5 weeks … possibly 6; before I can get back to traveling further than 10 minutes into the heart of “downtown” – or a “safe” half an hour to the next county.
Hopefully, by the middle of March, things will start drying up around here, and I can travel quite a bit further afield.
And with an outpouring of divine mercy, I may even get to travel between the two States flanking the Columbia River.
In the meantime, with the seemingly endless rain storms, that come pelting in off the river to flood the entire region – destabilizing hillsides, sweeping cars away in muddy floodplains, and sending car-sized boulders careening off cliffsides to barrel into traffic lanes: I’m pretty much trapped in-house unless I have to drive into town for quick business (to pay AT/T at downtown office to avoid ‘late fee’ charges; or quick grocery restock). So far, going into town isn’t tricky driving.
What does seem to be tricky, however, is fielding the questions from friends and family who seem to feel I should be an expert of heartache and familial angsts.
I am a widow; and a parent who has nerve-wracking children.
Bob’s spirit left Earth a little over 2 years ago.
Friends (my age, or slightly older) are facing their own morality, or the possibility of becoming a widow themselves: they are worried, scared, curious – and a bit rude in their question-and-answer probes.
At first it caught me by surprise; then it started to annoy me … now, I just accept it for what it is: they need pacifying, they are seeking answers – they think I can help them.
I can: to a degree. While it is true that I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and survived the pain and heart wrenching sorrow, to talk about it; I am certainly no expert on death and how it will affect them. Their lives are not my life. I can only speak in reference to my life, and how the loss of Bob affected/continues to affect my life. Sometimes that satisfies them.
And most of the time it no longer annoys me.
I am more than Bob’s Widow.
I am still ME: VAL – a person that has a life separate from The Grim Reaper’s pivot point.
Being trapped indoors by governmental crackdown bullshit most of all of 2020, and projected to go into 2022, has left people with too much time on their hands to sit and think. Children, as well as adults are becoming morose.
Not only are adults contemplating their own mortality; their children are also feeling the effects of isolation, and acting out in alarming ways.
Which, again, puts me in the crosshairs of “expert” queries.
Parents (friends and family members) struggling with teens and young adults call me to talk about what they are going through … and ask me, “how did you deal with it?”
Again, the circumstances, situations, and resulting outcomes – are vastly different. Their children do not hate them: mine, truly do hate me. There is a huge difference in how I “dealt with it”. Their troubles are current … the troubles with my kids go back 51 and 37 years: and since both kids have removed themselves from my life following their father’s absence in all our lives, the way I am “dealing” will not be helpful to those seeking helpful insights.
I do my best to be helpful, but the picking at the scabs of my personal life annoys me. I do not want to resurrect a painful past, that obviously did not pan out very well for me; or mine. I share what I share when I want to share it … and I chose what I want to share in the moment. I don’t share everything, because that is my business: it’s not fodder for the familial-friend’s-or bystander stranger’s gossip mill.
And, inevitably, what is shared, always leads to judging from those making queries: “but, you don’t get along with your children, do you?” Instead of the correct assessment that my kids do not get along with me. The quizzers can’t help themselves – they need vindication that even though their own families are in trouble … their trouble isn’t as bad as mine appears to them.
They make their judgements based on the little – very little – I share.
It may seem like I am a motor mouth; but I actually share very little about my family. I only share what I feel will be of some benefit to others – the rest, I keep to myself. It is no one else’s business.
And it irritates me that people come to me thinking I am an expert on heartbreak, and then feel free to come to conclusions about my life when they know basically nothing about my life (with Bob, or with my kids) as a whole.
They came to me; I did not go to them.
Beyond their quest to seek immediate comfort by asking surface questions to deep familial issues in their own lives, my personal life is off limits.
(https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2020/01/glass-house-christians_17.html)
I am more than Bob’s Widow.
I am more than an abandoned mother.
I am still ME: VAL – a person that has a life separate from The Grim Reaper’s pivot point; and the kid’s narcissistic angsts.
Everyone’s life is their own journey. What works for me, may not work for anyone else: my life is not their life, even if they feel there are similarities.
I am doing my best not to overthink, too, in this neverendingly government incarceration … and wet, dreary, gray clouded winter skies.
I am trying to move forward.
There is nothing left of the life I had for 44 years – I am doing my best to rebuilt from the shattered fragments. It is not easy: the slate has been wiped clean. As if those 44 years never happened at all. Only the memories keep me grounded and sane. I am exhausted on all levels … emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
I am in no position to take on other people’s issues.
That is what Elohim is for: they need to go to Him.
Does that make me a selfish bitch?
Maybe.
I don’t know.
All I do know is that I’m going through my own life upheavals.
And I am doing it alone – partly because I need to, and partly because there is no one else on Earth, I can turn to.
I am going through my own confusing time.
I am dealing with my own mortality: I was with Bob from the time he went into ER locally, until he breathed his last breath this side of Heaven, in a small hospital room in the next State across the River.
I am pretty sure I will breathe my last breath this side of Heaven, alone.
And I am equally sure my friends seeking peace as they ponder their own mortality, and quiz me on what it feels like to waltz with the Grim Reaper, do not want to hear that reality. I try to answer their queries as honestly as I can – as compassionately as I can – without scaring the hell out of them, or losing too much blood myself, from the healing scab they messed with.
I am still reeling from the final severance from the kids (their choices). They totally messed up their lives – the Grim Reaper messed up my life: when Bob breathed out his last breath, as shallow as it was, it blew my entire world apart.
People ask me how I am dealing.
But they really don’t want the truth.
They don’t want to know that I really don’t have answers for them.
They don’t want to know the reality that death changes the “fit” of old life with the new life.
Or that as bad as they think things are now … the death of a spouse, or the death of a family unit blown to smithereens is so confusing, there is no escape from the prolonged shockwaves.
They do not want to know that I am exhausted on all levels: emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually – which often leads to second guessing, which leads to overthinking.
They want me to soothe them in what they are personally going through, and overthinking; and in truth, no one is benefitted.
I can lend them an ear, but if they truly want answers to their queries, they will have to turn to Elohim.
Turning to Elohim is how I “deal”.
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