I’ve just come in from shoveling the dense, packy, sodden snow that accumulated outside last week. It’s the heavy kind that fills a shovel every few inches. Lifting that full shovel reminds one of lifting a mid-sized dog. It fell in big heaps over the weekend, nearly fifteen inches by the time it was done. My car got stuck in it twice as, despite the constant clearing, I just couldn’t keep up.

Shoveling snow is one of those chores that reminds me that I’m a widow. Actually, it reminds me that I’m a widow who doesn’t own a snow blower. The driveway at our old house was long and winding enough that it required hiring a plow. The walkways were fairly short and we had a teenaged boy (now away at college) to help. I’ve never had a very good relationship with any machine that requires a pull start, so the thought of purchasing a snow blower now didn’t make much sense.

In the three years since Kevin passed away though, I have purchased other small equipment. After a tornado touched down just ¼ mile from our house, I purchased a small, battery-charged chainsaw. I have used it a few times to cut very small branches and brush. I know it’s a fairly wimpy machine (not even sure it can be called a machine) but using it is still exhilarating and somehow empowering. 

But there’s a fine line between feeling empowered and feeling overwhelmed. Problems that arise--that I know Kevin would have dealt with--or that we would have tackled together, are more than just hassles. They remind, they discourage, they bring to mind the same questions, oftentimes they simply wear me out. I have written about the emotional struggles of being widowed, but there are physical and intellectual challenges as well. I come from a long line of strong women. I am grateful for whatever genetically endowed internal fortitude I have, as it has been called upon repeatedly over the past three years. 

So let me tell you about the strong women:

My great-grandmother on my mom’s side met my great-grandfather when she was twenty-one and he was fifty-four. He had been a Civil War lieutenant and the town’s Post Master. She bore five children in six years, watched one become blinded and one die of consumption, and then buried her husband before he turned seventy. She went on to run a boarding house in a town that had a lumber mill, a cannery, and textile factory, so I can only imagine her encounters with rowdy men. 

My great-grandmother on my dad’s side was a Cherokee woman who I’m told, hid in a cellar during the government-imposed relocation of Native Americans known as the Trail of Tears. She rarely ventured out of the house afterward, fearing for her life. 

My father’s mother married my grandfather at fifteen. She worked with him in the logging camps along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where she managed the kitchen. Each day, she rose at 4 a.m. to make breakfast and supper for sixty-seven men, including baking over a hundred biscuits. She raised eight children, including a granddaughter. She and my grandfather were married sixty-six years.

My mother, worried that her mother would never understand that she wished to marry and move away, eloped with my father in 1943. Together, they left their families and moved to Detroit, where my dad registered for and was drafted into World War II. At eighteen, and pregnant with my brother, my mom lived on her own in the second floor of a house owned by an Armenian family that didn’t speak English. In 1950, she went to work for General Motors. She worked full-time, raised 4 children, and kept a spotless house. She taught my sisters and me to be independent, to have our own money, and to love unconditionally.

I have often called upon the memories and the strength of these women as I’ve moved through the past three years, knowing that they also suffered losses as great as mine, and kept going. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the thought of one more pep talk to myself makes me want to scream.

I remember in the months after Kevin’s passing it seemed that everything that could go wrong did. In six months’ time, I replaced a hot water heater, a water softener, the heater control on our hot tub (twice), a sump pump, then had major car repairs for both my car and my son’s (which broke down on the freeway sixty miles from home). The furnace went out when it was cold, and the air conditioner quit on the hottest day of the summer. 

After going through so much, I was greatly anticipating spending a quiet summer evening at the home of a neighborhood friend. We would sit on the deck, sip wine and laugh about all of these problems. But when I arrived at my friend’s house, we instead discussed the fact that a black bear had been sighted at the house across the street. We wouldn’t be eating on the deck, and before we could dine at all, I was advised to return home, lock my dog in the house, and remove all bird feeders from the yard. 

A bear. A f#@**&ing bear!

Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly be put through anything more, I had to deal with a bear.

I sat down that evening after dinner and looked to the sky. I told Kevin that if his purpose was to make me realize I had taken him for granted, it had worked! But I was now ready to have a little break from this cosmic joke. 

Other things have happened, as they do. And even the day-to-day takes additional strength some days. I’ve broken down doing the simplest things: unloading groceries, putting gas in the car, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, and yes, shoveling snow. It doesn’t have to be something big to remind me that I am doing all of these things on my own.

And the big things remind me too, even those things that are planned. When I think back on selling my house, buying a new condo, buying a car, selling a car, helping my son with college arrangements, getting my daughter through high school, and all the other things big and small, I am thankful for whatever amount of fortitude I inherited from the strong women who came before me. 

Oh, and if you think the genealogy detailed above is impressive, you should also know that Elvis and I are cousins!