Widow Network

It was a weird week - full of an assortment of ups and downs. Rather than relate them all at once, I'll just start with the one from the beginning of the week, Monday. We were just getting over all the hoopla of Homecoming week when my youngest woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me his brother's foot was bleeding profusely. And it was. Turns out his little toe had somehow been cut while he was asleep and wouldn't stop bleeding. By the time we got to the ER, a bath towel was entirely soaked through - the whole towel. I couldn't believe there was so much blood because there was also a pool of blood around the futon where he sleeps and bloody footprints throughout the floor.

The ER doctor advised, that foot, toe and finger injuries/cuts bleed a great deal. My reasoning for taking him to the hospital was because we had no idea how he had cut his toe and I was worried there may have been something still caught in his skin. Plus there was just so much blood. It was 2:00 in the morning (Tue.) and we were all pretty groggy and not thinking too clearly. But what do you do when your kid wakes up with a foot covered in blood that isn't stopping bleeding?

When we got home, after the bleeding stopped, the cut had been cleaned out and bandaged, I figured out what happened. I saw a slivered groove in the wood of the bookcase next to the futon that my son's foot must have rubbed against.

It was all just kind of a surreal and strange event. In the past years, with two boys playing sports, I've been to the ER more times than I want to recall. Monday night/Tuesday morning I was so drained and tired of it all - the constant having to cope with everything on my own, including mysterious medical emergencies. I need to be there propping up my sons when they need me, but no one is there for me when I'm falling down and needing some propping up myself. I have reached the absolute limit of this widowhood life. No one, should have to shoulder so much on their own for so long. No one!

I did a bit of investigation into whether the friend of my youngest son, whose mom is widowed might be interested in sharing a home in the future, but she responded that she prefers to live alone. My son said he suspects she might be bipolar and that it would not be a good fit for us but I threw caution to the wind and asked anyway, simply because I don't want this life on my own anymore. It at least starts the chain in motion and shows my intention to the Universe.

Even sharing a home with another widow would allow some division of labor, perhaps sharing meal preparation, etc. And it would be far less lonely. But anyway, that is a no go. It got me to thinking about the "olden days" of my youth when divorce was still new and taboo. I remember that when I was in high school (mid-1970s) that two couples in our subdivision got divorced. People were so shocked that they drove by the couples' houses trying to get a glimpse of the divorcees. What happened was that these two women pooled their resources and shared a home together - they had kids around the ages of my sibs and I. I wonder what happened to these women who really in their own way were leaders paving the way for women at that time.

Then I thought of the few other women who I knew from back then, two of whom got divorced, one whom was widowed. All three of these women got remarried immediately. It's funny, but my son's friend's mom has a boyfriend who has asked her repeatedly to marry him and she has refused wanting to remain living alone. And here I am, a woman who longs for remarriage and ends up still on the search for the right guy... Well, we certainly know life sure ain't fair!

I think in earlier times, even 35 years ago, that there were stronger networks in place for women, families were closer and all. I wish there were some kind of widow network in place right now, listing widows who are looking for roommates to share houses, etc. Those two newly divorced moms from 1977 were smart to join forces together. Sometimes it just isn't worth the fight to keep struggling on alone.