Becoming a Crone

 

 

         I once asked my Grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat what it felt like to be old. She told me that she still felt like the 15-year-old she had been those many long years ago; the face in the mirror did not reflect the image she had of herself, the feelings that she still experienced. She lived to be 96 years old.  And as she was dying, she almost looked like that 15-year-old, tiny and curled up in the hospice bed, her hair in a ponytail. Her last words to me and one of my sisters who was also standing nearby were, "I love you, too."

        Since Tom's death 6.5 years ago (yes, I'm counting), I am more and more aware of my own aging, as the last photos of him will always be of his 61-year-old self, his beard graying, but his hair barely gray at all and having grown back after the chemo and all hope were abandoned. Among his last words to me were "you are so beautiful," as he reached up to stroke my face, just hours before he took his last halting breaths.

        I think of those words as I look in the mirror at the white hair I am refusing to color, at the face with the developing age spots and wrinkles, the sagging eye lids, the thinning skin. When Tom looked at me so lovingly those last few hours of his life, he saw much of that as my hair was already gray and I had gained weight and developed health issues during those years of sorrow and care. What did he see? Did he see, also, the fifteen-year-old girl with whom he fell in love? Was there in my face an image like a lenticular print that changes as one moves the image: Anita at 15, Anita at 25, Anita at 30, 40, 45...and back to Anita at 62?

        That's just another thing I have lost in losing Tom, a friend and lover who remembers the younger me, not just the me now, moving into old age--all that history we shared, aging together, reflected in our changing bodies.

        Today it's easier than ever to fight the outward appearances of aging. The rich can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on cosmetic procedures that remove the lines from their faces, the age spots, the drooping eyelids, the "turkey" neck, that plump up the thinning lips and sagging breasts. Much less expensive procedures are available for the less well-to-do. Women in their 20s begin Botox procedures these days. According to an article in The Atlantic, "the number of Americans ages 19 and under who got injections of Botox or similar products rose 75 percent from 2019 to 2022--and then rose again in 2023."

        Despite the drawbacks of Botox (expense, temporary results--3-6 months--, potential side effects), "a person who starts baby Botox at 25 and keeps it up could still look that age a decade later. In another 10 years, they may look noticeably young for their age. Even if they stop at that point, they age on a 20-year delay." ["The Logical Extreme of Anti-aging," by Yasmin Tayag, in The Atlantic, September 25, 2024] 

    The process sounds exhausting to me. And, anyway, I'm way past 25 years old. What would I gain at my age looking slightly younger? I have been schooled too well by death and grief. No, I'm limping into old age as a crone.

        I do recognize the drawbacks of just letting natural aging take its course. The white hair is a giveaway probably sooner than the age spots on my face. But, again, trying to keep up with hair color is more than I'm willing to do--though I did a bit of that when I was younger, coloring my hair with henna. I do see sometimes in the faces of younger people the sizing up, the dismissal. To some, our graying hair and fine-lined faces suggest we are beyond all desire, all hopes and dreams, energy long spent. The aging aren't cherished in our culture, especially aging women.

        I carry my history with me, in my memories, in my body. With Tom gone, the man who traveled this distance with me from the age of 15 to 61, that will have to be enough. 

 

After the Rain

  

Japanese irises (forefront) began blooming at the end of last week. (Click on a photo for a better view.)

 

        We have been experiencing a drought here in Georgia for the last few weeks, with south Georgia bearing the brunt of the hot, windy weather. The Highway 82 fire in Brantley County has burned over 20,000 acres, and, as of yesterday, is only 6% contained. The Pineland fire has burned an estimated 32,331 acres, and is only about 10% contained. These are among the worse fires the state has ever seen, according to news reports, and the amazement of a local woman indicates how unbelievable some may find these Georgia fires, which have also destroyed homes. "Only 10% contained," she exclaimed this past week in a local gathering. "How can a fire be only 10% contained?"

        Anyone who has lived in the west understands very well how a wildfire can be only 6% or 10% contained after days of fire-fighting, for the West has long experienced wildfires, droughts and high winds feeding flames that travel long distances, destroying everything in their path. Those wildfires, however, have increased in intensity and speed and have started earlier in the season during the last 30-40 years, due to climate change.While Tom and I lived in Eagar, Arizona, we were lucky enough not to have a wildfire come dangerously close to where we lived, but longtime residents certainly had that experience in the Wallow Fire of May and June, 2011, which started in the White Mountains near Alpine, a town just 28 miles from Eagar. The fire was finally contained by July 8th of that year, and had burned 538,049 acres of land, from Arizona into New Mexico. The largest wildfire in Arizona history, it destroyed 72 structures, including 32 homes, and cost an estimated $109 million. 

        And then, in May of last year, the Greer Fire, which started near the town of Greer, about 20 miles in the mountains from Eagar, AZ, burned 20,308 acres, and came, as close as I could tell, to about a mile from the house that Tom and I had owned when we lived in Eagar. Fortunately, by the end of the month, that fire was contained.

        Today we've had rain in the Atlanta area, and rain is predicted tomorrow for south Georgia. So maybe the fires there will soon be contained. Here I am happy for the rain that has watered my garden. I was out in the front yard earlier in the season weeding my flower beds and adding mulch, but I got a late start on the vegetable garden. And because I am a member of the Love is Love Farm CSA, I don't plant a lot of vegetables here, as the weekly delivery of vegetables from that farm begins this week. I did plant okra, tomatoes, 3 pepper plants, 2 squash plants, one cucumber plant, and, in late February, potatoes. Gardening has long been a habit that I find difficult--impossible--to kick.

The Irish potatoes are doing well,

I purchased the squash and cucumber plants from Oakhurst Garden.

I usually grow tomatoes from seed, beginning in February, but for the last two years, I have purchased plants. These are from Garland's Garden in Scottdale, GA.

 

My amaryllises have begun blooming.

This is the native plant garden I planted in Tom's memory. There are a few non-natives in this area, but most are native. Most of these flowers will begin blooming in early summer.

How to Live with Grief

 

Clicking on a photo will pull it up and bring it into focus.

 

        I have titled this post "How to Live with Grief," but, actually, I don't have any real advice about living with grief. I only know how I live with grief, for I have discovered, after moving across the country, after therapy, after turning my journal-writing into letters to Tom, that grief, while it diminishes in many ways, never leaves. The most mundane of events can lift a full bucket from that well. Even applying for the widow's benefits of social security elicits emotions of sadness and anger, sadness that Tom is not here to share these retirement years with me, anger that he does not get to enjoy the benefits of his long years of labor.  

        So how do I deal with grief? By turning to the skills I spent years developing. Gardening is the skill and activity we shared from our early days of marriage, beginning in the early 1980s in an open field near the Texas A&M married student housing. Someone from the university would disk up this field every year, and students in married student housing could choose a plot in which to grow a garden. Tom and I  did this for at least a couple of years. After that, we had a garden in every place we lived except for the temporary housing we rented when we first moved to a new area. Over the years we have gardened in Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Georgia, and Arizona, sometimes more than once in these states as we moved around the country.

        But I also grew up gardening, or, rather, weeding, for that's the task my dad assigned for his children. My dad was a gardener, his mother was a gardener, and I know that my current gardening skills began with watching them. 

        When I moved to Georgia (again) after Tom died, I began landscaping my front yard with several beds of flowers, natives as well as non-natives that remind me of my childhood or other places we lived. As soon as the weather permits, I begin weeding those areas and adding mulch, removing dead plants, filling in gaps with new ones. Here are a few photos of my spring yard this year.

 

Bearded irises and miniature gladiolas--The next blooms in this area will be Japanese irises, daylilies, and Asiatic lilies. A potted lavender is beginning to push up stems for blooms. 

The bearded irises came from an area planted by a previous owner. I moved them to other areas. The amaryllises that are just now beginning to bloom as of this morning, are descendants from a bulb one of my dad's first cousins gave me years ago.

 

The funky face among the gladiolas and mountain mint Tom made in a pottery class years ago.

 

My son and daughter-in-law gave me this persimmon tree about three years ago. It's a reminder of Tom's enjoying a ripe persimmon plucked from a tree planted by a great-aunt just a few days before he died. 

            I always have a project going, whether it's writing or crocheting or creating a photo book for my grandchildren. My grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat taught me to crochet when I was a teenager, and lately I have been crocheting in the evenings when I watch mysteries or British comedies streaming on BritBox. 

         

      

                How else do I deal with grief? I meet with friends weekly for happy hour, I take music lessons, I play my Irish whistle in the evenings, sometimes sitting on my back porch, letting the notes drift through the neighborhood, I visit my grandsons across country, I call friends and family, I volunteer to write postcards for political candidates I support, sometimes I do phone-banking for them, I plan ways to make my personal space more comfortable and efficient, I clean my house. In short, I go on living, as difficult as it sometimes seems to be, the best way I can.