But it was hard for me to relax. I was so worried that it was too much for Billy that I felt hypersensitive to how he was doing when we were all together. Sometimes I wanted to make things as easy for him as possible, and sometimes I wanted to test him to make sure he was a keeper. There were days when I would pray for no whining or fighting, and then some when I’d want the kids to let go with all the bad they had in them just to see if he would run away screaming.
And I was constantly watching the kids, just waiting for a sign that one of them wasn’t doing well. I paid close attention to what Billy said to them and how he would interact, ready to abandon the whole thing if for one moment it looked like he was crossing the invisible widowed-mother boundary I had set up. It was exhausting.
For the first time, I really started to understand how difficult it is to date with children. It was hard enough to have a moment alone when I was married, but back then, I was hanging out with Brad so he was just as much to blame for those lovable interruptions as I was. But when it’s a date who doesn’t have children and therefore doesn’t have a clear idea of how wonderful (yes, yes…wonderful…that’s it) they can be, it can lead to some uncomfortable moments.
I remember sitting on my couch with Billy on a snowy night, enjoying a postcard setting: snow falling in big flakes, a roaring fire, a little hand holding, a few stolen glances. Right at that moment, my youngest daughter decided to add her own touch to the romance by shouting from the top of the stairs…
“Hey, Mom! Guess what? I have a vagina!”
This declaration was then followed by my son running through the room, completely naked except for a strategically placed sock.
But Billy handled everything with a sense of humor, and I could tell that he and the kids were really starting to bond. Which made how I felt that much harder.
On paper, Billy was everything I wanted. Seriously, it was like I had made a list, handed it in, and a higher power said, “Okay. Here you go. He’s all yours.”
On the first anniversary of Brad’s death, he had the compassion to say, “Do you want me to call you this weekend? Or do you need to be left alone?”
I know. Perfect, right?
It didn’t seem to matter to Billy how crazy I was—and I was pretty bat-shit crazy right around that time. Anything could set me off without warning. All of my emotions stayed right at the surface and I think what really made them bubble over was the fact that I had found someone who cared enough to hear about it and still look me in the eye the next day. It seemed like I could do no wrong with him, and I had never been in that position before in my life.
Oh, I know with complete confidence that Brad loved me, but he was always ready and able to disagree with me about the big things (which I needed) and was sometimes impatient with me when I would get emotional and needed to talk. Billy, on the other hand, never seemed to tire of hearing about how I was doing, good or bad, and we didn’t fight once.
After six months, Billy and I decided to take a trip. I had vowed, when Brad died, to start traveling more, but I was scared to go alone. So, when Billy asked, “Have you ever been to the Bahamas?” I immediately replied, “Nope! Let’s go!”
It was beautiful. The hotel was amazing, the setting was like a postcard, and we ran around like kids, playing in the pool, going down countless waterslides, and lying on the beach. Everything was perfect.
Except me. Because I wasn’t happy. And it was on that trip that I started realizing that if I couldn’t make myself happy and find some sort of peace with who I was as a person, the perfect guy, the perfect relationship, and the perfect place wouldn’t make me happy either. This situation was actually when the whole “it’s not you, it’s me” thing applies. It wasn’t him. It was completely me. And for the first time, I realized, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for any of it. I didn’t know who I was. I was slightly confused about whom I had been, and I had no idea where I was going.
And if I didn’t know where I was going, I knew it wasn’t fair to ask someone else to come along for the ride.
In a move that I will forever feel guilty about, I broke off our six-month relationship in an email, the action of a true coward. But never one to handle conflict well and feeling so overwhelmed with the grief and guilt I didn’t know what to do with, I couldn’t bear to even have the actual conversation that would probably strike him from out of the blue. Because I didn’t understand it myself.
“This just isn’t working for me.”
The kids were told that Billy wouldn’t be coming around anymore, and they seemed to take it in stride. But realizing that by embarking on a new relationship, I was risking not only my broken heart, but the kids’ as well, made the whole thing seem less like a fun “adventure” and more like a dangerous expedition. And I knew as they got older and more aware, it would get a little scarier for us all.
After that experience, I understood that I had no business dating for a while. I had gotten exactly what I wanted and I still couldn’t make it work. I needed to overcome my fear of being alone and the only way to do that was to be…alone. I needed to concentrate on the kids, go to therapy, and generally just dive into a project that I should have taken on a long time ago…even before Brad died.
Figuring out who I was.
21
You may not believe me after reading the previous dating stories that ended with me sitting at home on Saturday nights with my favorite fluffy socks and a good book that I couldn’t concentrate on, but widows have the upper hand when it comes to dating.
And I’ll tell you why.
Many of us have been (or are embarking) on a journey of self-discovery that most people won’t ever experience. And even if they do, most people don’t experience it before they put themselves in a position of being in a committed relationship. I’m not saying that death is a good thing. But it does completely open our eyes to the world around us, and we tend to see things unfiltered and for what they really are.
We have a new level of appreciation that life is short. So we’d better do what we can to make the most of it.
At some point, the death of our spouses has us questioning who we are and what we want, when most people won’t do that once in their entire lives. We are forced into a world that we don’t want to be in…and then given the opportunity to change it into a world that we can live with.
In a twisted sort of way, it’s a gift.
When Billy and I broke up, for the first time I stopped questioning whether I could be loved and asked whether I was capable of loving another person. As I examined our relationship, all I could find fault with was my lack of ability to move forward. I started questioning if it would ever be possible to find that “spark” again or if that part of my life was over.
I’d worried about the prospect of being alone for the rest of my life right after Brad died, but that was because I was so insecure about whether anyone would want me. It never occurred to me that I could be indefinitely single because I chose to be. And I knew the only way to get on with my life was to make peace with that possibility.
I began to sit quietly in my bedroom…and just be. I wouldn’t talk on the phone. Occasionally I would watch a movie. But I did my best to become friends with being alone rather than constantly slamming the door in its face or running away from it. As I’ve said before, alone is something you choose to be; lonely is not. And as I chose to spend more and more time alone, I became less lonely.
I had spent so long trying to like what someone else liked, say what they wanted me to say, and mold myself into someone that another person would want to be with that I had no idea who I was anymore. I think a big part of me even did that with Brad. I didn’t like fighting with him, so I would usually do my best to keep the peace and go with the flow. I would do things he wanted to do because it was easier than pushing for what I wanted. It took me a long time to realize how much of my relationship with him was
bleeding over into the new relationships I was trying to create.
You can’t be with someone that long without getting into relationship habits that are hard to break. Brad, I think, had a touch of attention deficit disorder, which served him well in his professional life, but had contributed to a lot of the communication problems we had as a married couple. After thirteen years together, I had conditioned myself to say what I was thinking in two sentences or less. Otherwise he would get distracted and I would get frustrated. He wasn’t a cold person…far from it. He was just busy and always thinking about the next thing. And for the first time, I started dealing with how neglected that had made me feel.
And how much I feared feeling that way again.
I dug deep and really tried to get to know myself, and in a way, I met myself for the first time. I started thinking about what I wanted and ignored the part of myself that was constantly asking, “How can I be more attractive to him?” or “What kind of person would they want me to date?”
I don’t want to watch sports all of the time.
I like going to the theater.
I’m not good at pool.
I like movies that involve someone speaking with a British accent and wearing uncomfortable clothing.
I knew I had made it through a huge turning point when, one night, as I buried myself under my covers, smack dab in the middle of my bed, watching The Golden Girls, one thought entered my mind.
“This feels pretty damn good.”
This evolution turned me into a person who not only couldn’t be changed but didn’t want to be. I was good with myself. I could recognize the perfections and imperfections of my marriage and admit that I had a part in both. I discovered that I could hold on to my old memories while I made new ones. I started realizing that I could love Brad and still make enough room to love another person. That I could accept us—all that was us—and make peace with the beauty and defects of our relationship.
It also made me realize that I had no interest in changing anyone else. Losing Brad had left a huge hole in my life, a hole that, in the beginning, I just wanted to fill. I’m sure that I could have quickly found someone, anyone, to fill it. But that wasn’t good enough for me, and that shouldn’t be good enough for anyone else. No one should want to “replace” my husband and no one should be asked to do that. No one should mold themselves into the person I wanted if that wasn’t the person they were to begin with.
If this was going to work, I would have to find a new space in my life. If I was going to find the right relationship, it would have to be with someone who was just as sure about himself as I was. If I was going to be happy, I would have to accept someone else’s imperfections and he would have to accept mine as well.
Would this put me on the path to the “perfect” relationship? No.
But it would take me in a new direction.
22
I’ve heard many widows say they had an amazing marriage and that they will never find that again. And they’re right. It is completely impossible to find that exact same relationship again.
It took me a while to figure out that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I’m not the same person anyway. When something this huge happens in life, it’s impossible not to change. We all change tremendously. I’ve often said that if I met my husband now, he may not even recognize me. Hell, he may not even like me.
And that’s okay. Because the old me was perfect for him.
The new me is perfect for someone else.
The chances of us finding the relationship that’s just right for us, well, they’re slim. It’s a miracle when we find someone we can sit across the table from for two hours at dinner, much less entertain the idea of spending the rest of our lives with. Someone who makes us smile when we think about him. Someone we can’t wait to hug when they walk through the front door. Someone who makes our hearts jump in a good way when we see their name on the caller ID.
But the chances were always slim. They’re slim for everyone, loss or not. And I found it once.
Who’s to say it would be impossible to find again?
After spending some quality time with myself, I started feeling ready to try dating again. I realized that I had finally answered the question “What do I really want?” with “I want to meet new people.” This new outlook had me going back to the online dating scene with a different outlook. The pressure was off and I wasn’t going to take it so seriously. Who cares if I go out with someone and I end up not ever seeing them again? Who cares if the date is a total dud? Who cares if he “has no game”?
If I had a good time, great. If I didn’t, well, I can turn just about anything into a funny story for my married friends. And that was when I started looking at going out as part of the journey and stopped focusing so much on the end result.
I had a new requirement for this next round of dating. It had to be with someone who either had a hobby I knew nothing about or a job that sounded interesting. That way, even if we had no chemistry, we’d at least have something to talk about. And in a world where every man is in IT, finance, or sales, this was a lot more challenging than it sounds.
When I told my old college roommate what I was doing, she said, “Great. Good to see you’re treating your dating life like trading cards. ‘Well, I don’t have that one, so I guess I’ll go out with him…’”
I tried to find the balance between finding someone to spend time with and getting in enough “me” time, which I had come to enjoy. I began a pattern of going on about one date a month. It was almost like an addiction. I would be alone for a while, and then I would need a “hit” of male conversation. Then that need would be satisfied for about a month and I would curl back up with my Golden Girls.
A month later, I’d be out on another first date.
In a short series of dates, I met a guy who liked to hang glide, a guy who had traveled around Western Europe for a year, and a chef. During all of those dates, the chemistry wasn’t brimming over, but the conversation was always interesting. I looked at going out as brushing up on my people skills since, as a stay-at-home mom, I spent so much time alone. I knew that at some point I would want to go back to work and, just as sorority rush in college helped me hone my people skills and prepare for job interviews after graduation, dating seemed like a way to dust off those abilities that I had shelved for years.
After a few months, I started emailing back and forth with a guy who worked on a NASCAR team…the only team in Denver. Through his emails, I could tell he had a sense of humor, and by the time I agreed to go out on a date with him, I had decided that if Brad were here, he’d probably be dating him himself. Eventually, it came time for my “one date” that month and it was between Mike, the NASCAR guy, and someone else I had been emailing back and forth with at the same time.
“You want to get together some night?” he emailed me.
“Sure,” I replied.
“How about Dave & Busters?”
Since Mike had unknowingly suggested something that had been high on my list of preferences for a first date—go someplace where you can do something rather than just sit across a table and stare at each other—I took this as a good sign. And if the date was a complete failure, at least I could work on my Skee-Ball skills.
It wasn’t until I was driving to meet Mike that I realized I had never even talked to him on the phone, something that was always a requirement for me. And knowing that I was about to meet someone who worked on a NASCAR team, I had no idea if he was so redneck that he might need subtitles. So when I pulled into the parking lot of Dave & Busters, I started chuckling to myself that I was actually even on this date.
Brad loved NASCAR. In fact, for a while, he wanted to quit his job and try to get on a team as a mechanic of some sort. But since NASCAR racing did nothing for me but put me to sleep with its constant white noise, when he mentioned it, I gave him my “you wanna do wh
at?” look and put that notion to rest.
I’m sure Brad was watching me walk up those stairs to the front door of Dave & Busters thinking, “If you had paid attention to me for thirteen years, you would know what in the hell this guy is going to talk to you about.”
I was late, which I always am. I walked in and recognized Mike from his picture, sitting at the bar with an enormous beer and looking slightly embarrassed that he was there. After being stuck in traffic for the past forty-five minutes, I sat down on the stool next to him with a thump and said something that apparently endeared me to him right away.
“I’ll have one of those, too.”
We started talking with complete ease from the very beginning. And although I had no real interest in hooking up with someone who spent his weekends covered in grease and hanging out with 200,000 people who say, “Hold my beer and watch this,” on a regular basis, the longer the evening went on, the harder I laughed and the more fun I had.
I found out that he had three kids who were around the same ages as mine at the time—seven, five, and three—and that we could easily commiserate with each other on potty-training stories and how we both worried that our youngest daughters might end up on “Wanted” posters someday. Through the course of the conversation, I found out that he usually traveled about thirty-eight weekends a year and he learned that I was used to crazy schedules like that because Brad was gone all of the time, too. As the conversation took us from appetizers to dinner, we both seemed to forget that we had just met.
“I’ve always wanted to go to one of those places with the swim-up bar,” I told him as we paid our check. “I think that looks like fun.”
Confessions of a Mediocre Widow Page 26