For three years I registered for the Lions District Convention. Peg was still with me and my philosophy was that if she was well enough I would go. Since the convention is located within twenty miles of home I planned to go for the main day, attend meetings and the dinner. Peg was never getting better, so I never went. I forfeited the registration and dinner fees. This year was different. Peg had passed, and I had no excuse to not go. I registered for all three days, and booked a hotel room at considerable expense. Then, I told myself why not attend all the conventions, go to the State also, I registered. The flyer came for the Lions USA/CANADA Leadership Forum in Louisville, Kentucky. This was another meeting I wanted to attend all three of those years, but they were too far away, and needed several days. I opted out of all of them, until this year.
You know the rest of the story, all of them are cancelled. Today was supposed to be day one of the District Convention. They aren’t even having a virtual meeting to elect officers. I will spend this weekend the same way I have spent all the previous weekends, hunkered down in my palatial home wondering in which room to spend the day.
Yesterday, the President announced his phased plan to restart the economy. Good luck with that. I don’t think I will be too quick to respond to entering crowded restaurants and venues after the last six weeks of brainwashing to keep a distance. In fact, it’ll be a very long time before I am convinced it is safe enough for me to gamble outside. That is what it will be, a gamble. Each time I come within a foot of another human I will be wondering if the corona jumped the space and landed on me. Maybe I’ll zip myself into one of those big plastic balls and enter society that way. Or I’ll attach my feet to roller blades, and roll through crowds faster that the corona can leap. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll stay at home and not gamble with any of it. The next few years may be my end of life experience. Not such a bad one when I think about it, but nevertheless not such a good one either.
Last night I slept soundly and woke up a little early. By 7:30 a.m. I had folded my laundry and made breakfast. Then it occurred to me, today is Peg’s birthday. She would have been 86. Although it has been ten months since she passed, grief visited me as though it happened this morning. I may have to break down and drive to the cemetery to visit her.
On the COVID-19 front things are getting heated now that the death rate curves are beginning to show we may be on a downturn, New York, that is, Chicago is barely rising. Our area is clearly lagging New York and California, we always do even during recessions. We hear news about the east and west coming out of a downturn in business when we are just beginning to feel it. Nevertheless, we continue to hunker down as the rest of the country begins to argue about who to put the blame on. There are two major culprits in my opinion, Democrats, and China. At this point it is Democrats who are pointing fingers at Trump trying to further injure him. They don’t give a rats ass about their fellow citizens, only about taking power from Trump and the Republicans. With the Stay in Place Orders all across the country, the election is an issue, do we have an election or not?
I belong to the Lions Club that is not a secret. Lions Clubs International cancelled their yearly convention which is where they hold elections for officers. There will not be an election, the officers in place will continue for another term. Unfortunately, our United States Constitution does not cover how to handle a year when the election may not be feasible or possible. Therefore, we argue. We ceased to debate about thirty years ago, and now it is always all out war with people-bashing rhetoric, one party trying to out-bash the other.
In the meantime the population copes with boredom, lack of money, shortages, and anxiety. One thing we have not lost is our sense of humor. We love to poke fun at one another sometimes bringing out the most creative ideas ever. Here are some of them from my daily e-mails.
I just completed reading a book titled ‘I Love You, Send Money.’ It involves online dating sites. Why would an eighty something be interested in dating sites? As crazy as it sounds I still long for companionship. Being locked up isn’t helping me one bit.
Recently, while on a soul searching session with myself I began to list all the things I missed the most since Peg left me. Most of them involved physical comfort like: sleeping in the same bed together, hugging, holding hands, kissing, cuddling, sex. A phrase came into mind ‘sexual grief.’ It sounded strange, but I googled it anyway. Bingo, the search yielded several hits under sexual bereavement. It is a very real emotion experienced by both men and women, but it is little talked about because of embarrassment. One cannot spend 20, 30, 40, 50 years with a partner sharing intimate relations and not miss it after God turns off the life switch and leaves a partner alone. The suddeness, and finality of the change is too dramatic to not take notice. I have experienced this twice now, and I am here to tell you that sexual grief is a real thing. After Barb died my emotions went crazy, and never settled until I married Peg two years later. Peg and I were very happy together and now that she died the same damned emotion has kicked in. This time, however, I was waiting for it, and my body is also seventeen years older, so raging hormones with the intensity of a flame thrower have diminished to a flickering candle.
Getting back to ‘I Love You, Send Money,’ A few weeks ago, I experienced an online scam for which I fell hard. This time it was an email from a friend who purportedly was traveling and not able to buy a her niece a birthday present. She asked me to buy an iTunes gift card and to send her the pass key via email. This friend had lost a brother and a sister within a week of each other in different cities, and I thought she may be traveling between. I emailed back using the address in her message asking for how much she would like on the card. It sounded plausible so I took the bait and rushed out to buy a fifty dollar gift card without waiting for her reply. I scratched the coating off the passkey, took a picture and sent it via email. I called her and left a message as to what I did.
Hours later, she called me to tell me I had been scammed. How can that be, it was from your address? She hadn’t gotten my email. I looked at the original message I got and discovered that her address in the header was correct, but the address in the body was not exactly the same. He address was her name, but the scammer added an additional vowel at the end to make it different, and the service provider was different. Damn! I got fooled. What can I do now? Gift cards are not returnable, so that was out. I asked my self, I wonder if this scammer has had time to redeem this card? I went to the iTunes store, logged in and found the section where you can enter gift card numbers. I did and iTunes accepted my card and I have a credit with them. I got lucky by outsmarting the perp, but it doesn’t change the embarrassment.
When I spotted this book I was searching of free e-books to read while my library is closed. The title tingled a nerve and told me to read it. The story is about people who are using online dating sites. These particular people are in their late forties/early fifties. One a widower, the other a divorced mom of two lookin’ for love. Supposedly they are both using the site for the first time. They begin messaging. The guy, I thought started talking about love a bit earlier than I would be in this situation. I wondered. The girl was very tentative at first but slowly opened up. They agreed to meet in Hawaii months later for their first date. The guy is an engineer who has a business helping railroads. To make along story short, his latest client is in Sri Lanka and while he is there he needs money to finish the job. His bank for some reason will not free up his funds so he asks his online friend to help him out. He needs fifty thousand dollars, and she agrees to send it to him. I was right this was a scam. She never gets her money back, he never made it to Hawaii for their first date, and she goes bankrupt.
Between this corny online love story scam and the third season of Homeland I am ready for COVID-19 to die and go to hell.
In the meantime, I am experimenting with online grocery shopping and keep striking out. The grocers provide the service, but they can’t handle the volume of business. A third store has now put me on hold waiting for a delivery date.
A few days ago I completed a project that took me several months to execute. Begun in March of 2019, and then set aside in May of 2019 to spend time with my wife. I restarted again in January 2020 a full six months after Peggy died. During the time I worked on this animal, my life was never lonely. This week, I found myself with a couple of hours of free time that I didn’t know what to do with. I missed going to my shop to cut and grind, sand, and finish wood pieces. I found myself getting lonely and wishing Peggy was still alive, what a terrible feeling. Not that I didn’t want her to be with me, but that I wanted her to be with me so badly.
To ward off the loneliness, I dressed for winter and took a long walk. Exercise helps ward off grief. My shoes are beginning to show signs of wear because I am walking so much. Somedays, I will walk several times. If I need a book, I’ll walk to the library, if my hair needs cutting, I’ll walk to the barber shop. If i am meeting friends for a drink I’ll walk to the bar. Today, I’ll walk to a noon meeting with my men’s group for lunch. (KETO for sure.)
Loneliness is an emotion that causes me to be depressed. Therefore, I must avoid it with a passion. Instead I find more powerful activities to fight depression. I pray when I walk, I watch movies that absorb, I read books with stories that engulf my mind, the last thing I will do is nothing, because then the mind begins feeding me bullshit about how tough I have it when the exact opposite is true. My blessings far out number my adversities, and I thank God for having blessed me so much.
Yesterday, a friend texted me with a link to a Lions event which is in September. I texted back that I have not been able to think that far in advance. Then immediately, I signed up for the event, a three day training session called the USA/Canada Leadership Forum held in Louisville, Kentucky this year. I thought, what the hell. there is nothing holding me back but me. I have looked at this event for three years always thinking that when I am free again I will go. I am going.
While on the Forum website I was reminded of a newer Lions educational program. One can earn a Bachelor’s, Master’s and a Phd in Lionism online from Lions University. I signed up for it while Peggy was still alive and I was President of my club, but put it aside. I clicked the button and completed the first of ten sessions required for my Bachelor’s Degree. I want to receive the degree at the forum in September. Why not? I can be a widower who sits and watches grass grow, or I can be a widower who attends Webinars to get a degree.
Activity, activity, activity, is the key to trudging through grief, along with writing about it.
Today I postponed my daily walk a bit to catch a few extra degrees of warmth. The temperature didn’t matter though, the wind was blowing hard with gusts of fifty miles per hour. If it was at may back I was literally being pushed along faster than my legs would move. On the return, I got my workout. Several times the breeze stopped me dead in my tracks. Combine that with an uphill climb and the workout was intense. In either direction the breeze carried away any heat that the workout was providing and I was under dressed for it.
This after noon I added some more decoration to the house for Christmas. I am stopped at this point having broken my promise never to decorate again. As sorrowful as I want to be I force myself to see only the joy that Christmas brings. The tree, the lights, the colorful ornaments all add brightness to the dreary November days. Historically, in Illinois, November and December have the least amount of life sustaining sunshine in the year. So, why not brighten it up a bit?
I will post photos of my decorations once I figure out how to do it using a smart phone. (A smart phone operated by a dumb operator who is beyond the tech-savy required to survive the conveniences.)
Have a very blessed and happy Thanksgiving holiday with family, friends, or with yourself, what ever the situation presents.
