The Best Is Yet To Be...
I’ve been swinging a sledgehammer lately. No, I’m not just standing in the middle of the yard swinging it like Thor, I’ve decided to renovate my basement. And I have discovered that swinging that heavy hammer can be quite cathartic. Its mindless work for the most part and there’s a huge satisfaction in wielding that kind of power, especially when you hear the boards crack and then finally split giving in to the constant bashing of that big steel head, the hammer’s head not mine.
Going through all our stuff in the basement, sorting and throwing out, selling or giving away, the project is moving forward one small step at a time. Hours spent carrying out seemingly endless piles of wood and 70’s paneling, insulation and bits of water-damaged drywall. Water damage because the basement had flooded the year before Wes passed and I hadn’t found the heart to get going on a project this big until this pandemic hit and I realized that if I didn’t find something to do there was a really strong possibility I could go into a depression. Course if I had known how much fun I'd have with that sledgehammer I wouldn't have waited so long. Who knew I had an inner construction worker lurking inside?
But, in the beginning I felt very overwhelmed. Where do I start? Well, I had been watching a lot of Disaster DIY with Brian Baulmer, well not with him because he’s in the Bahamas at his resort, but listening to him host those older shows. Watching the basement renovations he’s done I began to dream about what my basement could look like, so I got out my graph paper and drew everything out to scale, even the furniture and I have to admit that moving those bits of paper around was kind of exciting. So, now I had a plan, but again I wondered where do I start?
I remember how much work it was years ago when we renovated the upstairs and back then Wes and Mark mostly did the demolition while I watched, but now it's just me. Yet it seemed that in nearly every episode Brian, yes, I feel as though we’re on a first name basis, said that people typically look at the whole project and get too discouraged to either start or finish it. He kept saying just pick one thing to start with and move from there. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. One room at a time and so far I’ve demolished nearly every room in the basement except the bathroom and that’s next on my list and then I’ll have a clean slate to work with. I’ve even learned a little bit about how the electrical works and managed to disconnect a switch so I could pull the wire through the 2 x 4’s in the wall and get this, I then managed to rewire it so it was useable again and all without electrocuting myself, of course I've always wanted curly hair, just look at my 80's high school pictures - yikes! But, I have to admit I have been pretty dang proud of myself and though I’m completely exhausted by the end of the day and I can barely lift my arms to wash the grit and dust out of my hair in the evening, but my spirit feels really good.
Someone said to me, why aren’t you asking for help? You shouldn’t be doing that by yourself!
I could ask for help I suppose, but, I’m not in any hurry to get it done and I’m very ok working alone. At certain times I’ll get my worship music playing at high volume through my Bluetooth speaker and it’s amazing how much energy that gives me. Other times I am totally ok in the silence with only the sound of the sledgehammer performing its powerful magic.
And let’s get real here, at this stage of my life I have to learn to do things on my own, good grief I can’t always rely on my kids or my friends to come running every time I need something done when I’m perfectly capable of learning how to do it myself. I may have a flair for the dramatic, but playing the needy widow is just not in my repertoire. So, when I do ask my kids for something I typically will ask them to teach me or explain it to me and what I love about my boys is that they do just that, just like their dad did. The other day I needed to change the lighting in my bedroom and a couple of times I had started to type in a question in our group chat on messenger but I stopped because I was determined I needed to figure this out on my own. I remember how Wes taught me to find the right fuse to turn off, he would plug in and run a drill and it would stop when he hit the right fuse and I didn't have an electric drill handy so I ran a hair dryer. Same result, different tool! I then carefully followed the instructions and within about an hour and a half I had it done. Course it probably would have taken someone else about 20 minutes to do it, but then just sitting and watching someone else do the work doesn’t give me that same feeling of accomplishment.
But in all sincerity I will tell you that there’s another underlying reason for me being so busy these past few weeks, part of it was because I knew today was coming. You see, today would have been our 36th wedding anniversary. Crap! Even typing it causes my heart to skip a beat.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m still grieving and I’m not ashamed of that. I give myself full permission to grieve and I honestly don’t care what people think about that. Until you’ve gone through it honey, don’t judge! You don’t love someone for 33 years and then simply get over it when they are gone. Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t laugh with my grandkids, poke fun at my kids, enjoy a girls night out or make plans to travel the minute we are given the green light to do so, but it does mean that the life I used to live is no longer the norm. Oh I do remember what a normal life with Wes was like but sadly that’s not reality for me anymore. That life is gone and it's not coming back and you want to hear some true hard facts about my new life? Brace yourself Effy, I still sometimes feel lost and sad and yes, there are times I get a little or a lot jealous of those who’ve still got their spouse. I don’t grieve like I did in the beginning, but now I experience what I call 'pockets' of sadness. Sometimes expected, like today and other times they catch me completely offguard.
A song can come on the radio and I’ll be hit with a memory of what we were doing when we heard that song, I can be driving down the street and I’ll remember a conversation we had when we were out for a ride, I hear a story and I still desperately want to tell him about it and sometimes I do tell him. I watch my boys and I see flickers of Wes, the way Nick walks is so much like his dad and Mark has his dad’s teasing smirk and even Tina has inherited some of his humor. Those little pieces of him that I see in my children and my grandchildren are amazing gifts for me to hold onto and to appreciate, not to push away or hide from.
So, today for my anniversary I bought myself flowers that came in a small pot with beautiful birds on it because Wes and I both loved birds. He always had two Killdeer nests that he protected every spring, one by the grain bins and the other by the shelter belt. Every year he would faithfully put up a reflective marker on a steel rod that he’d stick in the ground so he wouldn’t accidently run over the eggs with the mower. As soon as those posts were in the ground he would come into the house and ask me to come outside to look at the eggs. He knew it would drive those mama Killdeer crazy, but he was so excited that his birds had come back and to this day they still come back faithfully every spring.
He was the best thing on a motorcycle that ever rolled into my life.
He did not grow old along with me, but with him waiting for me in Heaven I know the best is yet to be.
Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. Mark 10:9
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