Category Archives: Widowhood

Hold on.

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Nate would be appalled. Without realizing it, I’ve been running around without any health insurance. I went over the handlebars on my bike without insurance and spent six hours in the emergency room without insurance. I had a full head scan and 21 x-rays without insurance and today at my annual ob-gyn appointment, the woman at the desk said, “Did you know you don’t have insurance?”

After telling her that wasn’t possible, she mentioned my insurance company was going out of business. I knew that. Two months ago I’d signed up for a new plan with a new company (which translated to several hours of being “on hold”) and pulled the new insurance card from my purse to prove it.

But after 30 minutes staring at her computer while she brought up my accounts with both insurance companies, we concluded she was right. I was wrong. Apparently there was a three week gap between the end of one and the beginning of the other.

Oh how I miss Nate! He would never have let this happen. Although I’d asked what seemed like hundreds of questions in the process of terminating the old insurance and setting up the new (with additional “hold time” while waiting for the answers), apparently I hadn’t asked the one question that could have saved me from the mess I’m in, which was, “When does it start?”

Today I’d driven from Michigan to see the doctor but heard the lady behind the desk say, “If you keep your appointment today, you’ll have to pay for everything yourself, which we call self-pay.”

Since I’d waited three months to get in and needed a new prescription to combat osteoporosis, I nodded and said, “OK.”

The doctor, who has become like a friend after many years, spent 45 minutes with me, taking time to ask questions about Nate and all that’s happened. I left her office with a fist full of prescriptions (mammogram, colonoscopy, bone density test, Fosamax) and in my usual daze, walked right past the girl at the desk and straight out the door. On my mind was whether or not Jack had gotten hot while waiting in the car for two hours. (He was OK.)

An hour later, just as my car was driving over the Michigan state line, my cell phone rang with the doctor’s office on the caller ID. “Did you walk out without paying after you said you would?” the girl at the desk asked. “I’ll take your credit card number right now.”

I’m learning the hard way, and tomorrow will most likely be another day spent “on hold” as I try to talk to both insurance companies and my insurance man. Hopefully, after enough time “holding on,” I’ll be able to unravel the confusion.

By now I’m used to the fact that as a new widow, my part time job is listening to “musak” and hearing a phone robot tell me my call is important to her.

But never mind. I’ve got a Bluetooth, a skein of yarn and two eager knitting needles to make all that “hold time” worthwhile.

“The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride. Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” (Ecclesiastes 7:8-9)

Love in a Crawl Space

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Before we moved from Illinois to Michigan, the girls and I emptied a very full crawl space measuring 25 ft. square. The most valuable thing in it was a trunk-sized cardboard box I hadn’t looked into since before we got married.

But it was time to downsize, and we needed to be cut-throat about trimming debris from our lives. The box was marked “Memorabilia” and I had no idea what was inside. It was also marked with water stains from a basement flood two houses back, and I wondered if the box was even worth opening.

After peeling off the dried out, curly-edged masking tape, I opened it to find every letter I’d received during high school and college years, each one still in its envelope, the oldest with four cent stamps. In a day without cell phones, texts or Facebook, handwritten correspondence was the only way we kept in touch. The letters were organized by author, nearly 30 different people, each stack secured with a rubber band and ordered by date. Although the rubber bands had rotted and the letters were stuck together, all were readable.

Tucked in the bottom of the box were my journals from the same time period. Although I didn’t have the letters I had written in answer to the ones I’d received, my journals showed what was on my mind.

After finding the letters, I went upstairs and announced to Nate I’d be taking a few days off from packing up the house to take a trip down Memory Lane. I invited him to join me, but he smiled and said, “No thanks.” He knew how goofy I was as a kid and had better things to do than wade through hundreds of old letters.

Every evening after dinner I “descended” and sat among stacks of boxes that were packed and ready for our move. Author by author I went through the massive letter-box, “visiting” each friend and our shared past.

There were cousins, girlfriends, boyfriends, my sister (after she went to college), my brother (after I went to college), my parents (mostly lectures-in-envelopes), and a number of letters from military guys fighting the Viet Nam war. The whole assemblage was a storyline of life in the sixties, from the peaceful beginning of that decade to its tumultuous end.

I’d forgotten most of the details in the letters but certainly remembered the people. After reading what the girls had written, I packaged those bunches up and sent them to each author. Some guffawed, some cried and some went through a crisis after reading their own writings. As for the guy letters, I read each one, then filed them all in the recycling bin.

The most interesting part of my trip down Memory Lane was to note how all of us had changed, what decisions we’d made since the sixties and who was doing what now. Some have compiled many years of marriage, others had suffered through divorce. Some had no children, others had lots. Some now live in foreign lands, others haven’t gone much of anywhere. Some are wealthy, others are struggling. And a handful have already graduated to eternity.

The letter-box had nothing in it from Nate. That’s because once he and I got to writing, his stack grew so well, it needed its own box. I kept that “set” to open after we’d moved. Going down our own private tour of Memory Lane would be, I thought, something the two of us would have time to share, once we moved to Michigan.

But God had a different plan, and we never got to open that box. My guess is that Nate now owns all knowledge of our past, even without the letters to jog his memory. It no longer matters to him like it still does to me. I believe when we get to heaven, we won’t have forgotten a thing. To the contrary, we’ll probably remember everything more precisely.

One of these days I’ll “descend” to our Michigan basement and open that box marked “Letters from Nate” to make that  trip down Memory Lane by myself.

But not yet.

“The memory of the righteous will be a blessing.” (Proverbs 10:7)

 

Love Letters

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I laughed the other day when a radio commentator made reference to today’s students as the “I-heart-you generation.”  She was referring to the abbreviated communication between boyfriends and girlfriends that has replaced traditional love letters. Texts and tweets are preferred over hand-written messages that were, in bygone years, scented with perfume, sealed with a kiss and read over and over again.

I still have every one of Nate’s love letters, written to me in the late sixties and early seventies. They span the weeks after we met, the time during which we developed a friendship, the months of his active duty in the Army and our five month engagement period. As I recall, they included a vocabulary of love, original four-line poetry and an abundance of longing, although I haven’t re-read them in forty years.

Nate was a frequent letter-writer during those days but also spoke the language of the I-heart-you-generation long before 21st century kids ever thought of it. Always the gift-giver, in our early years together he communicated his love with heart-shaped necklaces. The first was a small one made of ruby chips which I’ve worn hundreds of times. After that, any heart that would strike his fancy found its way home.

His most recent heart gift came during the summer of 2007 just after our son Hans got married. It was time to go home, and we were painfully late for our flight to Chicago. As we raced through the Manchester airport dragging wheeled bags and carrying many more, my eye caught on a display of chunky heart-shaped glass pendants in a glittering gift shop. “Oooo!” I pointed as we ran past. “Look at those!”

I never broke stride but ten paces further realized Nate had. When I looked back, he was stopped in front of the necklace display, reaching into his pocket. “Might as well get rid of our British pounds,” he said, looking at me. “Come and pick one fast!”

No problem, since they were all gorgeous. We made the plane, the whole crowd of us, just before they closed the doors, and today I have my glass heart, along with that joyful memory of Nate’s desire to please. I never had cause to doubt his love.

Nate loved me in a 1 Corinthians 13 kind of way. In doing so, he was being Christ-like, and I wish I’d thanked him for that. God’s love for his children can’t be duplicated, because he’s God and we’re not. And his greatest love-gift, that of his Son Jesus, represents a depth of love beyond all human possibility. Nevertheless, he wants us to reflect his love as we try to love others. Nate did a good job of that.

In the days immediately after he died, my heart hurt. I wore his heart necklaces often, sometimes under my hoodies, thinking about the circumstances that prompted each gift. Then one day while opening the mail, I came to a padded envelope. A college friend who knew nothing of Nate’s penchant for heart pendants had sent a golden heart with the word “Nate” engraved on it. She said, “You don’t have to wear it in the traditional way. Just pin it to your pillow, hang it over a mirror or slip it into your pocket.”

I was touched deeply by her thoughtfulness, and it seemed a fitting final necklace to add to Nate’s series of hearts. He “hearted” me, and one of these days I’ll celebrate by re-reading those old love letters. On a cold winter night, it’s bound to be a warm walk down Memory Lane.

“Love comes from God… for God is love. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (1 John 4:7,8,10, parts)