Monday, October 24, 2011

Talkin' Bout Late Night.....Juno What I'm talking about.

Fun weekend, listening and dancing to a friend’s band on Friday night. A large group of friends showed up, and it felt great. I was social, talkative, and there was great interaction. I felt like a little bit of the old Isherwood was back.  My self-worth took a huge dive after my wife died. I felt like people really didn’t want to hang out with just me. I was depressed and not feeling like I had anything to contribute beyond a silent warm body occupying a vacant seat.  When my wife was alive, I was very outgoing.  So this shift in self-worth is very welcome and familiar.

The pain of Friday with the third anniversary of my wife’s death seems to have been another glimpse of closure for me.

I was extremely social on Saturday in that I left my apartment at 8:00 AM and didn’t get back until midnight! Breakfast with my hiking partner, and then we wandered the avenue and bumped into some other friends for a lite snack! I dragged along my hiking partner with another group of friends that were Halloween shopping, and finally had dinner with another group for some late night socializing. That’s four different groups of people for the day. Very social indeed! It felt GREAT.

I even talked 3 people into joining me to Hippy Dance Church on Sunday! We are all going to the same Halloween party next weekend, so we are going as a foursome theme. We picked “one-night stands” and I was talked into wearing a dress since I am growing out my hair and it is long enough to curl now.  Not sure how I was talked into that.

Sunday afternoon was a widow/widowers dinner that I had made reservations for last weekend. I had requested an upstairs private room and the manager had agreed to it, but apparently had not written it down or let the other employees know. The restaurant is extremely busy and loud, and not enjoyable even on for a regular dinner so I had to pull the shift manager aside and politely but forcibly procured the upstairs room for us. I told him the nature of our group and that I would like to protect his other customers from hearing us talk about death and dying and with some newcomers to our group, we certainly don’t want his other customers being uncomfortable with people crying visibly and possibly loudly. Yes, I laid it on pretty thick and he was quite anxious to move us to the upstairs room. I slipped him some extra green after the dinner to thank him, as they really did go out of their way with so few servers available on a busy Sunday night.

I’ve turned into a semi-facilitator for this group, as most of the members don’t want to bring up topics. I tend to start a topic with a broad statement, ask a few of the regulars  if they have experienced something similar, and then look at the fairly newer members for input, allowing the brand new members to speak up if they are so inclined.  My heart isn’t in the group anymore. I plan on skipping the next few dinner groups.  The more full my life becomes, and the better I feel about myself, the less I seem to have in common with the widows/widowers group. I’m not turning my back because I am “OK” now….far from it….. but I feel like I am forcing myself to go backwards to talk at these dinners. 

Three years. That is a lot of dinners.

No comments:

Post a Comment