It appears that my long running windshield saga has drawn to a close. Today, in the rain appropriately enough, the fourth technician, on the fifth visit, replaced the gel pack under the sensor and, believe it or not the wipers started wiping automatically again.
Woohoo!
The next time the windshield cracks I’m going to leave the car on the highway, by an underpass, in the wrong part of town, where it can be stripped to the axles or out-right stolen. Getting a new car through the insurance will be simpler, and less time consuming, than getting the glass replaced.
One of the most dangerous, and perhaps damning, practices in our society today is the fixing of labels to individuals or groups. Any one who is in a minority group (label) already knows what this feels like. With just a word or three you are categorized, objectified, and shunted off to purgatory, never to return. As a white male, with a college education and a career in the high tech industry I’ve been largely immune to the potential ill effects of labeling.
Michele’s death however has added a new label to the skein trailing along behind me: widower. Quick, what comes to mind when you first hear the word: widower? An old man, wrinkled, gray or balding, stooped and spent. Some one who’ll just shuffle along a bit longer before joining his dear departed. I’m NOT that. I don’t want to be that. So I’ve been making an effort to stop using that term, even in my mind, to refer to myself. I think labels (like personal names) are self fulfilling prophecies, once you assume one you start to work towards making it reality.
My marital status, when asked for on official paperwork, is widower, but I am not just my marital status. Michele dying changed me profoundly, and altered the course of my life. Those changes cannot be summed in one word.
I am strong, courageous, intelligent, humorous, sensitive, caring, empathetic, athletic, purposeful, reflective, spiritual, kind, witty, casual, handsome, introverted, physical, mental, boyish, wise, complicated, simple, complex, driven, laid-back, questing, ancient, and single. In a word, I’m me.
Stereo microscope picture of Velcro being pulled apart at 94x magnification.
I’m starting to take some “next steps” in my journey back from the land of grief. Some of these are mental and or emotional adjustments, while others are more tangible. The most tangible one to date has been the changing of my voice mail greeting.
Until yesterday if you called my home phone you were greeted with the message Michele and I put together just over two years ago. I managed to make a recording of it over the winter using some VoIP software as it is the only (known to me) recording of her voice. But I’ve delayed changing the message as it was one more tangible reminder that she is truly gone.
I’ve also started to think about the artifacts she left behind. I want to keep them all but I understand that moving forward means letting go of the past. For some time now I have been waiting for life to resume again thinking that I’d let go when that time came. Now I realize that only by letting go will I get the resumption I desire.
It will be a true test of my maturity to collect and pass on the things that Michele left behind that will only hold me back. I’m a pack rat of the worst sort; keeping mementos from twenty years ago in boxes that just get moved from place to place. I learned that by letting go of my anger and quilt about my sister’s death that I could be happy and free. Now I need to learn that the part of Michele that is truly important - her love, her spirit, and her truth - will always live inside of me. Pictures, dresses, cards, and bits of jewelry may trigger fond memories, but they aren’t truly necessary to keep her alive inside of me.
I want to get or make a small chest, and fill it with a few things that I can’t part with just yet. Some things I’ll put into a safe deposit box at the bank. And the rest, well, the rest I’ll try and let go.
My love for her will last until I die, and being blessed with a good memory, my memories will last until then as well. But my relationship with her has ended, at least on the physical plane, and I need to release myself from the physical trappings of that relationship.
Last January while I was at a friend’s house on vacation I stepped on to their bathroom scale. I hadn’t weighed myself in years and only had a vague idea of my weight. Seeing two hundred and fifty pounds on the dial was a shock. I knew that I was heavy but I didn’t realize just how heavy.
With my motivation and focus at an all time low following Michele’s death, and my mother’s illness approaching the terminal stage I didn’t do anything about losing weight until about a month ago. This series of postings by Jeremy Zawodny got me to thinking, and what’s more, got me to acting.
As of this morning I saw two forty even, 240.0, for the first time. I’ve lost ten pounds. In a nutshell I track everything I eat in a spreadsheet, calories and grams of fat. I also weigh myself every morning after getting up and using the bathroom. Just the act of recording every single thing I eat in a day or a week made me very aware of where I was getting extra calories. At work I was typically consuming two or three sodas and a candy bar (or two) a day. Added too that was another soda with dinner and maybe dessert as well. Just eliminating those items from my diet saves me upwards of 800 calories per day. Over the course of a week I’m taking in 4000 to 5600 fewer calories.
Combined with my lowered intake I’ve increased my energy output; twice weekly kendo workouts (outside, two hours or more, in ninety plus temperatures) and walks in the evenings. I’ll never see one sixty again, but I think my goal of two hundred by next summer is well within my grasp.
In the movie Witness, at the end as John Book is getting ready to leave the Amish world and return to his own, Eli Lapp says to him, “You be careful out there among the English.” As both Michele and I loved the movie this phrase became part of our lexicon. When ever one of us was going somewhere alone the other would quite often say, “You be careful out there among the English.”
In my post-Michele world I have stayed close to home, not just physically but emotionally and philosophically as well. Knowing that still waters, while running deep, also can become stagnant, I’ve taken one or two small steps towards returning to the larger world outside. In effect I am going out among the English.
I’m not prepared to discuss details just yet, but I am moving forward – I’ve stirred up the water to see where it goes.
Coke Ad
Believe it or not, my windshield woes continue. In our last episode the technician came and examined the rain sensor assembly and decided that a new “gel pack” was needed. He called his office and they placed an order. Later that day I was called by the dispatcher and informed that the parts would arrive late Thursday, and could they install it on Friday. I explained very clearly that my car would be at my work location from 6:30 until 2:00 today, that the work had to be completed before 2:00 PM.
So naturally when I called at 1:15 this afternoon to inquire as to the status of my repair I was told that the technician would be at least another hour before he even left for my location. It seems that telling the dispatcher what times do and don’t work for you, the customer, doesn’t have any impact.
After venting at the current dispatcher on the phone about all of this we agreed that they would come on Monday between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. I told him in no uncertain terms that if the car wasn’t fixed and working by 10:00 AM that I would be calling my insurance agent and taking my business elsewhere. Then I called Safelite’s Customer Satisfaction line and filled them in (again) on the troubles to date. They promised to follow up with the local unit first thing Monday morning. Of course on Wednesday they promised to follow up today, and whether they did or didn’t, nothing happened today.
No matter what happens on Monday I will be calling Progressive and voice my extreme displeasure with this entire affair. I was prepared to have the car repaired at the local Lexus dealer’s body shop when the adjuster talked me into using Safelite. She said they were highly recommended and that Progressive would back them up 100% and go to bat for me if needed. On Wednesday they did put me in touch with Safelite’s Customer Satisfaction division, but so far that hasn’t visibly helped.
Please just shoot me now.
It has only been nine months since Michele died and already some of the memory contexts I’ve been using to keep the sound of her voice alive in my memory are failing. To be fair the urgency to hear her voice is falling off a bit too. In recent weeks I’ve been thinking more and more about the future, and while Michele will always be a part of me, she won’t be an (active) part of my future.
At times I still have an overpowering urge to call her on the phone. The impulse just happens and it always takes me by surprise when I realize anew that I can’t ever call her again. I still talk to her in the dark before going to sleep – this is the one context left where I can still conjure the sound of her voice in my ears. Early on, in my writing about all of this, I noted that there were parts of me that I lost as they existed solely in relationship to Michele. I’m discovering that there are new parts to me, new facets to my personality that she’ll never know.
Michele would never have wanted me to stay stuck in the past; were she here, she would encourage me to move on with the rest of my life. It seems that I am doing that without really setting out with that goal in mind. I’ve even started to think about dipping my toe in the relationship pool again. More in response to the fear of being alone forever than any other reason, but still considering it.
So I’m tearing down old contexts and starting to erect new ones. I don’t know what will come of this, and I’m not sure I need to know. It is enough, I think, to be moving forward.
Another graphic novel translated to the big screen, A History of Violence is reasonably good. There are no real surprises in the story line or eventual outcome.
Rating: Good Saturday evening fare