jim died, the book shelf that he'd made for me collapsed. Thankfully Jim's sister Mary FIXED that.
9. The following day, the push lawnmower went kaput as my brother-in-law Steve tried to mow my lawn.
10. And I'm not sure this counts but that same day, I was stung by a bee and Cathy saved my life. Two months later my friend Lisa saved me from the same cause. RESCUED.

Since then:

1. The new riding lawnmower! Part newbie driver, part bad design. The belt consistently slides off when taking the mowing deck down. That led to even more problems. I repaired it numerous times and then finally my friend Nate delivered it to a local repair person and it is working better though not perfectly. ONGOING.
2. The deck railing became uplifted. I believe from the same flooding issue. I repainted and repaired as best I could.
3. The hot tub no longer held water and fortunately due to Front Porch Forum I was able to get rid of it and some other things as well. GONE.
4. The back door would not stay latched. Friends FIXED that.
5. The dehumidifier—technically not broken just malfunctioning until I could sort it all out.
6. The grill needed to be REPLACED and was.
7. I repaired and replaced the shades in our bedroom.
8. The washing machine broke—I found a repairman during Covid!
9. When the ceiling and walls were repaired, I painted most of the downstairs after 15 years of living...
10. And the first electrical thing I repaired was almost a year ago—the outdoor garage lights. I had been Jim's assistant on many projects and luckily remembered that step one, turn off the breakers. Step two, double check!
11. The last thing I fixed was last week—the electrical outlet by the pond.
12. Oh and the pond! It had begun leaking when Jim was ill. I had thought I had repaired it then, but no. This summer I rebuilt the pond and waterfall. That was a week long project draining the pond, moving a couple of tons of rocks, finding the leaks, and rebuilding. I was incredible proud of myself.
13. Oh and the dog fence! Ugh such a pain—and when they finally put the proper drainage in within the next few weeks, it will need to be replaced again. Horrid job. Thank you Ken!
14. And the mice who seem to always figure a way in. I've got them under control now but double UGH!
15. Ahh and the dying trees by the driveway, thank you again Nate.

My love-hate affair with repairing the mower. Mechanic in training.

And then rebuilding the pond and waterfall.

But so worth it!

As one might imagine with a gross listing of over 30 things small to huge that have had to be repaired, this has taken tens of thousands of dollars, lots of negotiation, and on my part, lots of learning. There has been other things in these regards that would be considered normal maintenance—such as when I had to learn to replace the water filter as our house has well water—or setting Jim's father's clock—or getting the fireplace cleaned and repaired. There has also been the other aspects of closing down accounts, cellphone plans, automobiles, etc. Jim being Jim—loving me and being an engineer—did a lot to try to make this as easy for me as possible. Jim made sure to put financial affairs in order. He created Excel sheets providing passwords and usernames. We didn't anticipate two-factor identification that would fail because his email account was closed by Comcast as Jim hadn't been using it while so ill or that I would close out his cellphone 4 months after he died to save money. That made some things extremely difficult to remedy. However Jim did make sure his Facebook account would transfer over though he forgot about Instagram and LinkedIn. It was a big day when I finally hacked backed into our Netflixs, Hulu, etc. accounts. I still need to figure out how to get guests onto our Wi-Fi or why the signal now is so weak in parts of the house. Jim even created videos to help me know how to take care of the house. This one I am particularly fond of even as it makes me sad to see him so ill. Yet, full of his good humor, I can see that our love wasn't a dream, it was very real. And of course, the first time I changed the filter alone, I did get the muddy water all over me.

I don't think Jim could have ever anticipated what I've had to contend with to simply exist financially, physically, and emotionally since he died—and what I still am trying to put back in place—including getting out of a multi-generation abandoned house in Lyons, New York that Jim was on the deed for 1/16th of. UGH, I kid you not! I was in that house once as a kid. Grief during the time of Covid making it all the more difficult. I do think that he would be proud of me. With every step I take, with every new thing I learn, I think of him, his gifts, his love, and how much I've learned from him. With every step I take, I am realizing that I can continue. I can't go back in time and undo Jim's cancer. I can't bring him back into my arms, I can't reclaim the future we envisioned, but in fixing so much I feel I am honoring him. Life amazes me in how it makes us choose—do I go on or do I fall apart? Every day another chance to answer. Jim's life force fought hard to stay here with me, to embrace living even as he was dying. With him in my heart, the last thing I want to do is fail him. 

I love you forever plus 70 Honey, just as we promised. Thank you for loving me.