Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Widows' Group

I left for the Widows' Support Group lunch too early, stopped at a supermarket, then took a different route and managed to get myself lost and was fifteen minutes late.
However, I had a great time. I'm getting to know some of the people who attend and met two others with whom I really clicked: Nancy, Joyce, and I exchanged e-mail addresses and discussed getting together outside of the group. Also met Carla who, interestingly, lives right across from Ellen in Riverview Townhouses. She announced that she had been named to the Board of Trustees there, obviously expecting me to be impressed. I asked if it included a stipend, but no, of course not, so why bother to take it on? (I didn't say that to her.) Unfortunately, Carla is the big talker/little content type and struck me a a bore. The only thing I found interesting about her is that she mentioned she had lost 105 pounds.
Nancy, Joyce, and I exchanged our husband death information; as I had remarked in this group to general agreement, our stories are all different and they're all alike. Joyce, who I think is about my age (Nancy said she was 77), had a harrowing how-I-reached-widowhood story: Her husband had some disease, but it wasn't considered life-threatening. He went out one day and an hour later, the police called to say he was in the hospital. Shortly after, her son called from Arizona or somewhere--the police had gotten his number from his father's wallet--to tell her her husband had shot himself in the head in a parking lot. Why in the hell the police didn't go to her home and escort her to the hospital is beyond comprehension.
Anyway, others whom I like were there: pretty Vera, who founded the group; Donna, who works for the county; and Chuck, who handed out flyers promoting fund-raising for Soaring Spirits. I gather that Soaring Spirits is a grief support group for widows and widowers, which is international. There's a web site and blog in which different widows write. I looked into it and found it interesting, but it's not quite for me, as most members seem to be young, whose husbands (or others) had died fairly recently.
When I got home, I wrote to the SCAN manager, applying to conduct my Acting for Everyone class. Added my theatrical resume (truncated) and a copy of the blurb from Stockton and will submit it when I got there this morning for the Brain Gym class.
Texted my daughters, both of whom texted back with words of encouragement and derision. ("Don't forget to proofread," wrote one.) Listen, it's hard on my dumb phone; the alphabet doesn't come up, for one thing. Hey, one of these days I'll get a fancy smart phone and thumb my nose at everybody!
Note: The weather has turned very cold; bone-chilling, in fact. The paper said it got all the way down to 69. I even wore a jacket. Well, a light one. Anyway, it's refreshing.

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