Dear Wonderful Widows!

When Anneke was eight, a year after Mike died, I dropped her off at her Tae Kwon Do lesson and I was so relieved to have time alone that I forgot to pick her up. Forty-five minutes later as I unpacked the groceries she walked in the house having gotten a ride home from her instructor. She was incredulous and outraged. “You forgot me! You actually forgot me!” I was speechless. My daughter who forgives almost anything did not forgive this for a long time. A child who has been abandoned by her father does not take well to being forgotten by her mother. I had visions of the instructor reporting me to DSS.

Even worse, a year later I forgot her again. She was at summer camp. I remembered 45 minutes after closing time and burned rubber to get there. The fact that I almost got a speeding ticket did not make up for my forgetting. She is now 15 and still talks about being forgotten. I tell her that widowhood messes with a woman’s brain. That was my excuse for years and nine years later, it still comes in handy.

Widowhood does mess with one’s brain.

That was also the year that I lost the telephone while it was in my hand. It rang and rang, and everywhere I looked I heard it loud and clear. The bathroom, the kitchen, under the couch…Only when I finally put it down did I realize that it had been in my hand.

It was like looking for my glasses when they were on my head. Once I had 2 pairs of glasses on the top of my head.

I have learned not to be amazed at what widowhood does to us.

But is surely messes with our brains.