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I Am Officially An Old Lady [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-31

I don’t think anyone realizes how much a person relies on their significant other until they are no longer there.

So many of you were kind enough to read and comment on my diary about Honey leaving me that I thought I Might (those 122 unpublished stories, ya know?) let everyone know how it’s going.

I’ll tell you what. It about Has Went.

Turns out Honey was Prime on our 47 year old checking account, and I had to open another account, and by the way it will take 7-10 days before I’ll have access to any money, sorry about the rules change, but this is the way we have to do the account change.

So I ask the bank for some money to tide me over for some days, and I arbitrarily asked for $400. Should be enough for food and gas and cat supplies until my bankcard shows up in the mail. When I got the receipt, the $400 I asked for turned out to be $420. I swear, I thought it was Honey laughing at me, 420, indeed, but the credit union explained they had to give me back the $20 that they required remain in savings in order to have an account. I had forgotten about the $20 rule. Also...

I don’t care. My inner self smirks at the 420 joke, but it’s still hard for me to feel more than two things; I am either Fine, Thanks, or I’m Angry. Numb isn’t a feeling. The rational part of me knows that the credit union employee is just doing their job, and so I agree to close the account, leaving enough money to cover that Fat Check I wrote to retrieve Honey from the clutches of the funeral home industry. At that point, I realized that I did have another emotion: Resignation. Everything is Whatever. Turns out that Resignation is sort of an anti-emotion, but Whatever. Long sigh.



Until someone leaves you, you don’t realize just how much you rely on their companionship, their mere presence in the house. Even if you’re not in the same room, you still feel them. There. It’s like being a pair of cardinals; ever notice, they are always talking to each other: Hey, I’m still here, you fine? Yeah, I’m fine, how you? Over and over again. Especially during nesting season.

Nobody to cook for.

Nobody to clean up after.

Nobody who needs bandages or nursing things.

Nobody at all.

I’m not necessary now and

Silence is really loud.



When he first got sarcoma, we were told that Honey was not allowed to scoop cat pans or have anything to do with cat litter boxes at all. Never mind that when the oncologist told us about dirty litter boxes, we had 14 cats. Which is not my fault...the previous cancer, we wound up adopting partial litters of cats, 3 at a time, for 3 years running. Honey insisted that they were his therapy cats and, like pretty much everything Honey wanted, I just gave in. I would have done anything to keep him with me a while longer.

Trivia: Having one more litter box than you do cats will go a long way toward eliminating (not a pun) any competitive peeing wars, and cleaning them twice a day pretty much assures that people will not guess how many cats live in the house. This I know, because Honey would almost make a game out of it… some new therapist or nurse from some agency would stop by and Honey would play “Guess how many cats we have?”

They never guessed the right number.

When I was pregnant, I wasn’t allowed to touch the cat pans, so Honey had no choice. His turn. Eh. Everyone takes turns. Unwritten rules of marriage. My turn just lasted longer, and I sure do miss cleaning those boxes while saying to Honey, “Hey, let’s have 14 cats, it’ll be fun.” Now there’s nobody to tease and I still have to do it. Also, we are down to 12 cats.

I miss the Everything I had to do. Because I was doing those things FOR someone.

Chores are still done. Any dishes in the sink are washed. But it all seems so pointless and all the flavor I had in life has turned to something resembling unflavored oatmeal. Grey is a flavor. Who knew?



Despite our nearly pathological resistance to auto-pay, I was amazed at the number of places I had to call and explain that I would have to call them back in a few days and then auto-deduct could resume with the new account.

I learned that I could average 2 Thank You notes per hold time, regardless of who I was calling. Except Social Security. We’re not going there today. Turns out I don’t have to. I already got my “You now have $500 less per month than last month” notice in the mail this afternoon.

I also learned that people who work customer service are mostly very sympathetic people, especially if approached correctly. I quickly realized that some version of, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope,” will make the person you are speaking with actually WANT to help you. People like to feel important, and I have never gotten what I want or need from someone by being rude immediately. Much better to mention to the representative that being rude to the person you want help from rarely works. You have assured the other person that you are not going to scream at them, even metaphorically. Customer service people like that. Being in customer service is like retailing; it’s a great job except for those f***ing customers.

I used to do some customer service in my various jobs, and would tell people that the louder they shouted, the less I was able to understand what they want. It’s a hearing problem, I would tell them. Actually, it was a good manners problem, but wow, you point out to people that they’re being rude and it’s like holding a bone in front of a wolf; Invitation to Escalate.



Those were the not-so-great things that I never thought about having to do. It’s really mean to make people who are basically sleepwalking through both the wreckage of their life and overwhelming grief perform activities for daily living. Really, the pain is so bad sometimes that you cannot believe that everyone, simply everyone, hasn’t already heard about the demise of your beloved and made the appropriate adjustments already. Life goes on, though the good times seem gone. Calling the cable company seems somehow nonsensical. You call them anyway. And while you’re at it, you cancel the sports package.



Life. Goes on, anyway.



Not everything in life is Woe Is Me, though. I can go to bed when/if I like. Nobody will call me from the next room at 2am, telling me their ostomy has sprung a leak. I don’t have to buy food based on what Honey likes, or make a guess about what he might like this week. There is a lot less food waste. The savings on supplements alone is significant.

There is also the fact that I haven’t been to the grocery store in a month, and now I don’t have to worry about finding him laying on the floor when I do come home, because he forgot that he can’t walk without assistance. It is my intention to eat everything edible before I shop again. Even if it costs me money, it also somehow feels like a cleansing action.



I can connect with my friends again. I don’t have too many, but with the sarcoma and subsequent time limit placed on Honey’s life, the only thing I wanted to do was spend every second with him. All my friends understood. His “sentence” of 14 months turned into 38 months, much longer than anyone would guess, but I don’t think anyone but me realized how determined he was to hang on.



One of my skating friends took my skates to be sharpened, hoping to lure me back to the ice. That’s a heavy maybe; even at Old Person Team level, ice time and coaching isn’t cheap. I do miss the ice, but part of me wonders if I want to put in the ice time to get back to mediocre again at my age. 68 year old bones don’t have the bendability that my 36 year old bones did. Muscle memory is great, but relying on what basically amounts to gliding around on steak knives can be hazardous to one’s health. Really not up for that 8th concussion.



I learned how to operate the TV remote by myself. Go ahead, laugh, but I hadn’t held a remote since about 1981, because I have books and I don’t care what sportsball game is on TV. Hey, small victories.



I think the worst part so far has been trying to figure out how to dispose of his, er, toys. There are toys behind toys. And behind those, there are more.

I have more Hot Wheels than a 7 year old.

Sports cards? A million.

Comic books? Let’s just say that the people who stopped by my house did not realize that my formal dining room table was, in fact, stacks upon stacks of comics.

Autographed footballs.

A card with a piece of wire that’s been to space.

Some velvet from Frank Sinatra’s suit.

Also, who thinks this stuff up?



We had a great marriage, but I did let Honey dispose of our so-called “disposable income,” and he bought things when I wasn’t paying attention. I keep finding things around the house. Ridiculous. A Peyton Manning autographed football. Green Lantern expensive something. All well and good, but I was really hoping that he’d make an effort to rid himself of most of this stuff before he left.



I live in a house that looks like a 12 year old decorated it.



Not complaining. At least I have a house. Yard sale, anyone?



Thank you for reading, if you made it this far.















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