Neither . . . Heat Nor Gloom of Night

There’s this sign I bought when I was at my lowest point and thought I might never survive what life had thrown at me:

If cauliflower can somehow become pizza . . .

You, my friend, can do anything.

It’s still on my desk making me smile, giving me hope. Think about it. If you can take a tasteless, colorless, unloved vegetable like a head of cauliflower and, after steaming it into submission and pulverizing it into compliance, blend what's left with Italian ingredients and turn out a respectable pizza pie, you have performed a miracle. The transformation of a humble cauliflower into an unlikely hero means that this must also be true:

I can do anything.

That’s what hope does, right? It takes the mangled parts of our life and turns them into something new and amazing. Like a collage of photographs which, when they’re laid out in just the right pattern, make an entirely new image of someone else. There’s a young woman on YouTube who loves to take thrift store pillowcases and re-use the fabric to make clothing. Or how about a mosaic made with broken pieces of china? Finally, as in the case of our mailman, with enough determination you can even transform letters and packages into origami.

I just don’t think that’s what Japanese culture had in mind when they came up with the shapeshifting art of paper folding. 

I’ll admit, now that I share an address with my daughter and her family, there is a little more mail taking up space in their average-sized mailbox. Like, an extra two or three envelopes a day and maybe twice a year a small package, at birthdays and Christmas. Even a mail order clothing delivery might find its way into the hands of our crafty mail person. The problem is that what goes in may not look the same way when it comes out again.

Case in point. A dear friend painted a watercolor of my beloved dog, Brody (who lives with Jesus and chases balls for Rob now) and mailed it to me for my birthday. She framed it with a cardboard matting and backed it with more cardboard and sent it to me in a large, padded envelope. Seems like a reasonable amount of protection to me.  The problem was that it’s shaped like most pictures are—flat. But our mailbox is shaped like—a mailbox. It was a predicament, for sure. How on earth does one convince a stiff item in a padded envelope to submit to a representative of the United States Postal Service and behave itself inside a mailbox?

Our clever mailtech solved that little disconnect and now my handpainted watercolor has the same shape as our mailbox. I guess that way I can use it to cover the mailbox instead of my wall and everyone in the neighborhood can enjoy seeing Brody and remembering what a good boy he was the way I wanted to.

You might be surprised to learn that the next day I hand carried this reimagined piece of art into our local post office, stood in line for thirty minutes to speak with a supervisor, only to discover supervisors take Saturday mornings off. I was promised he would call me personally the next week, which was two weeks ago. I bet that comes as a surprise to you, too. I thought I’d give him some time to reach out, since I know the post office is so busy that even their mailmen don’t have time to walk up a driveway and leave a padded envelope outside a homeowner’s door when it won’t fit inside a mailbox.

But perhaps I’m not giving the supervisor enough credit for caring about my feelings, or the feelings of the artist whose watercolor now sports folds and creases that weren’t originally part of Brody. Last week, my son-in-law, Dan, stopped by with some more mail for me and dropped it on my kitchen counter.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said, as I stood over the crumpled mess that included a birthday card from my mother-in-law. What is it about my birthday gifts that has this mailman so irate? Is he against birthdays? Growing old? Women? Or does he just hate me or my name personally? It wasn’t the last one.

“Our mail was crumpled up, too,” Dan added.

Now I’m afraid to go back to the post office on a weekday and ask to speak to a supervisor. I’m afraid he already spoke to our mailman. It’s not like I can be anonymous about this complaint. The guy knows where we live. What if his fuse is even shorter than I think and he goes postal on us?

Today I went to Katy and Dan’s for lunch and when I left there were a couple of letters for me lying on their fireplace hearth. That’s usually where they put my mail until we connect, but I wasn’t sure it was mine at first. There wasn’t a crease in it anywhere.

Maybe the mailman was just having a bad day when he took his anger out on my birthday present. Or a bad month. Maybe he’s a frustrated artist who rides around in an un-airconditioned truck on hundred-degree days and hates his job. I know I would. Maybe his home life is in tatters and his wife just texted him to stop at the store when he gets off work because she wants to turn a cauliflower into pizza.

And He.Just.Couldn’t.Take.It.Anymore.

I think I may have to get rid of my little sign and go back to eating gluten-filled pizza crusts again. I'm feeling a lot less courageous after all this excitement. I still think hope is a strong core value, though, and that within limits I can do anything I set my mind to.

Right now, I’m setting my mind on getting a bigger mailbox.

With apologies to Brody, whose watercolor can be viewed above, for the unkind way he was handled, and also to the artist, Sheila, who may have to re-think mailing gifts to me. I'd stand up for all our rights, but right now I'm afraid of the mailman.

Service For One

Someone ratted me out. 

I watched the black sedan slide into my driveway with a sinister air and immediately felt my heart palpitations kick into action. Two doors opened and a man and woman, each dressed in black and wearing dark shades, set off my Ring alert as they headed to the front door.

When the doorbell rang, I opened the door instead of pretending I wasn’t home. Because I’m an idiot.

“Mrs. McCloyd?” the short one asked.

“McCloud,” I corrected phonetically.

“May we come in Mrs. McCloyd?”

If my dog, Brody, was still alive, he’d have told them no, but I’m on my own here in the house with a blue door and no address, so I let them both in.

“What’s this about?” I said, my forehead scrunching in confusion.

The tall one with the pointy nose aimed it toward my long kitchen island like he was measuring it with laser accuracy. “We’ll ask the questions,” he told me. “We have it on good authority that you aren't preparing food at home anymore. When was the last time you fileted a mignon?” he asked, running a bony finger down the granite and grimacing.

My voice shook. “Well, I don’t like steak. Wait. Don’t mignons come that way?”

The short one snorted and shoved her sunglasses back on the bridge of her nose. “I told you this wouldn’t take long,” she told her companion. They both tittered at their private joke. Rude, I thought.

“Are you sure you’re at the right house?” I asked, making a move to open the front door. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

The tall one ignored me and walked into the narrow space between the island and the appliances. He opened the oven door and peered inside. “Just as I thought,” he said, while the short one scribbled furiously on the notebook she held. “This oven is in non-compliance mode.”

“It’s what?” I asked. “I mean, it’s supposed to be an air fryer and a convection oven as well as a standard, but they never gave me instructions for those features. Were they supposed to? They were supposed to, right? I knew it! This oven is defective. Are you here to replace it?”

The tall one slammed the oven’s door shut and spun around. “This oven is NOT defective.” He slid a hand along its polished surface like he was caressing a Jaguar convertible. “It’s pristine. Undefiled. Underutilized. Basically, unnecessary in its environment.”

I bristled, taking umbrage at a couple of the words I understood. “Well, it’s not exactly pristine. A frozen pot pie bubbled over in there a few weeks ago.”

He slammed his hand down on the granite counter between us. “Exactly!” he exploded. “A frozen pot pie!”

The woman in dark glasses with hair pulled back in a tight ponytail let out a gasp. “Sir,” she implored. “Your blood pressure.”

“I. Don’t. Care.” He emphasized the words with a growl. “This is supposed to be a chef’s kitchen.” He opened the double doors of the island, scanned the slide-out shelves filled with pots and pans, cheese graters, rolling pins and pie pans, and closed them with reverence before facing me again. He removed his glasses and pointed a finger at me.

“You have not been cooking.” He waved a hand at the doors he’d just closed. “These implements are here under false pretenses.”

I felt color rise up my neck until it filled my cheeks. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said in a quivery voice. Dang, woman, I thought. Stand up for yourself. “Is this about how much weight I’ve gained recently?”

Ignoring me, he walked back around the eight-foot island to open the doors of an upper cabinet. “Aha!” he said, snatching out a Magnolia cookbook and flipping through it. “Not a single splash of tomato sauce on these pages. No egg whites in the binding, either.” He turned to speak to his assistant. “Not even a corner of a page bent out of position. Make a note of that.”

“Got it,” she muttered, scribbling.

I raised up to my full, shorter than I used to be, height and squared my shoulders. “Well, sometimes I cook breakfast for myself.”

Without hesitation, he yanked open the freezer on my French-door refrigerator and pulled out a box of Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, rattling them in my face. “Then how do you explain these?” he accused. The short one put a hand over her mouth and looked away, repulsed.

“They’re,” I stuttered, grabbing the box out of his hand and tossing it back in its hiding place, “they’re for my . . . grandchildren.” I crossed my arms over my body and looked at the floor.

The tall and short ones made brief eye contact and nodded at one another. “I guess that wraps it up,” the tall one said.

“Yes sir,” his toady replied.

“You know what to do.”

She nodded. Walking over to a kitchen drawer, she slid it open, pulled out my favorite whisk, and slid it into her leather purse. She closed her notebook with a loud snap and returned to stand by my front door, waiting for whatever came next. I stood frozen with my mouth open looking like a trout caught on a line.

"What do you think you're doing?!" I finally exploded. "You can't just come in here and take away my cooking tools!"

“We can and we will," the tall one said. "Mrs. McCloyd, you are charged with dereliction of duty. Failure of food fare. And fast-food gluttony of gastronomical proportions.”

I sucked in my gut and swallowed hard. Man, these two were hardcore.

He continued. “You are hereby relieved of your epicurean duties.”

I squinted and interrupted. “My epicenter of what?”

He rolled his eyes and joined the short one who had opened the front door. “You are in violation as a home cook and we are hereby revoking your license to poach. We’ll send someone out in the morning to confiscate the rest of your cutlery.” He turned to walk out the door.

“Wait,” I called out. The two stopped, turning in tandem to stare back at me. “This is a first offense! Don’t you guys give out warnings before you shut somebody down?”

The short one walked up within inches of me and poked me in the arm. “This is your warning,” she snarled, with a backward glance at my dusty living room. “You’d better get your act together around here or we’ll be coming next to take away your vacuum.” She turned on her heel and was barely inside the car again before it roared away up the street.

I stepped back inside the house and quietly closed the door, a big smile on my face. I'm not really an idiot.

That was the best anonymous phone call I ever made. 

With thanks to Cpl. Han Samuel for permission to use the delicious photo seen above. The original can be viewed at the link below.

Fusion Restaurant offers Yongsan delectable delights | Flickr

Even If

"Guilt is the unwanted companion of Grief."

David Kessler wrote that, a man who is an authority on grief. I don’t think as a little boy that he grew up thinking that’s what he wanted to be someday, but life is unpredictable. I’m learning that.

I’ve written a lot about sorrow and loss. Sometimes I do a deep dive and bring up the depths of guilt I feel over your death, Baby, but it’s a tangled mess of murky thoughts and rotting feelings. It smells bad and looks worse and I don’t know what to do with it once I bring it to the surface. Will I be judged by others the way I judge myself for my failures in your final days? Quickly, it becomes a heavy load and I release it back to the depths and hope it will fade away somehow.

But that’s not how we get free from dead weight, is it? Shame keeps it tethered to my ankles and no matter how hard I try to kick it away, it just hangs on. We have to bring our fears into the light. Speak them out loud. Take a look at them and see if they’re telling us the truth about ourselves.

They’re not.

I joined an online support group for widows, did I tell you that? I'm still finding my way. I know it’s been three years since you left us, but it’s hard for me to believe that. You still look so alive in your pictures. I still listen to your voice mails. I still sleep with your shirt at night. It helps me to meet with this international group of women via Zoom to sort out all the tangled debris left behind when our husbands died. We’re an Ambush of Widows, a Widow’s Army, Warrior Widows. We each know how much courage it takes to walk through this. We understand one another’s broken hearts.

Our fearless leader led us through the complex problem of guilt today. Why it burdens us even though we did the best we could with the information we had at the time. It comes down to this: we would rather feel guilt about not saving our beloveds than face the fact that we have no control over life and death.

It’s easy to look back with 20/20 vision and see where I could have done some things differently. But here’s what I learned today. Rather than view those desperate circumstances with the thought, “If only I had . . .” and be weighed down with a mountain of regret, the truth looks more like this: “Even if I had . . .”

Even if you and I had secluded ourselves away from every other person on the planet -
Even if I had realized we had contracted covid when we'd dodged it for a year -
Even if I had sought help for us sooner -
Even if I had beaten down the doors of that hospital and demanded they let me be with you still–

Even then I still might have lost you.

I have been punishing myself for what I didn’t know and for what I could not control. Now I know why I do that. Now I know it was not my fault, though I will have to keep telling myself the truth until I no longer question it. Now I know life and death are not in my hands.

Now I know - I just didn’t want to let you go. 

Agree To Disagree

I’ve been called a wordsmith. Told that I have a vast vocabulary. Even described as a storyteller. These are lovely compliments and I’ve done my best to accept them with humility while assuming a self-deprecating demeanor. But deep down, even I’m not buying it. That’s because my ‘vast’ vocabulary is courtesy of a synonym site called “Wordhippo.com” which I lean on like a four-legged cane. And being a storyteller just means I’ll never write a Grammy-winning song because I don’t know how to be concise.

I’m not even sure if I’m a wordsmith. It’s a lovely description when you dissect it into its two distinct parts. As a writer, I stand near the author’s forge, hammering out overheated elements until the perfect phrase emerges and then I douse it with cold water. I still think the credit goes to wordhippo.

What I do think I am is a word snob.

Currently, there are words batted around in print and out loud that irritate my inner soul the same way catching a foul ball with my face would tick me off. I’m talking about the willy nilly use of adverbs. I’ve been keeping a running list of a few of them because I’m convinced there’s either a vernacular virus on the loose, or else some kind of linguistic crime spree is taking place, and no one is paying attention.

I’ve read a few books written by famous authors on the ins and outs of journalism. Some of them, including Stephen King, seem to know what they’re talking about, and they don’t think adverbs make for good writing. They think adverbs are redundant and make you appear lazy. I don’t want to be accused of something like that. And neither do you! But, what, you may ask, is an adverb?

I would describe most adverbs as hijacked adjectives. Grab yourself a nice descriptive word, like poor, stick an -ly on the end of it, and just like that, you’ve got an adverb. And a poorly written sentence. Adverbs’ claim to fame is that they modify verbs. They’re only trying to help.

That's just code for co-dependency. Maybe verbs don’t want to be modified. Maybe they’re happy the way they are. Don’t you think if a verb wanted some help, it would ask for it? Does an adverb really need to take up valuable space resting on the laurels of a completely capable and independent verb? Hmmm?

See? Word snob. Or a writer in need of additional therapy.

I’m not suggesting we outlaw adverbs. I’m suggesting we stop creating new ones that look stupid on paper. For example:

Funnily

Guiltily

Excitingly

Haughtily

Stop it. These words not only look awkward, but they also sound awkward. And yet, I’ve read them in print. In magazines published by reputable companies which I presume even hire editors who approve their final product.

I am shocked and appalled.

But maybe I’m wrong? I doubt it because a word snob is a word nerd, but it’s possible. Before I sat down here to expose this attack on the English language, I researched my opinion by using an always reliable resource—the Dictionary app on my phone. Guess what I found when I typed in these particular words? Nothing. And I quote:

“No results for funnily.” “No results for excitingly.” “No results for guiltily.” Haughtily was the only exception. It still did not exist, but it was substituted by the word, haughty, which either means it’s somewhat acceptable or I am haughty.

I take umbrage to that.

So, what is going on here? I blame it on the English. Not the language, the country. We all know England and America are two countries divided by a common language. And with the ease of the internet and free trade, I’m beginning to read the writing on the wall as well as in foreign magazines. Which is where I recently ran across the adverb, excitingly.

Look at these examples of the King’s English compared with that of colonial peasants:

Here, we practice our spelling. Across the pond, they practise. (I had to go back and change that last word because autocorrect didn’t recognize the ‘s’ as appropriate. Neither do American schoolteachers.)

In America, if I spelled a word wrong, I’d learn to do it the right way. In the UK, if they spelt it wrong, we’d assume they were using an ancient grain to make bread.

Now, I could analyze these spelling differences all day, but in London they’re satisfied to analyse them and tell us that we’re wrong.

That manoeuvre might anger us, except that we wouldn’t know how to pronounce it. Manoyver? Manyuver? Just spell it like it sounds – maneuver. For heaven’s sake.

Finally, there’s this complicated example. Aluminum. I’ll admit, when I write that word, I squint. It’s too easy to add in extra consonants, so I sound the word out into four equal syllables. A-lu-mi-num. Across the pond, they’re also concerned with equality. Two ‘m’s. Two ‘u’s. Two ‘i’s. Let’s say it together. Al-u-min-i-um. Five syllables. All of that while speaking through clenched teeth. It looks exhausting.

I was determined to get to the bottom of this. So, I did one final internet search and the website Reddit came to the rescue with this entry (which was not from me, just to be clear.) 

‘Funnily’ is not a word, and everybody that says, “Funnily enough” is a twat.  Which still makes me laugh. But five out of seven responders thought the writer was a twat, one respondent had never heard of the word, and the final spectacular answer came at the end of the page. “It’s a perfectly crumulent word.” Which I had to look up. The Urban Dictionary offered this definition. If you want to call it that.

Crumulent - Ironically legitimate. Implies that the subject is actually laughably full of baloney, but that there is a reason to keep a straight face and pretend that it is not.

In point of fact, ‘crumulent’ is not a word either, making it illegitimate. The correct spelling is cromulent. And whoever uploaded that definition to the Urban Dictionary attached two adverbs back to back which modified absolutely nothing.

I give up.

Long live the King. 

Special thanks to eltpics for the photo seen above. The original can be viewed by clicking on this link:

Dictionaries | @HanaTicha | eltpics | Flickr

Verbal Communication is Highly Overrated

I should have taken Spanish when I was in high school instead of French. And when I went back to college to re-learn French, I should have taken Spanish instead. Who am I kidding? I’m never going to visit Paris. I don’t plan to visit Mexico either, but I do watch a lot of TV and lately a bunch of commercials on the Hallmark channel are spoken entirely in Spanish. It turns out that I really need to learn some of the lingo so I can get along with my Roomba and survive in my own home.

Communication between humans and artificial intelligence is problematic. I reference here the word, “artificial,” including that little spy hiding inside my phone who calls herself Siri. My iRobot, Roomba, is a lot like Siri. AI is helpful but not hospitable. For example, Roomba doesn’t greet me when I wake up with a friendly, “Good morning, Sunshine. Welcome to another day.” She doesn’t have the common courtesy to mention that I really ought to shower if I want to avoid public rejection. She doesn’t tell me I’m welcome when I thank her for her hard work. Siri doesn’t either.

What? I’m a polite person.

It's fine. It’s not like I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her. I think the problem is that she isn’t bilingual and neither am I. She just yells at me in Spanish from across the house every time she gets herself in another pickle. Personally, I think she’s irritated that she doesn’t have hands and feet like me. She just has three little clusters of filaments, like plastic tentacles, spinning in all directions to help her detect dangerous corners and undigestible fabrics. So far, I’m not too impressed.

This week she lost her artificial mind and let out the longest string of Spanish words I have ever heard her utter. I wouldn’t recognize a Spanish expletive if I heard one, but my money is still on the likelihood that I heard some yesterday. I never know what the heck that little robotic floor sucker is screaming about until I sigh and get up to go investigate. Yesterday she wrapped one of her plastic tentacle things up entirely in the stringed fringe of one of my rugs. I had to cut her loose and wreck my rug to get her moving again.

I really liked that rug.

Setting her free was akin to surgery, it was so complex. She weighs a lot for a 14 by 4 inch disk that just rolls around on the floor. Holding her upside down over the trash can while I emptied her plastic bin was harder than normal with the weight of that rug pulling against us. When I finally removed the accidental appendage, I noticed that her fuzzy little rollers were clogged up with rug fibers and dog hair to the point that I realized she’s just been roller skating around my house and not actually cleaning much of anything.

This really chapped my hide. 

The entire reason I bought this model is because she’s supposed to be so good at picking up pet hair. I don't currently own one of those pet things, but I may possibly have another one someday, so it seemed like a wise investment. I sometimes borrow my daughter’s golden retriever just to practice, hence the telltale signs of pet hair trapped in her roller which should have been trapped inside her little trash bin instead.

Someone lied to me in Spanish.

I grabbed a pair of scissors, removed the roller with a quick prayer that I’d know how to put it back where I found it, and began the intricate and necessary work of cutting her free from more intestinal blockage. It was not pretty, but it would have been easier if I hadn't been holding my nose. When I finished, I realized there was a second roller completely clogged up with floor debris that needed my attention, too.

You know how prices have gone up in the last three years on everything from frozen fish sticks to SUVs, and despite the fact that we are paying double for everything, they won’t include instructions on how to use the built-in air fryer inside that million-dollar oven you bought because THEY THINK THE PAPER COSTS TOO MUCH TO PRINT THEM FOR YOU? 

Right. That’s the way my Roomba came, too. No directions included. It's like they knew I neither speak nor read Spanish.

So, unqualified and clueless as I am, I did emergency surgery on the fly with less than sanitary surgical instruments, cleaned out her entire digestive tract, and replaced her on her little home dock in the corner of the room where she could rest and recover. And that’s when, for the first time, she spoke to me in a language I understood.

She burped.

Well, it’s a start.

Soliloquy

noun. 

A monologue delivered when the character is alone.

I remember most the first time and the last time he told me he loved me. Neither time did he say it out loud. I still have the card from fifty years ago—how can that much time have passed?—when I read in his handwriting those startling words.

I love you.  ~ Roby. 

He’d never said it to me. I’d never said it to him. And then he gave me that card and watched as I read it.

It changed everything.

In between that first and last were all the other times. The whispered declarations, the quick phone good-byes with the “amen” of lovers— I love you. The cards and poems he wrote, and always the look in those eyes that captured my heart long ago.

Finally, the last time. Dying. Unable to say a word because of medical intervention. His eyes strained to see me and hold my gaze, making sure I understood. And then the physical struggle to mouth what his voice could not express. I love you. The last time he told me.

It changed everything.

Addiction

Dear Joanna Gaines,

I love your Magnolia cupcakes, but I live fifteen hours away from your hometown. Once every other year I make the thousand-mile pilgrimage just to eat a Silos bakery cupcake. This year when I arrived and stood in line, waiting for my favorite like a two-year-old about to ride her first pony, there was no chocolate cupcake with white buttercream icing on the menu card. The Silos’ Classic Cupcake was MIA.

The girl at the counter smiled and told me the bad news. “We’ve retired that one.”

Retired? How does one retire a cupcake? Not the iconic cupcake of The Silos Baking Co. The one which, with its simple coloring alone, defines the Magnolia style of home renovation - white on black. 

Say it isn’t so, Joanna Gaines.

“We have a Shiplap cupcake,” the attendant offered. Not even close. I’m sure it’s delicious to those with one note taste—vanilla on vanilla, or chocolate on chocolate. But I like mixing it up. Chocolate with a heavy dose of white buttercream. There’s a reason it was named The Classic.

“We offer a chocolate cupcake with Oreo cookie icing,” she went on, pointing the choice out on the tear-stained card in my hand. I wiped my nose. Sorry about that.

A brilliant idea popped into my head, much like the one you had when you decided to convert a flower shop into a beloved bakery. Since you still make a chocolate cupcake and you also make white buttercream icing, perhaps someone in the back room could simply swap one icing for the other?

“I’m sorry. We don’t do that,” she said.

So I did it. I paid double and bought two cupcakes so I could swap out the white buttercream from a Shiplap cupcake onto a de-iced chocolate cupcake and, when I closed my eyes and didn’t look at the mess I’d made out of two cupcakes, it tasted the way it was supposed to.

Look at the desperation to which I’ve been driven.

Oh, Joanna Gaines. A chocolate cupcake with white icing is the quintessential Modern Farmhouse Cupcake, right down to its dark foundation and cheerful topper which, if we were getting picky here, is kind of the opposite of your renovations with their dark roofs and light exterior, but you get my drift. Tomato, tomahtoe. You don’t want to retire what is the iconic Silos cupcake! You’d be retiring Magnolia Market itself. Magnolia Real Estate. Possibly even the entire Magnolia Network. The chocolate cupcake with white buttercream icing stands on its own without the need for peanut butter. It's richer than lemon or mango or strawberry (don’t tell my sister—that one’s her favorite.) And peach pie. Okay. That one sounds awesome.

I don’t know why The Classic isn’t a big seller anymore, if that’s the reason it no longer makes the cut. But if I can drive all the way to Waco, Texas, from Phoenix, Arizona, for a cupcake, can’t you pretty please keep it on the menu?

I don’t beg for many things. But when my birthday rolls around each May, all I ever want is a chocolate cake with white buttercream icing. And when Jesus’ birthday rolls around each December, I have it on good authority that His favorite flavor combo is the same as mine. Ironic. Listen, I’m not begging for me. I’m asking for Him.

You don’t want to disappoint Jesus, do you?

Very very very sincerely,

Eula McLeod

p.s. My sister thinks His favorite is strawberry, but she’s wrong. 

Object seen in the photo may look more chocolate than intended. I'd already eaten the Classic.

The Wall

Microsoft has been at it again. Commandeering my laptop at night while I’m asleep and messing up all my open files. Rude. If I didn’t need the internet so badly, I’d shut this thing down every time I’m finished with it instead of leaving it to its own devices.  I remember well the simple years before the world wide web even existed. Now we’re all caught in it.

I put everything back in its cyber place and re-opened the row of documents I’ve been adding to for weeks. They’re my journals. All the pages where I process more of the grief that replaces itself every time I think I’ve cried it all off or written it all down. It’s a bottomless well. Or as experts describe it, a hole in my life that will never shrink. Instead, I will slowly learn to build a new life around it. A life I never asked for and never wanted.

I don’t know if exposing my thoughts on a public blog makes me a narcissist or an idiot. I don’t post all the things I write because I’m not sure how they’ll land with my audience. That’s a good way to go out of business as a writer, worrying about what other people think of the things you have to say. I’m working on that little confidence issue.

Three years ago. Unbelievable. I am now beginning the fourth year without Rob beside me. It hurts to even write that here. I am so tired. Tears still flow easily. Too easily. I wonder why I bother with mascara every day, although wearing it means I’ll pretend I’m fine and won’t look like I lost a fight with a three-year-old makeup artist.

I’m here again because I had another argument with God this week. It was a lot like the kind Rob and I used to have where I verbalized how I felt and he didn’t. One-sided, it left me feeling like I was talking to a wall. No explanations were given. All I accomplished was offloading more pain.

I could go all religious-speak here and chastise myself for not having enough faith to simply trust God, but He made me and knows me and never seems offended by my accusations or queries. I think deep thoughts and ask hard questions because holding all that in will only make me sick. Or explode. Ain’t nobody wants to get hit by Eula shrapnel.

Sometimes you don’t know what to question until your world blows up and sorrow fills the void.

I told The Wall that I don’t think our traditional concept of Heaven is fair. The need for such a place comes up quickly when someone’s life evaporates right before your eyes, stopping all forward movement in its tracks. Left behind as that train pulls away from the station, we find ourselves holding a bag filled with shattered dreams and confusion, shouldered with heavy responsibilities and tormenting regrets. We’re eyewitnesses to the broken hearts of our families, and unable to fix a thing while our loved one is sent “to his reward” and “a better place” where “there is no more suffering.”  By contrast, we’re still here, devoid of reward in a diminished place where we now endure enormous suffering.

This is so hard to articulate, but I know it’s natural to want to make sense out of something that is senseless. Last week I was shopping with my sister when the heart-wrenching voice of Michael Bolton flooded the room. I told her I had to leave because the words of his lament were tearing me up, but it was too late. They rang in my ears on the sidewalk outside and I cried anyway.

Tell me how am I supposed to live without you
Now that I've been lovin' you so long
How am I supposed to live without you
And how am I supposed to carry on
When all that I've been livin' for is gone

It didn’t matter that the song was about a different kind of rejection. It’s the question we ask in loss. It’s hard enough to stand by helplessly and watch the love of your life die without wondering if there's a reason he found relief and you lost your entire world. I’m wrestling here. Afraid to say what I’m really feeling. How dismissive it feels when a man is promoted to the spirit world while his wife is left behind and the situation is described as "better." There. I said it.

But there’s more. If when people die and go to heaven, they are protected from seeing the pain we still suffer here on earth, how much more abandoned can I possibly feel? How much more rejected? Or less than? It’s like I need to cry out, “Unclean!” I’m only human. We were in this together and now he is gone. I cannot help but feel that I am being punished for something I don’t even know I did. I know that’s not how God works, but that’s how grief and guilt do.

The why’s haunt me.

The Wall didn’t say anything. Just stood there listening. Very smart. So, I held the floor and kept verbalizing, sorting through my feelings, searching for words. Like right now. I don’t know if I’m making this complaint clear. Or, perhaps, it’s offensive. Fortunately, The Wall understands me and did not fall on me in judgment.

It will take years for me to learn to rebuild a life for myself that I never asked for and never wanted. Years. This isn’t everyone’s story. It’s not everyone’s perspective. It’s not even someone else’s complaint. It’s mine. The answers to why someone dies when they do are insufficient because they’re simplistic and one-size-fits-all. They’re also a guessing game.

Rob wasn’t trying to “go to his reward.” When he got sick, he called it the fight of his life. Until that happened, we were side by side in the middle of doing life together, 'flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone', settling into our new home. He was changing his passwords to ILMW—I Love My Wife. He loved his wife, he loved his life, he wasn’t suffering here until he got sick. Now we’re the ones suffering. It’s a life sentence.

So, I asked God about all of this, accusing Him of punishing me without probable cause. I challenged the accepted belief that when people go to heaven, they cannot see what’s going on here anymore. That they’re cut off from us and we’re cut off from them because there’s no bad news allowed when you live with God. We interpret Scripture to back up this point, referencing “no tears in heaven,” for example. But that’s not the context and to be honest, the Bible doesn’t give many literal details about heaven. I think God wants to surprise us when we get there.

I don’t think we understand death. We don’t understand grief. We don’t even understand God’s heart.

Here’s where I landed as I stood there talking to The Wall. Rob got sick and his body could not recover, but his spirit and soul are in perfect condition as always. More than that, he has the privilege now of seeing what’s going on here from the same perspective that God has. No longer does Rob have partial knowledge—First Corinthians 13* says that now Rob knows fully what’s going on. I’m pretty jealous of that. It means that Rob knows the answers to the questions that remain unanswered for me right now. No surprise there. He always knew more than I did.

Seeing what we’re dealing with here on this planet could not possibly bring tears to our loved ones in Heaven, because time does not exist there. There’s no guesswork anymore. No reason for prophecy. They don’t need hope. They don’t even have to walk by faith. They have perfect vision. Perspective is everything. They have the huge advantage of having stepped outside of time and this limited dimension and, in the presence of the All-Knowing One, they see what we only hope for right now.

Which is why I hope. Even when the tears cascade like a waterfall and my heart cramps in missing him and loneliness is both teacher and companion. Even when I pound my fists against The Wall. I hope. I endure. Maybe someday I will thrive.

I know Rob knows what I’m going through here without him. I know he prays for me and for our family, his family. I no longer believe he and all the others who love us are so removed from the connection we have that we are left on our own in the rubble. It’s just that he also knows that The Wall has my back, too, and that our separation is a temporary situation. Relatively speaking.

There’s a line in the movie, The Princess Bride, that comforts me. “Death cannot stop true love,” Westley told Buttercup. “All it can do is delay it for a while.” Then he took her in his arms and she stopped crying.

^*8 Love never fails. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Wall never falls because love never fails.  

With thanks to Michael Kogan for the use of the wall seen above. The original photo can be viewed by clicking on this link:

Avila | michael kogan | Flickr

Slam Dunk

I’m sitting here at my desk in front of the huge window I asked for two years ago when I built my home. Big windows were important because I wanted to always have plenty of sunshine streaming through the rooms. Every window in my house takes up half its wall and every bird within two blocks has slam-dunked itself into them not realizing the straight-through view to the back patio isn’t open space. It’s a house.

I often sit at this desk and write. Writing sets my soul free and sometimes the inspiration for what I write comes from my view at this window. Now that I’ve hung a hummingbird feeder above the fence in my front yard, for example, I watch them endlessly from here, which is the reason I hung it there. I also know, of the four I see regularly at the feeder, which one is the bully bird and which ones are the chickens. Poor little insecure things. They really ought to stand up and fight for their rights. But I don’t speak hummingbird, so they don’t listen to me.

I’m witness to a lot of life in this front row seat, gazing past my front yard to the road that separates it from the neighbor’s pasture. The goats across the street are an endless source of entertainment. You might think the brown one is a deer, but even she knows she’s not graceful enough to launch herself Bambi-style up and over the chain link fencing. She’s content to just be a goat. And the two black ones who love to rest on the ground side by side facing opposite directions blend together so well, I mistakenly think there’s a Pushmepullyou living over there.

Families stroll together past my house all the time, pausing to admire the livestock in the neighbor’s pasture and disappointing the Pushmepullyou’s who were expecting snacks from them. Dogs walk their people, always barking a surly “How’s it goin’?” to their incarcerated canine cousins. Kids ride their bikes and, most recently, pair up to sail by on electric scooters, posture impeccable, hair flowing out behind them like they’re posing for a shampoo ad. Just now, somebody’s dad did that, standing tall in his white dress shirt and black pants while his tie flew across his body in the breeze, hands holding on tight to his scooter. It made me laugh. Guess he gets good mileage riding to church that way.

Laughter is good. I was crying until he flew by, and just like that, my spirits lifted. Then a friend called with her own story of heartache. We talked through the details and then something made us both laugh and two hearts lifted together out of the pain for a while. Sometimes, in the middle of my tears, usually when someone catches me swimming in them, I shift gears and make a joke so I can stop crying. Tears come and go, like that well-dressed dad on his scooter. This I know.

It's been three years since I last saw my husband alive. Barely. But alive nevertheless. Three years ago today was the last time he mouthed the words, “I love you” to me. The last time I held his hand and felt him squeeze back his love for me. The last time. Three years. It’s a long time. And it was yesterday.

So, the tears are flowing all out of rhythm, punctuated by moments of much needed laughter. What a ride this grief experience is. I’ve been in my office a lot this week, glancing out my giant window, reading and printing off all the blog posts I’ve written about life since Rob died, one hundred thirty-six posts in all. Plus this one, one more. I need to empty the trash can on the floor beside me before it overflows with used tissues. It’s been emotional like that all week, leading up to this weekend’s painful remembrance. Maybe today is turning out to be harder than tomorrow will be. It's rougher than I expected, though tomorrow is the day I told him good-bye. I don't know. I don't know much of anything anymore.

A friend of mine, who will see the fourth anniversary of her own husband’s passing in April, calls this a Marker Day, and the days of dread leading up to it the Season of Sorrow. Maybe there will be relief on the other side when Day One of the fourth year begins for me. If not, there is always this big, sunny window where I can sit and wait for something to happen that makes me laugh. I desperately need the release in laughter.

And right on cue, Church Dad sailed by on his scooter again. I think I saw a Bible tucked into the back of his trousers.

I bet Rob is laughing, too.

When The Fog Lifts

Here it comes again. Here I go writing about it again. I wonder if people weary of this story that has no obvious ending. I weary of it, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m the protagonist in this “adventure.” Supposedly that makes me the heroine. I don’t feel very heroic today. Or very eloquent.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the day we found out Rob wasn’t going to survive. Sunday will be three years since I sat beside his hospital bed while Katy sat on the other side and Lee stayed with us long distance on his phone. And Monday, the nineteenth, it will be three years since there was a Welcome Home party to greet Rob, but which we weren’t invited to attend.

I’ve been living in dread of this weekend since the middle of January, remembering the whole nightmare when it began in 2021. Maybe next year will be different for me. I hope to God that it is.

For the past week, I’ve been re-reading and printing off every blog post I’ve published since Rob died. A few people have suggested that if I turn these writings into a book, it might comfort other broken hearts on this same path. I’ve never read them all like this before. So far I’ve made it through my twelfth box of tissue. Word to the wise—buy stock in Puff’s. There’s this heartbroken writer in Arizona who’s keeping them in business.

It probably sounds crazy for me to read again about all the agony I’ve lived through, but the important thing there is that I’ve lived through it. Against all odds, though I’m a terrible gambler, I am surviving. I spoke with Rob’s mother today and she asked how I’m doing, neither of us wanting to say out loud what the approach of this sad anniversary represents.

“Oh, you know,” I told her in answer to the question that has no answer.

“Surviving,” she filled in.

Yeah. Surviving. Yet, it’s not only my loss. It’s hers. It’s my daughter’s. My son’s. Their families’. Rob’s friends'. His sisters'. Their families'. My sister’s. Her family's. Our neighbors'. The hole Rob left in his departure is a deep one. We all grieve his absence.

That’s why I decided, since grief is inevitable, especially this week, to see where the journey took me over the last three years. The first year remains a blur to me with big blank spots and memory lapses but still I recorded its highlights. Or lowlights. Take your pick. It was The Year of the Fog. The emotional/mental kind aside, I usually love a good fog. It’s scary to drive in at times, but it’s romantic in its wispiness. It softens the edges of the everyday view. It makes you slow down and focus on what’s right in front of you.

That’s the part that resonates with me. I’ve had to slow down and focus on what’s here in front of me right now. Looking back is painful except when laughter is involved. Looking too far ahead is pointless because I can’t make out any details. Living in the right here/right now feels like a miracle of survival to me. Everyday tasks take twice as long as they used to. Sometimes just getting my weekly laundry done deserves a high five, especially when it sits in a basket in the living room for three days like it did this week, waiting for decontamination. Definitely cause for celebration when that happened.

In year two, as shock’s anesthesia wore off, throbbing pain replaced the numbness in my soul. Who knew brain fog was my body’s attempt to protect me the previous year. I thought getting through the Year of Firsts was all I had to do to get back on track and reclaim my life. But when Day 365 ended, Day One of the Second Year began, and I had to face all those difficult holidays and celebratory dates all over again, not to mention the continued waking up without Rob. I think that’s when the fog burned off—the day I realized this was the first day of every day of the rest of my life.

Now, year three is coming to a close in my own personal calendar of events. I’ve made it through three of everything from Valentine’s Day to our anniversaries to Christmas. Seems like quite an accomplishment if it weren’t so sad. And in a few days, February 19^th  will arrive again. In all those blogs I’ve read, 113 so far and I’m only at the end of 2022, I’ve noticed a lot of repetition in what I described.

Like how I live in Sadness now. That this is the slog of grief. How the only way through grief is through it. And especially, that this is going to take a long time. I agree. Of everything that comes into focus with the disappearing fog, what I recognize more than anything else is how long it’s going to take for me to adjust to the life I’ve been left with. Still, I’ve seen peace come in little pieces, both with God and with these unchangeable circumstances. I’ve seen my vision expand to include not only the things we can see but also the things that we can’t. I’ve watched hope rise from the dead, a welcome sight indeed.

But I’ve also noticed the continued fatigue and loneliness I experience and how they seem to be companions to my companion, Sadness. Megan Devine, in her book “It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok,” writes that the loss of your loved one leaves a hole that will never shrink or fill in. Instead, the life you are asked to live in the aftermath of tragedy grows around that hole. You learn to carry what cannot be fixed.

I was actually hoping for better news than that when this journey began.

Apparently, this is my new reality. I know from experience and from what I’ve shared in those blogs that Grief teaches you honesty as well as how to live a life that holds both sorrow and joy together at once. It’s an interesting bouquet.

In all of it, you have been an important participant with me. You have witnessed my pain, and that is more powerful than all the explanations any of us have ever come up with. Grief needs a witness and as hard as I know that is, you have risen to the occasion in my life.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me even when I repeated myself so often. Thank you for praying for me and my family through it all. For loving us and holding out hope for us and saying nothing when nothing can be said. For forgiving me when I have been too honest and pain-stricken to be tactful. Thank you for saying Rob’s name and keeping his memory alive with us. My one consolation is the knowledge that he is very much alive still and I will be with him again.

I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, but it’s good to survive. It's good to find hope. It’s even good to cry and sit with the Sadness. 

 And it's good when the fog lifts. 

With gratitude to Broo_am (Andy B) for permission to use the lovely photo seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: Fogged | Solo young tree in the park | Broo_am (Andy B) | Flickr

An Ode to Firehouse Subs - Who Once Saved My Life

Hospital food has seldom—no, never—been seen as anything more than punishment for getting sick. It’s one level beneath airplane food which, of late, has hit an all-time low with their limited options of peanuts or pretzels. Excuse me, but that is not food either. Bring me a ham sandwich.

Three years ago this week, I took up residence in a hospital in northern Arizona which asked what I wanted to eat for each of my three daily meals. On every single menu sheet I selected, “nutrition.” Actually, that was a write-in and I found out quickly that they did not accept off-menu suggestions.

I ordered their version of a Thanksgiving meal once, and I emphasize here once, during my nine-day stay. I was served a gray piece of boiled turkey. Boiled. It actually turned to powder when I cut into it. I’m not even exaggerating here. The next evening, I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich. The word “grilled” was part of their description but when it arrived all alone in an oversized styrofoam container, the tiny white bread triangles, sans butter or fat or grill marks of any kind, had come apart to reveal a piece of microwaved cheese food product masquerading as nourishment. I was not fooled. I was not filled.

And that was the night I ordered takeout to be brought in to my hospital room. Because typically one does not go to a hospital to die of starvation. One goes there to get well. Someone ought to mention that to the kitchen staff. It should come as a surprise to no one, especially hospitals, that our bodies require actual food for survival and recovery, and if it tastes good, we'll be more likely to eat it.

Of the handful of restaurants that worked with my DoorDash app, only Firehouse Subs was reliable, which is why every single day for a week and a half I ordered a hot sandwich from them. I’d lost fifteen pounds while I was sick at home. I was starving, and while the hospital considered food optional, Firehouse Subs was more than happy to feed my fever. No one questioned why a patient like me had to resort to outside food for sustenance. Perhaps because no one else ate at the hospital either.

And I got well. I came down off that mountain, back to the land of the living, and to this day I am privileged to be a huge fan of Firehouse Subs. I plan to order a Hook and Ladder from them in about fifteen minutes, give or take how long it takes me to get dressed. Hospitals let you eat in your pajamas, but there’s a tiny little bit of a dress code when you go out in public at my age.

Here’s the thing about this sandwich shop. There is a heart connection for me, as well as a hunger connection. Not only did they feed me while I was hospitalized, they also support first responders who save lives everywhere everyday across the country. Every time I spend money there, I have the option to donate a little extra which helps with the purchase of equipment for first responders in my community. Tax money, as we all know, doesn’t spread as far as politicians tell us it will. To date, Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation has donated eighty-one million dollars to hometown heroes in all fifty states and Puerto Rico. That’s a lot of bread.

I am the widow of a firefighter who spent thirty-eight years of his life saving the lives of people, both literally and through the education of firefighters and citizens alike, in Florida and also Arizona. Our children grew up climbing on firetrucks and hanging out in fire stations. When I walk into this sandwich shop with its fire department décor and themed sandwich choices, I feel at home. So, how ironic is it that this same restaurant once saved my life?

Keeping it real, there is only one thing I’ve ever complained about when it comes to my Hook and Ladder Sandwich. I despise pickles. Pickles offend me. I can smell one at twenty paces and if any pickle juice from a donated pickle puddles beside my food, I will soak it up with a napkin and discard both the culprit and its evidence. Firehouse Subs, as well as most of America, sees pickles differently than I do, and include one free pickle spear with every sandwich.

This is a problem.

Finally last week after several online and in-person orders where even my receipt specifies that I am anti-pickle and yet often I still wind up with the soggy, booger-green ex-cucumber atop my sandwich, I politely mentioned it. To the manager. Who knows my face, knows my sandwich, works hard to train her young staff, and gave me that day’s order free just for the inconvenience caused by my pickle phobia.

See? This, too, is why I support Firehouse Subs. They save local lives with their determination to financially support firefighters. They save me from making my own lunch. They care about making the customer happy even when they themselves have had a bad day (which she had.) They saved my life in the mountains. And they've saved a few unwanted pickles from dying a tragic death in the trash.

Firehouse Subs. Do yourself a favor, order a sandwich, support a firefighter.

The life they save may be yours. Or a pickle’s.