My Camp Widow - Resistance is futile, Connection is vital

When I first heard about Camp Widow, I rolled my eyes at the corny name and wondered, why would I want to spend a whole weekend focusing on the fact that widowhood was indeed my reality?

And yet I exist in this reality in my day-to-day life already: the unavoidable burden of knowing that no adulting gets done unless I do it or manage it someway; the heavy sadness of my nights at home alone; and having to outsource all adult connection, as it is not built into my family home anymore. The familiar territory of partnership has become a haunting echo of the past. 

But the truth is: the aloneness of widowhood had begun to chafe my soul, becoming restrictive rather than welcomingly quiet for my healing. 

What finally skewered my decision to attend was binge-watching “Dead To Me,” and the possibility of meeting and making out with some hot widowed guy who got it. It was with this piercing decisiveness that I registered for Camp Widow late at night, after my son had gone to bed. I felt a sense of relief and satisfaction in the execution of registration - I did it! I felt brave. 

Then I didn’t think about it much for a while. 

I kept the “Camp Widow” box tucked carefully away in the back of mind, preferring not to think about leaving my son for four days. I was figuratively squinting my eyes away from the deep pool of emotion I knew was lurking in the weekend event. Instead of thinking about it anymore, I allowed myself to get lost in the minutia of a busy day-to-day life. 

It wasn’t until 10pm the night before I was going to catch a 9am train to Camp, that I realized how much I’d been avoiding the reality that I was going to participate in Camp Widow. I stared at my empty suitcase and revolted against the hard work I knew was coming. I did a few more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I was using as a distraction. 

It was the need to get some sleep that finally pressed me into action. The practicality of packing for a few short days of conference was surprisingly easy and over in just a few minutes. Finally. 

And then, as smooth as the gears of a well-oiled clock, I arrived at Camp Widow. Pulling my suitcase behind me, I put on my brave adult mask, while my insides felt childishly insecure, cowering against the reality that I knew would soon hit me. I entered the bustling registration room, and was surprised by the sounds of gregarious greetings and eager chatter. It sounded like a midwifery conference! I knew how to do this! It was under that false pretense that I began the registration process. 

Everyone that checked me in was very kind, saying things like, “We’re sorry you’re here, but glad you came.” As I moved from one station to the next through the busy room, I felt my outside life slipping away incrementally. Each new ribbon and pin I chose to decorate my lanyard with, was like battle regalia. I am a widow warrior, I began to think.

And then... there was a little red heart pin that we were invited to write the name of our “person” on. 

As I conjured the letters “M-A-T-T” from somewhere that seemed very far away, I realized that I had put Matt - my husband, friend, confidant, my cheerleader, the dear father of my child - into a convenient (or at least compartmentalized) part of my brain and heart, that allowed me to live the day-to-day subsistence of a working mom. I realized how much my busy-ness and the all-encompassing survival mode of my life had allowed me to pack away the enormous depths of the feelings I still had about being a widow. And yet by packing away those feelings, I had also packed away the real and potent memories of the man who loved me, wholly and purely. 

It wasn’t until I was here, at Camp Widow, that I finally gave myself the space to set aside the day-to-day tasks and open up the room of grief and memories in my heart. 

My aversion to exploring the closed up room reminded me of that old food in the fridge phenomenon, when you know something needs to be tossed, but you whir by it several times, glancing sideways at it while you pack a snack for preschool or grab dinner items so you can make it to bedtime routine on time. Skimming the surface of life and avoiding the stinky stuff. 
The thing is, it doesn’t go away. And usually, the longer you let it sit there, the worse it gets. And yet, airing things out, allowing room for the pain, also made room for the joy of remembering Matt. 

As I wrote those letters, M-A-T-T, the double doors to the part of my heart where Matt lived swung open. A breeze of love and connection swept through the now-open doorway, the name coming through in a long-lost whisper. Tears stung my eyes as I softened into that connection. The softening felt scary and vulnerable, and I quickly hardened into anger for a moment, raging against the man who had left me to have to do this kind of stuff at all. I wanted to flip over the table of pins, send them scattering across the floor, just like how my dreams of my future shattered with the plane wreckage.

Somehow, I was able to breathe into my big feelings. I attached the pin to my lanyard, securing and including MATT into my experience. Then I sat down and dug in - grabbed my journal and wrote about the big feelings that had just surged through me in that “little” experience of writing four letters. After my journaling, I felt satisfied. I went through something big and remained present with myself in every moment. I didn’t walk out, I didn’t find the closest bar and order a margarita, or three. I moved it through my body, and felt debris fall away from the wall around my heart. 

The rest of the weekend offered similarly refreshing experiences. There was something incredibly comforting knowing that the other attendees around me “got it.” Of course each of our experiences of loss were different, but the commonality of losing a spouse/partner bonded us in a way that overrode the differences.

In addition to the validation of an understanding community, I saw that by allowing myself to fully immerse in the widowhood part of my reality, I felt more able to breathe into the rest of me. Choosing this conference on widowhood was a step toward taking down the wall around the sadness and pain. Which of course, opens to more joy.  

What inspired me most at Camp Widow was seeing the founder, Michele, and the other presenters, standing in their power after loss. Each presenter was a widowed person, and were there because they chose to make something more of their loss. Literally, peoples’ careers took right turns as they integrated their new wisdom after loss.

Seeing this all around me gave me permission to envision that for my own life. To step more deeply into my writing, to the wisdom I am harnessing to help others through their own losses and big transformations. In a “creating a meaningful career after loss” workshop, I shared that my current work as a midwife is very meaningful to me, and yet I’m looking for a way to deepen my work and weave in my new experience of loss to be able to offer more wisdom. Deepening and weaving… yes, this… I’m still in the exploration of  all of this.

Returning home after Camp Widow and attempting to integrate this big shift into my life as I’m back amongst the “norms” (those who have not experienced the loss of a spouse), has been challenging. I hear people complain about trivial things, and it is hard for me not to roll my eyes and point out how much they are erroneously taking for granted. I still must work hard to sit down and write my book about being a widow, making that a priority above work emails, sweeping the floor, the resistance and distraction. And yet, I do it. 

As one of the keynote speakers quoted as the weekend kicked off, “none of us are getting out of here alive.” I’m even more aware of how resistance to and denial of death rob us of our full aliveness. In thinking that we have tomorrow guaranteed, we easily allow ourselves not to be in the present moment. 

If we remember that there is nothing but the present moment, and we are not guaranteed anything beyond that, we will likely do more and feel more in the present moment. Additionally, I came away from this weekend feeling the truth that resistance to and denial of our own power and wisdom denies us the experience to more deeply heal and connect. 

So that is my practice these days. Living the question of how I can stay fully present in connection - to myself, to the earth, to others, and to spirit… How do I continue to lean into the deepening, the opening, even as my chest aches against the rawness and vulnerability? 

How do you lean into the tides and continue opening? Tell me in a comment below!

A Dead Mouse Is Not Just a Dead Mouse

The saga started last year, when I heard them skittering in the wall between my son Jack’s closet bed and the living room. As I laid there in the dark of the closet, the soft breath of my newly-sleeping son on my shoulder, his silken hair tickling my neck, I welled up with anxiety and rage. I watched myself go down the worst-case scenario path, my common response. How dare these vermin invade my space? What if they are vampire mice and could find their way into the closet bed and eat my child? What about if/when they died in the wall and smelled? Could we get sick from the odor of their rotting bodies? Would they take over the apartment and we would have to move? How would I pack up and how in the world would I find another affordable space to live in this crazy town? Oh yes, my thought process went there.

And, most of all, how do I deal with this on my own, as a widow, a single mom, and a working midwife? That was the biggest question. This was something that for sure my husband Matt would have dealt with, without blinking an eye. But now, here I was, dealing with yet another mundane life event that was literally a mouse getting blown up into a monster in the face of grief.

I took my son to Home Depot a few days later and zoned out at the pest control wall for a few minutes. I raged against the fact that I had to do this, and not Matt. I wanted to destroy that whole display of catch ‘em - kill ‘em contraptions. Like how some TV shows cut out from the current scene and show the protagonist’s fantasy, I stood there in the aisle, imagining swiping my arm across the products, knocking them to the floor, stomping on them, going back for more, throwing shit, and even tearing the shelves themselves out from the walls. Fucking mice and fucking widowhood and fucking solo parenting and fucking rodents gnawing into my sense of security and self-sufficiency.

Cut back to real time: I finally picked two different kinds of humane traps, calmly brought them to the checkout, and brought them home. And then I did not open them for a year. It was overwhelming for some reason, but also because I didn’t hear the mice in the wall again. It was as though purchasing the traps was enough, for now.

A year later, I heard them again, the sound of chewing seeming to be audaciously right in my ear, on the other side of the wall. I hate the sound of chewing anyway, most especially when humans do it in my close proximity, and this was just as bad. The grating noise felt like it was directly on my nerves, as yet again, I lay in the dark, snuggling my now-bigger sleeping son.

This time, I was able to open the mouse traps. I did it the next morning with Jack, and even though I felt a bit lame using my three-year-old’s company to get through this, it was actually a rather fun activity. He was into it, figuring out quickly how the traps worked, and interested as he watching me put the peanut butter in the designated bait area. We set the two traps against the wall in the living room, where there was conveniently a little hole in the wall for the mice to get through.

The next morning, there was a strange excited anticipation, a little like Christmas, when we looked at the traps. One was no longer set in its open state, it was closed! I was rather amazed that it worked! When I picked it up, I was surprised by how light it felt, and I wondered if it had closed on itself with no mouse involved. After a few minutes of debating, I decided to peek in there, and face either a trapped mouse that might try to escape, or the disappointment of a false catch. I figured we’d better know for sure if there was a mouse in there before we brought the trap down the hill for releasing.

I carefully opened the cover and peeked in. A little shock and thrill went through me as I saw two little black eyes peeking back at me! I yelped and told Jack that there was indeed a mouse in there. It was fun to share this with him. We brought the trap down to a field close (but not too close) to his preschool, and shared a fleeting but exciting moment as the little gray mouse ran out of the trap.

The mouse saga escalated over the next few days when I smelled dead animal in our house. I felt sure that one had died in the wall. It was an oppressive, invasive smell and I felt helpless and frantic to find a way out of it. I texted my landlord, Rob, with a mix of righteous entitlement as a tenant and trepidation of asking too much and jeopardizing my “bro deal” rent situation. To my relief, he came over the next day with non-humane traps, on a mission to dominate nature. He set them around my apartment with peanut butter, and while I was grateful for the help, I now felt just as at-risk as the mice, vulnerable to coming upon gore and death around any corner.

The next morning, I was preparing my coffee in the kitchen, and suddenly knew without a doubt that the trap under the sink had caught a mouse. I cautiously peeked under, and sure enough, two black eyes popped out at me. Only this time, they were glazed and lifeless, unlike the two I had seen from inside the humane trap. I quickly stood up and moved a cooler over to block the horrid view. I tried to shake the shock of death from my body. I texted Rob that we had caught one, and I was too squeamish to do anything about it. Would he please come by and dispose of it? He said he would, at the end of the day.  

The traps were quiet for a few days after that.

Then I thought the trash was smelling. I took it out. The next day, the house still smelled. That smell, the smell of rotting death. I blood-hounded around the kitchen, checked the traps I could find, and yielded nothing. Maybe it was coming from under the house like what I had smelled before? It was unsettling and infuriating that I couldn’t track it down.

And then, the other night I lay on the couch after a long day of work and hardly any sleep the night before due to a birth. I had come home to my son writhing in pain with an earache. I spent over an hour holding him close and helplessly in between homeopathic doses and cold compresses, until he finally settled into sleep. Afterwards, I snuck out to the couch to unwind with a little wine before bed.

The weight of work, the agony of parenting a child in pain, and the harsh loneliness of widowhood came crashing down on me as I sat in the dark. I crumbled into a sob. I cried softly, then hard, then screamed into a pillow, then subsided into whimpering again. And then my nose led me out of my misery and to finding the culprit of the odor I had been hunting down for days. It was under the couch, just two feet from where I had been grieving for the last half hour, the same spot where we had found the very first mouse in the humane tube trap. This one was not the humane trap. The vicious snap had flipped over the trap, so the mouse was under the little rectangle of wood. I was grateful to be blocked from the full view of it. But I still had to remove it, and now.

I put on a latex glove I have around for work, and strategically grabbed the trap by the end that was furthest from the mouse. It was surprisingly light as I carried it to the door and flung it as far as I could across the yard and onto the landscaped hill nearby. I felt okay about that disposal technique because that is what Rob had said he does with the mice. Only, he takes them out of the trap first. I gave myself permission to fling mouse and trap together. Rob could go get the trap himself if he wanted to.

Glove still on, I sprayed the floor excessively with my essential oil cleaning spray and rubbed it down thoroughly. I realized I wasn’t breathing out of my nose. I gave a tentative little sniff and was pleasantly surprised that it smelled lemony fresh, and not like death.

I threw out the wipe and glove with a satisfied flourish, and laid back down on the couch. The air was refreshingly free of death, both literally and figuratively. I had handled something that some would see as just a small thing, but for me was a big deal. I didn’t succumb to helplessness, depression, and the “why me” mentality when presented with the task of dealing with a dead mouse this time. No, this time, I faced it head on, like Matt would have, without blinking an eye.

Kitty Conundrum: Found, Cant' Keep, Part 2

It all climaxed one morning when I heard Little Kitty yowling at 1am. I dozed back to sleep until 3am, when suddenly, my wall was shaking with the thunderous sound of my neighbor’s fist pounding vigorously on our shared wall. I couldn’t respond right away, as I was still waking up to the reality that my neighbor was pounding on my wall. But the cat yowled again, and he pounded again, and I was out of bed and knocking on the wall in response as I made  my way down the loft stairs and crept outside in the dark, cool, spring night.

What the fuck do I do?

I picked up the cat and brought her inside, where I placed her in the cat carrier a kind neighbor had lent me. I put the carrier and cat in the bathtub. She yowled, and the sound echoed off the tile walls.. I opened the cat carrier. I put a towel down in the bathtub and some food out on the floor. I left the light on and closed the door behind me, yearning to crawl back into my warm bed. She yowled. I went in, petted her some, turned the light off and went out and shut the door. She yowled. I grabbed two sweatshirts and stuffed them at the bottom of the door to muffle the sound. She yowled.

I opened the bathroom door and let her roam the house, something she had only ever done twice before, and never at night. She roamed, and yowled. I threw open the camping pad that was currently Jack’s play area couch, and set up a bed on the floor, thinking that from there, I could soothe the cat into quietness, and hopefully get back to sleep myself.

I spent the next three hours - the aching dark, tired hours of the morning - going from quieting the cat to quieting Jack stirring in his bed. There was nothing else I could do but lean into the ridiculousness of it all, and pray hard for help. It certainly grounded me into the reality that an end to this cat needed to come, and soon.

I finally got the cat to settle down with me, snuggled up like a real house cat, purring at my side. We slept like that for an hour, once I finally stopped thinking about the fleas, dirt, and possibly worms that were now in my house. And it took awhile for the questions to settle down; do I keep her? She’s not doing too bad with her first night inside. She’s so affectionate. Do I like this kitty cuddling? Am I really the cat person I always thought I was? If I give her up, does it mean I’m not really a cat person? Does it mean I’m less capable and giving and nurturing than I thought? Less responsible and grounded and stable? Am I giving up part of my relationship with Matt if I let this kitty go?

The next morning, I put the cat back outside first thing. A few minutes later, Jack brought her inside, snuggling and loving her, saying he loves this cat, and it’s his cat, and she just laid there and took all his toddler attention. For a moment, I questioned my decision. After losing his dad, how do I justify taking away this warm, furry, live comfort? Even with her fleas and dirt and possible disease? Will he really miss her? Will I have to watch him grieve? For the love of God, help my mommy heart. And yet, to think about keeping her, with all the fleas and the ants getting into her food, and the responsibility that I would have to take care of her no matter what happened in the future… I just couldn’t. 

I called the Humane Society and told them that our distress had mounted, and I needed to bring her in as soon as possible. Suddenly, they said bring her in whenever! Why hadn’t that been immediately available when I first called, I wondered in frustration. Finally, that afternoon, I found myself driving into the Humane Society parking lot, with the cat in the carrier on the seat next to me. All the frenzy of logistics and decisions to get to this point slowed down, as I parked and prepared to say goodbye. The staff inside was really friendly, and sat me at a table cluttered with various pet items.

They brought me some paperwork to fill out, while Little Kitty looked at me through the cage bars of her carrier. Filling out that relinquishment form was eerily familiar. The last life I was legally responsible for relinquishing on paper was my husband’s. The funeral home paperwork; a blur of lines as I was too blown out to even read. I could only sign where they pointed.

As I signed the kitty away, I couldn’t help but feel some shame, and imagine that I was letting Matt down in my decision not to keep her. As if she were a thread between our souls, and by relinquishing her, I was giving up a piece of Matt. And yet… to keep her felt burdensome and messy. The hard part was that I had a choice, this time.

I finished the form and glanced around the room while waiting for the staff to come back and tell me what to do next. I noticed a table in the corner, covered with about a half dozen wooden boxes, some smaller than others. Each box had a piece of paper with a photo on it, rubber-banded around the box. Just then, a man walked in and quietly placed another box with the others. Somehow, I knew right away that they were urns; there had been a sign out front about pet cremation.

Well, shit. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head. Figures that the universe would make a hard thing even harder, by deepening the parallels of my loss. It felt like salt in the gaping wound of my heart, and all I could do was just sit there and take it.

The woman came in and reviewed my paperwork, reading the “reason for relinquishment” section, where I played the widow card in my explanation of why I was choosing not to keep her. The staff woman entered some info into the computer and said she was trying to find the best choice from the drop-down menu for reason. The best she could come up with was “found, can’t keep.” I loved that reason! I felt so validated and relieved at such a simple truth! I laughed even, saying, “well, it only took me five years after finding her to realize I can’t keep her!” But it was okay, this reason was telling me. They made it ok.

The woman then asked me if I wanted a moment to say goodbye. I unexpectedly started tearing up at just the thought of it. She politely left the room, and I was overcome with a wave of sorrow. I opened the cage and Little Kitty poked her sweet head tenderly into my hand. I surprised myself with speaking out loud to her quite freely, which doesn’t usually come easy to me. I told her that I was so grateful for her sweet presence in our backyard all this time, and for starting to teach Jack about being a pet owner. Some tears came, and then there was a burning, tearing feeling, as I felt a tidal wave of grief bang at the back of my throat. It wasn’t just a cat, it was another familiar face that had been part of my landscape before and after Matt Died.

I had to tamp things down, keep Little Kitty from getting all the way out of the carrier, and also didn’t want to be a complete mess with all these strangers around. After all, I was choosing this. Did I deserve to be as sad as I felt?

The woman came back after a minute, and told me that the cat would go right to the clinic for some pain medicine, and was scheduled for her eye removal surgery the very next day! I was pleasantly surprised, and realized - I had done that. I had gotten her to the place where she would be taken care of, and it wasn’t going to be my burden to hold anymore. On the other side of her recovery, Little Kitty would be put up for adoption. And it wouldn’t be me needing to feed her anymore, no more fighting the ants off of her food out back, no more boxes and boxes of wet food cans to recycle. No more yowling, no more stressing about the neighbors.

There was a stillness after Little Kitty was gone that was both relieving and oppressively sad. The vacuum of silence in her absence left room to feel so many other things. Loss of companionship, familiarity, that bridge to all things Matt…as well as potential, space for a new kind of gain… relief. Appreciation of the birds and wild beauty of our backyard. I felt like my perspective widened from “what to do with this cat,” to deep connection with earth and nature around me. And Matt.

I did not get to keep Matt, either.

And then it got me thinking… do we really get to keep anything?

***

I just looked on the SB Humane Society website, stalking “Little Kitty.” She wasn’t in the “L”s where I would have expected her, alphabetically. And then I saw a “Cathy,” with clearly the left eye removed. I harkened back and thought, yes, it was her left eye they would have taken out. I looked closer, and… Cathy was Little Kitty!!! 

She was photographed on a staff member’s lap, and the description says:

“Cathy is pretty much the sweetest kitty you will ever meet. She is a little love bug who thinks that the best place in the entire world is in a warm lap. She will nuzzle in close and purr loudly. Cathy is a very happy girl who will make some adopter very happy.”

I felt tears of relief, having wondered if she had made it through the treatment process alive. She had! And then I wondered… what have I done? I chose to let go of “the sweetest kitty you will ever meet.” And why did they name her Cathy? She clearly had come in with the name Little Kitty; I wrote it on the form. In giving her away, I gave up her name, too? That seemed excessive. 

Just seeing her familiar fur markings brought back a feeling of comfort she provided, by being part of my apartment setting for the last five years. Did I want her back? Would she work as an indoor cat? Did I want an aggressive snuggler, purring, clawing, and drooling on my lap? My mind sorted through possibilities of who I could send in to adopt her back, since I couldn’t as the relinquisher.

And then I remembered why I let her go in the first place. One less thing to take care of. Honoring my position as a solo working parent, not knowing what the future holds, and knowing that I can’t be everything to everyone - or every cat. Or even the cat I had just given up. So I’ll share the link with my friends, and pray that she finds a good home, quickly.

https://www.sbhumanesociety.org/adopt/cats-for-adoption-pf/

Kitty Conundrum: Found, Can't Keep, Part 1

Just five months into dating, Matt and I moved into an apartment together. The landlord, who was moving out of the unit we were moving into, mentioned a little kitty living under the house that he had been feeding along with his own cat. We didn’t think much of it. The day we moved in, we stood in the small backyard, surveying our domain and the view down the canyon to the ocean beyond. Matt pulled me in close to him with his strong arm, and we chatted together with excitement, satisfaction, and curiosity of how this new adventure would unfold in our still-budding relationship.  

The little kitty came running up to us, meowing loudly and rubbing up against Matt’s leg. Matt greeted it warmly, like he did with just about every living creature. After looking at it for a few minutes, he exclaimed that it might be the now-grown kitten he had had when he lived on this land years before.

So we fed the cat together; and since Matt passed, I’ve continued to feed her for a total of five years. All with the belief that she was Matt’s cat from years before we met, which would make her at least 13 years old. She mostly stayed out of our way, quietly occupying our backyard, and becoming an expected familiar face.

A few months ago, she started meowing earlier and earlier in the morning to get fed. She was spatting with the unfixed male neighbor cat; he was mounting her, and they would yowl and hiss all night. Part of me was jealous. That cat was getting more action than me. She continued yowling at all hours, even after the frenzy of spring or the full moon seemed to fade from the neighbor’s cat. I’m not sure if Little Kitty is even fertile; I’ve never seen her have kittens, or do the “bootie dance,” as one vet tech called it in one of many phone calls to try and figure out what to do with this cat.

Over the past couple of weeks, her yowling became distressing, as it literally sounded like she was saying, “OW!” The neighbor who shares a wall on one side asked me a few times what was up with the cat. I said I didn’t know, but I thought she was really old, and was waiting for her to kick it.

And then the yowling became unbearable. She was clearly in distress of some sort, and I noticed that one of her eyes had gone dark. Perhaps she was going blind, and that was causing her to yowl? For days, I agonized what to do about this cat. Each yowl sent a shot of adrenaline into my heart, knowing she was in distress, and knowing it was totally up to me to make a decision. Do I treat and keep the cat? Get rid of the cat? Each idea had the weight of how… and of having to figure it out all on my own.  

I shared my conundrum with a friend, unable to contain the emotional stress on my own. This friend has a background in animal hide tanning and farm work, and she very practically asked if the cat just needed to be taken out and shot. While somewhat shocking to consider, I actually spent a good 36 hours thoroughly thinking through that option.

Perhaps I thought about it too much. In the shadow of the loss of my husband that was totally out of my control, it was overwhelming to think about being 100% in control of taking a life. Little Kitty seemed to have so much life in her still. Who was I to decide when her time was up?! And how would we do it? How do you shoot a cat without it turning into a splattered mess? Could I be there and “midwife” her through that transition, without undue trauma of seeing a blood everywhere? A complex fantasy developed of having a shared crossing experience with this cat, journeying with her soul out of her body, and sending her to the other side, back to Matt, with the message, “SEND HELP. I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

In the end, I couldn’t reconcile choosing to end her life, at least not without more information that that was the direction she was heading anyway. I called a mobile vet clinic and was able to set up an exam for that afternoon. I was relieved. And also still in the escape fantasy of putting her down (more humanely) with the vet, and me still midwifing her transition. As it was, the vet and tech went right for the eye, and after thorough examination, determined that she had iris melanosis, with secondary glaucoma. It’s painful, the vet said. But otherwise, she seemed healthy, was superbly behaved, and was even purring at one point during the exam. They also said that she didn’t seem like she was that old. Not old enough to fit the timeline of being Matt’s cat from years ago. So I had an identity crisis about who this cat was, and how much was I responsible for her.

When the vet mentioned that she would be fine after getting her eye removed, and how much that could cost, I welled up in outrage and resistance. Chin trembling, I told them that there was no way I was spending over a grand to take care of this cat that I never fully decided I wanted anyway. I guess I found the edge of my cat ownership.

Hence ensued over a week of calling the ASAP shelter, the Humane Society, and Animal Control, sort of getting the runaround about when and where I could bring this cat. According to the county, I was the legal owner because I had been feeding her for more than 30 days. The three, two-hour windows they have per week for owner relinquishment conflicted with my work commitments. Meanwhile, Little Kitty continued to yowl, driving a stake of suffering into my heart each time I heard her. I finally got an appointment for the next Saturday, a few days away.

Of course, in the anticipation of saying goodbye, my son decided to snuggle her every day, pick her up, call her “my kitty,” and otherwise break my heart at the thought of relinquishment. But the peace and freedom I envisioned on the other side of relinquishing ownership held me fast to my plan. Click here to read Part 2 of the Kitty Conundrum: Found, Can’t Keep.

I Tried to Shop Away My Sadness. It Backfired

It was a Saturday and I had no set plans, which as a single mom and a widow, is daunting enough in itself. Swaths of free time tend to wrap around my head and heart like tule fabric; promising in theory and overwhelming in execution.

To make matters worse, I was on a deadline to clear out an area of a storage tent in my driveway, which my landlord had informed me was no longer available for me to store stuff in. He actually said it was never a part of the rental agreement, but since I never got a rental agreement (four and a half years ago), I didn’t know. The rental process included my late husband talking to said landlord, a long-time friend of his, until a reasonable-for-this-town bro-deal amount of money was agreed upon, and the space was ours.

Matt had always been a buffer between myself and the sometimes unpredictable nature of the landlord. Matt knew him well, and knew when he was in the right mood to ask him for something, to report a needed repair, and to negotiate things like storage space. In the first two and a half years of living here, anything landlord-related was reliably husband territory, and I felt queenly taken care of.

I was now not only alone to deal with the stuff, the landlord, the negotiating, etc; but also felt the security of the  bro-deal tremble each time something like this came up. If the landlord can change his mind about that storage space, could he suddenly change his mind about our bro deal? My home feels lonely and vulnerable, at the mercy of someone else. Perhaps also, it’s like a form of PTSD … after experiencing such a traumatic and profound change that was completely out of my control when my husband died, any little change since has carried an aftershock of insecurity.

Most of the pile of stuff in the white storage tent in the driveway was Matt’s. About two weeks after he died, someone had gifted me the service of a housecleaner. A welcome gift! (Do it for grieving families! And new families!) In preparation for the cleaning service, I had hurriedly shoved away Matt’s coats, socks, and other random clothing items in some duffle bags that he had had for years. I quickly reorganized my storage system to reduce clutter and give the cleaning service a chance to do the most with the space available. The clearing out Matt’s stuff from the house had happened quickly. Some of the nice clothing items I had been able to donate, but the socks had not gone far, lying in wait for their next step, in the white tent, in the driveway.

The stuff wasn’t in great enough shape to keep for Jack, but also not trashed enough to just throw away. Or maybe my emotional attachment was clouding my judgement and it was just trash. I could not be the one to decide. And yet here I was, having to decide something. On my landlord’s timeline, not mine. I resented the whole thing. As I tossed the bags into the back of my van, I steeled against nostalgia, but it didn’t work.

I drove down the hill away from home, fighting back tears as I thought about how those socks had seemed to end up all over the house, before Matt died. Nothing special, white or black trouser socks, but I would find them behind the couch, in the bathroom, under the bed; everywhere. Shortly after we moved in together, I had made a basket for him, for his socks and boxers. I prided myself in helping him organize; it was not his strong suit. It felt like a sweet and simple way to take care of him when I would pick up the sock and tuck it into his basket, or put our clean laundry away. I don’t think I ever resented him for that. I hated when he would put things back in the kitchen in a different spot every time. But there was something endearing about those socks.

So, this Saturday, with my hours of unstructured time, I finally loaded up those duffle bags and tried to donate the stuff to the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, where Matt did his residential recovery program. They are under renovation, though, and didn’t accept them. I thought about giving the bags to a homeless person, but they were dusty and I didn’t remember exactly what was in each bag, and I didn’t want to burden a person with my giveaways if it was indeed just junk.

My desperate attempt to pass something on, to have Matt’s possessions mean something to more than just me, was at risk of taking up my whole Saturday, and was clouding my decision-making. I imagined myself driving around town for hours, trying to decide where these items would make the most impact. Was I doing enough to keep his memory alive? Writing is helping, but I miss his community… he was legendary in my life; how do I most deeply make that legend live on?? Who would benefit most from wearing these socks?!

These were the thoughts in my head as I pulled out of the Rescue Mission driveway, disappointed that I couldn’t just drop the stuff easily, and tell myself the story that it would change the lives of some homeless folks. I glanced back to the plain buildings that housed the rooms of recovery. It was in their cafeteria, where I had first met Matt, the day before Thanksgiving five years ago, at the dinner for the homeless. He said he had seen me walk across that very driveway, entering the cafeteria from our volunteer training session just before.

He said I had looked like an angel. Don’t go too deep, my mind quickly warned, staving off the gathering tears. I had a car to drive, a son to care for, and shit to put… somewhere.

It was in that moment that I quickly, simply and silently asked Matt where I should bring his stuff. There wasn’t too much weight on it, but perhaps just a little. Ok dude, my ‘tude said, you left me with all your socks and shit. Help me figure out where to dump it. GoodWill immediately came to mind. I was both reluctant and relieved, knowing I would just be able to drop it off and someone else would be able to decide if it was trash or treasure. But I also thought that perhaps that put some of the stuff at risk of going to the dumpster. I just couldn’t manage the minutiae of deciding. So, to GoodWill, it was.

The parking lot was packed; people bringing end of year donations and whatnot. I parked across the street, and Jack helped me load my little Costco wagon with the stuff from the back of my van, pull the wagon across the street, and drop off the bags.

I was afraid she wouldn’t take them when I wheeled the laden wagon up to the GoodWill employee. They were dusty and dingy. But she didn’t look twice, and said, “Put it anywhere.” Relieved, burdened, grieving, mothering, and being a human, all balled up into one frantic moment of tossing the bags in and walking away. The only thing I noticed was how unremarkable they instantly were, amidst the pile of indiscernible junk.

As I walked across the GoodWill parking lot back to my car, I said a little prayer to Matt, asking that he make sure the stuff goes to the right place. Actually, I think I was asking for forgiveness, that I had to rushedly and somewhat carelessly toss his stuff impersonally in a bin of other peoples’ throw-aways. I worked so hard to be so intentional with each step of the process of letting go and grieving his loss… this was uncharacteristically unceremonial, and it was disconcerting.

I wasn’t even able to register until later that Jack was helping give away his father’s memorabilia. I didn’t tell Jack at the moment that that was what was happening. Should I have? I wondered later. Did I miss an opportunity to include him, that could have been meaningful? I was functioning on autopilot; just do the thing and move on. Looking back, I feel like I missed out on a chance to share an experience of giving, and appreciating the spirit of his dad, that could have been a bonding moment.

But I had stuff to do that day, so back in the car we climbed, and headed out.

I drove directly to a grocery store and bought the basics on the list, as well as a few impulses, like Strauss Creamery eggnog, for $5.99 a quart. It’s my third quart in the last month. I put it in my coffee. And sip it directly from the container whenever I pass the fridge. A moment of sweetness in the bitterness of this phase of my life. I’m not yet spending too much time worrying about how that eggnog will appear on my waist. Give it time. And maybe another quart.

Then I went to Costco and somehow spent almost $300. Aside from renewing my membership to go buy more shit, and a four-set of metal wine tumblers that I suddenly desperately needed for the camping kit I use twice a year, I literally cannot tell you what else I bought. Ok, some eggs and cat food and gluten free flour mix, even though I already have a bag, but it’s winter and I’m going to be baking, and this is a new brand for cheaper, so I’d better get it while they have it and I can shove it in a cabinet and hope to not forget about it when the bag of Pamela’s baking mix runs out.

I felt a little jolt of satisfaction and something like grounding, each item I put in the cart. Like their physical weight was keeping me on this earth, moving me forward, surviving life. I could survive because I had pounds and pounds of gluten free flour, and backup bottles of gummy vitamins, just to have, for when the current almost-new bottles ran out.

After Costco, I convinced poor, tired, snotty three-year-old Jack to go to Sprouts with me - I bribed him with a balloon, imposing my mothering tactics on a poor unsuspecting employee to fetch the promised balloon. I could have let that store stop go, but it was also early enough in the day to make a long afternoon at home feel tedious and lonely. Shopping was an activity… and around other adults, to boot!

After loading my cart up with bubble bath and chili-making ingredients (all on the list!), I got back in the car to head home, realizing that all the space I had made in the car by leaving the stuff at GoodWill was taken up, and then some, by the mindless mania of shopping that had wasted my day.

Jack did, however, get his balloon, and it’s been a source of great entertainment since then. In a couple of days, it will be deflated. And it will soon go in the trash can. Much like the thrill at the moment of purchasing all this stuff that I now was responsible for getting into the house and put away.

Once we got home and unloaded the car, I took deeper stock of what had just happened. Shit was everywhere, and so were my emotions. It was practically dark at 4:30pm, and cold, giving my two-room studio a closed-in feeling. The playmat was covered in trains and cars and clothespin-like balloon clips that somehow became sharks in Jack’s world and are some of his favorite toys right now. Ugh. Clutter everywhere; it felt like static in my brain, all I could think of was how to get rid of it all.

I was irritable, stressed about getting some work tasks done; there was dinner, lofty ideas of making chili, putting shit away, throwing packaging in the recycling bin… and the underlying tension of having given away my husband’s socks, and having shoved those feelings into a shopping bag.

What hit me deeply upon going to bed, finally giving myself a moment of quiet; the first all day, with no stuff, no Facebook, no toddler; was that I literally went directly from giving stuff away to replacing it with more stuff. I thought I wasn’t really a victim of consumerism and marketing; I rarely buy new clothes or wear makeup... But there was something really … ingrained … that shopping would make me feel better after giving away my dead husband’s ratty coats and old socks.

As I write, and make space for these feelings, I see how easy it is to hide behind the “Buy Now” button on Amazon.com… or where ever. I’ve become acutely aware of how clutter in my house sucks my energy, catches my creative flow in its nooks and crannies, and swirls it up with the dust bunnies. It also gets in the way of acknowledging the unrelenting reality of grieving. What would it have been like to slow down and include Jack the whole way through what happened, and then go to the beach and sit in the warm sand with him to let my nervous system regulate? There was nothing I bought that day that I couldn’t have gone another day - or another few weeks - without. Yet holding back the tide of sadness felt safer. But just like in nature, that wall will eventually have to come down.

I’ve joked for a long time that I want to become a minimalist, I just haven’t yet found the time. I am realizing that my mission not only includes getting rid of already-existing clutter, but also not adding any new! My relationship to shopping needs to change.

I realize, with some fear, this means changing my relationship with my feelings. ‘Cause if I don’t, the next time I go clothes shopping when I hit a big emotional surge of grief, I’ll get home and realize my new purchases won’t fit in my closet. Fuck.