Confessions of a Mediocre Widow

by Catherine Tidd

  “Want me to go with you?” my mother had asked me before I left.

  “No, that’s okay. I’m sure it’s just a little reception. I think I’d rather go alone,” I said with false confidence.

  My mother gave me a doubtful look, but she didn’t argue. When I think back on it, I kind of wish she had. Because what I was about to witness was the most beautiful and horrific thing I had ever seen.

  And I wish someone else had been there to experience it with me.

  The Air Force Academy had always been one of my favorite places to visit because I had so many fun memories of it—meeting Brad, going to dances, attending his graduation, and going to football games. After the rigorous training he had been through, Brad was less of a fan and it took him a few years before he truly enjoyed going back. I think that on every road and in every field he could envision his eighteen-year-old self running, doing push-ups, and generally getting berated by upperclassmen.

  I get it. I mean, if my college experience had been comprised of a bunch of guys yelling in my face and poking at me with weaponry, I probably wouldn’t have been all that excited to go back, either.

  But on that beautiful fall day two months after Brad’s death, I walked into the building, which had been set up with formal-looking tables decorated in blue and white and a banquet table along one wall with coffee and snacks. People were milling around, some in uniform and some not, and after I checked in, I immediately made my way over to the table to which I had been assigned. I was in no mood to mingle as everyone else was and I stared down at my plate, hoping no one would talk to me.

  “Ma’am?” I heard a female voice next to me. “I’m Cadet Gray. Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She sat down and I realized that she had actually been assigned to keep me company—that each table had at least two or three cadets making conversation with the other attendees. While this was incredibly thoughtful of the Academy, I couldn’t help but wonder if the cadets there were being punished for something.

  I mean, who would actually volunteer to go keep a bunch of grievers company?

  Cadet Gray was as sweet as she could be, talking to me about current Academy life and telling me her plans for the future. For a few minutes, she did a great job of distracting me from the real reason I was there.

  That was, until she said, “I’m an astronautical engineering major.”

  I swallowed hard. “You’re kidding. So was my husband. Our first station was Cape Canaveral. He worked on the Titan.”

  Her face lit up. “Oh, I would love to go there! That’s my first choice.”

  It was bittersweet, talking to her about life at the Cape, a life that both seemed like yesterday and a lifetime ago. Her hope for the future was written all over her face—kind of like another cadet I had met when I was just eighteen years old.

  The crowd suddenly started to move and, to my surprise, people began getting up from their tables and making their way outside to awaiting buses. “Where are we going?” I asked Cadet Gray.

  “To the memorial service,” she said.

  “I thought this was the memorial service.”

  “Oh no. That’s over near the chapel.”

  Like a sheep to the slaughter, I followed the rest of the herd and got on the bus. It drove us from the building just outside the school grounds and dropped us off at the impressive USAFA Cadet Chapel. I followed everyone down a set of outside stairs to bleachers that had been set up just below. Another cadet handed me a program and, bewildered, I sat down next to an older couple. The woman gave me a friendly smile and said, “Who are you here for?”

  “My husband.”

  And then that look of pity. “Oh, honey. You’re so young. We’re here for my daddy, but it was his time.”

  Suddenly all of the current cadets began pouring onto the grounds, rigid in their lines, keeping in time with their squadrons. They all stopped at the same moment, each group standing in a perfect square. At first, I didn’t understand what was going on and I could hear someone up front announcing a name and then one cadet from out in the field shouting something back.

  It took me at least ten names and a look at the program to figure out that they were announcing each cadet that had died that year in order of age and that one person from the squadron they had once belonged to was yelling back, “Absent, sir!”

  I looked wildly around at the people surrounding me. Not only were there family members of those who had been lost, but tourists had actually lined the wall above us near the chapel so that they could watch the show. I began to panic and felt my breathing grow shallow. They weren’t really going to do this, were they? Announce my husband’s name and then the fact that he was permanently absent? I wanted to run screaming away from that field, away from this public display of pain, into my car and, frankly, to the closest bar I could find.

  But having taken the bus there, I was kind of stuck.

  I opened the program to see where Brad fell in the lineup, hoping it would be sooner rather than later and that once I heard his name, I would no longer feel the anxiety I knew was written all over my face. Page after page, I flipped through the book, until I found Brad’s name and the picture he’d had taken as a senior just before he graduated. His smile. The light in his eyes. The look that was positive that an amazing life was just beginning. The picture that was on the last page of the program, which meant he was one of the youngest cadets to die that year.

  And that’s when I began to cry.

  I cried through the rest of the names. I cried when they announced his. I cried when a group of cadets on the far side of the field stood under the American flag and raised their guns and fired, saluting the officers who had died. I cried at the beauty and ugliness of life shown in this ceremony that I wish I had brought my mother to. Because I knew that when I got home, I wouldn’t have words to describe it.

  “How could you not have warned me?” I ranted at Brad’s roommate, Steve, that night on the phone.

  “I thought you knew!” he said defensively. “They do that every homecoming weekend!”

  “How in the world would I have known that?” I said. “I didn’t meet Brad until after homecoming!”

  “Well, I didn’t know,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “Tell you what. If you know of any other little surprises the military might have in store for me, you have to warn me, okay?”

  “Deal.”

  Later I realized that even if Steve had cautioned me, nothing would have eased the pain of that moment. At that point in time, I was still trying to plan my grief and save myself from unexpected moments of hurt, something that, really, no one has the power to do. I didn’t know that grief would sneak up on me without warning six months, a year, three years out. I didn’t know that loss would become my constant companion and something that I would just have to make peace with. That hurt would sometimes be the only reason I knew I was still in the land of the living.

  And that time would be the only thing that would ease it at all.

  • • •

  So there I was, a few weeks later, facing another shitty day.

  I knew that burying his ashes wouldn’t be easy. And I knew that cleaning out Brad’s closet wouldn’t be, either. So like the day I demolished his motorcycle and attended the memorial service from hell, I decided to get them both over within one twelve-hour period.

  After the urn that I had ordered came in, Brad’s ashes were finally ready to be buried. And even though I had been unclear about a lot of my husband’s final wishes, when I knew he wasn’t going to make it, there was only one place that came to mind as his final resting place.

  I remember turning to my mom at the funeral home while the chaos of planning was going on around me and saying, “I know that it would be more convenient to bury him close to home. But there is a place I just can’t get out of my
mind.”

  My mom looked me straight in the eye and said, “Buffalo Creek.”

  Buffalo Creek, Colorado, is a town so small that it’s what my grandmother would call “a wide spot in the road.” Settled in the 1870s, Buffalo Creek has the Platte River winding through it, and the area has some of the prettiest properties in Colorado. One of the most vivid memories I have of the beginning of our relationship is of Brad and I taking a drive up there with my mother in her convertible during the summer of 1995, before my parents were transferred back down south. My mother had befriended an old, widowed innkeeper in town and wanted to go up and check on her. So we went along for the ride.

  I have a picture of the two of us, smiling from ear to ear and so much in love, that was taken that day on the wide front porch of the Blue Jay Inn just before we got engaged. I’m sitting on the enormous porch swing, and he’s standing behind me with his hands protectively on my shoulders as if to say, “She’s mine now.” That picture was blown up, matted, and signed by everyone who attended our wedding in 1996.

  Buffalo Creek still has an actual general store (where you can buy anything from cake mix to tires) and a church so old that it looks like it was made from a Lincoln Log set. The church’s only source of heat is from an enormous stone fireplace, and it had just gotten plumbing about two years before Brad died. The town is rural, clearly, and can get some serious winter weather, so many of the residents don’t stay year-round and the church only has services during the summer.

  The cemetery there overlooks the river, a valley, and a winding mountain road that is popular with motorcyclists.

  Since Brad was such a country boy at heart and loved the mountains, I couldn’t bear the idea of putting him in a plot in the middle of the city. I used to joke with him that if he didn’t behave, someday I would put him in a cemetery I had seen about twenty minutes north of our house that was located in the middle of the parking lot of a Chick-fil-A.

  I’m not kidding.

  Now that I think about it, considering how old the kids were when he died, they probably would have been just as happy to get chicken nuggets and a toy as we waved to him on our way through the drive-through.

  My mother pulled some strings because, even though you were technically not supposed to be buried in that old cemetery unless you were a member of the church, many people in Buffalo Creek knew her from when she had helped take care of the innkeeper before she died several years earlier. So, after talking to the church elders and getting their approval (and paying the one-time two-hundred-fifty-dollar fee for a plot. Seriously, what a steal), we found ourselves heading up to Buffalo Creek to bury Brad’s ashes in the urn that had taken me fifty catalogs to find.

  The only problem had been that we weren’t really sure how to get this done.

  I mean, this place was in the middle of nowhere and pretty “old school.” At a church without a full-time cleric or central heat, what are the chances that they would have official gravediggers?

  As a joke, I asked my mom, “So, are we supposed to just bring a shovel and bury him ourselves like a pet parakeet?”

  The answer to that question turned out to be a “yes.” It was also suggested that we bring a pick-ax just in case we hit some granite.

  I guess I’m lucky.

  With that new bathroom, the church elders could have just told us to flush him.

  So, on that day, I organized my parents, my kids, my sister, and her family to trek up to the mountains and lay Brad to rest. Everything felt so surreal. I mean, nobody thinks “burial” when they think “family outing.” We looked like we were heading up to the mountains for a picnic. And there’s something a little odd about carrying your husband to his final resting place while your father and brother-in-law trail behind carrying shovels and picks.

  I could faintly hear the sound of banjos and someone blowing in a jug.

  Having told the kids that we were going up to bury Dad’s turtle shell, I got an enthusiastic “K!” from Haley, a puzzled look from Michael who I’m sure was trying to figure out how Dad’s turtle shell got into that tiny box (ever try explaining cremation to a three-year-old?), and a demand for Goldfish from eighteen-month-old Sarah, who seemed to have no idea what was going on.

  They ran around playing tag in the woods of the cemetery, distracted by my nephews, Brian and John, who were four and two at the time, while my dad and Sean did their best to dig into the side of the mountain in order to bury Brad low enough that some woodland creature wouldn’t come along and dig him back up again. Then we all pushed the dirt on top of him and stood there in awkward silence, wondering if someone should say something profound and who that someone might be.

  Because whoever he was, apparently we forgot to invite him.

  “Hey, kids!” I yelled. “Get over here! Let’s squish Daddy’s turtle shell!”

  When Brad stretched out on the floor, it was always a game to my children to come over and sit on him as hard as they could. Usually some tickling would follow, but that day I was working with what I had.

  Haley, Michael, and Sarah came running over with my nephews behind them, giggling as they sat on the mound of dirt that covered Brad’s final resting place. They mashed that dirt down with their little behinds, and just for a second, I felt like I had done the right thing.

  We parted ways at the church, with Kristi and Sean taking their boys to their home downtown and my parents driving the kids and me back to our house at the southernmost tip of Denver. The hour-and-a-half drive seemed endless with the lump in my throat so massive the saliva almost couldn’t get around it. My whole body radiated anger at the situation that I still couldn’t believe we were in, and that translated into more nervous energy that didn’t like sitting in a car that long.

  So, when we finally pulled into the driveway of my house, I ran up the stairs with a box of Hefty bags, straight into my bedroom, and flung open my closet door.

  “If this day is going to suck anyway,” I thought, looking at Brad’s clothes with tears rolling down my face, “I might as well get this over with.”

  I know how I am. I know how I operate. And I knew then that if I didn’t at least make an attempt to get rid of some of Brad’s things, it would reach the point of becoming too damn hard. And I would never be able to part with any of it.

  I tore through that closet with impossible energy, filling bag after bag. Doing my best to separate a few pieces that I would either like to keep for myself, pass on to friends, or pass on to family members. I dripped sweat and tears as I worked away in the August heat. Piles of T-shirts that he wore with his BDUs during his Air Force years, detailing the Titan projects he had worked on. One for me, one for his parents, one for storage, donate. The concert T-shirt from one of my aunt’s gigs as a blues pianist that Brad thought was hysterical because the cartoon they had drawn of her made her boobs enormous. Give to Sean. Steelers T-shirts, sweatshirts, fleece pullovers…divided between my family and his so that they could wear them during games and think of him.

  I kept saying to myself, “The clothes aren’t him, the clothes aren’t him,” but every shirt had a memory and every pair of shoes looked like he had just stepped out of them. I loaded it all into the back of Brad’s Chevy truck and took off for Goodwill, ignoring the offers of help from my parents and feeling like this was something I needed to do alone.

  And as I handed over all thirteen black plastic bags to the attendant, I felt a mixture of relief that I had gotten that excruciating task completed and a pain that I can’t explain because between burying Brad’s ashes and getting rid of his clothes, I had just given away a part of myself.

  • • •

  Three weeks later, when the bedroom project was finally finished, I had a room with buttercream walls and brown and turquoise bedding. I had installed shelves on the wall opposite my bed that held some of my favorite pictures of Brad and the kids so that they would be the fi
rst things I would see when I woke up. I bought new lamps on consignment, and the lampshades had the faintest leopard print on them, something that Brad would have hated and a sure sign that I was starting to embrace my new independence a little.

  And on one wall, I had two antique flashcards framed that, when put together, displayed a phrase I tried to remind myself to do every day.

  “Play Again.”

  I sat on my bed and listened to the kids scream and run around on the main floor of my house and smiled, knowing that all I had to do was shut my door. On the days that we were snowed in, I could set them up with crafts and a cartoon downstairs while I buried myself under my down comforter and turned on a mindless, black-and-white movie in my room. Thick towels without stains were waiting for me in my bathroom for the nights when I would stand in the shower and let the tears mix with the water streaming down my face. For a moment, it felt good to know that I had made the space mine, all mine.

  Then I looked over at the other side of the bed, the one that had been empty since July.

  It’s mine, I thought silently, reality settling in.

  Just mine.

  • • •

  “I’m so glad you got your bedroom finished!” my mom said, as she admired my handiwork a few days later. “Now you can relax a little.”

  Relax? Why in the world would I do that?

  After a few days of sitting still in my new bedroom and deciding that sitting still wasn’t something I could do anymore, it occurred to me that the best time to remodel the kids’ bathroom was right now. Every time I went in there and saw the chipped countertops and flooring that was the original, yellowed linoleum installed in 1979, it drove me crazy.