MORE GOOD ADVICE FOR RECENT #WIDOWS: BITCH WITH IMPUNITY!

I feel like bitching

INEVITABLY, things are worse now. 

-If you are an impatient driver, there will be many lane closings in your area and the lights will turn red on you more often than ever.  

-If you were looking forward to the gorgeous fall colours depicted on every Canadian postcard, just to spite you, fall WILL be gorgeous although you no longer care.

-If your husband was the kind of guy who could repair anything, your taps will begin dripping, your furnace will go on the frizz, and your car will develop an unidentifiable noise.

INEVITABLY,

the government will find a reason to tax you. My husband was worth a great deal to me, but I’d be hard pressed to put a Dollar value on him. Not so Customs Canada. They knew his value as I discovered when I picked up his ashes. The duty on the goods came to $ 72.00.

INEVITABLY,

people will ask: How did he die? I suggest preparing a CD outlining the circumstances of his death (hotel room, Madrid), the exact cause (aneurysm of the aorta), his age (76), treatment he received (autopsy), treatment I received (amazing offers of assistance from hotel management, consulate, AND Air Canada, an organization not widely known for its amazing offers of assistance).  When The Question is asked, hit “play” and leave the room unless masochism is one of your dominant character traits.

INEVITABLY, you will want to bitch about life. Now you can do it with impunity! There is a period of grace for widows. No one will dare accuse you of being a bitch, even if you are.

GOOD ADVICE FOR RECENT WIDOWS: DEVELOP A LIKING FOR MUZAK.

I’ve recently been widowed and am wondering: Should I start an advice column for people in my position? I don’t mean advice about dealing with grief – there’s plenty of that on the web, none of which helps. No, I mean, about the practical stuff that goes with being widowed. Here are some observations.

-       You will be making many phone calls to cancel things the dead man no longer needs and to put into your name things you continue to need, such as electricity, heating, the car, insurance…

-       This name-changing process involves calling numerous companies and government agencies, which in turn involves listening to a great deal of Muzak and being told that your time is greatly valued, but no agent is available at the present time. BTW: No matter when you call, they will experience a higher than usual volume of calls.

-       After pressing 1 for English, you will be listening to a long list of options, none of which fit your case. And even if one of them does, the robot will not understand your answers. When you finally reach a live agent, the conversation will begin with velvety condolences, but end with the usual chirpy signoff: Have a good day! Do NOT make the mistake of asking how you can have a good day when you are devastated. You will be put on hold to speak to a specialist, which involves listening to more Muzak…

-       Death certificate: Scan it into your PC. You’ll need many copies. Absolutely everybody needs to see it. You will be asked a dozen identifying questions to make sure you are not a crank caller.  But even if you know the name of your husband’s first pet and the maiden name of his grandmother, Mother Bell will not cancel the dead man’s cell phone unless you send in that certificate!

To be continued, as I accumulate more experience as a recent widow.

KAFKA AND THE FACTS OF LIFE.

James Hawes on Kafka

Continuing with Kafa’s Letter to His Father:

Getting married, establishing a family, accepting all children that happen to be conceived, to support them in this uncertain world and give them even a little guidance – I am convinced that is the utmost a human being can achieve. It is no counter argument to say that many people appear to achieve those things with ease, for first of all only few people achieve it in truth, and secondly those few do not actively seek that result. Rather it happens to them. It may not be the ultimate, but it is nevertheless a great and honourable achievement (especially because action and happenstance cannot be strictly separated). And in the end the point is not to reach the ultimate goal, but to approach it, yet go a respectable distance. It is not necessary to soar to the centre of the sun, as long as one manages to crawl to a clean little spot on earth, which is reached by the rays of the sun occasionally and where one can find a little warmth. How was I prepared for that step? As poorly as can be.

I remember an evening walk with you and mother. We were at the Josefsplatz near what is now the Länderbank, and I started to talk of those “interesting things” [i.e. sex] in a foolish, bragging, superior, proud, cool (feigned), cold (in truth) manner. I stuttered the way I often did in your presence, reproached you for leaving me unprepared, so that my classmates had to take care of me. I came close to being in great danger (here I lied shamelessly, as was my habit in order to appear daring). In fact because of my timidity I had no clear idea of the “great dangers”, knew only the usual sins city boys commit in bed, yet I indicated in the end, that luckily I knew everything by then, needed no advice, and everything was alright. But I had started on this topic primarily because it gave me pleasure at least to talk of the subject, also out of curiosity, and finally to avenge somehow whatever you had done to me. You simply accepted my words, as was your way. You said only that you could advise me on how I might engage in these things without risk. Perhaps that was the kind of reply I was fishing for. It suited the lasciviousness of a child fed on meat and all good things, physically inactive, and forever focused on himself. Yet my sense of decency was so hurt, or at least I thought it had to be hurt, that against my own inclination I could no longer speak with you about that topic and arrogantly or insolently broke off the conversation.
(Source: Letter to my Father, text on www.kafka.org; my translation)

#AMREADING NEMIROVSKY, THE FIRES OF AUTUMN.

Irene Nemirovsky

The setting: France during WWI.

Soldiers in the trenches. He had been prepared to die a heroic death, but soon the idea of death terrified him…as he looked at the little blackish heaps lying between two trenches, dead bodies as numerous and insignificant as dead flies in the first cold snap of winter.

Returning soldiers: All they wanted to do was eat as much as possible, get drunk, go wild…The beast would be released, the beast you had carried within yourself and kept under control for four long years.

A woman in the post-war years:

Marriage: Mediocre marriages are based on partial confidences, she thinks: one of you lets slip a confession, a sigh; a fragment of some dream or desire is shared, but then fear sets in; it is retracted…but it is too late. The other has seen your tears, a certain smile, an expression that is hard to forget.

The superiority of men. I have to give in, she thought. After all, men are stronger, more intelligent than we are. If he thinks that this is what love is, nothing more than sleeping around, he must be right. I can’t stand up to him, I can’t. I couldn’t prove to him that he’s wrong.

Married love. His boredom, a kind of gloomy inertia of the soul, had set in very soon after they were married…He doesn’t love me any more, she thought, but when reality is too bitter, we reject it; the heart protects itself against the truth and tirelessly invent its own dreams. It will all pass, she told herself.

Despair. We don’t give in easily to despair. We put up barriers of hope, which we have to remove one by one, and only then does despair penetrate to the heart of man who gradually recognizes the enemy, calls it by name, and is horrified.

KAFKA AND MARRIAGE. Frailty, lack of self-confidence, and guilt feelings.

Image:CharlesPieperPuppets

I had almost no sense of the meaning and possibility of marriage for me…As a child I developed very slowly. These things were too external, too far removed from me. Occasionally there was a need to think of marriage but there was no indication that I was up for a continual, decisive, not to say, most bitter test. In reality my attempts to marry became the greatest and most hopeful attempt to escape you, and my failure was correspondingly great.  Since everything in that area is a failure, I fear I will not succeed in making you understand the significance of my attempts at marriage, and yet the success of this whole letter to you depends on it, for on the one hand all positive strength available to me was concentrated in those attempts, on the other hand all negative strengths accumulated in them too, and with a passion – all the results of your education, which I have described, that is: frailty, lack of self-confidence, and guilt feelings. They formed a kind of barrier between myself and marriage.  It is difficult moreover to offer an explanation because I have spent so many days and nights digging through and thinking about this subject that I am momentarily disoriented. The only element that makes my explanation easier is your complete misinterpretation of the matter, at least in my opinion. It does not seem to be difficult to introduce at least a small correction in this complete misinterpretation of yours.

First of all, you place my failure to marry among my other failures. I wouldn’t object to that, as long as you accept the explanation for my failures which I have offered.  My failure to marry is part of that chain, but you underestimate the significance of this matter to such an extent that when we speak of it, we actually speak of different things. I dare say nothing ever happened to you in your whole life which had such significance for you as my attempts to marry had for me…


(Source: Letter to my Father, text on www.kafka.org; my translation)