When Emma went away to school in 2021, Sami stopped doing my laundry. We didn’t ever discuss it - I think she just felt it was time for me to do my own, which I didn’t mind - she was right! Part of sharing a life is sharing the work. While neither one of us were spectacular housekeepers, we kept up on most chores. We shared the cooking and dishwashing. I took care of the yard and the garden. Sami cleaned the inside of the house and paid the bills. We worked together on home maintenance.
Since she passed, obviously, all of these chores have fallen to me. Some days, I think Sami must be chuckling, telling me, “See - you never really understood everything I did, did you?!” Other days, I find myself saying to her, “I do know how to make the bed and do the laundry - aren’t you impressed?!” At least I’ve impressed myself. The house isn’t a total disaster. I haven’t run out of firewood (yet). The mules and the sheep and the dogs are still alive and seem happy. My diet is reasonably balanced. The house is no more a mess than it was when two of us were here. The bills are getting paid.
This morning, I awoke at 4am worried about all that I needed to accomplish this week. By 4:30, I realized that I needed to get up in a half hour anyway, so I went out to the kitchen to start the coffee. Later, as I washed my breakfast dishes and made the bed before cleaning up for work, I realized that there is a certain momentum associated with routines. My habits, now after a year and a half on my own, are to get up, make coffee, do the crossword puzzle on my iPad, fix breakfast, take care of the livestock, make the bed, and take a shower. Virtually every day. And while I suppose there is some benefit to these habits, there are times when I grow weary of the routine. There are times when I want to let things go. Like this morning. This morning, I decided I was weary of being an adult.
But I didn’t break my routine. I went ahead and made the bed. I did the chores and got to the office before 8am. As I was driving down the hill, I realized that I felt like if I let just one thing go - that if I didn’t make the bed this morning - I’d tumble down the slope of dishevelment and disorder. The dishes and laundry would pile up. I’d run out of hay for the animals. I’d start living on frozen dinners. I wouldn’t get the bills paid. Maybe that’s the benefit of having a routine?
Tonight, I did a quick internet search about the relationship between the loss of a partner and one’s own mortality. Some of the research I looked at indicated that people who lose a partner have a 48 percent increased risk of mortality after becoming widowed. And that this risk is apparently higher for men than for women. For me, at least, I think my routine has helped me cope. My routine has brought some sense of comfort that I can take care of myself. I guess my routine is also a symbolic way of flipping the bird at the cosmos! “See?! I can be an adult! All on my own!!”
Except I’m not “all on my own.” I also realized this evening that my friends and my family play a huge role in all of this. The support of friends and family has been critical in helping me process my grief. I continue to lean on my friends and family - especially on days like this one when I feel like going back to bed and being sad all day (which is ok - sometimes that’s helpful, too). The most helpful support isn’t “get back in there” or “buck up and be strong.” It’s more, “yeah, that sounds really hard” and “give yourself some grace.” This support is also always a part of my motivation, though - I find myself thinking, “what would XXXX think if they saw what a mess my house is?!” or “how would YYYY feel if they knew I didn’t feed the sheep until noon?!”
As I’ve written before, grief is a universal - perhaps the most universal - human emotion. I imagine everyone who reads this blog has experienced grief in some form or another. My grief for Sami began on that evening in January 2023 when the ER doctor told us she had a mass on her brain. My grief intensified through two surgeries, chemo- and radiation-therapy, and her brief time in hospice care. My grief, I’m coming to understand, will also be part of my routine.
One of my favorite characters in Wendell Berry’s fiction is Burley Coulter, who says something to the effect that he never learned anything until he had to. Isn’t that true of all of us? Doesn’t being an adult mean we’re constantly learning? I used to think that by the time I was 30, I’d have things figured out. Now that I’m nearly 58, I’ve realized this will take my entire life - if not longer. But now I need to go cook dinner and stoke the wood stove.
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