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, my grandmother (holding doll) and my great-aunt. This is one of only two photos that exist of my grandmother before she was blinded. |
My grandmother (her daughter) was accidentally blinded at
age 7 by her brother. She lived at the Tennessee School for the Blind until she
was nineteen and received a college-level education including Latin, French,
calculus, and chemistry. She read Shakespeare, Cicero, and Upton Sinclair, all
using Braille. She could use a sewing machine, a typewriter, and play piano.
She raised her three children on her own when my grandfather, a traveling
salesman who was rarely home to begin with, died of typhoid fever in 1933.
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 grandmother in the camp kitchen | with my dad, c. 1922. |
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!
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