Glitter in the Air

I got home from Nashville this afternoon—my first overnight business trip since Bunny died.    My firm is working on a big construction case, and Brent (my partner in Oklahoma) and I were there for a deposition yesterday.  We actually arrived on Tuesday to start preparing. 

Brent is really nice and very straight-laced—a real, old-fashioned gentleman.  He’s about my age, and has three kids—two boys and a girl.  His eldest is in college and youngest is seven years old.  His wife, Janee, has homeschooled them all.  I met her back in December, and she’s pretty and just as sweet as she can be, and so tiny!  She’s about five feet tall, which surprised me, because Brent’s at least 6’2”. 

I had been to Nashville a few months before, and had told Brent about a karaoke pub crawl I’d gone on with another attorney in the case.  Brent was game for karaoke (he’d never done it before), but he’d pass on the alcohol, which was fine with me.   Since Tuesday was Mardi Gras, though, karaoke seemed to be off the Nashville menu.   We shopped the little souvenir places and boutiques along Broadway instead, picking up some Elvis-style sunglasses for Brent and trying on cowboy hats.  There are tons of hat and boot stores in Nashville.  

Last night, after a very, very long deposition, we decided to give it another shot.  We had dinner with one of the other attorneys at Morton’s Steak House (AWESOME steak!) and then walked down to 2^nd Street.  I knew from the previous night that Printer’s Alley was a bit too seedy for Brent.  Finally, we came upon the right place: Buck Wild Saloon.   Brent jumped right in, telling the waitress the Elvis song he wanted to sing.   When they called him up, he whipped out his Elvis glasses and took the stage.  He actually does a pretty good Elvis imitation—we’d visit Graceland together, so I’ve heard it—but still, I was impressed with his performance, especially for a first-timer.

A few songs later, they called up Veronica.   To Brent’s surprise, I jumped up and walked to the stage.  Bill wasn’t as surprised—he’d been on the first karaoke crawl when I’d been Jennifer.  Giving a pseudonym is part of my karaoke fun.   I sang Pink’s Bad Influence, and I later joked to Brent that I was a bad influence on him.

I liked Pink’s songs, and even had some on my iPod, but I didn’t get really into her until about five months ago.  Bunny had taped a performance of her Funhouse show; basically, it was a live performance of the album of the same name.  When he cued it up, I wasn’t overly excited, but it was going to be a lot better than the standard bigfoot/mummy/UFO/Civil War/men catching wildlife/men hunting treasure/men playing poker shows he usually watched.   We sat for the next hour or so, mesmerized by energetic Pink and her elaborate costumes and sets and acrobatics.  If you ever see it listed on your channel guide, I highly recommend it.

Bunny had very diverse, eclectic tastes in music.  Metallica was his favorite band, but he was nearly equally enamored with Celtic Women.  Johnny Cash, Dido, Leon Redbone, and Adele  also made their way into his iPod.  For awhile, he was in a folk music phase, and we went down to Sarasota for a concert.   He came up with odd concert choices—a Randy Newman event in Piedmont Park one year springs to mind—but he went along uncomplainingly to my Elton John concerts and events, so I went along to his.

I’ve loved Elton John all my life, and still do.  When we lived in Atlanta, our chances of running into him were much better, because he lived there, too.  One year, he had a closet sale at Neiman Marcus to benefit his AIDS foundation.  We both took off work and went down to Buckhead, taking positions right on the edge of the red carpet.    There were lots of other people there, too—I’d guess about 200 or so—and we all buzzed with excitement as the long, black limo came into view.  It stopped and Elton jumped out onto the red carpet, then strode directly up to me, like I’d pulled him there by sheer will.

Elton and I, who are about the same height (he may be a smidge taller), were literally standing toe-to-toe, face-to-face.   You may be thinking that, as we looked into each other’s eyes, I said something witty or admiring or grateful to the man whose music had seen me through many dark teenage days.  Alas, you’d be wrong.  For the first (and only) time in my life, I was struck speechless.  I believe I was slack-jawed, as well.  So Elton moved on, without my having uttered a word to him. 

Bunny had stood behind me the whole time, watching the scene unfold.  He thought it was hilarious!  As soon as I regained my senses, I chided him.

“Bunny!  Why didn’t you give me a nudge?  You saw I was frozen!”  Now he started hooting with laughter.

“Oh, yeah!  Just my luck, you’d have fallen over on top of him and broken his arms.  That would have really made an impression!”  If he could have rolled on the floor laughing, he would have been by that point, but the crowd was too thick.

Anyway, back to Pink.  We both loved her show, and I immediately downloaded the Funhouse album.  I still play it often, and know all the songs by heart.  She co-wrote all the songs, and the theme of the album is her separation from her husband and her feelings of grief/anger/frustration.  All the ballads on this album have special meaning for me.  In Bunny’s final hours, as he lie unconscious, Joey and I played songs for him.  Joey chose mostly country tear-jerkers about sons and fathers, while I tried to stay more upbeat with songs about love, by artists that Bunny liked.  Since Pink was on that list, and I had the whole album on my iPad, I played all of the ballads.  It was the last concert we’d watched together.  I had to search You Tube for Johnny Cash and some of his other favorites.

So on Wednesday night, Brent got up for his second Elvis song, and I picked Glitter in the Air for my mine.  If you’ve never heard it before, it’s a very sweet mid-tempo ballad.  Here’s a link to Pink (that makes me want to go all Seussian and rhyme some more—like “so take a drink and link to Pink”) performing it live (at the Grammy’s, so you’ll have to tolerate a small commercial beforehand, but it’s well worth the wait): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GStp-Mzy_w. 

Then I (as Veronica) took the stage for my turn.  Whichever version the DJ chose was in the right key for me—I hit all the high notes without my voice breaking, and all the low ones without effort.  When I finished, I got some very enthusiastic applause.  That’s more impressive than you might think, because most of the karaoke singers in Nashville seem to be frustrated or soon-to-be frustrated professional singers looking to make it big.

On our way back to the airport this morning, we stopped at The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home.  Andrew Jackson was a President who always intrigued me, probably because he was quirky and passionate and a fighter.   But his treatment of minorities was distressing, and tarnished my admiration for him.  One of the recurring themes of the tour was Jackson’s absolute devotion to his late wife, Rachel. 

Rachel had been married prior to marrying Jackson, but her divorce wasn’t official.  That situation was finally rectified, and the Jacksons married again.  However, when he ran for President, his political enemies launched a huge attack on Rachel’s character.  She died shortly before Jackson entered the White House, and he never forgave her attackers, nor stopped defending her honor.  He was widowed at 61, and died at 78 without ever remarrying.  The Hermitage is steeped in Jackson’s tributes to Rachel.

The tour was fascinating, and certainly educational, but the repeated references to Jackson and his wife left me saddened.   On my drive from the airport, I remembered the times I’d come back home to find Bunny waiting, almost child-like with enthusiasm, to see me and to find out what little trinkets I’d gotten for him on my trip.  This was the first time I’d come home to an empty house—no one impatiently waiting for my arrival.  I couldn’t help shedding a few tears.

Then, as I opened the front door, my kitties came excitedly to greet me.  Sierra was first, followed by Bono and Shiloh and Kieran.  Everyone wanted kisses and petting, and said hello in his or her own way.  I hadn’t come home to an empty house, after all: four furry little loved ones were eagerly waiting to welcome me.  

Signs

My sisters and I have such unique personalities that if we didn’t know better, we’d think we weren’t related at all.  Other people think Julie and I physically resemble each other quite a bit (even though we don’t think we look anything alike), to the point that we’re often mistaken for each other. 

But as different as Julie and I are, we shared a common interest with Bunny: the supernatural.  From childhood, Julie and I have had precognitive dreams—we’d dream about things that would later happen.  Sometimes, we intuitively knew about things that were about to occur.  We even, at times, could read each other’s thoughts.  Any time we reported these abilities to Mama, she would roll her eyes and snort “As if!” or some other derisive comment.

Bunny’s only psychic gift was precognitively thinking about songs that he would hear later in the day.  He readily acknowledged that it was a pretty useless ability, but he was quite proud of it.  Some obscure song from days or yore would come on the radio or television and he’d loudly proclaim that he was just thinking about that song a few hours before.

Many years ago, long before cancer came calling, Bunny and I decided on a code word—butterfly—that we would use to communicate with each other once one of us had passed on.  If the survivor heard that word from a medium or anyone else claiming to have a message from the departed, the code word would be the key to knowing if the message was genuine.  We happily kept to that word until about a year ago, when we found out that “butterfly” is the word that most people pick.  A medium who throws out the code word “butterfly” has a very good chance of getting it right.

Naturally, we had to come up with a new word, right then and there.  Before cancer, we would have done it eventually, but the fact that Bunny was so ill gave us a sense of urgency.  The one we picked is obscure, but not so obscure that either of us would forget it.  I’m not going to tell you what it is (that would kind of defeat the purpose of a secret code word), but you’re welcome to guess.   

Julie was visiting us when Bunny entered the hospital for the last time.  As we visited him in the ICU, and it was evident that he wasn’t coming home, we explained to Julie about our code word.  She wanted one, too, so I stepped out of the room so they could come up with something: theirs was actually a code phrase.  Of course, Bunny was thrilled to have someone else to contact from beyond.

He had a list of questions to find the answers to once he reached his final destination.  One was whether Bigfoot really exists.  Seriously.  He was fascinated with several different oddities, and Bigfoot topped the list.  Another was whether UFOs exist, although he was already sure they did.  He was so sure of it that, in the days before cell phones had cameras (or before people had cell phones, even), he kept a camera in his glove compartment in the event that he saw one while he was driving.

I don’t remember what his other questions were, but those were no-brainers, so it’s easy for me to recall them.  Although, I have to confess, I was a bit surprised that there weren’t more burning questions to which he sought answers.  Julie and I added our questions to the list so he could give us the answers from the beyond.  See?  That’s why you need code words!   Otherwise, you might find yourself walking around with erroneous messages from people who are just making things up.

Once Bunny died, Julie started getting bombarded with her code phrase as soon as she got back home.  It’s an unusual phrase, and certainly one you wouldn’t expect to see in everyday life.  Not more than once, anyway.  I haven’t heard my code word yet, but I haven’t been seeking out mediums, either.  I do believe that Bunny has let me know he’s around me, though.

The first sign I had was that the Wii was on. If my mother were still alive, she’d be rolling her eyes right now. I got the Wii several years ago, chiefly for exercise.  After I’d had it a few months, my dad told Bunny that Netflix made a disc you can put in the Wii and get movies online.  Thanks, Daddy.  Not!  After that, I had to fight for Wii time, and Bunny would never take his disc out when he was done.  He also left the Wii running 24/7, which aggravated me to no end.  My protests that it wasn’t good for anything to run all the time fell on deaf ears.

Sunday night, once I got back home, I settled down to watch whatever mindless show I could find.  I caught sight of it almost instantly—the Wii was on!  The tell-tale blue light was emitting from the disc slot.  I’m a freak about turning everything in the house off before I leave, which aggravated Bunny to no end.  Many’s the time he bitched and moaned that I was too paranoid, electricity’s been safe for years, and on and on.  More than once, I told him he could thank Daddy for raising us that way.

Aside from the fact that my freakishly paranoid obsession with electricity would have kept me from leaving the Wii on, even though Trinity had spent the night Saturday, we hadn’t used it.  We watched movies instead.  No one had gone near the now-running Wii.  Then the second sign came yesterday.

I was visiting my family physician, Dr. Williams, who’d also been Bunny’s primary care doctor.  It was time for my annual check-up.  Dr. Williams is one of those rare doctors who doesn’t rush in and out—she takes her time, listens to her patients, and actually cares about what’s going on in their lives.  She was the first non-family member to call me after Bunny died.  Before she left the exam room, I held her back a second.

“I just want you to know, John and I were married over 25 years,” I began, my voice breaking.  She put her hand on my arm, and I composed myself.

“In all that time, he hated going to doctors.  But he always loved coming to see you.”  I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.  She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight, and thanked me for telling her that.  Her own eyes were brimming with tears. I wasn’t exaggerating—Bunny loved Dr. Williams, because she’d listen to his various ailments or stories or whatever else he had on his mind, even before he got sick.

When she left the room, she left the door ajar so the tech would know she was finished.  As I waited for the tech, I could hear two people talking in the hall.

“What are you, a rabbit?” One asked the other.  I took that question as a sign from Bunny, because sometimes I called him Rabbit or my Rabbit.  Corey sometimes called him B. Rabbit.  The timing was too eerie to be coincidence.  Besides, how many times do you hear the word “rabbit” in a doctor’s office?  I couldn’t remember ever having heard it, and I’ve actually worked in doctors’ offices.  Bunny was happy that I’d told Dr. Williams how much he loved her.

I’m not surprised that Bunny has visited us.  What surprises me more is that Mama has visited me.  About a year ago, Mama told me about letters she’d read to Dear Abby about pennies from heaven—recently bereaved people finding pennies in odd places, and believing that their departed loved ones had left them there as a sign.  She reported that she had had the same experience with pennies from heaven. I was astonished that my mother--who’d been a doubter all her life--would believe such fairy tales.

I don’t like pennies—they take up too much room, so I try to rid myself of them whenever possible.  If I get pennies as change, I leave them on the counter for the next person who needs them.  Suddenly, I was finding them in the very least likely place they’d be: my house.  I’ve found five so far.  The first was smack-dab in the middle of the living room, in a spot where Mr. Dyson had traveled less than an hour before.  I thought it strange, but not overly so.  Until I found the second one.

“What the hell is with all these pennies?” I asked Margeaux.  Then I remembered the conversation I’d had with Mama about pennies from heaven.  I found the next one within an hour.  She would have scoffed at the idea of a code word, but she’d still found a way to reach out from beyond.  Now I don’t mind pennies so much. 

A Moving Experience

A friend of mine often jokes that I should have my own reality show, because so many weird things happen to me. After today, I’m starting to take the idea seriously. I had planned a lazy Sunday—my granddaughters spent the night with me, and we were going to sleep late then go out for breakfast. However, I was roused from my bed by the phone ringing at 9:00 a.m.

I don’t function well without coffee, particularly first thing in the morning--no matter how late the morning starts. Whenever Bunny brought me coffee in bed, that was a big hint that he had something planned for the day. Now, without the benefit of caffeine, all I could hear was frantic babbling.

“Movers…jacked up…hostage!” A friend of mine had bought a bunch of furniture at an auction in Clearwater, and now the movers who’d been hired were apparently changing the terms of the agreement. Could I go down there and see what was going on? Would Joey be interested in going with me to supervise the movers? Joey actually worked for a moving company for awhile, so he was the perfect person to come along. The movers were supposed to start at 10:00 a.m.

First I called Joey to gauge his interest. My friend would pay him a flat rate, and I estimated the job wouldn’t take more than two or three hours. I’ve moved several times, both internationally (from Germany to the U.S.) and interstate (Louisiana to Georgia to Florida), and several times intrastate, so I have some experience knowing how much stuff will fit into a moving truck. I had actually previewed the furniture for my friend on Friday afternoon, so I knew where it was and how much of it there was. Very dark cherry, Horse & Hound style—not my taste at all—but nice, heavy, quality pieces, all in good condition. Professional movers should have had no problem fitting it all into the truck in that amount of time, if not less. He was willing. We’d meet at Steak-N-Shake (yes, they serve breakfast), and Corey would take the kids and I would take Joey to Clearwater.

So I threw on some (very) casual clothes, applied a minimum of makeup, and dressed Sarita while Trinity got ready. We headed out for breakfast, JoCo joined us, and then Joey and I headed for Clearwater. If the movers were starting at 10:00 a.m., they should be well into the job by the time we got there. The furniture was actually at two locations. We went to the one where, logically, the movers should have been—the one with the biggest pieces of furniture. Naturally, the movers were at the other location. The guy in charge of our location called the guy in charge of the other place to see how far along the movers were.

“They’ve got about 30 minutes left.” There was no sense in going to the other location, since it was about 15 minutes away. There was a question of whether everything would fit into one truck. so we told them to bring everything over to the second place and we’d sort it all out there. We had inventoried the stuff that was to go onto the truck at our location when we first got there. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, a Penske truck pulled up, and Joey jumped up to meet the sole occupant. It wasn’t the truck we were waiting for; it was someone else who’d bought furniture.

After about another hour, as we were sitting in the lobby looking out on the parking lot, a well-worn, dirty white moving truck pulled up. The driver peered uncertainly at the building.

“It looks like the movers from Funny Farm!” Joey said. His unexpected reference to the Chevy Chase movie threw me into a fit of laughter. So dead-on, so funny, so perfect.

Eventually, the three-man crew made its way into the building to start taking apart the desks. I hate to judge books by their covers, and try very hard not to, but these guys made it very difficult. Two of them looked like they hadn’t seen soap and water in quite awhile. Or shampoo. The movers I’ve seen before had uniforms, not wife-beaters. On the plus side, the lack of sleeves did allow for viewing the full sleeves of tattoos. I’m an art lover, but “Never Trust Bitches” is probably an acquired taste.

They’d brought only the desks from the other location, which meant they’d left behind about half the stuff they were supposed to have on the truck. There was plenty of room on the truck, but their boss had told them to only move the desks.

“Then get him on the phone. You’re supposed to move everything.” I said. Since the unexpected mark-up, my friend had Googled the moving company, and let’s just say they don’t get stellar reviews. If there was still room on the truck after they loaded this location, they’d go back, he assured me. After he talked to his boss. Besides, there was another mover coming for that other stuff. I assured him he was mistaken—he was the only mover who’d been hired.

They weren’t the hardest working movers I’ve ever seen: it took them a little over two hours just to get nine desks loaded. The crew leader huffed and puffed and moaned and groaned like he was 80 years old, but he was actually younger than Joey. He also had difficulty keeping his crew on task—he had to occasionally go looking for them. At about desk number seven, he made it clear that the desks were all they were taking.

Another argument ensued, and I even got in the truck at one point to demonstrate how much room was left in the truck, and how the contract was for the whole truck. Joey made suggestions about how they could maximize the space they had, but they were adamant—the boss had told them that only the desks were being moved. The boss who now wasn’t answering the calls that the crew leader was allegedly making to him.

They closed up the truck and were “going for a snack” while they waited for the boss to call them back. Side note: we were on a corner lot, and there were two big convenience stores directly across the streets in either direction. Snacks were easily in walking distance. We suspected we’d seen the last of our reluctant movers.

Meanwhile, I was on the phone to my friend, who actually managed to get hold of the boss’s wife. I can only imagine that conversation, but I’m sure that at least some of it consisted of him disabusing her of any book-cover judging her crew leader had done of me and my sidekick. We weren’t just some haphazardly-dressed mother with a know-it-all son; we were an attorney (with photographs) and her hired gun moving expert.

While we were mid-dial at trying to find a moving truck of our own, the movers reappeared. They were less happy than they’d been the first time, but they were back. They loaded in more stuff and ignored more suggestions. At one point, Joey offered to climb into the truck and load chairs onto the top of the stack of desks. Instead, they piled chairs onto the lower sections of the furniture, declared the truck full, and left.

As they were peevishly loading the chairs in, yet another box truck pulled up, with another guy coming to pick up furniture. Joey was the first to notice his license plate—he was from Gwinnett County, Georgia. Joey greeted this new guy like he was an old friend. My sonny has the gift of gab—he’s the kind of person who truly never meets a stranger.

I could go on and on with the story, but to bring it quickly to a close, we talked the new guy into bringing all the left-over furniture to my house, where it’s safe in my garage instead of out on the streets of Clearwater. So, what started out to be an easy few hours turned into a long, drawn-out affair. On the plus side, I got to spend the day with Joey, trading barbs and laughs and working together to try to solve a series of problems.

“I enjoyed spending the day with you, even though it didn’t turn out like we thought,” I said as I drove him back to his house.

“Yeah, but it would’ve been a lot better doing something fun,” he answered.

We’ll do something fun another day. What matters most is that we got through this day as a team, and we enjoyed ourselves despite the circumstances.

Surprises

In one of my prior posts, I talked about Bunny’s office (Cleaning House, 1/22/12), and how I’d decided to postpone clearing it out for awhile. A lot has happened since then, but when I was visiting Joey and his family last weekend, I declared that this coming Sunday would be The Day: I was finally ready to tackle the man-cave.

“You’ll need to get a bunch of boxes,” Joey said. Duh! We joked about how cleaning out the office would be Bunny’s last laugh on us—he liked to play little jokes; we all did.

One of the best pranks of all time happened last February. Bunny’s cancer, which had been dormant for a short time, kicked into high gear, spreading up his lymph nodes from pelvis to neck within a matter of weeks. He had just completed a second round of radiation, and was about to start his first round of chemo. Joey and Corey still lived in Virginia, and decided to come down for the weekend to surprise him.

It wasn’t easy to surprise Bunny—he was so nosy, he usually figured things out well before the big reveal. For about two weeks, Joey and I plotted and planned. He almost caught us at one point, but I explained away the conversation Joey and I were having. Finally, the big day came: Joey had told Bunny that he and Corey were going to Atlantic City for the weekend, but really, they had flown down to Tampa. Joey had talked about his AC trip that whole week with great enthusiasm, asking Bunny about the places he’d visited there when he was in the Navy. Bunny and I were supposed to be going to AC in a few weeks, ourselves, so Joey promised to be on the lookout for the best new places.

I picked up Joey and Corey (“JoCo”) at the airport in the early afternoon and took them to the Hard Rock, where they would be spending the night. They’d come to our house for the next two nights, after the big surprise. I went back to work and waited for Bunny to come home. He called me about mid-afternoon to tell me that Joey had called from AC and was having a great time.

“Oh! You’ll never guess who’s in town!” I said excitedly. Up to this point, I hadn’t formulated an excuse to get him to the Hard Rock.

“Who?”

“Woodie and Cheryl! I told them we’d have dinner with them, so come straight home.” Then I told him I had another call coming in and had to go.

He had been pleasantly surprised—we hadn’t seen Woodie and Cheryl in a long time. Cheryl was a CRNA—a nurse anesthetist—and she’d been the one who set us up on our first date. Her husband is a retired Air Force pilot (and Vietnam hero) who worked as a CPA until a few years ago. He retired from the Air Force as a Lt. Colonel, but Cheryl didn’t retire from the Air Force Reserves until she outranked him as a full Colonel. I think it was mostly so he’d have to salute her. They are, quite literally, the most accomplished people I’ve ever met, and they’re funny and down-to-earth and a joy to be with. We saw them fairly often when we lived in Atlanta. They travel all the time--I doubt there are many places in the world they haven’t been--so they were a good choice for unexpected people coming to town.

I had about two hours to weave a story about why they were in Tampa. I had to be able to sell whatever I came up with, which would be very difficult. Most of the time, I couldn’t get anything past Bunny—he could almost always tell when I was fibbing. Meanwhile, Joey was arranging with the front desk to give me a key to get up to their room. At the Hard Rock, the elevators are guarded, so you have to show your key to board them.

By the time Bunny got home it was dark, so I rushed him out the door, saying we were late. We jumped into my car and set out, with me driving. I was also thanking my lucky stars for the darkness, because he wouldn’t be able to see my face. I was hoping my voice wouldn’t give anything away.

“How was your day?” I asked innocently.

“Why are Woodie and Cheryl in Tampa?” The nosy rabbit was coming out right away.

“Something Cheryl’s doing at MacDill—a presentation or something.” MacDill is a big Air Force base in Tampa, Cheryl’s always lecturing on something, and before she retired she was one of the top ranking nurses in the Air Force, so this was a pretty easy sell.

“Why aren’t they staying with us?”

“Bunny, you know she’s allergic to cats.” This is 100% true, so again, an easy sell.

“Oh, that’s right. Wait—where are you going? Just go down Dale Mabry!” Bunny had a very irritating habit of always back-seat driving. Side note: he was one of the worst drivers ever. Also, in general, his sense of direction was non-existent, but even he knew that MacDill was a straight shot south, and I was heading toward the interstate.

“They’re not staying at MacDill.” I hadn’t thought ahead for this part, so now I was totally going to have to come up with something on-the-fly.

“Where are they staying?”

“At the Hard Rock.”

“What??!!??” Bunny didn’t like the Hard Rock very much, so the mere mention of it made him suspicious.

“They’re staying at the Hard Rock. Apparently, Woodie is really into Blackjack, so he wanted to stay there so he’d have something to do while Cheryl’s at MacDill.” To this day, I have no idea whether Woodie plays Blackjack, but it wasn’t too far of a leap—he’s an accountant, and he has all kinds of hidden talents at board games, so I was turning him into a semi-pro Blackjack player.

“Really? I didn’t know Woodie played Blackjack.” He was buying it!

“Yeah, we didn’t know he played Scrabble, either, until he handed us our asses.” As it turned out, Woodie used to write crossword puzzles for a newspaper, so he’s a Scrabble savant. That little detail sealed the deal.

We walked through the casino with me pretending to scan the Blackjack tables for Woodie, and Bunny doing it for real. I managed to give him the slip long enough to get the key from the desk clerk, and we rode the elevator up to the room.

He knocked on the door and when Joey opened it, Bunny had a look on his face that I’d rarely seen before: absolute shock. It was priceless! Thank God Corey had the camera ready.

That weekend seems so long ago, but it was only last February. I know the exact date, because I was scanning Bunny’s Facebook page Sunday night and came upon the pictures. I was astonished at how good he looked: no one could have guessed that he’d be gone in less than a year. My heart broke to see him looking so happy, so (outwardly) healthy, so alive.

Tonight, JoCo and the kids came over. While the kids and I were playing, JoCo went into the man-cave to size up the job. Joey was also looking for the power cord for a camera I’d given to Trinity. Suddenly, it was like Bunny’s spirit possessed me: he hated when I touched his stacks, and I could hear JoCo shuffling through stuff.

“Joey, get out of there!” I called. No response. I waited a few minutes before calling out again.

“I’m looking for mumble mumble mumble,” he shouted back. I told him to get out again, an unexplainable anxiety quickly rising in me. More mumbling.

Finally, I got up and went to the doorway.

“Get out. I don’t have the boxes yet!” I said. Corey came out right away, but Joey had two more cents to contribute.

“I think we can just use these,” he said, showing me a plastic storage box.

“I’m not ready for you to be in here!” I replied, tears uncontrollably streaming down my face. Joey was sorry that he’d caused such angst, and even called once they got home to apologize. I still can’t explain why I reacted the way I did. I just know that I’m not ready yet. Which is a shame, because it’s a perfectly good (albeit extremely cluttered) room going to waste.

On the bright side, Corey got in touch with a chess club today to see if they were interested in all the chess paraphernalia. Bunny wanted his chess collection to go to a chess club, and as it turns out, the man Corey spoke with actually knew Bunny. That will be a good way to start dismantling the collections—once the first collection is out the door, the others should be easier. Time will tell.

My Funny Valentine

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. No worries here. Bunny didn’t believe in Valentine’s Day. He thought it was a holiday--much like Mother’s Day (but not necessarily Father’s Day)—that Hallmark made up to sell cards. Or florists to sell flowers. There was some conspiracy afoot, he was sure.

Bunny was a lot of things, but romantic wasn’t one of them. When Jan’s husband proposed to her, he whisked her away to a quaint B&B and gave her a Valentine box. It was filled with little candy hearts that all read “Marry Me.” Bunny slipped an engagement ring on my finger when I was confined to a hospital bed, recovering from emergency surgery. Not the kind of proposal to write home about.

Julie gets flowers every time she sneezes too hard. Todd surprises her all the time with getaways and thoughtful little gifts. In all the Valentine’s Days from the time we were dating, Bunny gave me flowers exactly once. It was so shocking that I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was 2001, and he came in bearing a dozen red roses. I nearly fainted from shock! Joey nearly fainted from shock when I told him when he called later that evening. Bunny never said why he picked that year, in particular, but I started thinking about it today, and I believe I have the answer. As usual, there’s a backstory.

We moved to Atlanta in 1988. For the next 10 years, as we took turns going to school, we lived in a nice-enough house in a nice-enough, but crowded, neighborhood. I graduated from law school in 1997 and got a job making what, to that point, was the most money in a year than I’d ever made in my life, combined. At the same time, Bunny was climbing his own career ladder to middle management, and he was making the most money he’d ever made up to then. We stayed in that house for another two years, saving our money.

Finally, we started really house-hunting. I say “really,” because Bunny liked to house-hunt just for fun: model homes, open houses, tours of homes—just to look. We weren’t finding any pre-existing homes that we liked, when we stumbled upon a new neighborhood under development. I was only about three miles from our old one, but much less crowded. There were only three lots left, and we spied the perfect one: it was on a little higher ground than the others, and had several ancient, gorgeous oak trees dotted around it.

We went to the model home to see the agent, and the builder was actually there at the time. We looked at several floor plans, and picked one that had what we were looking for: master on main, large laundry room, bonus room upstairs. The builder told us that the floor plan we’d chosen wouldn’t fit on the lot without cutting down at least two of the trees. He suggested an alternative—he had a house that would fit perfectly on the lot, amongst the trees, in another subdivision.

We went over to look at it and fell in love. It had lots of sweeping arches and open spaces, and had everything we wanted and more. It really was our dream house. We signed the contract to build it on our lot that very day.

Over the next several months, we threw ourselves into the task of homebuilding. A lot of people warned us that building a house tends to put a lot of strain on a marriage. In fact, one of the couples who’d just built a home in our new neighborhood split up during construction. Strangely enough, building our dream house was the one thing we never, ever bickered about. We were on the same page in every detail, from the flooring choices to the fixtures. No contractor-grade materials here—we pimped that house out! It had more hardwood in it than any of the other houses in the neighborhood—the most hardwood flooring the builder had ever installed in one of his houses. All the years of penny pinching were finally paying off.

We settled on a Mediterranean theme for the interior. The new house seemed palatial compared with our old one, so we needed more furniture. Plus, some of our old furniture, which we had bought because of low price rather than quality, was on its last legs. We got new appliances, because we were selling the old ones with the old house. We picked out upgraded fixtures to fit the theme. The new house had a lot of windows, so we scoured Atlanta for the best (i.e., least expensive) place to buy window treatments.

Finally, we moved in and started enjoying our dream house. The master bath was like heaven—huge garden tub, separate shower, two sinks, separate throne room. It was quite an improvement from the one-sink-in-the-bedroom house we’d just sold. We entertained friends and family. Once, my entire family came for a long weekend, and we had enough room so that everyone could sleep comfortably and not have to fight for bathroom time. Looking back, it really was too big for just two people. By that time, Joey was on his way out, so the upper floor didn’t see much use. We figured the extra space would come in handy when the grandchildren came along.

Then the unthinkable happened—Bunny got headhunted by a company in Clearwater. He normally started job hunting toward the fall every year, and 2000 was no exception. I could always tell when hunting season had started, because we’d get a sudden surge in voicemails on the home phone. Every once in awhile he’d get an offer that he would actually think about, but usually he just stayed where he was—the same hospital he’d worked at since shortly after we moved to Atlanta. I used to tease him that he was like a dog chasing a car: he wouldn’t know what to do with it once he caught it.

Then finally, Fido—er, Bunny—caught the car, and he knew what to do with it: move to Florida. I didn’t take him too seriously at first, but then he moved down to Clearwater in late September. The plan was, I would stay until the new house—the dream house—sold. But by mid-October, he couldn’t stand being alone anymore, and there were no buyers on the horizon. (It would actually be 11 months before the house sold.) I had to move down over the Thanksgiving holiday. The job he had landed was too good for him to leave, he liked Florida, and the hospital he’d worked at was on the verge of bankruptcy. Plus, we were sick of the traffic in Atlanta, anyway, weren’t we?

After he’d supported me and my goals, how could I say no? Heavy-hearted, I started packing. The big-mouthed movers arrived ahead of me and told Bunny they’d never seen somebody cry so much about leaving a house. They also said they’d never moved so many books from one house. I tearfully left my dream house, car packed with fragile valuables, for the eight hour trip. The fragile valuables included three cats—Lilah, buzzing on Valium (prescribed by her vet, thank you); Tony, needing Valium but sans prescription; and Penelope, who just wanted Valium to drown out the noise Tony was making.

We arrived at our Palm Harbor apartment late at night. Bunny had already arranged the furniture, so when I opened the carrier doors, the cats popped out like they were horses at the Kentucky Derby. Aaaaayyyyyaaaannnnndddd they’re off! Each claimed his or her piece of furniture, happy to be on solid ground again. I wasn’t so eager--I was looking at the contents of a two-story house crammed into a three bedroom apartment.

Between unpacking, trying to get the house sold, finding a job, flying to Louisiana when Mama had her first near-death experience, starting the job, and—oh—studying for the Florida Bar Exam (no reciprocity here for lawyers) at the end of February, I was thoroughly overwhelmed. And miserable. My friends, my haunts and my son were in Atlanta. Many nights, I imagined how easy it would be to pack up the cats (after getting enough Valium for all of them) and go back to our house. Our dream house. The house where we were supposed to grow old and tuck our grandchildren into bed.

And then, that first Florida Valentine’s Day, Bunny came in with his roses. He knew how miserable I was (I certainly didn’t keep it to myself), and either: 1) he figured I was a goner, for sure, if he messed up this Valentine’s Day; or 2) he was making a gesture that went against everything he believed in, because he knew it would make me feel better. Either way, it worked. I settled in and now I couldn’t imagine leaving.

It’s odd how things work out. Even if we’d stayed in Atlanta, in our dream house, we wouldn’t have grown old there together. I’d be sitting alone in a house that was way too big, expecting to find snow on the ground in the morning. And I’d still be fighting that God-awful traffic.

The Treasures of Mi Madre’

After I left Louisiana, my sisters stayed on to go through Mama’s things and get them sorted out. My family has a long history of dividing up heirlooms without drama, and this time was no exception. Mama had left a list allocating certain items to each of us. The larger items—china, silverware, furniture—can stay where they are for now. None of us is concerned that they’ll disappear.

When her mother died, Mama and her brother went to Granny’s house and did the same thing, without the benefit of a list. Granny and her sister had done the same thing years earlier. Unfortunately, they were all more focused on having things come out even than they were on keeping sets of things together. Now, Granny’s side of the family has incomplete sets and our great-aunt Sarita’s side has the other half of the incomplete sets.

My dad was an only child, so there were no siblings to split things with. Aside from that, neither of his parents had come from wealthy families, and even if they had, they had each had at least 10 siblings to divide things among. Even so, for what treasures she did have, Grandma had developed a system long before she died. From as far back as I can remember, if someone admired one of her things, she would put that person’s name on the bottom of the item with freezer (a/k/a masking) tape.

On Friday, I got a small box in the mail with my portion of my mother’s jewelry. Except for one ring, I didn’t know what else the box contained. The aforementioned ring was initially supposed to be Jan’s, but she didn’t want it. I was very happy to get, because it was my great-grandmother’s engagement ring. I already had her wedding band, which is engraved with her wedding date—October 22, 1895. Mama gave me the wedding band several years ago, prior to one of her “last” birthdays, because I had devoted a great deal of time to researching that branch of the family tree. Ironically, when she and Donald married, it was on October 22nd. She didn’t know, until years later, that it was her grandparents’ wedding date.

As I went through the contents of my box, I was struck by different emotions and memories. There was a very tarnished silver cuff bracelet with Mama’s initials from when she still had our dad’s last name. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, but it’s quite pretty. Another unfamiliar piece was a plain silver band with cut-outs. I’m going to polish it and wear it on my pinky. Of the three of us, only Jan inherited my mother’s (and her mother’s) delicate hands and small bone structure. Julie and I, like Daddy’s side of the family, are more “big-boneded,” and while Julie has been able to squeeze certain heirloom rings on from time to time, I never could.

I also got a baby ring, which I think is actually Julie’s, and a locket. Julie and I both had baby rings (why babies needed rings back then, I don’t know), but Jan didn’t. Maybe they had gone out of style by the time she was born. There’s a star sapphire ring, which I remember well—my dad surprised my mom with it when they were married. I can still hear her squeals of delight.

I also now own Mama’s high school class ring, which I can add to my collection of high school class rings (mine, Bunny’s and Daddy’s). I also now have two mother’s rings—one from Mama and one from Grandma. Mother’s rings were quite the thing to have back in the 70s. I vaguely remember when they got them.

When we were little, one of the things we liked doing most was going through our mother’s and grandmothers’ jewelry. It must be a girl thing, because Trinity does the same thing when she comes over. Granny kept jewelry in a big, wooden jewelry box on her dresser. She had lots of costume jewelry and a few valuable pieces. From early on, she had each of us pick our favorites, and left them to us when she died. Grandma kept her everyday pieces in easy reach, and her better pieces in a zippered bank bag, hidden under some lingerie. She also had us pick the pieces we would end up with. Going through the contents of my box the other day, I remembered seeing most of the jewelry from looking through Mama’s jewelry box in the old days.

But the most important items I got are probably, among the lot, the least valuable, money-wise: two nursing pins, one from college, and one from the State of Louisiana. Mama and Grandma were both registered nurses, and they both worked as public health nurses. Since I am the only registered nurse among “the girls,” I got all of Grandma’s nursing pins after she died. I keep them in my safe deposit box, and these will join them there. Unlike the other jewelry, they are truly irreplaceable: they represent the education and career achievements of two of my earliest role models—women who dedicated their lives to helping others.

Now, somebody in the next generation (or the one after that) needs to become a nurse so I’ll have a safe place to leave the pins when I go.

Where are the Flying Cars?

Tonight starts my fifth week as a WiDeaux.   My sister Julie Skyped me this afternoon and we talked for a long while.  I've used Skype since it first came out, and I've always loved it.  The first time I used it was amazing.  It was like the science fiction shows and cartoons we watched as kids--The Jetsons springs to mind--where you can see the person and hear them at the same time.  Now, if only we'd get flying cars!

The first of my family members to adopt Skype was my dad.  He's always been techno-savvy.  Julie's always living in some far-flung place, so she was a fairly early Skyper, too.  My mother, though, was very technophobic.  Every time I called her, I'd tell her how cool it was to see Julie, or what great thing I'd found that week on the Internet.  She simply didn't see the need for any of that stuff--the telephone was just fine, thank you.

Then, a little over a year ago, she was in the hospital.  Again.  Todd was in town, and was on his way to visit her.  I asked him to bring along his laptop so I could Skype Mama.  When she finally realized what I had been talking about all that time, she got excited.  Next thing I knew, she got a "Skype Machine."  It was actually a laptop, but she used it almost exclusively to Skype.  

Once she learned Skype, she didn't want to talk on the phone anymore.  "I want to see you," she'd say.  The strange technology was suddenly a blessing, because she could visit with her widespread family without having to leave her house.  She virtually visited as often as she wanted.  She enjoyed telling Trinity stories about when we girls were little, she talked to Joey and Corey and caught up on their news, and she Skyped me to see how Bunny and I were doing.

As he became increasingly more housebound, Bunny began to really appreciate Skype, as well.  Before Joey and his family moved down here, he could chat them up without leaving the living room.  If I was having a Skype session with someone, he'd chime in until I turned the screen to him.  The person he most liked to talk to, though, was Mama.

He got down in the mouth fairly often, and he knew I wasn't going to facilitate any gloominess.  I couldn't--if I had, he'd have taken a downward spiral long before he did, and he'd have dragged me along with him.  He would reach out to Mama, initially seeking to send some whine her way.  Before long, they'd start trying to out-do each other with their physical ailments.  By the end of their Skype sessions, he'd gotten over his self-pity and was in good spirits.

Last week, as I held Mama's hand in her final earth-bound moments, I told her all the things on my mind and in my heart.  At one point, I asked her to give Bunny a big hug and a kiss for me.   Then I said, "He'll probably meet you right at the gate so he can show you around.  And he's probably driven everybody up there nuts with all his chattering, so they're all gonna be glad to see you."

I shared that story with Julie today, and she agreed that Bunny was probably the one who came to "meet her with the flashlight."   I know it sounds strange, but in a way, I am comforted by my mother's passing.  Now she and Bunny can talk each other's ears off, free of any of the physical restrictions they had down here.  

Now he really is in heaven. 

One is the Loneliest Number

After Bunny died, the thought of dating again was almost repulsive to me. It’s not that we hadn’t talked about it, because we had. Quite a bit. He fully expected I’d be out on the prowl in no time, and thought I’d probably even get married again. I told him he’d be my last husband—who needed that kind of headache? One day I was driving him somewhere with Trinity in the back seat, and he started bickering with me about something.

Finally, he turned to her and said, “Trinity, I’m going to be Nana’s last husband.” She hesitated only a second.

“Yeah, but I’ll bet she’ll have a lot of boyfriends.” My girl! He thought that was hilarious, and told the story many times.

I hadn’t even seriously entertained the thought of dating again until Mama died. For some reason, her death created in me a sense of urgency about getting back into circulation. Maybe it was the lack of intimacy in my life, or just the emptiness I felt, that I didn’t have someone unrelated to me to console me with hugs and kisses. I’m a very demonstrative person—I’ll hug even casual acquaintances—and I miss having someone to hug. I especially missed it during the days between my mother’s death and her burial.

For the first few days of my trip, my nephew, Stephen, stayed with me in hotel suites. Stephen is a 21 year old college student who reminds me a lot of Napoleon Dynamite. We had a good time hanging out together, and he was very conscious of my emotional state. If he saw me crying, he’d ask if I was okay. He’d bring me Kleenex and sit next to me. He’d even hug me, if I told him I needed a hug.

One night, we even visited one of Louisiana’s very finest establishments: a drive-through daiquiri hut. For those of you who’ve never seen one, I’m attaching pictures. As anyone in southern Louisiana of drinking age can tell you, it’s not an open container until you put the straw in it.
 

Once his mother, Julie, arrived on Monday, he went to stay in her hotel room. I missed him, because he really was a good roommate. He didn’t talk my ears off like Bunny used to; he kept pretty much to himself and his computer when we were in the room, but he’d have conversations about anything I wanted to talk about. He’d acquired a bit more sense than when he’d come to stay with us for spring break last year and almost burned down the house making his own breakfast.

By the time I arrived at the funeral home on Tuesday, my alter-ego, Margeaux, had lamented the fact that I was very much alone. I was heartened when I saw one of Mama’s former co-workers, Ms. Berniece, who had married a year before Bunny and I had. She had found herself suddenly widowed, and was quickly back on the market. I remembered well when she started dating again, and was happy for her when she tied the knot. At the time, she must have been in her 60s. Now, here she was 26 years later, with her “new” husband at her side.

Seeing her reminded me of one of my ex-husband’s aunts. Her husband died, and she remarried in record time—I believe less than a year later. Another year or two went by when I met up with her again.

“Well, I killed off another one,” she joked. She was probably working toward husband number three by then

On the other end of the spectrum was Aunt Beverly. She’s pretty, has a good sense of humor, and can out-cook almost anybody. She’s a great catch, or should be. It’s been three years since her husband died. On Tuesday evening, I circled back to her once she’d calmed down. We talked a bit about Bunny’s passing.

“It never gets easier. It never gets better.” she said, tears welling. I offered tons of solutions—traveling, visiting relatives (including me), getting out—but she shot them all down. I went scurrying over to Kelly, somewhat distressed. She assured me that I wouldn’t end up in the lonely boat, but a small part of me remained worried.

How could things not get better? How could I live another 40 years or so (God willing) without things getting better? Impossible! I would have to get over my hesitation and get back to living, sooner rather than later.

Later on, I was emboldened by another conversation, this one with Mr. Lloyd, a friend of Donald’s. Mr. Lloyd was the administrator of the hospital I worked at when I returned home from my first marriage. He promoted me from emergency room nurse to Utilization Manager. At the time I was “only” an LPN, but he saw something in me that led him to take a chance on my abilities, and he empowered me in the process. The position to which he promoted me was the one that would spark my desire to become an attorney. As he offered his condolences on my double loss, he assured me that I would be fine.

“You’re strong. You’re smart. You’ll be okay.” By the time I left that night, my confidence had returned.

I had teased Joey one day about starting to date again, and he had freaked out a bit. I was offended that he thought I’d sequester myself in my house, wearing invisible widow’s weeds, for the rest of my life. I made my case to him so strongly that he begged me to wait at least six weeks. He had no idea that dating again was the farthest thing from my mind.

Staying home alone isn’t going to bring my husband back, and it’s only going to make me increasingly unhappy in the process. Starting to date again is going to take some courage—it’s been a LONG time since I was on the market—but I can do it. I will do it, because Bunny wouldn’t want me to hide myself away from the world. He wouldn’t want me lonely and sad.

But I’m going to wait at least six weeks.