Year In Review

     *Whew*  Where has the year gone?

     Yes, I do technically know that the year is not over yet.... BUT, today is the one year mark since closing on my house!  Hard to believe that just one year ago I closed the Ellsworth AFB chapter of my book of life and began a new one in Colorado Springs.

     I've done so much in the last year that I have never done before, and I did it (mostly) by myself. I entered the world of DIY and have laid hardwood floors in the living room, put in a retaining wall in the front yard, created nooks in empty walls, removed a swamp cooler, and tore out an entire exisiting bathroom. That is - of course - not all that I have done to my home. With the help of various home professionals and my trusty contractor, we have also installed a whole house humidifier, an A/C unit, a patio wall, new windows, new front door, hardwood flooring in the dining room and hallway, french doors, a deck in the crawl space, replumbed the laundry room and 3rd bathroom, and poured a shower pan. I wish I could show you before and after pictures, but the before pictures are on my desktop - the one that the kids have again messed up and is at the computer repair shop.

     While the past year has been good to me and the kids, we have also had our share of heartbreaks as well. During the summer, we had to say goodbye to Pumpkin, my ever faithful and loving cat of 11 years. He had been with me longer than my marriage had lasted. From a cute 8 week old flea invested kitten that I picked up from the humane society in Everett, WA, he had traveled with me from Washington state back to Alaska after a failed relationship (unknown to my dad *grin*), joined me in marriage to Matt, stayed by my side during various deployments and Matt's death, and stoicly battled feline IBD (http://www.halopets.com/pet-education/pet-articles/Inflammatory-Bowel-Disease-in-Cats.html) until the stress from moving from South Dakota to Colorado was too much for him to handle.

RIP my sweet kitty

     While the loss of a pet is always hard, that's not the only death we had to deal with. The daughter of a good friend also passed away in September... Gabby's best friend Charity. Of course, we traveled back up to South Dakota for the funeral - that much was a given. Come hell or high water, I would not have stayed away from that. The funeral was beautiful and Gabby gave a very moving speech when they opened up the stage for speakers. With as much as my children have gone through, I am oh so very proud of the way they have handled these adverse moments.

RIP sweet girl... you'll forever live in our hearts and we will miss you tremendously

     We have also welcome many new people into our lives. My dear friends Lynette and Joy, the first of many I have made here.

Our Golden Retriever puppy, Chief.

    

I've jumped out of a perfectly good airplane

http://www.mile-hi-skydiving.com/

I even ran a 5K mud run with Charlotte and some of the army wives I've met.

http://www.godirtygirl.com/

     So as we move into the holiday season this year, we do so with old friends from before, new friends who have come into our lives, and loved ones looking down on us from above. Remember to live your life to the fullest and enjoy it, as you never know when you will be called home. 

The next chapter

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.  - Lao Tzo

With most things, we keep moving forward, always taking the next step wherever it may lead us. My steps have taken me many places and have introduced me to many more people who help in my journey. After a year and a half, those steps have brought me back into the dating world. It's been years - 10 years to be exact - since I last dated. So much has changed in that decade, yet many have not. It's still crazy awkward, though maybe that awkwardness is from the fact that in an alternate reality I would still be married to a man I loved. However, I am happy with the path that I am on.

I know I have mentioned to my friends before that no, I wouldn't date another service member. Been there, done that, would not like to visit that hell again. That, however, is difficult to do in a town surrounded by five military bases. It's truly hard to move on from a reality that you grew up in, married into, and still surround yourself in. So I find myself dipping into the dating pool and encountered a couple people. Three times is the charm is what they say.... so after the first two attempts at meeting people, I ended up getting together with the guy I am currently seeing.

Our relationship is going well.... I enjoy spending time with him and he makes me laugh. I see myself looking forward to seeing him when his time allows.  He knows I have my demons, and he knows I'm widowed.... but he does not know the circumstances and he hasn't pushed, for which I am thankful. Has he met the kids? No. That's not something I'm ready for, not something he has asked about, and I'm good with that. It's much more fun sneaking around like sex starved teenagers hiding from their parents. ;)

Moving on with life

So with the end of our year in base housing creeping closer to us, I finally bit the bullet and bought a house in Colorado Springs. It's a very nice house with ALMOST everything I could ask for.... 4 bedrooms, tri-level, wood burning fireplace, huge-to-me backyard, and the icing on the cake... 2200 square feet.

I met the neighbors the other day. To the right of me, a nice family with teenage boys and a cute little 18 month old girl. To the left of me, an older gentleman and his wife with grownup chidren and adorable little grandchidren. And behind me a retired military couple with SEVEN girls ranging in age from 6 to 22. In talking with each neighbor respectively I learned that the fence line is the ORIGINAL fence, so that must go this spring and be replaced. Also found out that the house has been empty for 3 years.... wow... had I known that I would have countered the counter the sellers gave me.

And then - reality check with the military and my shipment of household goods. After calling yesterday to find out where my goods were (they were supposed to be delivered on Friday), I was told by the moving company that per the military everything was put into storage on 2 November. WTF. So I call the Colorado Springs military movers and was told that because my shipment was a bluebark shipment and it requires delicacy and was a "sensitive" matter, that when my stuff arrived in the Springs on the 2nd that instead of calling me to schedue a delivery, they called the casulity officer in the area. When they were unable to get ahold of the casuality officer, they put my stuff in storage.

Excuse me? So because my husband died for his country, you wont deal with ME directly?? You have to play 3rd party with me and have a casuality officer contact me to schedule delivery?? I realize they don't know me, and don't know I've been living this life from hell for the last 11 months, but seriously now.... I'm not some wilting rose ready to fall apart at the slightest touch. So because they didn't want to deal with me specifically because of the "sensitive" nature of the move, I'm shit out luck without my stuff until Thursday, November 11th. Thanks for fucking me over once more United States Air Force. So I hung up on the SSgt after telling her that, and called my casuality officer at EAFB who assure me that this was NOT the way it was supposed to happen and she would deal with it to the best of her abilities.

So after ignoring their call 3 times while venting to a friend I called them back. Shockingly enough, after I told them to not bother the shipping company, they called the shipping company and managed to get them to deliver my stuff on Monday.

The icing on my cake of life ........... had I not called the moving company to find out what was going on and been directed to the military, I would still be waiting for my stuff for longer because the casuality officer had still not returned the movers phone call and my household goods would have remained in storage for a longer period of time.

Surviving Death

   We do not recover from the death of a loved one. In fact, we never recover from that death in the same way we recover from an illness or broken limb. It will always be a part of us—always—and to suggest otherwise is unrealistically and harshly to imply that we somehow “get over” the feelings about the event or stop experiencing painful reminiscences of the loved one or the death. A much more accurate metaphor is represented in the old Carole King song “Tapestry.”

    

    My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
    An everlasting vision of the everchanging view
    A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
    A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.

    In fact our lives are “tapestries,” and the death of a loved one is a ripping, gaping, bleeding hole in the very midst of that tapestry of our life. How, then, is the tapestry rewoven? It does not, with the mere passage of time, magically pull itself back together. Rather, it is rewoven only with the initiative, energy, and strength of the survivor reaching in and grasping the torn ends of threads, painfully pulling them back and tying them together. And it is rewoven only with those persons around the survivor cutting threads from their own tapestries and bringing them to the survivor, with love and support and caring and tears and strength, helping to further tie the threads and fill in the gaping hole.

    So, eventually, the tapestry is rewoven. But that “glitch” is always there, the roughness of that reweaving is, and always will be, apparent. In fact it may be twenty years from now, as the survivor reviews the tapestry of his or her life, or is in a particular setting, or hears a song on the radio, or remembers a special day of the month, that the rewoven seam is seen and felt again, and the survivor remembers and cries, or feels sad, or is touched by the love and caring expressed by those whose threads are apparent there—and that is perfectly normal. We do not recover from a death, but when we allow others to help, we can reweave our tapestry.

— Charles Meyer, in Surviving Death.

The Scarlett Letter

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness.  Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods.  The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.  Shame, Despair, Solitude!  These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. 

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XVIII "A Flood of Sunshine"

Widowhood, much like the Scarlet letter, is a very solitude path that one walks until they come upon another widow, and even then not every death is the same. People try to understand your pain, going home to their loved ones at night and expressing their love to their significant others hoping that the life of their friend doesn't become their own, a very real nightmare that threatens every military family. Other people go out of their way to ignore you - unsure what to say for fear of upsetting the widow - and then talk about your pain and your life behind your back with their friends. Then there are the people who listen to those who talk about you and decide to ask the widow the questions that bug them, apologizing at the same time if they upset you.

11 months ago after being notified by my husband's command of his suicide I opted to remain on base for a sence of normalcy for my children's sake. Their life had gone through the spin cycle in the dryer - flipped upside down and tumbled around until they didn't know what side was up. I kept the kids in the school that they knew with the friends that they loved, although I did notify the school counselors of what had happened. My son ended up entering counseling with a child psychiatrist in Rapid City, and my daughter was coping with the help of her school counselor.

Summer break was quickly approaching and I had scheduled vacations and trips the entire time, thinking it was best to remain busy so we would not regress with the children and the progress they had made. Staying at (h)ellsworth through the summer made more sense as I had my friends who I could rely on to pet sit for me, and I figured I would begin the home search before school started.

Needless to say my decision to stay was the talk of the town, sorta speak. My friends were bombarded with questions about why I was staying, why I was going into work, why I was keeping the truck that my husband shot himself in, and how I seemed to not be affected by what happened. I've never been one to care about what people think of me and I often, if not all the time, don't hold back or think before I speak.

I prefer surrounding myself with people who are like me, choose to be open with their thoughts and words, and not hide behind excuses. I prefer being asked questions to my face instead of having people talk about me behind my backs, because it will get back to me - shocking isn't it?

So to those who have the courage and decency to ask me questions directly, Thank you. 

To those of you who hide your questions and choose to talk about me behind my back, Fuck you. You're really not worth my time to worry about. I don't care what you say or assume about my life. You'll never know the pain that hides behind the mask and the day you do is not a day I would wish on my worst enemy.