TheBanyanTree: Empty Shell

[Margaret R. Kramer]

4/16/04
Hi Love:
 Good e-mail, I think that she too might have a distant love somewhere too!
Love you
 Ray & George  (he tries)

Our weather has whipped around like an out of control top this week.  We
started with a bit of snow last weekend, then endured the depths of minus
zero temperatures, and we're rebounding nicely with some rain this morning.
But we're in for dire windchills later on today and maybe some snow, too, as
a strong storm is passing just north of us.

While all this weather is happening outside, I'm trying to do my Christmas
preparations inside.  I got the house decorated, the tree up (with help from
my son and grandsons), and I hosted a holiday party for the grief group last
night.

I invited eight people and only two showed up.  Three people called with
regrets fifteen minutes before "showtime," which I find rude and annoying.
When it's a dinner and a certain amount of food is prepared, then not
showing up or calling at the last minute is not very nice.  A party, well,
who care who shows up?  But dinner, I don't know if I'm being prickly or
not, but that's different.

Perhaps it was the holiday season with all its distractions and stress.
Perhaps the two who came live close to me and the others live further across
the metro.  And perhaps we keep forcing ourselves to remember what we want
to forget.

Well, we don't want to forget really.  But when I'm with the widows, I want
to hook into other topics, not just our husbands.  Maybe that will happen
eventually when we make it through this first round of holidays without our
loved ones.

But the two who came are actually the best of the bunch.  We do mourn our
husbands.  The widows are like me, waiting for death.  We're less afraid of
death and dying, because our husbands all died slow, agonizing deaths and we
were witnesses to it.  And we want to be with our husbands in the ground.
The sooner the better.  Life as it is now has no luster and fewer moments of
joy.  Better to be in the ground than suffering on it.

And the two who came are the ones who are grieving the most, yet are the
most successful in putting together their lives.  Both are busy
volunteering, taking on new activities, and getting up every morning to
greet the day, even though it's another sad and long day without the one who
they loved so much.

I developed pictures from my older grandson's disposable camera this week.
Some of the pictures are two years old.  He captured Ray a couple of times
and there were pictures of all of us playing Scrabble, including a picture
of me and Ray sitting side by side in front of the Scrabble board.
Examining these pictures, it was like being shot out of canon back in time,
back to when I was the person I used to be.  I was invincible with Ray in my
life.

Now I'm an empty shell.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com
www.polarispublications.com

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so
intangible that it is like a fragrance.  It may weave a spell of nostalgia.
Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a
day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever
loved.
~Augusta E. Rundel
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