Your Inner Beauty

My son and his cousins were recently going through a box of family pictures that were taken decades ago.  One of my sisters and I were in the same room with them as they passed the pictures around and made comments about each picture as they looked at it.

 

You know the kind of pictures I am talking about; the pictures we all take at family weddings, baptisms, birthdays and first days of school.  The milestones in all of our lives.

 

There was a lot of talking and laughing going on and my sister and I were only casually listening to their comments until one of them said in a tone of surprise, "You all look so young!"

 

Then we went over to the box and looked at the pictures and then looked at each other.

 

OMG.  They. Are. Right.

 

The color of our hair, the expressions on our faces, the clothes we are wearing.  We were so much younger in a way that I didn't remember until I looked at the old photographs.

 

I'm not saying that I want to go back to that age because along with the way I looked, I also remembered what was going on in my life when those pictures were taken and it was good but I didn't want to re-live it.  I don't want to go backwards.

 

 

I feel I've worked hard to get to this place in my life where I am comfortable within my own skin.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I don't like seeing the lines that are now forming around my mouth or on my forehead and I really don't like it when I see grey growing into my hair.  My first instinct is to get rid of it immediately even though I know it's a battle I won't win.  Madison Avenue spends millions of dollars and airs countless hours of commercials to make me and the female population as a whole feel that these normal aging signs  devalue us as people and that our signs of age can only erased with the products they are selling.

 

Of course, I want to look and feel my best and I work hard to try and beat the aging clock through exercise, eating well and thinking positive thoughts.

 

These days, women have more options in life and therefore I think they are much smarter and more confident about the ways they present themselves to the world.  Some agencies, such as the one that recently produced this ad for Dove soap, are finally getting the message and responding to a woman's inner and outer beauty.

 

And that's a healing thing:

 

 

 

 

A Special Picture

Snoopy at typewriter sharing his memories

A very good friend recently came over to my house to drop off some things.  It was a Saturday and she was out running errands and my house was on her route.  We both were trying to get things done so it was your usual routine drop off and chat for a few minutes to check in and see what's going on with each other.

Hi. How are you?

Great.  What's going on?

Not much.  So and so called me.  Listen to this...

She has been in my house tons of times and everything in my house is pretty much arranged the way it always is.  No big renovations or rearrangements going on here at all.  So it surprised me -- in a really great way -- when she came into the hallway and saw probably for the millionth time the black and white picture of my husband that has been hanging in the same place for years since he died. 

Now this picture really dates him because he is sitting at his work desk in front of a manuel typewriter (what is that?) and a rotary telephone (how does that work?) that has five clear square buttons across the base so you are able to put multiple callers on hold.

I love this picture of him and for the first time I found out that she loves it too!

We stood there and talked about the picture and about my husband.  It felt good and it was really a lift for me.  I think one of the most thoughtful things you can do for anyone who has lost someone is to talk to them about that person.  Tell them how that person affected your life, tell them what that person meant to you, share an experience you had with that person even if they already know the story.  Tell it again.  They'll never grow tired of it.

We know the person we lost was special but we want to hear from other people why they also miss that person; why the deceased person left a void in their life too.

It's comforting to share memories.  Try it and see. 

Anniversary Rituals?

This month would have marked the 25^th anniversary of our wedding if my husband was still alive.  I wonder if he knows?  If things had turned out differently, I’m sure we would have thrown a big party for our family and friends to help us celebrate 25 years flying by since we first said “I do” to each other.

I looked at the calendar this year and thought about all those other anniversaries.  Of course, I haven’t celebrated a wedding anniversary for the past eight years and, truth be told, some anniversaries were more fun than others.  I think that’s true for every couple because it’s just part of the emotional roller coaster of being married.  But the important thing was we always tried to make time to do something special, remember that eventful day and reminisce about the wedding itself.  We had such a good time at our wedding that after the reception ended we joined a group of our friends who were going to a local bar to continue celebrating.

For our first wedding anniversary, I made the dinner reservation and I put a lot of thought into trying to find a place neither of us had been before.  I wanted to find a restaurant where the food was delicious, the atmosphere was comfortable and romantic but it wasn’t too expensive.  I thought I had done well but instead I had flunked reservation making big time.  We walked into the restaurant and my husband didn’t like it AT ALL.  Since I didn’t really want to go through that again, we agreed that in the future, he could make the anniversary reservations.

Fast forward to the wedding anniversary that arrived just after my husband died, and I was emotionally drained.  I didn’t really feel anything except numb – just as though I was walking through cotton candy.  Life’s daily routines were definitely surreal.

The next year was much harder for me because as silly as it sounds, it took me about a year to really absorb the fact that he was gone.  In that first year, I still was sort of looking for him.  Once, I was driving the car to the grocery store and I saw a man walking on the opposite side of the street with the same physical build as my husband,  dressed in the same uniform my husband wore: khaki pants and a denim shirt.  In that split second I thought it was him.  I remember there being something about the way the man walked that made me do a double take.  I had to pull into a parking lot and collect myself.

25 years. . . how could it be?  We were married for 17 years before he died and we had known each other for three to four years prior to getting married.  He was my best friend.  I recently browsed through the album of wedding pictures and shut it after a few pages.   The flood of emotions was unsettling.  In some ways, it felt as though it happened yesterday but it also it felt like a dream.  Did that really happen to me?  Is that really me in that wedding gown?  My God, we took so much for granted. 

Now the date is a day without rituals but I still have my memories.