Tag: widow

Alone In a Furniture Store

· Leave a comment ·

I’ve done some dumb shit in my life. I’ve made some dumb ass mistakes. I’ve put my faith in the wrong people. I’ve made unhealthy choices. I’ve basically just been a human, you know. Sometimes I get it right. Most of the time I don’t.

Tuesday I had an appointment to pick out appliances for the new house. Exciting, I know. I feel about appliances pretty much the same way I feel about light fixtures – couldn’t give 2 shits. I’d like a refrigerator that keeps my food cold, freezer keeps the ice frozen, oven cooks shit, microwave heats shit up, dishwasher washes shit. Those were my requirements. Doesn’t seem complicated, right? Well, technically it was not complicated. However, I hopped in my car, turned it on (because one must turn the car on before it will actually drive in case you didn’t know) and the radio comes on. And playing on the radio is Maroon 5’s “Memories”. And that’s when the tears first started.

Ash and I loved furniture shopping. We would do it more often than was necessary in our spare time. (Just to be clear, I hated doing any other kind of shopping with Ash. And I mean HATED. I am a get in, get what you need, get the hell out type of gal. Ash was the polar opposite. He tried things on. He googled reviews. He tried things on again. He walked around aimlessly to “think” about what he just tried on. Shopping with him was my own personal hell. Some of our biggest fights happened because of these very opposite shopping habits.) However, furniture shopping together was a hobby at which we excelled. (Probably wasn’t a hobby and probably not something at which one can excel but whatever.) We had a favorite local furniture store. And if you guessed that I was headed to that favorite local furniture store to pick out appliances, well ding, ding, ding, you’ve won (absolutely nothing other than maybe a boost in your pride).

So, stupid song is on (not a stupid song, I really do like it a lot but just wasn’t what I needed to hear at that particular moment in time), headed to favorite furniture store and Kellie is crying. Again. (Same shit, different day?! Not really, I’m mostly fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.) It just got me thinking that Ash is really gone. Gone, gone. I will never see him again. Which, obviously I know that. I’m not completely crazy. Yet. But it was quite devastating to me. I will never furniture shop with him again. We will never grab a coffee and leisurely meander, holding hands, always holding hands, through the throngs of couches and recliners and end tables that we don’t need but certainly want to peruse. We will never dream of the day when we build our own home, to our own taste and outfit it just the way we want. I am doing those things, but I am doing them completely alone. And on Tuesday I felt that aloneness deep in my soul, in a way I haven’t felt it in quite a long time. Every little step I take is a step further away from him. It’s a step to the future that does not include him. And while my rational mind is always aware of that, my heart sometimes forgets. Luckily, a good friend called half way on my journey to the furniture store and I reined in my devastation and had a lovely chat for the rest of my ride.

Appliance ordering took me about 15 minutes (I told you I didn’t give 2 shits). Fridge: check. Range: check. Dishwasher: check. Microwave: check. Washer and dryer: check, check. My earlier pain wasn’t forgotten but had been put on the back burner while I checked things off the list.

However, and this is the part where I get to doing the dumb shit in my life, I figured since I’d made the 35 minute drive, and I do have a brand new house in the works that will need to be furnished with some brand new items, perhaps I should take a look around, see what they have, maybe, dare I say, order a new thing or two. And so I did. And I did order a few things that will be here sometime before my kids leave for college (thank you Covid for making everything impossible to get in a timely manner). But that earlier pain came rushing back as I couch hopped. I was doing one of my favorite things without my favorite person. And it sucked. I had to put my sunglasses on for a bit because I knew I looked pathetic, moving from couch to couch, with tears streaming down my face. Although, the sunglasses did probably made me look crazy (or hungover), and I hate to beat a dead horse here, but I am a *touch* crazy and I accepted that long ago.

I did eventually get my shit together and get the hell out of the furniture store. I let a few more tears out on the drive home and then I got on with the business of being the bad ass (ha ha) that I am. But for a few hours, I grieved. Hard core. Because I shopped for furniture alone. Because I’m making our dreams come true alone. Because I feel so alone.

Lost AF

· 2 Comments ·

Disclaimer: It’s very sweary up in this piece.

Building a house is not easy. At first, I was killing it. I was making decisions left and right. No problem. I know exactly what I want and where I want it. Then enter freaking light fixtures. Who knew there were so many lighting options out there? It is mind blowing. I’ve been staring at light fixtures on this computer screen for so long that they now all look like ridiculous cartoon drawings that no one should ever put in their house. I’ve been staring at them for so long and just thinking “wow, I couldn’t give 2 fucks about what the fucking lights look like in my house or on my house or around my house”. I’ve been staring at them for so long that I am now in tears questioning everything about my whole entire life.

Here’s the thing – I am not a picky person. I like to think of myself as easy going and laid back where most things, especially these kinds of things, are concerned. Aside from anything ridiculously tacky, I really couldn’t give a shit about any of the lights that are in my house. Or much else for that matter. There are some things that I absolutely do not want, such as anything with brass. Or crystals. Or brightly colored. But otherwise, don’t care. Can I get a volunteer to come pick out all the damn lights for my house? Cuz in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t fucking care.

Which brings me to my point, sort of. Someone asked me recently what I’ve been doing with my time. And I couldn’t answer the question. I had no idea. I mean, sure, I’ve been keeping my kids alive, doing the single mom thing, going to the baseball games and the practices, and the baseball treasuries thing and doing the laundries and making the meals and cleaning the toilets and getting the groceries and all the dumb ass adult shit that we dumb ass adults have to keep doing every fucking day until we die (that was dramatic). And I’ve been doing the building the house thing, well up until recently, quite well. And I’ve been doing the thing where I avoid being in my house because I hate my house because my husband (and his father) died in my house. (Hence the need to build the new house and pick out the light fixtures.) So I spend a lot time with whichever loved one will take my boys and me in for the evening because avoidance is always a very healthy choice.

But what am I doing? And the answer is, I have no fucking clue. I am lost AF, y’all. I do not know what to do with myself. Apparently, being married to Ash was my whole identity. Which makes sense. We got married, we had the kids, we did the jobs, we fell into marital bliss/marital holy-shit-I-hate-you-why-did-we-do-this (it could have been either scenario on any given day at any given moment – that’s just the nature of the beast that is marriage and if you say it’s not, I’m going to go ahead a call you a fucking liar), we ultimately opened a business together, worked together, lived together, did literally almost everything together. And then Ash had to go and get the damn cancer, and if you thought we were together a lot pre-cancer, it had nothing on our togetherness post cancer. Our roles changed, obviously. We went from happy, oblivious young(ish) business owners with their shit together(ish) to terrified people with their world literally crashing down. But, we did our best. We lived. We wept. We laughed. We kept moving forward until moving forward was no longer an option (well, for Ash, at least – I have no choice but to keep moving forward. Fucking bullshit.). But still, moving forward has me lost AF.

He’s been gone almost 18 months. And I gotta say, the first year went by in a blur, what with the grief and the learning how to do all the things alone and then the whole pandemic thing and the virtual school thing. It was a whole new horse of a whole different color (pretty sure that’s not how that saying goes). So it was hard to tell how much I didn’t know what I was doing. But now, things have gotten (I hesitate to even use this word) easier in a sense. I mean, really, when is life ever easy? Never. Easy is definitely not the word I am looking for here. But we have our routine. Things are about as normal as they are probably ever going to be for us. I now have time. And I have no fucking clue what to do with it.

I want to be a better person. I want to make a difference. I want to feel needed. And respected. And loved. And while doing the dishes and the laundries and the groceries are all necessary, they are not satisfying any of my needs to be more. To do more. My cup is wholly un-full, if you will. And I’m just not sure what to do to start filling it up again.

If I have any talents that don’t pertain to wiping asses, making jokes or bursting into tears at any given moment, I certainly can’t remember what they are. And my situation is different in that I do not have to go work some shitty job that I hate or take time away from my children or my responsibilities. I have the flexibility to be choosy, to find what will make me happy. If only I knew what that was.

For now, I will pray. I will have faith. I will smile through the pain. And I will go look at more fucking light fixtures.