Widows Gone Wild by Sunny Wells

Author:Sunny Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: friendship, adventure, death, grief, bereavement, support group
Publisher: Sunny Wells

Sixteen

911 / 411

The first 911 From Mary:

I decided to go out to the cemetery as I was melancholy and missed Dan. I drove to Mt. Olivet, walked over to the stone, and looked up at the sky with the geese flying overhead. I looked down and saw his name chiseled into the cold granite. I looked all around at all of the stones with dates of young people and old people.

I knelt down and sprayed holy water on the ground and prayed, an old tradition that I witnessed my mother doing all of the times we went to the cemetery near where I grew up. I kept thinking how it was my turn to spray the holy water.

I left the cemetery and drove home and sat in my car and struggled with the emotions I was feeling. I sent out a text to the “Sistahs” that I was in need of some love and talk time and titled it “911.”

I got immediate responses from Sunny, Deb, Janet, Jan, and Sue. It was that fast and we were to meet at Champs. I was surrounded by my new best friends and their love and I felt I could breathe again.

This was the first 911 with more to follow.

We used the 911 call to reach each other when we were feeling like we couldn’t handle what was going on that day. If we were having a particularly bad day, we could send an email to the group with the subject line “911.” Within minutes, the group would respond, and more often than not, quickly decide on a gathering place for a happy hour where we could hash over the latest happenings. The 911 was used for such minor events as someone saying something thoughtless that would send us into sobs, or a big thing like an anniversary that we just couldn’t cope with that day.

Sometimes it was as simple as being asked out on a date and not knowing how to respond. Other times, it was a realization that your in-laws were not communicating much with you anymore. We were able to conclude with that one that just our being alive reminded them of their dead loved one, and it was hard to have the same relationship. That got better over time, and the phone calls with my mother-in-law became an event I looked forward to as she passed on family news that I might not have heard about otherwise.

Sometimes it was just driving by an old familiar place that would throw us into a tailspin. Many in the group stayed in the same house they shared with their spouse for years. Therefore being in the same neighborhood where we lived our married lives brought new occasions for grief. I still can’t drive by the Dairy Queen on Colfax in Denver without remembering the Tuesdays that Nicole would bring Terry a DQ milkshake because “the shakes were the best there.” I can hardly drive by the KFC in my old neighborhood without thinking of one of the last foods he could eat.

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