Margm

I dropped out of the "free book" club at Amazon because I really got my "money's worth" when Billy was reading. It is $9.99 a month and for the life of me, why do they charge you $9.99 for something, why not just say $10. I was not reading as much, and I was choosing some that were not on the "free" list. Cannot remember if this book was on the free list or not but it is one book that I am glad I bought. Oh, I did join the "free" book club again. Annie Dodd covers losing her husband in the first of the book, and possibly will get into it later on. Maybe because I know the area she is writing from, maybe that makes it more interesting. Her husband had been bipolar and unfortunately, in one of his moods, he canceled his life insurance. So ya'll, she found herself selling everything (meager) that they had to take care of the cremation. She has two or three grown boys that live elsewhere, but do come in handy at times. (I think this was her 2nd marriage, but lasted quite awhile). She is not dwelling on her loss, so if your looking for empathy/sympathy, don't read this. Years before she had picked up a magazine about living off the grid. (Backwoods ???), and I cannot remember. Know she is in her 50's though and know that was probably the strongest physically I have been. I could not do what she did, not now, maybe not ever. No money. A nun had slipped a little over $200 in her hands. She has a truck that is probably going to be repossessed (have not got that far). The house and land belongs to a friend of her son's.. He raises cattle. No conveniences. The price was right though, I think a little over $500 a year. At night she heard gnawing in the attic and saw rats that were fearsomely huge. (We had a type of Norwegian rat living in the city where we lived that I would not have let any cat come up against.) The house is in the East Texas back country with small country stores, 1 or 2. No electricity, no conveniences. (She did buy a bucket). She found a cistern of water that had been covered up. Hey, I'm country, but I have not looked this up, think it might mean a well. The bull that lived outside the fence that surrounds her house fell in love with her truck. I won't give anymore away. Kay, I think you would like this woman. She reminds me of you a lot. She knows how to "make do" and in "making do" she does not have time to let the grief head to the surface, although I figure further on it will. I know we are supposed to let it come out. I have not got to that part of the book though. It is called "A Widow's Walk Off-Grid to Self Reliance" and the author is Annie Dodds. It is on Amazon. I have not read many books yet that I had to make myself put down, have not had the concentration. It is funny/strange/ironic that at first she mentions forgetting things often. Little Annie Dodds, she obviously had not read that that was part of the grief process. I know at my age I could not do all she is doing in this book, and I wonder how much of that "Backwoods" magazine, how much of it is helping her. One thing I thought was funny, no phone service (she does not even know her address), but I know the "backwoods" in her part of the country and when she did get a cell phone, the only place she could get service was on top of a ladder she placed in the pasture (50 acres of pasture), and she would go out there at night to use it too. No offence meant Kay, I definitely meant it as a compliment to your ingenuity and your strength in shoveling that snow. She has a fur baby to take care of too, which provides much company. I pick books to read from widows and widowers to learn how they are coping. I read "us" to see how we all are coping.

Mitch, I hate remembering dates, but they always have a way of jumping on you even if you try to forget whether it is Saturday, 17th of any month, hate October. Birthdays, Valentine's day, and of one thing I am grateful. Billy's family never celebrated much, Santa Claus was a loud man that hit on the walls. So, when we got together my celebrating was nothing if he had our daughter or his sister pick me out something. Thankfully, It got to where our celebrating came in secondary to what a good fellow he was otherwise, and so thoughtful, and took such excellent care of me when I was ill. But I have all the cards, always cards (except when I forgot to get him one for our 50th). Did not do that on purpose. But now that he is gone, I don't have to remember wonderful celebrations that don't have to hurt me more than I already do. I don't miss them. I miss him though. I'm sorry for your sorrow, and all of ours.

Gin, Cookie, here is a direct quote from a friend, all my life, the one who told me i would find myself now. "the girl I remember was a cute little thing. She had fun and made other people laugh and be happy. Smiling as some of our antics. Your personality was so wonderful." Okay, I used to know that girl too. Sorry folks "Alice does not live here anymore." You know what I say? That girl left when Billy left. I sorta miss her at times, but I don't think she is coming back. Maybe even if I had been 50. But, I got to keep him so long, I prefer that to good time Charlie. I'm okay. You know, after our kids got grown we still felt guilty going out to eat without them. We were just that type of people. I have not reached the point yet where I can have fun without him.

John Steinbeck wrote his book "Of Mice and Men" I believe from the Robert Burns poem "To a Mouse." And his dialect held it as "moose." in 1785. I always say God loves me, but he thinks I am a comedian, so when I make plans, he laughs and laughs at me. The words without the Scottish dialect are below: But little Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! I think of this often. Billy and I got to live a long time with each other, we got to carry out a lot of plans, but we let things hinder us along the way and stop those plans because carrying them out would hurt others, so we covered our plans, and we waited for a better time. We waited too late. But, we had a good time waiting and I won't be bitter. (I probably will, I am imperfect that way). Do like Brad said and ask for the concoction he takes.

This was my writing morning. I just want to shut up for awhile. I hope I deleted it. I meant to. Like Shakespeare said, it was "signifying nothing."

Well Gwen, I just looked where you live. Ferris Yaris and I are getting used to being on the road, but I think he would give out before we got to Washington. One thing I know, no one can come in with you anyhow except the nurses and doc. And, I think now they give you stuff that puts you out, so you will enjoy that resting time. I'm afraid I would just have to call 911, but my sister would be around. My kids have deserted me but I have Brianna and sure don't want to worry her. As soon as you can, please let us know how you are doing because if we cannot be present, remember, you are on our minds. And, I will try out my mustard seed faith in prayer too. I know you didn't ask for it, but I'm gonna give it a try anyhow. Until then we will have to send you virtual hugs.. I wish we could do better. Your on my mind and heart though. Kids have not "deserted" me but are otherwise occupied. Which is good.

I stopped by Mama and Daddy's grave on the way home Friday. The cemetery is about 25 miles straight up the road I live on, just before you hit the Arkansas line. It is where all my relatives sleep. Daddy's grave needs more dirt added, it is caved in some. I'm not supposed to lift heavy so I bought the cutest little shovel with long handle. I could do it. I still had the crosses, nice size, I had got at Michael's, but they were fall flowers. I even remembered to bring wire strippers to help hold the bows on. I bought the flowers in groups, about five daffodils to each group, white daisies, and I cannot put flowers down without purple, so some bearded beautiful purple. Three of each group with baby's breath (I think it is called) in between, big white bow for Mama. Daddy was a rose man. He grew roses. I found groups of pale purple, dark red, white, and baby's breath with a big red bow. It rained all the way up there. And here was this crazy woman out in the rain fixing flowers and talking to her mom and dad. No one around but my relative ghosts. Out in the country, forests bordering the beautiful cemetery. Here is this insane woman talking to her dead relatives making flower arrangements in the rain. Huge cemetery, I'm the only one in it, and I did not feel creepy at all. I did not cry But coming home Merle Haggard was finishing up his song. Goodbye, goodbye little darlin' I'm leaving this cold world behind So promise me that you will never be Nobody's darlin' but mine... Okay Billy, I heard you. You have not changed a bit.

As do I Dave. I miss that tall, lanky, neatly trimmed, graying handsome (to me and other women) man I have known through thick and thin, sickness and in health, through hardships, struggles and roadblocks we threw in our own path. We were so far from perfect individuals (never in trouble with the law, but Billy hated the IRS and sometimes refused to pay.) They laughed at us each time though and we came to our knees and paid extra taxes and penalties often. We got $800 back the last tax time he was here. (I had finally retired a 3rd time after 43 years). It went for back taxes. What it amounted to was nothing was definite but taxes and death. Now, I am due to get a whole lot of money back for my taxes. I put back a whole lot of money out of each of our retirement checks into the IRS. They will go to pay my mom's succession and for some reason, I cannot find the folder with all the information in it. It is my mind playing tricks. Billy always said I was him and he was me. Well "me" would have always paid the taxes but "him" would not let me handle it. I wanted to take them to people who did taxes, but he would not let me, so on April 14th, he would sit up late into the night trying to figure out ways to cheat the IRS. We never won. We just did not have them take enough money out of our retirement checks to come out even. I remember the author Ed Abbey hated paying taxes too, so they took the money out of his book earnings. My granddaughter and her family moved into mine and Billy's house after he passed away. Now, she was in her late 20's and the fussing that went on with them there and her dad (my son) and his woman there, I just had to leave. While I was gone, she decided to clean out Billy's tax cabinet and got rid of all the loose paper, etc. All those years of trying to cheat the government were burned. I wonder if maybe he had something to do with that? I wonder now if the reason I cannot find my folder (that I would never lose if I was in my right mind), if he has it hid somewhere. Sometimes I think the "him" in "me" is playing tricks with the government. I will just have to go down to H&R Block and be at their mercy. I have all my receipts and W????'s saved. I have no idea how to do this. I can spell the genus and species of all the dreaded viruses and bacteria, but if I have to add four numbers in a row I will give up and scream (no, it makes my head hurt), no I will just cry and they will have to give me IV saline to account for lost sodium. I am getting better. I miss him terribly. I used to spell out the word "grief" as "guilt." Some electron in my brain could not distinguish between the two words so it most times was spelled guilt. And, I know yours is too. When I was talking to a neighbor on my fast trips back to our "home" in Arkansas I learned of a man. He was married 15 years and his wife died of cancer. Then he was married to a 2nd woman 15 years and she left him. One of the women I was to do business with had just retired after being his 3rd wife for 15 years, and she promptly filed for divorce. Then Brad told about the woman that had had the three husbands die. (Brad, stay away from that woman, we want to keep you). Sunday morning word salad. I cannot eat real salads anymore, so you all get my psychological term word salad torture. Now if I can make Billy quit laughing long enough to let me find that damn folder, I will pay for my mom's succession and also pick out a memorial to be placed next to my mom and dad's stone. I am gonna make Billy's ashes be mixed with mine and our headstone will be in the cemetery with all my relatives. How's that Billy???

A good analogy Ana. I don't know how many ways we try to help ourselves, but we keep trying. A fellow who "left" this forum for some reason (his own feelings) would say one foot in front of the other. Figuratively, that is what we have to do. Mindfully, I think dragging that one foot in front of the other is like dragging Thor's hammer attached to our leg. But, we will have to do it, or standing in one place, digging our hole, we will just be unable to drag ourselves out. I have done that. Generations ago, our parents were taught self sufficiency because there were so many kids, they had to be self sufficient. Now we think "OMG, I have lost my reason for living" and what is life without that reason? Finding ourselves is something hard to do. When you are 74-years-old you wonder what is there left to find. Our bodies are weak, Thor's hammer is hard to drag along. That hole we dug conveniently becomes a grave.........if we let it. The will to live is greatly diminished, but still we have to. I think it was mostly a myth, but after the Crimean War, I think Florence Nightingale found herself not needed like she was during the war. I'm going from memory (which is very faulty), but the "lady with the light" did not have anyone else to take care of. In her late 20's or early 30's she lost her reason for living so she took to her bed. And she did die, but I think she was in her 90's when she died. Our reason for living is gone, but I notice that some are finding new reasons for living. I applaud them. My personal self would like to take to my bed. I've earned it, but for some stupid reason I lived and Billy didn't. I should have gone first. Is it just the world of coincidences that I was left or was there a reason? I have reasons, I hope I am of some help or I am just ready to pull up the covers.

I posted somewhere. It was a blank sheet, I have to put words on blank sheets. Blank words somewhere, but I might have deleted them. Not important. (Found it).

Musing along............ I went to Mount Ida today. I will miss my sister widow who became probably one of my closest friends that I probably will never see again, and we both would know the reason, I am sure. She is a saint. Most of my friends are saints. (They would not like Grace and Frankie). I have the remnants of an unsaintly lifetime. I really don't want to be saintly, but I am much nicer............and older. Of course I did try to play CCR and listened to it some. But then, I put on Air Supply's greatest hits and played it for about 400 miles total. Lost a little sodium. I don't like going back to where Billy left me...........

In my defense, I really think in everything I hijack, I am always musingly musing and reflectionly reflecting.

Thank you Brad. I'm good at some things.

I'm sorry, they left "logical" out of my vocabulary, my brain, my heart, and if it was in my colon, it was a goner anyhow. My teachers at our school got together and told me there was no way in 1961 that Billy and I could live on $98 twice a month. We did, but we ate a lot of his mom's pinto beans with dry salt meat, cornbread, tea and onions from his dad's garden. And, we had so much fun going down to the barrow pits alongside the highway, off Dorcheat Bayou and bass fishing. Back in those days we did not catch and release (we eventually did that in later years), but one of my favorite foods was bass fillet's. They had never eaten "fish gravy" and it became Billy's favorite food. You just made it like regular gravy, but you used some of the oil you fried the fish in. Now was that perfectly illogical and off topic? I do understand illogical. And Brad, I hope I don't hurt your feelings, but I am going to use your topic to advertise "Grace and Frankie" starting March 24th. Now if you are even a little prudish, don't watch it. I am just warning you ahead of time. But, if you are terribly illogical like I am, and if you want to laugh again, you have to watch this show. It throws rational thinking out the window and the topics are really off the natural course of things. I just like to laugh. And, I love these two women and their ex-husbands who leave these two women for each other. It is not slap-stick, it is about women my age doing crazy things that are not l-o-g-i-c-a-l. I'm sorry to get off ya'll's subject. Sometimes I hate grieving.

My positive is a get to wear my "do-rag" to keep the wind from blowing my hair. The temperature is very mild, up into the 70's, but that wind is whipping. Okaaaaaay, this is March. March winds, April showers, May flowers.

Well Brad, it is a good looking animal to be that old. I'm afraid I feel the worse for wear. I'm glad you have it.

Good for you Brad. Sometimes it is hard to focus on anything but our loss. My son just called me and he is through Amarillo on his way home to the ArkLaTex. I remember him just born and me not out of my teens yet. I would feel of his chest and his heart beat so fast and I was so scared. I would stay awake at night and watch him, afraid to go to sleep, the only child I had been around was my sister, and I was nine-years-old then and did not remember how to take care of a baby. Billy was a natural born Mama/Daddy, he always knew what to do and he wore out two big old red wooden rocking chairs at the foot of our bed. Then he rocked the grandchildren. Now both kids are middle aged, older than some of our forum members. And still, this mother worries. One is somewhere in the Land of Oz where she has never been before, alone. Another is "On the Road Again" and still, this mother worries. I'm glad you had that time with your grands.

I don't cry every day anymore, but somehow or other, your "Wakey Dog" brought them. Billy's Tee Shirt still held his essence, a small bit I imagined, and it brought tears. Tears are good, they release something. Maybe my sodium level is less. Thanks Brad.

After nearly 55 years of sleeping beside Billy, my first thoughts each morning are that he is beside me. I do not lay in bed in memories because memories still hurt me. I thought at first I would touch his side of the bed and be honest and tell him I knew he was gone. My friend, who had lost her husband a few months before, told me never to do that again. Love his side of the bed and tell him that you love him and he will be with you forever. I felt so much better doing that. I found his favorite Tee shirt this week. I don't know why it was packed separately, but I added it in between my pillows, and I am a person who scatters pillows on top of pillows to sleep. He slept on a flat pillow, only one.

And, that is what it is. If you can help Patty along I wish you both much success. I think you both can understand the grief, so you share much. Happiness for you both.

Gwen, you are one that I worry about. WBS has already made me feel more safe about her. I know you all get tired of hearing about my illnesses. Nearly 35 years ago they were putting canisters of radium into my female parts, up inside them. Betcha would not think a medical terminologist could not or would not use the terms. Essentially what they did was get rid of the cancer with inside and outside radiation. I think they have changed tactics some. We were left in bed two different times, 72 hours each time, (could not move) with canisters of radium in our insides. We had no feeling of them, but they had to be done in the operating room. You see people with those haz-mat uniforms cleaning up chemicals spilled on the highway, well, when we were checked on, people with those kind of uniforms including head gear came to check on us. We had a catheter but were given something where we would not defecate until after the 72 hours. Saved my life.. I had nearly 33 years of some troubles, but hey, I was living. I got to work, raise my family, love my grandkids and Billy and my kinfolks for a long time. Then that friable tissue exploded sending poison (overall sepsis) all over my body and I was unconscious and don't remember much of the first week. My surgeon was an innovative surgeon with the personality of an angry grizzly bear. (He had to have anger classes, but not because of me, because of his personality). This angry surgeon, instead of putting in a colostomy bag, he fixed a tube, then removed it, and I was put on some strict orders the rest of my life, which is a ticking time bomb. I take my temp often, because if it goes up, it means the artificial colon he made up is not working or has ruptured. I stay on a strict "nothing healthy" diet, because that is what I have to live.. No fiber. No one can help me in the medical community. Like the GYN doc said when I was hemorrhaging, we can do a D&C, but if we find anything we cannot fix it. But, in the meantime, I can eat steak, fried chicken, gravy, biscuits, cakes, etc. Just no healthy veggies. And my tummy talks constantly. And, I take Miralax the rest of my life and know where every restroom is when I have to get away from home. (Going to Mount Ida, I know where the logging roads and bushes are located). I can walk. I am like the tinman of Wizard of Oz, I get so stiff in my joints, and am in danger of falling, which I have done a couple of times. Still, maybe I am in better condition than you are. And, I am not an example to follow, I am simply a blob of flesh that Billy left behind and said "the one left must stay." I have things I have to do, and as Robert Frost said, I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. And, if Billy had outlived me, these are the things he would be having to do also. As much as I miss that ole bearded, tall, lanky fellow, I have to try to complete this task. And that is why the (new doc/fired doc) insisted I take antidepressants with me telling her I could not. I'm not ready to let go yet, though I might be one of these days. But, it will be at the time it is supposed to be. I won't help it along unless I can do it with necessary deliberation, and only then at a natural pace. Please, I wish I could offer support. I hope someone can offer support.

You have joined a group of people who literally saved my life and I appreciate them all. The loss will never go away, but how we handle the loss will be something that you, yourself, will find a way to go on. There are some I worry about, but there are some I worried about who are going on with their life. It is like we have lost half our body and are trying to go down the path flopping along with half a body, half a heart. But, that is what they left us. It keeps coming back to me some things Billy told me "the one left must stay." I did not want to stay. I understood the culture of women whose mates were set out in a burning boat and the widows threw themselves on the burning bier. I wanted to do that. But, we do have to learn to live and it is not easy. Stay on here, you will get the help you need and you will most of all learn, you are not alone. Say what you feel, everyone will understand, and most have already put it into words.

Oh my goodness, she is looking like a little young lady instead of a baby/baby. So sweet. And, brought a welcome smile. Thanks Kay

Thanks Marty. Hits home. That is why I rent and the little guy pats me on the shoulder when I tell him I don't know how to do something. He says "that's what I am here for." Of course, he does not fill the space left by Billy.. Nothing ever could, but I have help when I need it.. Miss my best friend terrifically though.

There is one song I will run from, absolutely run from and that is Willie Nelson's (or any cover) of "Always on my mind." Someone had his son singing it and I started listening. Bad idea.