This blog will not interest many people; nor will it contain photos or even the names of the real people who are revealed within the text. It is just a way for me to capture my thoughts and emotions about living my last phase of my life as a widow. I guess it is just cheap self-directed therapy. I just hope it works.
I always knew that I would, at some point, be a widow. Actually, I thought it would most likely happen earlier, rather than later in my life. My husband, who I will call “Joe” for the sake of anonymity, was only 5 years older than I am. But he lived on the edge of poor health. He was overweight and did no regular or even irregular exercise. He had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and several other weight-related problems and had, in the past several brushes with health issues that could have certainly been fatal. But, he didn’t live like he had health problems. He rarely complained of feeling badly or begged off doing something due to his health issues. So, after numerous “close calls” with medical issues like an elvated potassium level which should have put him on a slab in the morgue (so the doctor told him), congestive heart failure due to reaction to a new med for his high blood pressure (twice!), sleep apnea, and even kidney cancer, he still was an upbeat, outgoing person. After all that, I came to the conclusion that he was going to outlive me!
It happened suddenly and not at all how I thought it would. It was a nice Saturday in February. Joe got up early, as was his habit. He did his usual “stuff” in his office: checked the performance of our investments, paid some bills online, read the newspaper and walked our dog. At some point that morning, he went outside to work in the yard for a while. Around noon, he made himself some lunch and around 2 p.m., he laid down in our bedroom for his 30 minute “power nap”, which was his custom since he had retired.
When he awoke – exactly 30 minutes later, he went back to his office to do whatever he normally does in there. He came into the kitchen about 3:45, where I was sewing, and announced the was going to Walmart & did I need anything. I gave him a short list and he was out the door – happy to be out and about in his little sports car. I don’t even remember if we kissed “goodby”; but we probably didn’t.
Our dog, Digger, has some sort of built-in clock and by 4 p.m., he was whining to go on his afternoon walk. So we set out on our usual afternoon 45 minute walk.
I heard the ambulance sirens during the walk. I could tell they were fairly close to our neighborhood, which is somewhat isolated. But I couldn’t tell if the sirens were actually coming to our neighborhood or some place on the connector road outside our neighborhood. I immediately thought of Joe in that sports car, wondering if he had been involved in an accident, as I always did every time he was in that car and I heard sirens. I remember sending up my usual short prayer, “Please God, don’t let it be Joe in that car.” The sirens stopped. I walked on with Digger. Then, pretty quickly, I heard the sirens headed back up towards town and the only hospital. Upon returning to our street, I remember thinking, “Well, at least a police car isn’t parked out front, waiting for me. But as I approached our home, a neighbor came up to tell me that Joe had been down at the central post office in our community and was “having some problems” and they had called 911. He had been taken to the local hospital “just to check him out”. Bless my sweet neighbor’s heart. He is older than Joe. But he didn’t want to scare me. Then, two of my other neighbors came up to say they were driving me to the hospital. One was a nurse and I could tell by the look on her face that whatever the “problems” were, it was serious. In retrospect, I think I knew even then that this was the beginning of the end of my married life.
The Widow's Walk 