In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

–  Christina Rossetti

Beech leaves rustle in the “frosty wind,” turkeys glide silently through the thickets, their dark shapes nearly invisible in the early morning gloom; the tracks they leave in the snow look exactly like a child’s drawing of a turkey foot.

The roadside snow is pocked-marked by sharp little hooves, all I see of the deer herd that lives between Ducktrap Stream and Frohock Mountain. After a long day of rain, a rare warm day, the surprising sound of running water is on all sides, rivulets running into ditches into the little brooks that feed the larger streams.

Overhead six crows are mobbing a much larger bird, spiraling higher and higher around the intruder until the whole crew disappears from sight. A few minutes later, I’m returning along the same route; the raptor is back, but the crow mob has fallen away. When it swoops down and lands in a tree on the side of Berniers’ field I realize it’s an eagle.

Fritz, a not always well-mannered dog of some five years, walks beside me every single morning (except for those sub-zero days of Christmas week when we both hugged the fire), heading up the road at daybreak, to Carvers Corner and on down Ducktrap Road to Maplewood Cemetery where we predictably turn around and come home. He and I are becoming a team; he knows where we turn, knows the spot where I’ll let him lollygag along the shoulders, sniffing out good places to poop and pee. 

When we come to the yard where Rilla, the Olivers’ glamorous golden doodle, is usually waiting for us, I keep tossing pieces of kibble ahead of him on the road, and he promptly forgets all about the charms of that blonde bombshell and goes for the food. I tell him she’s just a tease anyway, but I doubt he’s listening.

This ritual walk started last March when a diagnosis of diabetes led to a prescription to lose weight and start exercising. So I did. The diabetes is under control, I’ve never felt better and am in the process of remodeling my wardrobe to fit the new me.

Remodeling. Oh my. The upstairs of this house, including the loft of the barn, has, over the past four months, been gutted, shored up, re-framed, wired, plumbed, and sheet-rocked. All the entrances to barn, loft and rug shop have been reconfigured so that I have to actually stop and think how to get from one place to another. There are three skylights in the barn roof, which has also been reshingled, and windows installed front and back looking out over Wally’s favorite view, the treeline behind our house.

But of course, Wally’s not here to see it.

Or here to weigh in on the plan my son, Ed, his wife, Tracee, and I hatched last summer, that they move into the upstairs of the house Ed grew up in. Along with their three children – ages 6, 8, and 10 – this is going to be a busy place. What on earth would he think of this drastic change?

Or of the other changes, mostly small, subtle changes, but any of them would have, at the least, disrupted our comfortable marriage. Unthinkable, of course, would be my relationship with another recent widower, a man we barely knew.

One year ago today, January 29, Wally slipped away from us and into memory. All our conversations – about deer tracks and crow mobs, about family, about politics, what to have for dinner, ordering seeds – I now have with myself.

It’s a time I dreaded – don’t we all? Dread the loss of the one we love most in the world? But then it happens – it will, to half of every couple – and you, the survivor, have no choice but to carry on.

Traditionally, a widow(er) was thought to mourn for a year, wear widows’ weeds, perhaps not even leave the house or mingle with non-family members. Though that year of mourning is nonsense; I don’t expect to ever be done with mourning him, missing him, remembering him. Loving him.

Some people who’ve been through this say the second year is harder. I don’t like hearing that, but suspect it could be true. The fog – denial, numbness – call it what you will, that descends on that first day, lingers on through the year. When – if – it lifts, perhaps the reality of the death becomes more, well, real.

As the shock wears off, as new routines take over, and especially as a new person to care for enters the scene, the puzzle that is death remains. Where is he? Is there a “where”?

I’m intrigued by the different ways he lives on in those who loved him. Some seem able to access a realm of existence not obvious to most of us. When I recently learned that a young family member has been having regular conversations with Grandpa Wolf in her dreams, my first reaction was “why isn’t he visiting me?” But I know why. I’m too practical; my feet are planted too firmly on the ground. I’ve left  no space for him to get in.

He believed there was nothing after. He specifically told our friend Norm that two days before he died. Was he wrong?

But along the way something unexpected happens, or at least, it has for me. Without the anchor of a lifetime partner I’ve changed. I have moments of actual exhilaration at the freedom being alone brings. I’ve slowed down enough to take a walk every day, to listen to the rustle of beech leaves, make salad for breakfast, spend hours knitting with a friend, become fussy about folding laundry, getting rid of stuff.

I’m weirdly grateful (weird, isn’t it, to be grateful after my lifetime partner died and my marriage ended?) for this time to rediscover myself.

Myra Polan, a woman old enough to be my grandmother when I met her in 1973, got me thinking about the inevitable end when I was a young wife. Her husband, Lou, had dropped dead at the wheel of their car while on the way to Lincolnville for March Town Meeting. She continued on back to their Chester Dean Road  house where she lived alone until her death several adventurous years later.

“Only another widow can understand what this is like,” she told me, when I awkwardly offered my sympathy.

Indeed, there is a bond between those who’ve seen their life’s partner die. A few weeks after Wally’s death Terry, a friend who’d been widowed at the age of 44, stopped by. We started making it a regular thing, every Monday night I cook dinner for her, she brings her knitting, and we talk. Early on she told me of a dream she had a year after her husband died.

Wednesday, Jan. 31 is the state-mandated deadline to license your dog. A $25 fee will be charged in addition to the cost of the license after that day. Do it at the town office or online.

Dave Kinney reports that “the Office of the State Treasurer holds some $241,085,691 in unclaimed property and some of it may be yours.  To see if you are on the list and to claim your lost property please visit: the site is free, secure and easy to use.”

School News

The boys’ basketball team plays Islesboro Monday, Jan. 29 at 5 p.m. at the Lynx gym.

This week’s Lynx newsletter focuses on how to help your children become better writers and why that’s important. I especially liked the suggestions for how to engage them in writing at home:

 •Have your child write instructions for taking care of the family pet.

•Write a letter or thank you note to a relative.          

•Make a shopping list for the  grocery store.

•Write a review of a recipe you tried

•Start keeping a personal diary, a household guestbook, or a baby book for

a younger sibling.

•Use wide lined paper which helps kids line up and space their letters

Polly Schuessler, longtime resident of Youngtown Road, passed away last week in Florida. Polly was a talented weaver and had beautiful flower gardens across the front of her home. She was also one of the many women who gathered together every couple of weeks to spin at each other’s houses, to talk, and to eat whatever delicious concoction the hostess was serving.

"Excuse me," said Alice to the White Rabbit. "Is this the end? Everything comes to an end sometimes..." 

 "It might be a beginning, you know." replied the White Rabbit.

 "Beginning of what?"

"How can I tell 'till I know more?"