60. "Widster" Defined

Wid-ster (noun) 

Definition of WIDSTER 

1:  wife sans husband, long-lost sister of fellow widows, and woman with a no-B.S. perspective on what really matters in life

2:  Hell on earth 

Origin of WIDSTER 

Unexpected and indescribably crappy loss of husband 

First known use:  Forever ago when the first living woman felt the pain of what it means to lose her soul mate and best friend in the world 

Synonyms:  Worst thing ever, shattering of all dreams and plans for the future, sudden inability to fit into the rest of "normal" society, club no one wants to belong to but in which we find ourselves involuntarily committed to a lifetime membership

As crazy as it sounds, I've read that having a bird poop on your head is actually a sign of good luck.   It's even been said to be a "major sign of wealth coming from heaven," despite being an incredibly annoying - and messy - inconvenience.  I remember it happening to me once when I was a kid, though I certainly don't recall any heavenly riches.  The next time I saw it happen was when Jon and I were in Williamsburg, Virginia buying furniture for my law school apartment just a few weeks before he deployed to Iraq.  A bird pooped on his mom's head as we walked out of one of the stores and, after the requisite laughter, we agreed it must be an indication of good things to come.

I'll admit I've become a bit of a cynic, but I don't think I buy into all these signs and cliches about good luck anymore.  It's also supposed be a good omen if it rains on your wedding day...and we all know how that one turned out for Jon and I.  As far as our future was concerned, all the signs were there for a long, happy life together.  I know we would have had our challenges and disputes as time went on, like all married couples do, but I'd welcome the opportunity to go through even the hardest of the hard times with the man that was my husband.  When I listen to friends and family gripe about the things their spouses do and don't do, I think about how I'd give just about anything to have a fight with Jon if it meant I could see his face and hear his voice one more time.

At dinner at few nights ago, a friend and I talked about the things we've found the most challenging along this long and lonely road called widowhood.  I realize it's human nature, but both of us agreed that listening to others complain about issues that are trivial in the grand scheme of things is something we have less patience for as more time goes by.  While she's generally been pretty blunt with these people about her unwillingness to tolerate their pettiness, I've been playing the all-too-nice game for a long time.  I make excuses for others' failure to recognize that they sound ridiculous, and I apologize for the fact that I'm a little distracted by bigger issues (like the fact that my husband died) and don't always have much energy left over for long, complicated stories about the latest office drama or debates about which political candidate is the bigger sleazeball.  I quite frankly admire my friend's straightforward approach to the situation; her self-professed "spazzing" probably makes a bigger difference in the long run than my own tiptoeing-on-eggshells technique.  People don't realize they say stupid things and sound like whiners unless you tell them exactly how they come across...and then not-so-politely tell them to knock it off.  Again, I get it - people love to complain (much like it probably sounds like I'm doing right now), but I wish there was a magic phrase I could throw out there at stressful times to remind everyone of what really matters in life.

This conversation with my fellow widster made me realize how much I continue to want (and need) the love of other widows in my life.  I wish I could scoop them up from their scattered homes across the country and plant them all in one spot - that being, of course, wherever the Army decides to send me.  It would be like our own little wacky widow commune.  The only rules would be:  (1)  Don't die.  (2)  Laugh lots.  (3)  Tell husband stories whenever you feel like it.  Here in Ohio, the widow population is notably sparse, and I miss being around the incredibly insightful women I was lucky enough to befriend back at Fort Bragg.  Like me, all of them had to grow up much too quickly and in doing so, they learned the hard way that life is not always fair.  To these women, I don't sound crazy and they don't try to handle me with kid gloves or look at me like an alien with three heads.  And they definitely don't do the thing I hate the most, which is when people act like I won't notice if they go out of their way to avoid all mention of my dead husband.  It's the proverbial elephant in the room - we all know it's there, and I'd much rather it was openly acknowledged and accepted than shunned like a sick circus beast.  You are not making it worse for me by bringing him up!  How many times to I have to emphasize this to get the point across?  In fact, more than anything, it touches me when people remember the hard dates or take a moment to ask how things are going along what is indeed a very long and lonely path.

For the first time since I added the dates of Jon's birth and death, a woman I'd never met before recognized the tattoo on my arm for exactly what is - a memorial tattoo.  Unlike other people in the past, she understood immediately.  She didn't grab my arm and say, "Oh, cool tattoo!!  What does it say?!"  She just told me that she was very sorry and that loss is an incredibly sad and difficult thing to endure.  I thanked her for her sentiments.  It made me glad I'd gone ahead with my decision to add the dates to the tattoo in order to clarify its meaning.  It also made me breathe a sigh of relief - finally, someone who gets it and doesn't belong to the widster club herself.  Hallelujah!

Don't worry, though - there's always the opposite extreme to pull me back to reality and serve as a reminder of why it is that loss sucks so much.  When I started law school last fall, I was initially very self-conscious of the fact that my tattoos would probably raise questions from some of my classmates - law students are naturally pretty inquisitive people.  As the months went by, however, I started to feel less wary and wore things that sometimes exposed one or even both tattoos.  That's essentially what happened on the day one of my friends first noticed the tattoo on my upper back - the Gold Star with Jon's initials (JDG) in between the points.  "J-D-G," he said, "Jenna...'Something-That-Starts-With-a-D' Grassbaugh.  What's your middle name?"  Really?  Okay dude, why would I tattoo my own initials on my back?  It's not like I'm going to forget them or love myself that much.  It didn't even occur to me when I got the tattoo done that anyone might think the letters signify anything other than what they actually mean.  Maybe I'm just too emotionally entrenched in it all to see it from an outside perspective, but hey, too late now.   Even better, though, was when a lady told me a few days ago that her life sounded so boring in comparison to my exciting plethora of experiences and world travels.  I hadn't gotten to the part yet about losing Jon.  Oh no, I told her, you don't want my story, and this is why...

I. Am. Just. So. Freaking. Tired.  I'm tired of looking of someone across the table and listening to their words and knowing by these words that they simply don't get it but nodding my head politely as if to verify what they're saying.  Once or twice, I've been brave enough to cut the person off once they start spouting the dumb cliches, but more often than not, I do my all-too-nice thing.  It's exhausting to put on the fake-fine face every day.  Plus I hate fake.  Fake isn't fine.

I'm tired of constantly feeling like I have to make excuses and explain in detail what I'm feeling because it's been FIVE years and good God, I should be "over it" by now, right?  I'm tired of having to count the number of times I mention Jon during a single conversation and wondering to myself if my non-widow friends are going to start thinking it's strange that I talk about him so much.  It brings me a sense of peace and happiness to laugh about the good times Jon and I shared together...but when the people I'm talking to weren't fortunate enough to have met him, I get these blank looks that probably mean they're secretly assuming I'm just biased when I tell them my husband was an amazing man.  I am, after all, one of their "single" friends, and they don't see me the way I will always see myself, which is as Jon's wife.  One of my friends even told me I won't always think of myself as "Jon's widow."  Ha, okay, so I guess "wife" is completely out of the picture in his eyes.  I think from now on, when I'm filling out paperwork and it asks for my "marital status," I'm just going to circle all three - single, married, and widowed.  Single:  The way my peers view me.  Widowed:  The way society at large views me.  Married:  The way I feel in my heart.  Let the other person figure out what the heck all that means.

Mostly, I'm tired of having a reason to be so tired.  I want a do-over.  This isn't the life I signed up for.  "Where do we go from here?  This isn't where we intended to be.  We had it all, you believed in me.  I believed in you..."  Somewhere, somehow, someone must have made a mistake along the way.  It certainly wasn't Jon, so maybe it was me.  Honestly, the truth is that on some days I can kick back and even laugh a little at my crazy life, but others are surprisingly more hellish and bring about the rage against the fake-fine.

I'll be twenty-eight years old this Wednesday.  Twenty-eight.  It's really not that old, but the time has truly dragged by over the past several years without Jon.  Getting older doesn't bother me.  Older and hopefully wiser, right?  But I think I've finally figured out this year why it is that I dread and dislike my birthday so much.  It's not the number or even the not-so-pleasant things that come along with age, like wrinkles and fatigue.  It's simply that I dread becoming another year older without Jon.  It isn't fair and in my mind, it doesn't even make sense - I physically can't wrap my brain around it.  He's supposed to be three years older than me, period.  He was twenty-five, almost twenty-six, when he died.  On a physiological level, that means his adult brain had just barely reached full development when it was blown to smithereens by an IED.  And now here I am, in unknown territory without Jon here to impart his wisdom and guide me through it.  Jon always kept me right, like bumper lanes at a bowling alley.  When I lost him, I lost my left and right limits and I eventually lost my way altogether.  As I contemplate turning another year old, I wonder how is it possible that I've reached an age he never lived to see.  

Birthdays are also one of those things Jon and I rarely got to celebrate together, and if we missed one, we usually missed both since our birthdays are only four days apart.  However, no matter where he was, he always wrote me beautiful cards to commemorate the occasion.  On August 18th, 2012 - the day Jon would have turned thirty-one - I re-read the card he wrote to me for the last of my birthdays while he was still here on earth.  It was just a few months after our wedding and I was about to turn twenty-two.  I thought I was so grown up; my friends at school used to call me an "old soul," but really, I was just a baby.  It's true that I didn't like to go out to the bars until 3am, and unlike many of my twenty-something-year-old friends, I valued sleep over partying.  I'd grown up a lot faster than I would have without the Army, but I still had no idea back then that I'd have so much to learn - and fast - less than a year later.  Although he was deployed and couldn't be there to tell me in person, Jon's words in the birthday card he sent from Iraq reminded me that there were still many things for us to celebrate.  He said he missed me so much, but that the days were ticking by, and before I knew it, we'd be back together again.  He told me he loved me with all his heart and that he knew would would live life to the fullest, all the while in each other's arms.  He said he was eager to be my best friend forever and share each other's happiness and sorrow.  He told me he would be there to support me - always, and that no matter where we found ourselves in our life experiences, he would be there waiting for me.

This is not where we expected to be...but I pray Jon is still waiting for me.  I miss those arms of his - I want to be there again in the "nook," protected by his love.  I miss his smile, his touch, and the sight of his beautiful face.  I miss everything about him.  We had only a few minutes together in the grand scheme of things, and yet I have a thousand hours to spend thinking of how I would do anything to have him right back here by my side.  So happy belated birthday with all my heart to the man I love.  Until we meet again, I will be spending my thousands of hours thinking of you, missing you, and dreaming of a time when I won't have to miss you anymore.  With the support of my fellow widsters - even if from afar - I pray I'll find the inner strength I need to push myself through those thousands of hours.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll even enjoy a few of them too.

Nothing comes easily - fill this empty space.
Nothing is like it was - turn my grief to grace.
Nothing comes easily - where do I begin?
Nothing can bring me peace - I've lost everything.
I just want to feel your embrace.
I love you.  I love you.  I love you...
~Kate Havnevik, "Grace"