Tag: grief

sewing

And Here I am Again

Lisa

You may have wondered where I’ve been, or maybe you haven’t. It was a terribly rough year in 2023. After losing my husband in May, I kind of sat back and gave myself some grace, trying to figure out what my life looks like now. To say I have lost my center would be a gross understatement.

My husband and I never should have been together, but there we were. He was 18 years older than me, and not healthy when I met him. He was retirement age. I had years to go. He was shorter than me, though not by much. I still miss him saying “tall girl, come get this off the shelf for me.” He was my rock. My sounding board (he LOVED work gossip!). My encourager in chief — after many years of thinking about it, I finally finished my bachelor’s degree, then got my master’s, then quit working, all in pretty rapid succession. He was my person, and I was his.

But it was about more than losing the love of my life. I had lost my mom 18 months before my husband, and my dad 18 months before that. My brother had died a couple of years before my dad. Then I had to have my son’s dog euthanized while he was on vacation, and shortly after, my own dog. Like I’ve told people this year, the mortality rate is pretty high in my milieu — you may not want to get too close!

That being said, when you marry someone 18 years older than you, you do know that the odds are that you will outlive them, so I pretty much knew what the future would be from the beginning. I had a few trial runs whilst he was in the hospital before he passed, because he was gone for weeks at a time. Truth be told, he was in the hospital MUCH more than he was home for the last three months. So I knew what was coming, especially because I was a nurse. That doesn’t mean a darned thing to that monster called grief, because it rears its head and doesn’t let go easily. Pack on top of it the multiple losses on top of the loss of my husband, and I needed a minute.

So I stepped back, pondered, cried, took some trips, moved a stepson out, moved a son in (both a very good thing), and am trying to get my house in order now, in more ways than one. I have lots to share, so expect to see me back, for better or for worse. And if you too are clinging for dear life against the tide of grief, I see you. I understand. I hope that you have as awesome a support network as I do, and if you don’t, that’s ok. Reach out to me. I’ll listen.

Tomorrow I am off to see the Downton Abbey exhibit in Chicago, so I’ll be back with lots to tell you.

Until then,

Lisa

Uncategorized

New Beginnings

Lisa

Mom passed on December 6th, at home, surrounded by her family. More about that later, when I’ve had time to process it better, but this. This picture shows a good depiction at where I’m at right now.

After Mom died, we emptied her apartment into my house and garage. She was not sentimental about things, and they moved so much that she purged belongings on a regular basis, so although it was a two bedroom apartment, it wasn’t as much stuff as it could have been. That being said, it was a LOT. It completely takes over half of our garage, and spilled into our sunroom and my office. It was chaos, more than usual.

I started slowly, because trying to sort through stuff during a period of fresh grief is hard. I had my boys put all the media stuff into the office. My dad was a communications and electronics guy. There were probably a couple of hundred 8mm home movies and video tapes to go through, as well as videos that hadn’t been copied from the camcorder tape, cassettes, photos, slides, and on and on and on. I ordered two boxes from Legacybox, and am having the family stuff digitized, so everyone has a copy. There’s nowhere in Indiana to recycle VCR tapes, so I ordered a box from Green Disk and have it nearly full. You can almost walk in the office now without fear of losing a limb — note I said almost. Hubby still won’t go in there.

We switched out TVs and took Mom’s new smart TV — that ended up being something of a pain, because we couldn’t get the internet to work on it for a while, despite my tech support son’s hard work. Next day, I googled it and got resolution to the problem, but we still have the old TV and stand in the sunroom. Baby steps.

I’ve passed along some things through our local FB Buy Nothing group. If you haven’t indulged in this group, it’s a great way to get rid of stuff that someone else may need. You can also get stuff there, or even borrow. The only catch is that it absolutely must be free. I gave away Dad’s shower chair, two walkers, their microwave, and some odds and ends. It was nice to be able to bless people in their season of need. I very rarely use it to get things, but it’s great for giving stuff away.

And so, on to this picture. This is my computer “tower”. It is in what I’m calling her “my” office, but it’s actually my husband’s office that he doesn’t use. (Mine is chock full of sewing patterns.) This area was piled as high as the printer with stuff. It really only took me about half an hour to process the stuff, but meantime, I found a pattern I had misplaced that someone was interested in, as well as the forms I filled out last year, fighting with the post office over a package that arrived empty in the buyers’ mailbox (if you live in Ohio, there’s a 1940s corset floating around there in a post office). Some stuff got moved to a different pile to be filed, but for the most part, everything is taken care of.

I needed this today. After the last few months and all of the life and death crises I’ve dealt with, I needed a clean space. Yes, that’s a bobblehead Pope Francis. No, I’m not Catholic. He just makes me happy. The jar of pins behind him is a collection of pins that I started last year, harvested as I count pattern pieces. It makes me happy too — I feel connected to the original owners of my vintage patterns.

So yes, I’m going into Christmas with a clean slate, no matter how small it is, but it gives me peace and is helping to keep me sane, even while I have an undecorated Christmas tree up and nothing wrapped.

Here’s hoping that you find peace in the holiday season as well. Next, I will tell you about my plans for the new year.