Grieving For Those Who Are Divorced

Still quite blue. Gary once taught me how to turn my pink hydrangeas into blue. It never worked until this year.

I wonder if there are articles out there that discuss the awkwardness of knowing what to do or say in regards to the survivor in the death of a divorced former spouse? If not there should be. It’s kind of an isolated awkward lonely sadness … interspersed with misplaced guilt and odd pinches of regret …. that don’t really make any sense in the larger picture, but seem larger than life in the here and now right after the loss.

Married 18 years, 2 children together. Divorced 18 years, neither party remarried … able to continue family traditions and Holidays, sometimes grudgingly at first …. then as time passed, very very easily. Able to phone or visit one another, able to somehow establish a unique and closer friendship together while divorced than when married.

Actually travelled together in the same automobile within the last two years …. on a 22 hour two way road trip of 4 or 5 days …one of those nights actually sharing a hotel room with two beds (no hanky panky and lots of hilarious comments from kiddos) … and of course lots of animated and healthy conversation and a few unheath fresh reminders of all those weird personal tratis and habits that are easy to fall back into … annoying each other with snoring, television and temperature control issues, bathroom and eatting habits …. to the point sometimes of exasperation … leading us to admit that love unfortunately isn’t always enough … when two people are as opposite as can be in lifestyle and personal expectations (okay, I’ll admit it … when two people are stubborn and unflexibly set in their own ways).

At this moment in time, it has been 13 days and 51 minutes since Gary (formerly referred to as Ghengis Kahn) was happily out ( so the story goes since I live 85 miles away) it was a beautiful evening, cool weather, lush grass, no rain since the previous day. He was eager to play with his Brand new Bush Hog.

It was attached by 3 point hitch to his Case 275 …. he apparently considered, and then decided not to purchase the stability attachment convinced that his 61 years of experience on mowing the hillside pasture made such an expensive purchase when he knew every sincgle square inch of the farm that he been in his family since 1841.

That man knew every groundhog hole, every deer bedding round, every killdeer nest, thicket, rut, rock, and bunny den. He felt confident he didn’t need to waste money on pricey stability attachment when he had always done just fine with all kinds of mowing in the past … andt his wasn’t a field, this was just for the lanes, the orchard, and the pasture.

So he took his new toy for a spin on the level, practiced on his own seperate acreage just a quarter mile away from the farm propoer …. felt he had mastered it …. and then headed down to the hillside pasture to cut a lane between the electric fencing and the tree line where our mobile home used to sit when we were a newly married couple.

The lane isn’t rough, but it has one steep little hillock toward the bottom of the hollow …. just a little rise followed by a 22 or so degree dip that levels off within 12 to 15 feet.

In the meanwhile, my eldest daughter who lives in the origianl farmhouse and helps with the farmwork …. was holding dinner for her father. He usually met with her at the farmhouse for his own evening meal well before dusk … then returned to his own more modern house where his 91 year old mother resides in good health, but in a more modern and handicapped accessible building and with someone there to provide her meals at 8am, noon, and 5pm on the nose.

Nana had already been served her 5pm meal and they had visited prior to Gary deciding to give his toy a whirl ….

Janelle (eldest daughter) had their meal ready at 7:30pm and anticipated her father at any moment. She didn’t hear the tractor and one of the gates on the highland was down so she figured he was up and over the hill in the back 40 where it is level.

When she still didn’t hear or see anything by 7:40, she went looking for him over the upper hill … no tractor, no bush hog.

She then called a neighbor to help her look, and they found the overturned tractor in the bottom lane …. they called his name over and over, looked all around and under what they could see of the tracotr .. saw nothing amiss, scouted the surrounding area … the brush, the nearby lightly wooded area … saw nothing.

Janelle was so relieved, was convinced he must have headed back to the farm to get tools and bring out the larger Farmall tractor to …. so she headed and the neighbor (her boyfriend) headed back to the farm on foot … No Gary.

So they headed back to the tractor and took another look … by this time it was getting darker and hard to see ….. and Kurt (her neighbor and boyfriend) and her suddenly discovered a bit of gary’s left face upward, right downward, left arm near his head on his stomach as if he were sleeping … under the rear wheel … no pulse.

Janelle is a nurse, she screamed so load the neighbors a mile away said they heard it loud and clear …. she send Kurt for help and to call 911 (because she had no cell reception) and knowing he was dead, was intent on lifting the tractor off of her father (she’s 125 pounds soaking wet but stronger than an ox)

She couldn’t do it …. so she flagged own a poor 17 year old kid who was driving by and MADE HIM HELP HER … somehow they uprighted the tractor ….. Janelle tore her Daddy’s shirt off, no pluse, cold, no blood, no obvious crushing, she said he looked perfectly featured, no grass under his nails as if he had struggled …. just her Daddy sleeping in the grass …. so she continued screaming and wailing, and laid on the ground with her arms around her Daddy until help arrived … she found him at 8:20pm. The emergency crews didn’t arrive until 9:03 (that is how it is in the middle of deep Country Land).

I learned of the accident when I arrived at work (85 miles away) for my 11pm to 7am shift. I tend to forget to charge my cell phone and it hadn’t been on that day at all. I had a message to call my youngest daughter immediately …. which I did …. and upon learning this news, actually slid from my chair to the floor with phone receiver in hand, and rocked and sobbed like I’ve never done before.

I’ve had my share of loved ones lost. My beloved father and mother, grandparents, aunts and uncles, preganancies that ended badly …. and I’ve grieved and greived hard, but never like this.

For the former wife of a departed ex-spouse, there are no cards, no bereavement leave, no flowers, casseroles, condolences … not that they would help bring him back … but the truth is that no one knows exactly what to say or do and very few understand that there should be any emotion at all save for feeling badly for your children.

There is no protocol for surviving divorcees of former spouses … noetiquette book, it’s most awkward for those who were aware that there was still an open cordial friendship (interspersed with hurts from the past that led to said divorce) …. but divorce in and of itself doesn’t always mean that loved died. Some people don’t divorce because they no longer love, some people divorce, because they do love their partner enough to let them go to find whatever it is they are searching for that might make them happier than they are with you.

I would like to think that Gary found that happiness living the rustic life and being free to date whomever he wanted whenever he wanted … emotional obligation an option rather than a must.

I want to think that he died instantly, that he was just travelling up that hill with his new toy, marvelling at the beautiful weather, looking forward to dinner with his eldest daughter and best friend to catch up with each other’s day and plan the next ….. admiring the beauty of the land and the smell of new mown grass, and that whatever occurred happened so fast that he didn’t even have enough time to think “oh shit” …. just instant peace.

I joined the family that very night … was there by 2am and stayed through the week. Just left them the day after the funeral.

His daughter’s did him justice. We did not have an open casket. Not because his features were distored so much, but because Gary put great stock in appearances, and he was indeed a very handsome man …. because so much time passed between his death and the ambulance taking him to the hospital morgue … and even more time until the coroner finished the case, and yet another few hours until we decided upon the funeral home … hypostasis of the right side of his face was so distinct that even the best of mortuary artists could not disguise to our satisfaction …. the darkness and swelling of the one side of his face.

While the girls were planning everything, I stayed in Gary’s house the whole week with his mother. Making sure she got her meals at 8am, noon, and 5pm. Consoling her. She always loved me even after our divorce…said she always hoped we would get back together, that I was such a kind person and that was what Gary had needed even more than order and meticulous precision in household endeavors … ‘nough said on that …

And on the third day I did the unthinkable …. I decided while Nana slept and the weather was good …. I fired up the old little Kabota mower …. and mowed two acres of Gary’s yard closest to his house … which is surrounded by another 10 acres of wildflowers I wouldn’t dare touch.

There used to be a trick to starting that Kabota. Gary would never tell me what it was …. it’s been 18 years since we were divorced … but in those years, I think I must have watched him start it enough times that I inadvertently learned the secret …. either that, or my little conversation to the sky “Hey Gary, if you want your yard mowed then let me know how to start this darned thing” …. worked.