Copyright © 2014 by Catherine Tidd
Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Jennifer K. Beal Davis
Cover image © ColorBlind Images/Getty Images, © Kick Images/Getty Images
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of her experiences over a period of years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
www.sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tidd, Catherine.
Confessions of a mediocre widow : or, How I lost my husband and my sanity / Catherine Tidd.
pages cm
1. Tidd, Catherine. 2. Widows—United States—Biography. 3. Widowhood—United States. 4. Grief. 5. Loss (Psychology) 6. Adjustment (Psychology) I. Title. II. Title: How I lost my husband and my sanity.
HQ1058.5.U5T49 2014
306.88’30973—dc23
2013018386
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
Part One. Widowhood: When Normal Becomes a Fantasy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Two. Memorializing: If I Get the Casket without the Four-Wheel Drive, How Much Will That Run Me?
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Three. Coping: An All-Inclusive Trip to the Island of Crazy
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Four. Changes: Helping Others Cope with Your Loss
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Five. Milestones: I’d Rather Pass a Kidney Stone than a Milestone
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Six. Dating: Mom…Don’t Read This Part
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part Seven. Moving Forward: Time to Pull On Your Tights and Become Your Own Superhero
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Tips for Widow(er)s and Those Who Support Them
Widowhood
Memorializing
Coping/Changes
Milestones
Dating
Moving Forward
What to Say
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
To Brad
When in doubt…I look up.
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die
any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
—George Bernard Shaw
Author's Note
Life can change in the blink of an eye.”
As a mother of three, I’ve seen those changes in action. One day a kid is barely walking and talking, and the next she’s tripping over her Stride Rite shoes and yelling “Shit!” just before her head hits the corner of the coffee table. One day she’s running away from the boys on the playground, and the next she’s waiting by the phone for them to call. And any mother will tell you that one day your son is in one size, and then the next morning when you’re dressing him for school, his pants are an inch too short.
I’ve figured out that the most obvious kind of change seems to happen “in the blink of an eye.” That’s the type of change that other people can see and are comfortable with (even if it’s an “uncomfortable change”) because it can be labeled and categorized.
“It’s a growth spurt!”
“It’s hormonal.”
“Her husband just died. Give her time. She’ll be back to her old self in a few months.”
The other kind, the deep-down kind, takes more time and more patience. That’s the kind of change that you don’t realize has happened until you look back a few years later and think, “Was that me?” And you’re stunned to realize that you and the person you abandoned years ago without giving her a second thought are one and the same.
All of my big changes were gradual. Oh, sure. You could say that my husband’s death was “in the blink of an eye,” and I wouldn’t argue with you. You could say that that moment, that blink, was what changed my life forever. You could say that the second I heard the words, “He’s not going to make it,” I became an entirely different person.
And you’d be right.
But the change into the person I became didn’t happen in that moment. It didn’t happen as I was riding in the passenger seat of my mother’s minivan on the way home from the hospital after hearing those words. And it didn’t happen at the funeral.
In a way it happened all at once. And in another way it took years.
As with all life changes, at some point you have to own who and what you are. You have to accept it so that you can move forward and become who you are meant to be. So here goes.
I’m Catherine. And I am a widow.
No one says when they’re ten years old, “Hey! You know what? I’ve decided to become a doctor when I grow up. No wait! An astronaut. Better yet…I’ll be a widow! That will amaze everyone!”
But I’m betting that through this unwanted education, I’ve learned more about life—my life—than I would have as a doctor or an astronaut. I’ve learned about loss, love, and how to truly pursue happiness. I’ve learned how to look at someone who may not be making the decisions I would and say, “Why does it matter? Their journey is all their own.” I have a master’s in grief with an emphasis in empathy. And I’m not afraid to use it.
And like all widows out there, I’ve got a story that is in some ways completely my own.
And in some ways, it’s the story of millions.
- Widowhood -
when normal becomes a fantasy
1
I spent my eleventh wedding anniversary planning my husband’s funeral.
If I could figure out how to make that rhyme, it would be the beginning of a great country song.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to forgive Brad for suddenly leaving me with three children under the age of six, no job, and a mortgage on a house that we bought because he liked the location.
Oh, I know it wasn’t his choice. It’s not like I sit around picturing him up on a cloud in a chaise lounge, fruity beverage in hand, waving down to me and saying, “Have fun down there!”
But there have been moments
of deep darkness—as I figured out the bills, health insurance, and child rearing alone—when I have wondered if he didn’t get the better part of this deal.
The first time I saw Bradley Tidd, I was in Colorado Springs where he was a cadet at the Air Force Academy. He was laughing as he threw a football, completely unaware of my stare. The grass in the field where everyone was tailgating was dry and crunchy, just begging for the first snow of the season. The grounds overflowed with sports cars, a purchase that seemed to be required of every cadet the moment they made it to their junior year.
And in the middle of all of that macho testosterone stood Brad, his arm cocked above his shoulder, ready to throw a spiral to another classmate, laughing as if his internal joy couldn’t be contained and was just bubbling out of him.
A little shorter than I was, he had the all-American looks of a soon-to-be Air Force officer, with his light brown hair cut as close as it could be and his frame suggesting that he worked out but still had a good time. Four years my senior, he had a mischievous grin that reached all the way up to his green-hazel eyes and matched his irresistible laugh, which would eventually teach my heart how to stop and then keep right on going again.
The last time I saw Bradley Tidd, thirteen years later, he lay motionless in a hospital bed not five miles away from that spot in the field. Those hazel eyes were shut, and the infectious laughter that had gotten us through moves, job changes, and childbirth had stopped. His hair was still short, now due to the battle he’d had with a receding hairline that started in his midtwenties and eventually won when, at thirty, he decided to start shaving his head completely bald.
We were just so damn normal. He was the breadwinner; I was the homemaker. We grilled on the weekends with our neighbors, had occasional date nights where we tried our hardest to talk about anything other than the kids, loved a lot, and fought a little. There were times when I’d ask myself, “Is this it? What life is supposed to be like? Do I want more?” and almost always answered myself, “Nope. I’m good.”
We were partners in every way. And while our relationship wasn’t perfect (whose is?), we seemed to function as well as we could, given the fact that we had three young children and almost no time to ourselves. Like most couples who have been together for a long time, I felt like I knew Brad better than anyone else in the world.
And like most people who have been through an unimaginable loss, I’ve wondered, since he’s been gone, if I knew myself at all.
• • •
July 16, 2007.
Picture a normal Colorado summer morning, with blue skies and the perfect breeze floating through two open windows. At the crack of 8:30 a.m., I was still in my bed, half asleep, enjoying that gentle wind, waiting until the last minute to emerge from the cocoon I had created with the six pillows. I’m not the early riser.
My kids figured out at a young age that, until their stomachs were audibly growling, they should not wake Mommy up. Even then, my oldest, Haley, who was five, would gently come in, rub my arm, and try to rouse the slumbering beast in the calmest way possible so as not to anger it. Sarah, who was eighteen months old at the time, must have gotten my sleeping gene, because she rarely woke up before 9:00 a.m. And my son, Michael, who was three and stuck in the middle of a bunch of estrogen, just tried to do whatever he could to blend into the background so that none of the crazy females surrounding him would strap him down, force a Cinderella costume on him, and take pictures to show future prom dates.
He would pretty much go with the flow.
As I slept with my pillow over my head (which I did every night because my dog snored like an Irishman on a bender), I slowly came out of my princess-like dream world, thinking, “Was that the phone ringing?”
I checked my caller ID, which read “Penrose Hospital,” with a Colorado Springs area code. I dismissed it, thinking that it was probably someone looking for a donation, and wasn’t I lucky to avoid that call? I mean, that’s why I had this, my favorite piece of technology. How did people avoid solicitors (and their extended family) in the ’80s?
But then I remembered that Brad was driving south of Denver that morning for work and that I’d better call back just in case.
“Penrose Hospital.”
“Yes, I wanted to make sure that no one there called me. I just missed a call and I wanted to double-check that it wasn’t about my husband.”
“Name?”
“Brad Tidd.”
“Please hold.”
After holding for about five minutes, I felt my heart begin to pound in my ears. It should have taken that receptionist a minute to check her computer, see that he wasn’t there, and get back on the phone with me, annoyed that I had wasted her time.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“I’m transferring you to a nurse right now.”
Damn.
A voice came on the line that was entirely too cheerful for the mood I was sinking into.
“Hello? Mrs. Tidd? This is Joanie,” she said over the noise of trauma in the background. “I have your husband here with me.”
“What happened?” I said frantically, running down the stairs from my second-floor bedroom and starting to pace. “What’s going on? Is he okay? Why is he there?”
“Now, don’t worry. He’s fine,” she said in a way that I knew was supposed to calm me but just made me more impatient. “He’s talking. He was in an accident, but you’ll have to talk to someone when you get here about what happened. We’re going to take him in for some x-rays and you can meet him in the ER. Right now it just looks like he has a dislocated knee. Don’t rush. Take your time getting down here. I promise that he’s okay.”
Right, lady. Don’t rush. If he’s so fine, why isn’t he calling me?
At that point I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. I couldn’t trust some stranger to tell me that my husband was “fine.” I needed to see for myself. I sat down on the recliner in the TV room for a minute and looked around wildly, trying to decide what to do next. Haley sat on the couch, her eyes focused on The Wiggles. Michael sat on the floor, fiercely concentrating on constructing a castle out of blocks. And I could hear the sounds of Sarah in her crib, babbling away to a stuffed animal.
Crap. I can’t take them with me. Now what?
And I immediately started dialing my parents’ phone number.
My parents had moved to Denver six months earlier from Louisiana, something that I couldn’t have been happier about. Those poor people had made it through Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, only to move north during one of the worst series of snowstorms on record in Colorado. Not only that, but they had brought along my extremely asthmatic ninety-five-year-old grandmother, who hadn’t lived above sea level in fifty years.
Those two had their hands full.
I felt a little guilty about calling my mother that morning and adding something else to her plate, but before I had even finished saying the word “accident,” she was walking out the door to come watch my kids.
“I’m calling your dad. He’ll meet you at the hospital,” she said breathlessly.
“Oh, Mom. Don’t make Dad leave work. They said Brad was fine. I’ll feel terrible if Dad has wasted the day,” I said, knowing that my dad didn’t miss work for anything.
“He’s coming.” Click.
While I waited the twenty agonizing minutes it took my mother to get to my house, I ran upstairs, took the quickest shower in history, and looked over the contents of my closet. What to wear? It was hot outside, but I knew that the temperature in hospitals could vary from muggy and hot to chilly and “I wish I had a sweatshirt” cold. I decided on layers and then packed a bag, thinking that if I was prepared for an overnight stay, it probably wouldn’t happen. And in that bag I packed Brad’s favorite shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers so that he would have something comfortable to wear on the ride home.
My m
other finally arrived, and I barely said hello to her before I threw everything into my minivan and screeched out of the driveway. I started driving south, mentally going through routes in my head to figure out the fastest way. Finally deciding to go through Castle Rock, I thought for sure I had missed rush-hour traffic and would be able to slide right onto the highway. And then I saw the signs and flashing lights just before the on-ramp.
Construction.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I muttered. Looking around, trying to figure out if I could take a side street, I sat helplessly in my car, fidgeting in my seat until the traffic finally gave way to the wide-open highway.
When I got down to the hospital in Colorado Springs and entered the trauma area, I was greeted by a woman who looked eerily like my cousin, adding to the surreal feeling of that moment. As I waited for forty-five minutes in the tiny, curtained room in the ER, I kept thinking to myself, “What in the world is JoAnn doing up here from Louisiana, and when did she become a nurse?”
It’s weird how the mind works during moments of extreme stress.
After waiting what felt like hours for something to happen, everything seemed to happen at once. My dad walked into the room with a nervous expression on his face that I didn’t want to see. And then a skinny little police officer with a mustache that looked like it had been a work in progress for twenty years came stomping in with an accusatory look.
“Do you know what your husband did?” he demanded. “He passed a whole line of cars on his motorcycle on a two-lane road and hit a guy up ahead of him turning left.”
All of the moisture left my mouth. My hands began to shake, and I seemed to lose any sort of handle on how to speak.
As if I wasn’t shocked enough, he followed that with, “Wait until you see his helmet. You’ll wonder how in the hell he survived this.”
At that moment, a couple of nurses wheeled Brad in. He was laid out on a gurney, neck stabilized, but looking pretty good for the most part. I mean, you T-bone another car when you’re on a motorcycle going sixty miles an hour…I kind of expected him to look worse. Lucky for him, he had been wearing his helmet, with clothing covering every inch of his body. I think the “powers that be” knew that I’d have a hard time trying to nurse someone back to health who looked like something the road had chewed up and spit back out.
Confessions of a Mediocre Widow Page 1