LIVE FOR LOVE

I’ve been posting the last few months about the necessity of getting on with the business of rebuilding my life. And I really am trying to do that. But it is not as easy – or as simple – as it seems it should be.

One of the reasons it is not simple is because for every step forward I make … someone or something sets me back 2; or 3 steps. With this constant occurrence happening, I am always losing ground.

After Monday morning's phone convo,
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2020/02/a-day-of-exercise.html) in which I was shouted at, and told (by my daughter!) that my husband was terrified of me because I am a dictator, and that whether I wanted to believe it or not, she and her brother did give Bob money because he said I was bankrupting him; that he shared secrets with her because he couldn’t talk to me; that she heard rumors he was cheating on me … and then she finally ended the call with, “and he said you were killing him”. She has finally lost all touch with reality! I know she hates me – she has had a 35-year-old vendetta against me; but I admit I was shakily dismayed that she would say those things to me – it went way beyond her normal vitriol. She tells everyone she knows horror stories about me, so much so, that when by chance, I actually meet people she is in close contact with, they say, "You are not at all like she said you were". It's sad. It has always been hard to bear, but Bob was always here to hug me and make things better.

Now, Bob is no longer here, and both kids think they can continue to harangue me. I can’t allow that; my support system has been seriously altered.

She is obsessed with trying to destroy me – she goes after me like the demoncrats go after Trump – but I KNOW everything she said was utter bullshit. She kept saying, "This is MY truth". And it may be 'her truth' ... but, it is NOT THE TRUTH.

Bob & I were together constantly – the only time we were ever apart was when he worked … and he left the house cutting it pretty close to make the truck yard at work: there was NO TIME for him to sneak off to bellyache to her about anything. If there was an issue with me, Bob had no problem at all letting me know – he’d do it in a calm manner, but he’d let me know: just like I would to him, if I had an issue with him; we always worked things out calmly and together. And we NEVER took our personal business outside our home. Bob made me household bookkeeper before the ink was dry on our Marriage License – I was with him when his paychecks were deposited (his choice – he wanted me involved), and we paid bills together, and went over the bank statement together. Sure, money got tight sometimes on slow months … but we were NEVER at a point where either of us had to ask ANYONE for monetary help: we just tightened our belt and did without the extra’s until things picked up at work again. I am very frugal: we even had a pretty cushy saving account and IRA – there was NO need to tap anyone for money. The kids – Alex and Stacey were the one’s asking us for money – and to raise their kids, for Pete’s sake! And there are plenty of witnesses to testify to that, on my behalf. Bob never cheated on me our entire married life. He always said I was more than he could keep up with; and he’d learned in his first marriage that sneaking around wasn’t worth it. He wouldn’t have cheated then, either, if Gloria hadn’t been sleeping around – Bob’s cheating then, was a spite thing. Plus, Bob knew I’d leave him and not look back if he ever stepped out on me: I wouldn’t tolerate that – that was one thing I couldn’t overlook, and he never did it. As to “killing” him … Bob had a standing DNR in place; I honored that. And Bob spoke directly TO THE DOCTORS himself concerning his wishes in that regard, telling them that if he couldn’t make that decision when the time came, they were to do what I told them to do. Bob was lucid enough on his final day on Earth to plainly and clearly state, himself, his final wishes and Comfort Care was started on his say so. I did not have to make that decision.

Bob was on very heavy narcotics those final months. If any of what she screamed at me was true, it would have come out in a deathbed confession of sorts – it would have slipped out in a drugged stupor where thoughts would have been uncontrolled. That happens under drug influences.

Instead, WHAT DID COME OUT, was his talking to his doctors and attendants about how much he loved and appreciated me in his life; and that he was sorry he was leaving me. He told them, every day, his 1981 salvation testimony; and how he appreciated I prayed for him before he got saved. I was in the room, and he would reach for my hand and hold it, smiling at me, when he told them these things.

His siblings, Merry and Kerry, have told me that Bob and I had the most loving and secure marriage they’ve ever seen. I didn’t have to make room for Alex in our life, but I did. He was Bob’s son, and our daughter’s brother. Alex’s daughter Krisa was our first grandchild – and I doted on her like a first grandchild. Bob’s siblings are flabbergasted at the things Alex and Stacey have shouted at me; and the way I have been used and abused. They understand that what is heard can’t be unheard, and both of them have said, “Bobby loved you, Val. There is no doubt – don’t let anyone make you doubt that.”

I have never doubted Bob’s love and devotion to me. I don’t doubt it now.

This is what I know – this, what I have written is factual.

Stacey and Alex live in their heads, with their fantastical hostilities – which they aim at me. Because they think they can.

CORRECTION: they could … they can’t anymore. I haven’t spoken to Alex since July 4^th, 2019 – and I won’t be speaking to Stacey anymore; she’s kicked me out of her life for 35 years, and finally yesterday for good. She left no doubt about that. They are both crazy with twisted angsts that have no conception in reality. Neither one of them take any personal responsibility for where they have taken their lives, and it is easier to blame someone else. Basically, me – because they think I am an easy target now that I am grieving, my defenses are down, and Bob is not here to shield me.

Well, neither of them know me; they never took the time to know me. Yes, I am grieving, but I am not going to allow myself to be taken advantage of, or be abused.

Instead, after that ridiculous phone convo, I took stock of my life; admitting to myself once and for all, that there will never be a relationship with Stacey. Ever. She won’t allow it - it wouldn't fit her victim script. And honestly, I think she can’t allow it: she continues to feed her irrational 35-year-vendetta and it has consumed her.

There will be no help there because there is no love there.

And I am tired of crying for something that will never be.

I am pretty sure half of my crying jags are missing my family members as well as missing Bob – but if they can throw me under the bus and step on the gas to mangle me, what’s the point of crying over their absence in my life? At least Bob loved me: that is worth grieving, and crying about.

So.

Earlier today I jotted down some notes to myself about how to forge ahead with rebuilding my new life. I know I am not the only widow who has to do that; I also know that I am not the only widow who is being treated horribly by her children, or who have been heartlessly abandoned. This is what I came up with:

Strengths: Elohei/myself/my past

Weaknesses: my children. They can wreck me if I let them.

Goal: peace and happiness in my new life.

Elohei is my foundational support; without Him, nothing I build with stand the tests of time or challenge. I – me – myself, is strong enough to move on: While holding my hand and facing death, Bob told me he knew I could do it; so, I will. For me, and to honor him. My past is my strength: before Bob, I was a pretty strong, kickass person. I will be again; I have to be. There is only me now, fighting for my survival and success.

My only real weakness is my love for my children. And they know it. But they have used, abused, and abandoned me; and shouted malicious things at me to deliberately hurt me – they have lost their minds to bitter hatefulness. I have to shelf my love for them, or they will wreck me. I can’t allow that if I am going to survive Bob’s absence in my life and move forward to build a new one.

My goal for 2020 … and hopefully, beyond … is to live my life saturated in love to obtain peace and happiness in my new life. I was able to do this before Bob – I am sure I can obtain it, sans Bob in my life, now.

There are many forms of love; living for love is easy-peasy. Peace and happiness just naturally follows ;-)

And I need to ferret out other widows and widowers to spend some time with.

I do have friends, but they are coupled and really have NO IDEA at all about what widows go through on a daily-minute to minute-spin. They have their own ideas about grieving and moving forward; they’d have it together in a year’s time and be making rational decisions to take their lives upward and onward. They know this because they watch oprah and dr. oz, and would “go to counseling” and “get the help they need” to right their lives again. They’d get a job – because a job would solve “the issues of” grief fog, loss of short-term memory, the sudden tears & fears, and the incapacitating sorrow that saps all your energy – even if you don’t particularly feel it, it is there, lurking and working at draining you.

Sometimes it is hard not to get snippy and say, “You can’t fix me!” It is annoying to listen to well-meant suggestions that are not helpful at all. And then to sit through clueless minimalization of grief, while they are complaining about their husband not paying enough attention to them, is almost too much. It doesn’t do any good to get mad, they are clueless – they don’t know that there is a seriously real difference between frustrating ‘grief’ caused by supposed indifference, and the very real death grief of loss that can’t be talked out.

Even with family members, I get tired of trying to explain that.

And I can’t seem to make people understand that filling my life with someone … or something else … won’t erase the loss of Bob in my life. Yes, I am blessed to have a home, paid for, free and clear; but it is no longer “my happy place” since the person who made me happy no longer shares that home with me. That nearly all of my life has been spent loving one man; three quarters of my adult life identity was coupled with that one man … even though I am a strong, intelligent, independent woman in my own right. That the exhaustion of trying to function on skimpy sleep and foggy daytime brain can be overwhelming.

I get tired of trying to explain to my coupled friends, who still have intact families – that my best friend, lover, confident, and comforter is gone forever; and that no one else ever “got” or “will get me” like he did.

They are clueless. They won’t understand until it happens to them.

They don’t understand how hard it is to relearn everything as a solo lobo that I did as a couple for most of my life. They can’t understand the incredible feat of strength and fortitude it takes for me to get through every day. Every day. They don’t understand that the progress they saw me accomplish this week could be so easily wiped out, sending me into a tailspin that will set me back 2 weeks; by a single snarky phone convo. They can’t understand that I am helping myself – I am doing everything in my power to move forward: without love and support. They don’t understand that I am really doing pretty fricking good, all things considered.

Better jot down the need to make connections with widows and widowers, on that ‘note to self’ mentioned earlier.

Live for love.

2020’s motto and mantra.

There is no longer place for unwarranted and unbridled hate in my new life.