Author: Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

It’s eleven in the morning. I’m sitting opposite a Volkswagen service department man at our local dealership. I’m not supposed to be here right now. My day’s script with accompanying task list reads differently. But apparently my writers spent the night in revisions forgetting to send me this new draft at dawn. A draft placing me just about now in this chair off of Highway 1 in Iowa City, Iowa.

We’ve been living off-script since Tony died. Still I create lists, plans, and expectations for each day. Being organized makes me feel all is well. Yet organizing grief is a misnomer. More often than not this multi-layered emotional experience infused with its copious practical matters thwarts my plans. Every seemingly small event includes more paperwork, takes more time now, and lumps up my throat. I’m beginning to believe the trauma expert’s two-year healing prediction offered to me early on in grief when I batted it away, unable to accept the road ahead.

Today’s change, the part of the script in which I was to be zipping down Interstate 80 toward lunch with a dear friend, was replaced with a scene involving the mystery surrounding my defunct email address. I had some head’s up on this one. Knew already the computer people, far more skilled than I, were working on it. So the phone call asking me to come downtown to their shop wasn’t too out of line with my day. A small change to be accommodated. What surprised me on my drive downtown, sent my heart racing really,  was the check engine light glaring at me from my dashboard.

The computer people found all sorts of information about my email domain. Information formed early in the history of The Men’s Center. Information I did not know or really even cared about until now. Standing in the waiting area of their shop I learned how to reinstate my email with the help of a number of people working in far away countries across wireless air waves. The check engine light however forced me to reschedule lunch.

A ten minute drive later I find myself at the service check-in desk staring at the man behind the computer. It’s been all business up to this point. Masking perhaps what he thinks of me. I’ve been clear, maybe a bit demanding, in what I need which is a loaner vehicle. Tony’s classic Mercedes not currently well either. It’s engine light coming on too and the air conditioning ka-poot. Not having an appointment for this interchange may be part of the problem as well. Coupled with what could be construed as my sense of entitlement. Masked desperation (mine) the truth.

The car is under Tony’s name in the service man’s computer. Of course it is. I never did anything with the cars but drive them and take care of some routine stuff like getting gas. I tell this stranger to remove Tony’s name and why. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says.

Good. He got that one right, I think. The many faceless computer people I spoke to on the phone today forgot this small moment of acknowledgement, a courtesy. Then looking deep into his screen he says, “I sold you that car,”

“The one I’m driving? In Cedar Rapids?”

“Tony was a counselor,” he states looking up at me.

“Yes. It was unexpected.”

Days later I remember. I wondered aloud, maybe even complained about having to look at a car on the north side of Cedar Rapids, ninety miles from where we were living at the time. But Tony felt he was getting a better deal out of the area and really liked the salesman. I acquiesced. We desperately needed a new car. Bugs having taken up residence in the back seat of our station wagon. Feeding off the crumbs deeply embedded in the universe existing underneath where the cushions meet forming a crevice. Multitudes of food particles leftover from the early childhood years of our children.

Now our former salesman turned service department guy clicks away at his keyboard. His eyes reading the screen. Yet a shift in his face muscles and posture, almost imperceptible, shares something with me as the room’s air parts for just a second. I take an instinctive, singular, sharp breath in. Through my mouth. Sucked in with a bit of noise from the wind of it. Realization flooding me just prior to my intake of oxygen or perhaps a recognition of something deeper than words.

He assures me my car is safe to drive until the scheduled check next week. Maybe he is less business like now. Maybe softening. Hoping if necessary there could be service people of all kinds willing to work with and for his loved ones in his stead. Or maybe I just imagine all this. Once again wondering if molecules of emotion are to be trusted or not. But then knowing they are. Floating human truths to be paid attention to.

Nothing else runs on schedule for the rest of my day. I throw it all to the wind. Go car shopping all by myself for the first time ever. Find finally what I want which is really not to see another check engine light until I’m way out of seminary. Along with heated seats and a white exterior because Tony was so very safety conscious. And I can’t bear to hear his admonishing voice in my head if I pull out of the car lot with any other color. Then I shop at a different grocery store, the one Ricky works at on the weekends. Get lunch giving into my hunger for once, and buy hot, homemade Mennonite pretzels for Paul. Once home crawl back into bed writing on my day-off from words and during the afternoon hours instead of my usual early morning reverie.

But what stays in my heart this particular day, one of so many in our ongoing complicated grief, is this: Someone Tony knew for just a brief blip on life’s timeline saddened knowing he no longer is here on this plane of existence. And I take great solace in this small knowing and others like it. Glimpses of others’ sense of loss and possibly their own approaching mortality. Their emotional release, although often cloaked, creating a molecular communion of sadness of sorts swirling in the air.

My doctor hurries. I persist. Grief emboldens me. I cling to my agenda. Pointing to my forehead I ask,”What is this?”

A scabby, bumpy thing popped out of my forehead sometime during the months before Tony died. The months in which I kept wondering if after the death of our dog, the death of Ricky’s dear friend, and the ongoing downward spiral of Ricky’s health what could be next. No time or energy during those trembling months for attending to myself.

The growth lives right in my very Swedish receding triangular hairline. The same hairline some of my first and second cousins have both male and female. Some families get identical tattoos. We just use our hairline to mark us as clan.

I pick at it in the beginning of this pain, in my ongoing angst. Sometimes ripping it off in anger only for it to grow back. Mocking me with its presence. Now at ten months into keeping grief my thinking clears enough helping me plan ahead once again and think about my own health.

“Looks like a basal cell,” she replies.

“What’s a basal cell?”

“Skin cancer,” she says as if this is a non-issue, “We’ll get you a referral.”

Shit. The last thing I need is skin cancer. But I look like the token poster child for the disease not interested in excessive use of sun block and hats until about two years ago. Skin cancer and osteoporosis popular among we fair-eyed, northern European types. So I suppose it is to be expected. Then given the stress inherent in grief, my cells are doing who knows what. Still skin cancer belongs on the list of things I do not want and cannot imagine adding to my long roll of issues to cope with.

Once home I call every dermatologist in town. Pleading. Begging. Pushing. I’m waitlisted everywhere. Still I persist, grief making me more adamant especially when my health may be compromised. Magically while trying to find an appointment at the University’s clinic, a space opens on the scheduler’s screen. “Oh!” she says, “I have an appointment now available tomorrow at 9:00 with Dr. So and So.”

“I’ll take it!” I scream. Relief floods my cells. Maybe even the ones in question.

The next morning I take off warning my younger son he may be late for school but then again what else is new? University rush hour swirls around my journey. An accident slows traffic even more. I’m running late. Parking in the wrong parking garage, I face what seems like a mile walk to the dermatology clinic through a labyrinth of walkways. The clinic moved since last time I was here with Ricky’s awful eczema which was in truth Lyme’s Disease but that’s really a whole other story and his to tell about.

I finally check in finding a chair to slump in only to realize I left my cell phone in the car many walkways and floors away. Neither son can get a hold of me. And I don’t believe I’ve been away from my cell (just in case!) for more than a few minutes since Tony died. Except for the time in the first fall of our grief when I lost my already battered phone, freaked out, and then found it beneath our mailbox.

My heart begins pounding with worry. For what brought me to this appointment in the first place. For what could happen if I am not just a phone call away. For what happened to us in August of 2016 creating my hyped vigilance in caring, in making sure all is well, in overseeing our grief.

Later after staring at the white walls of the exam room, waiting for eons, fighting mounting anxiety with deep measured breaths and therapeutic self-talk, the doctor arrives. He looks at my growth with a large magnifying glass breathing and making non-verbal communicative sounds under his breath. Finally he says, “I don’t think it’s cancer. I think it’s…(something I now don’t remember and probably could not pronounce.) I can freeze it off or I can cut it off and biopsy it.”

‘Biopsy it! I’m it,” I reply, “I am truly a single parent. Take it off. Biopsy it.”

I also tell him he mustn’t scar me which in the middle of all this angst reveals I am still concerned about topical issues. After I week or so I find he hasn’t to my relief. My skin smooth and clear.  New bits of hair filling in my receding triangle leaving me to wonder if I lost more hair during the shock of Tony’s death than I first imagined.

After a few more days the doctor calls with my results. His typical doctor call etiquette remains non-committal. I hold my breath at the stop light along the river’s construction zone. Finally he says, “It’s a wart.”

“A wart,” my voice pitch mounts as visions of those Scandinavian warty trolls roll across my mind’s eye. “You mean I could have just used Compound W?”

“Well if it grows back you can try an over-the-counter medicine,” he replies.

Another week passes. I laugh at the entire situation until the bill arrives. My procedure not fully covered because of our medical insurance deductible. My wart removal’s initial cost is one thousand dollars!  Obviously I am not emotionally healed yet. The old me would have researched the growth. Maybe even experimented with wart removal first before seeing a doctor. But I am still highly reactive. Measured thought remains a dream away.

More time goes by. The wart does not return. Another bill arrives. The cost of wart removal sinks by two hundred dollars or so. A small gift I think.

However in the same swirl of taking care of myself leading to the wart’s removal, I schedule a bone density test for August. In this week between what would have been our twenty-second wedding anniversary and the first anniversary of Tony’s death, I am upgraded from osteopenia to osteoporosis in my wrist and hip. My doctor puts me on medication to strengthen my bones. The ravages of my grief finally rearing an ugly head now at twelve months. Grief taking hold somewhere in my body playing on an already weakened area. Physical and emotional health responding to one another. Playing off each other. One a pinch. The other an ouch. Not so separate as we all tend to think.

Still I’m thankful for good care in all realms of our life this past year. Good care leading to emotional healing, trauma relief, medical diagnosis, and solid treatment plans. All helping us repair, rebuild and live despite it all.

And for me, well with good care there is this added benefit, a “bonus feature” as Tony used to say. One I hadn’t thought of until recently when I almost stumbled into the face of it while rediscovering with my sons the living world outside our grief. One brought home to me by warts and weak bones. A possibility which because I receive good care remains in the realm of my anxious imagination. A thought which when entertained out loud would have made my late and dear husband laugh.

The avoidance of becoming an ancient, warty, humped over troll.

Saint Anthony of Padua is for Roman Catholic Christians the patron saint of lost or stolen things. I wonder today while walking, spying the blooming orange day lilies in the ravine’s ditch, touching the bulbous flowers of the milk weed plant,  if this Saint can help me find myself again now amidst the many layers of my muck. Or if my own saint Anthony can from where ever he now resides.

Tony heard for years about the Lutheran Christian belief of saints and sinners. That we are both held in opposition, a paradox catapulting between one to the other minute by minute in our daily lives. One loving act quickly followed by shaming words. One promise kept while another not. Our humanness embraced and forgiven by an understanding, compassionate, and loving God without one request from us. Grace we call this incomprehensible mysteriousness.

But at almost eleven months I still feel lost. Not like at first when I could barely move or think. But lost yet. Steeling myself each day for come what may. Still making phone call after phone call tying up Tony’s affairs. Still supporting both boys through tragic grief compounded by medical issues compounded by feelings of unsuccessfulness as school for both of them this past year tenuous, arduous, hazy. Still weeping at odd moments.

I think somewhere in Tony’s things lies a St. Anthony medal. I wonder if I should pull it out. Even though I don’t believe in Saintly elevation. Rather preferring taking my worries and dreams right to the Trinity. But over the years understanding why many want and cling to faith mediators. Thinking maybe at the end of the day it does not really matter where we fall in embracing Saints or saints.Wondering too if Tony’s medal has the symbolic capability of showing me I will find myself again.

A friend reminds me of Erik Erikson’s famous and lovely and ringing true Eight Stages. Death flings me back into the adolescent stage of identity versus role confusion.  I struggle again and with great emotion figuring out who I am alone. No longer attached on every living level possible to another person except in memory and in two tall, young almost men sleeping soundly right now. Moving differently in grief, my body betraying my state. One not associated with a partner. Alone. Misplaced. Confused.

Stay focused I tell myself since grief makes me more aware of others’ attention issues and my own ability to get side tracked. Remember your strength my braceleted wrist reminds me. Remain curious Tony in my memory reiterates. All that glitters is not gold I say to the boys. And in a remembered haze from the early days of this hell I think a pastor friend told me to keep my eyes on the cross and not in a sin salvation kind of a way. But in a there is life after death both for the living and the deceased kind of a way. Or the salvation of the cross frees me from my living bondages, grief able to overtake me. Own me without something bigger to focus on, believe in. Or maybe that’s just what I want to think he meant.

Slowly and on better days than this one, I find I still love a good dress, sharing a finely prepared meal, the obtuse humor of friends and family, chocolate colored dogs, my extended family strewn across the world, dark chocolate for breakfast, my boys even when they are goofing off or leaving trails of stinky socks around the house, the fragrance of laundry hung on the line, pulling onions out of my garden with a pop(!), the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the seasons in our little corner of Iowa, Minnesotan Scandinavian idiosyncrasies, Spirit-filled worship services, the close knit chords of hymnody, meeting a friend for lunch, and a whole host of other joys embraced before and now after.

Somewhere in this mix of loves and grief is me. Not so lost as I sometimes think. A saint in my own right, Lutheran Christian style. Forgiving my own sins of omission and otherwise during this time of keeping grief. Focusing on healing trauma, walking with and through sudden loss, noticing my emotions whether they be feelings of abandonment, guilt, loss, or being untethered. At the same time entering fully into an unfolding future looking hope straight in the face. Living on with joy flowing from sorrow in another of life’s many paradoxes.

Every week a widowed or divorced, middle-aged man with a car, boat, or home who is always caucasian asks to befriend me on social media. These men have names like David Smith, Mark David, and David Mark. Each request comes with an oddly empty profile page. These people have no family or friends. If they perchance have one or two friends the friends tend to be (for the lack of a better term) booby younger women in scant clothing. The men also have no work history, no history at all really. And their written English syntax reads like a foreign tongue.

My sons call these requests trolls referring to a common media term but also to our collective aversion to the small Norwegian warty, hairy, figurines populating the homes of our extended family. Grimy also falls from my sons’ lips often in general feeling like an apt term in this case. As the recipient of these requests I feel repulsion as if over the cyber airwaves someone wants to do me harm.

I block these requests. Laugh about them. Make fun of them. Rail at this annexed injustice added to my many layers of pain. And now openly write about them for any one willing to read my blog. Poking at a world that sees widows as easy prey in our emotional pain. Limping along like an easy shot. The shooter tasting dinner on the trigger.

But I am not a target. So whoever you are get a proper job and an actual life. Volunteer your time to a real and worthy cause. You who haunt me obviously have time on your hands. And while you’re at it find a good therapist. Delve into your early childhood attachment issues. Have the courage to work on yourself instead of hurting others. Understand where you start and stop and others start and stop as well. Discover the space between your emotional boundaries and the emotional boundaries of others is where all healthy relationships in any form really live. Dream about goodness, the goodness you want to receive and return. Then create goodness in all its forms in the space between you and other people.

But if you continue haunting me I will keep calling you out in public. Giving you databases of trauma therapists around the world for you to contact. Urging you to make that first appointment. Wondering aloud about your substance and process use or abuse or addiction and how it’s impacting your life.

Because what you fail to understand in haunting me is that my late husband knew you better than you know yourself. And he and people like him are the key to your healing and happiness. Although now the world has one less of these healers and that is why you found me in the first place scouring your search engines for women using the title widow. Perpetuating the cycle of your pain. The pain you bat away. Hiding instead behind what your fingers can find on your computer. Your screen shielding you from healing.

Trolling instead of living.