Ask for Help

Business men who recognize the importance of achieving their goals don't fret about what they don't know or can't do themselves. They find advisors, seek counsel, and create boards of specialists. Athletes take as a given that their crucial wins are dependent on the right coaches, trainers, and team members, and they find them. Why is it so hard for us to ask for help?

That's a rhetorical question. I know why. Women of my generation were raised to do things for themselves or do without. Sure, we read how-to articles and books, and chat informally about our worries and wishes. We commiserate well with one another and grab at snatches of one anothers' stories. But I'm talking about intentionally soliciting help on a continuous basis until a task has been accomplished. And yes, finding a new mate who is appropriate and appealing to this new stage of life is a task, and an arduous one at that. Acknowledging its importance and assuming a successful conclusion are initial steps. Amassing a team is next.

Do I sound aggressive? My mother would think so, as would my grandmothers. After all, I'm one generation removed from centuries of arranged marriages.

I sound aggressive to myself. Applying the same focus and determination to a romantic goal that I use in my professional life was (and still is) uncomfortable. I sometimes forget that I'm  the first person in my family to earn a PhD. My discomfort about pursuing goals in a manner that my family has deemed "unfeminine" is likely a sign that I'm on the right track.

Besides, who knows? Maybe my ancestors have all been cheering me on from the great beyond. They could have been members of my team all along.

I didn't consciously assemble a team of advisors, and they weren't a team in the literal sense. Most of them never met one another. In fact, I never met some of them--mostly friends of friends and book authors. But I took their most relevant bits of advice to heart as if we were sitting across the table from each other in a cozy diner booth.

Thinking of them all as my team--those I know personally and those I don't--helped me cut through my own resistance to carrying out such a dramatic change in my life. It helped me focus on the present instead of the past.

Starting to Take Charge

Registering my profile with a couple of dating sites turned out to be the easy part, although it didn't feel easy at the time. But it was merely a business transaction, done and done. I still have one of my receipts from the end of February 2011. That was four and a half years after my husband died.

Then I waited to be contacted, passively looking through the catalogues of pictures and statements. This one looks nice, I'd think. I wouldn't mind if that one wrote to me. But I didn't do anything more than that.

Little baby steps were all I could manage. What did I know about dating in the 21st century? The last time I'd been single was in the 1980s, when women like me were just beginning to offer a man their phone number without being asked. I met my late husband Al before I could get used to the idea. Too forward, my mother would have said in that judgmental voice I had accepted and internalized.

So I waited for the notifications, like a sleeping princess who had slept through her middle age without answering her wake-up calls.

Over the next month, some men wrote to me, although not necessarily the ones I would have chosen for myself. I corresponded with some and spoke on the phone with others. But I didn't get to the stage of face-to-face meetings with anyone. Baby steps.

 Early on, an intense writing fest with one man ended precipitously when he disappeared, not just from my inbox, but from the dating site entirely. I fretted about that. Was it something I wrote? I was tempted to take this personally as some kind of abandonment. I was looking for a sign that I should quit, but I guess I wasn't willing to abandon myself so easily.

Besides, with each encounter I was learning about the fragility of feelings and fantasies--my own as well as those of the men with whom I was corresponding. Many had good intentions and were feeling their way through this new method of meeting someone special. We were of an age where bereavement, divorce, or other kinds of disappointed hope had made us raw. Our first attempts were clumsy and regressive, but that was no reason to quit.

Another man, with whom I had set up a meeting, let me know the morning of our date that he had met and been seeing another woman  and wanted to give that budding relationship a chance. He must not have realized fully how he felt until that morning. At the time, I thought he was simply a man who was out of touch with his feelings, and maybe he was. But now I know that the whole process forces a focus on quantity and quick decisions.

 You can't wait for men to contact you! one of my friend Susan exclaimed when I told her about my minimal efforts. She had met her partner on the web and knew the ropes. You need to contact them! You need go through numbers--at least five a week!

I ran this by other friends who viewed my reluctance with surprise. When I could find no allies whose views on dating hadn't evolved beyond mid-century modern, I sat myself down, picked five profiles that didn't seem so bad and drafted a note that I could tweak and send to each one.

Like submitting work for publication or a resume for a job, I got into a rhythm that overrode my resistance. Did he write something counter to what I was seeking? Was his photograph out of focus? Tough, I needed to make my quota, and, besides, most of the profile fit my wishes. That was good enough for my list.

The Wisdom of Women, Part I

I have always depended on the wisdom of women. So it was only natural for me to seek the advice of my women friends when I embarked on Internet dating. It didn't matter whether they had personal experience or not. If they hadn't, they encouraged. If they had, they advised. Some just led by doing. My friends were my coaches and mentors.

They brushed aside all of my reservations. They just wanted me to try. With their help I came up with a game plan that I could fall back on when I faltered. And I did falter. Old insecurities rose from the depths. I relived the embarrassment of being too tall in high school and too shy at college mixers. I redeveloped a blush that I thought I had lost long ago. 

If I hadn't witnessed similar unwelcome resurrections in my friends who had struck out on this  path before me, I would have shrivelled up in shame and quit. One friend who had reconnected with a high school boyfriend, had gotten uncharacteristically giggly and confused when she talked about her first date. She's a very successful and (usually) poised business woman. Over dinner one night, she quivered, "Should I call him or should I wait until he calls me?" The next moment, her fingers were sending him a text, which in the next moment she wished she could take back.

I got to see beneath the layers of sophistication and self-assurance that she had created over the years. She was sixteen again and worried about boys. Her girlish anxieties and concerns had been preserved perfectly, like fossils brought back to life in Jurassic Park.

I knew that it would be no different for me when my time came. I was going to fall prey to a riot of conflicting emotions,--heightened emotions--after years of dulling down my feelings. I can't say I was ready, only that I had decided to stop worrying about it and take the plunge

Another New Identity

I thought about Internet dating for months without doing anything about it.  I wasn't sure that I wanted to leave my comfort zone, but something inside of me was urging me to fly out of the nest. I was 61 years old, healthy and vital, and afraid of loving and losing again.

And that's not all I feared. Over the last four and a half years, I had built a new identity for myself as a widow. In my mind this imbued me with an air of dignity and self-sufficiency. I tended to dress all in black anyway, but I may have played that role up a bit. In my everyday black jeans and black shirts, I wanted to look like the Manhattan professor who had it all together--had gotten it all together-- no matter what life had thrown her way. I guess I was hoping to overcome the pity and fear that widowhood brings out in most people. Pride had something to do with it, but pride doesn't keep you warm at night.

Placing myself in the dating game meant that I was just another single woman seeking a man. It made me feel vulnerable and wanting. The last time I'd been single was in my 30s, when I had attitude. Here I am you lucky men. Who is going to buy me dinner tonight? After twenty contented years with my husband and a decade of family illnesses, my attitude had slipped away into a distant memory.

It took me a while to even mention the possibility to my friends. Saying it out loud and hearing their encouragement helped me enormously. (More about that later.) In fact they were more than encouraging. I got the sense that they were thinking it's about time! They helped me ease into the flow of time, which changes us whether we will it or not. I didn't want to petrify into the "Widder Barbara" with black veils covering all my mirrors. That wasn't dignified. It was horrifying, but sometimes when I'd spent too much time alone, it seemed inevitable.

So I took the first step and drafted a profile. It didn't feel so threatening. After all, I consoled myself, I don't have to do anything with it. I can hold on to it until I'm ready to post it somewhere. And if I'm never ready--no harm done. I made notes. What did I seek in a man? What did I have to offer? It was hardly a revolutionary way to begin, but it didn't have to be. Writing feeds writing, and the process helped me  forget my doubts and fears. What do I like to do? Who have I become through the years of my life? I wrote and wrote, and it was good for me to declare myself, my many roles, and my wishes for my future.

Too Young to Be Alone

There is comfort in a regulated life. After nearly five years of widowhood and two years after my mother died, I knew how my days and weeks would be. Students, papers, and meetings during the week. Movies, concerts, and dinners with friends on the weekends.

No more emergencies. No more long-distance calls to doctors or checking in with aides. No more coming to school hauling my overnight bag for my monthly trip to Florida. No more sitting in the sun with my mother in her wheelchair while she looked off somewhere in the distance or looked at me with perplexity. No more of those moments when she seemed to recognize me for a moment or two, beaming and smiling, until she drifted back to wherever she went in or out of her mind.

After she died I was responsible for myself only. I was lonely, but there was a relief in the sudden simplicity of my life. I knew I could follow my uncomplicated routine indefinitely. I was grateful for  the lack of drama.

It's hard to pry oneself out of a complacent existence. Part of me wanted more. Part of me wanted nothing but rest.

My neighbor had been widowed several years before me, and after some time had passed, her mother took her to task. "You're too young to be alone. Find someone!" My neighbor, a sophisticated and accomplished professional who was used to running her own life, obeyed and entered the world of Internet dating.

Back then I was busy with my family illnesses. Nevertheless I followed her attempts, admired her perseverance through the flops, and cheered her success when she met her compatible new mate.

There came the day in my widowed life when I decided to borrow her mother's wisdom. She might as well have been my mother for all the resistance I felt. Finding someone was a daunting task, an ordeal. But I knew it was in my best interest to proceed, so that's what I did.

Kaddish

My dear friend's husband died this past month. She asked me to tell her about the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the bereaved. Even though I've been through it myself, I can only know a piece of her grief. Their bond, like my own with Al, was unique, is unique. Still, I would have thought that I would know exactly what to do for her, having been through it myself.  I’d have thought that I’d know instinctively what she needs and how much intervention.  But I m struck by my own uncertainties and reluctances.  I can see how ritual holds us together in our ignorance of one another’s mysteries.
 
I'm no expert in matters of religion. As a child, I had a few Sunday school lessons. That was it. What I'm writing is from experience and comments gleaned from my attendance at the synagogue I joined after my father died in 2005. Little did I know then that belonging to a congregation where I could say Kaddish would be so necessary in the next several years.

The Kaddish is a praising prayer. It sends forth blessings and gratitude for life and that which gave us life. It doesn't directly mention death or grief at all. Traditionally, it is said very quickly, which used to make me giggle when I was a child in shul--hearing the men outdo themselves in quickness and agility of speech, as if they were in a competitive race. The old men sounded like schoolboys showing off their skills, and I suppose there is some truth to the idea that how we learn a thing is how we practice it for the rest of our lives.

But there are practical reasons for saying it quickly. It isn't easy to drop into praising mode when you've just lost your beloved, whether a husband, partner, parent, child, sibling, or friend. Inarticulate shrieks or moans surely come more naturally as the shock wears off. This institutionalized traditional prayer calls for the mourner to stand and evoke a picture greater than one's own individual sorrow.

As above, so below. The will of God or however we see it, universal energies, carries us all in its flow. The mourners rise and recite the prayer that this life we are living and making for ourselves be revered, whether we like it or not. The chant alternates between the standing mourners and the seated congregants. Yes, there is a separation, but it isn't absolute. We are all within hearing distance of one another. We have agreed to gather together in support.

We say aloud the names of our dead, and we capitulate to forces beyond our control with as much grace as we can muster. Kaddish helps. The prayer is said in a language, Aramaic, that sets it apart from the other Hebrew prayers in the rest of the service. I imagine that through the ages, its foreignness must have always seemed odd and hard to assimilate. Like bereavement itself, it doesn't fit, but must be included.

We can find this prayer as well as those used by other religious communities easily these days on the Internet. I sought them all in my first days of mourning. The many different sources of consolation are reminders that we all belong to one community, no matter what we do or don't believe.

Life After Death

I spent the first few years after the deaths of my husband, mother, and father going through the motions of living one day at a time. Thankfully, my life had already been set up in such a way that I could depend on its structure to keep me upright and in motion. I had a job as an English professor with students who depended on me to hold up my end of the teacher/learner cycle. I had friends who did not exclude single women from their social activities. And I had a therapist who told me how well I was doing.

Whether that was always true or not didn't really matter. I no longer had an intimate companion to care about my innermost fears and wishes as my husband Al had done with love and intelligence for twenty years. I no longer had my mother who, in her better days, had been a warm and loving presence through the thicks and thins of my life.

From 2002 to 2009 I had the responsibility for overseeing the care of my elegant mother's descent into dementia. My father had given up hope and lost his intrepid spirit, handing over to me all of the duties of health care and financial decisions for both of them.

During those days Al was more than my helpmate; he was brilliant at navigating the systems and befriending the bureaucrats. He ensured that my parents got the best possible care until the end of my father's life in 2005. Then, early in 2006, we received Al's diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer, which began our own descent into the cancer treatment mill. We had one blissful six-month period of remission--and went right back down until he died in the summer of 2007. Then it was back to my undivided commitment to my mother's care. Although I lived and worked in New York, my heart was in Florida, where my mother resided. I traveled back and forth until she died in 2009.

I'd had no time to think about and react to the crises that had piled up around me while they were happening. I simply acted and went on to the next thing. And that same mode of getting through another day as best as I could continued for several years after the deaths of my loved ones. My low-level goals were to keep busy and not have too much time alone.

I didn't think about my life much beyond that until one day when I let myself fall. 

I was walking to the subway to keep some medical appointment that I'd put off when caring for my family. In my spacey state, I tripped on an uneven square of pavement and began to sprawl forward. There was an instant when I knew that by sheer will I could have forced myself back upright.

But I'd been living by will power for too long, and I was on empty. "What's the point?" I thought. "Give it up." And I let myself fall, landing on my hands and knees. What a relief!

A couple of passersby stopped to ask me if I was alright. (Don't believe everything you hear about New Yorkers. They can be kind--in a pinch.) I assured them I was okay, even though I didn't get up right away. It felt luxurious to just lie there. No hurry. No one was depending on me any more to get somewhere fast. The rough pavement felt cool against my cheek. It was the nicest feeling I'd felt in years.

In a little while I got up and moved to a nearby front stoop. I sat there for a while, resting and watching the world go by. It felt good to give up the ghost.

It wasn't long after my voluntary fall that an image from Greek mythology began to emerge in my consciousness. It was of Charon rowing his passengers across the Rivers Styx and Acheron from the land of the living to the land of the dead.

I identified with him--the one who accompanies the dying and dead on their journies. My time on the rivers hadn't ended after my seven years of caregiving. I had not stepped ashore after my last passage, when I had ferried my mother across. I was still in the same boat, straining to stay upright with no steady ground beneath my feet. 

I'd been close to the shore where the living dwelled, and yet I hadn't taken that next step. I hadn't realized it, but I'd been living in a neither-here-nor-there dimension. Still on those rocky waters,  surrounded by river mist.

I felt my isolation. I saw my numbness. Even though there was no one in particular waiting on shore to hold out a hand, I decided to reach for a mooring and hoist myself up. This was the beginning of the next part of my life.