Turning Over A New Leaf
I wrote a little poem shortly after Jimmy died that was called:
I am a Widow
I have been many things in my life.
Some given as a birthright such as a daughter.
I was a wife and mother through a conscious choice.
A Grandmother as a gift from my child.
My widowhood was laid at my feet like a dreaded
threshold. It's span immense. No possible way to take a detour.
I knew it was on my horizon.
Just as sure as I knew I loved the person who
presented me with this new title.
As I took my first step
into my new role, I did not
know how I could possibly
make my way.
I still do not know and will
try to learn how to make the best of it.
Only I will walk this path
in my shoes.
No one would ever want
another to know how it feels to be a widow.
Cathy Windham
2/25/13
Coming to terms with the new title that I wear I didn't know really what was going on at the moment. Friends of mine who have been widowed agree that there is very little said about this transition. Learning how to live as a widow is something one must learn to do alone.
These headstones represent soldiers that have gone before.
They also represent the fact that there are many widows, too. Women and men, too who feel like me. Alone and numb.
I suppose I was no different than all others who have mourned the loss of their husband or their lover or their boyfriend.
I had some photographs taken that day in black-and-white. It will help keep the moment frozen in time so that my children and grandchildren and those beyond them will reflect for a moment and know that this was a significant part of my life, too.
I met Jimmy very young. I was 18 and he was 23. We began our lives together. We enjoyed every minute that we were together and worked hard.
We truly love each other and had so much fun. There are so many things to remember that will help me get better as we go from the present into the future not knowing what's in store.
Depression can come over you like a big dark blanket and smother out your world. Sometimes you feel as though you cannot breathe. Sometimes you have to cry. Other times you have to just be. You find yourself staring at a photograph or not really being able to do anything constructive.
I know this is a phase. This is a period of time that I do not know how long it will last. I'm often reminded to live just one day at a time. I need to slow down and feel what is happening right now and make the best sound decisions for the present. I wrote in a journal about my father after he passed away. I was feeling a very strong compulsion to get some feelings out that were trapped inside me that I hadn't had enough courage to share with anyone. I didn't keep journaling and years later came across the small book. I let my husband read it. Why is that we have to feel worthy of expressing ourselves? Why do we think it's not worthy of someone else's time to know our pain and what our fears have been?
So, as I reflect on how to best help myself deal with this enormous loss I guess I just have to back up my mind to a time when others existed some that that I didn't even know. Recall stories repeated by my parents and look at old photographs of relatives to know who I really am today.
Looking through some old boxes after my mother passed away, I came across photographs that were of her growing up and some ancestors on both sides of the family. The old black and white and sepia photos on paper and tin captured stiff poses and unsmiling faces.
My mother's family immigrated from Norway. I don't know the exact year but they settled in northwest Minnesota in a little town called Ulen.
My grandmother Emily Fevig Syverson lived on a very small farm on the edge of the tiny town. She raised seven children on her own. Mother's father was Charles Syverson. I'm not sure exactly how long he stayed with the family but he left them and started a new family in North Dakota.
This is very harsh country in northwest Minnesota. It is very flat and very dependent on its agriculture to make ends meet. I really don't understand how in the world granny managed to do that. She was a very small statured woman. Her demeanor was kind and sweet. She had two sons and five daughters.
All of them attended the small elementary and high school in town. Each one of them graduated. That was something to be very proud of!
I remember mom telling us some stories about how she and her sister worked for a lady in town to help take care of their household and earning extra money. The boys tended to the fields and got other labor-intensive work. They were always very respectful of their mother and helped her in any way that they could to make ends meet. They remained a close family.
I did not know my grandmother very long. The first time I really recall her I was six years old.
We had moved to Ulen for a year in order for my mother to help her mother during the last year of her life while my father was in Turkey with the Army.
I attended first grade at the same school that my mother attended and when I think back on it now, I sure am privileged to have been able to do that.
After graduation mom went on to work outside the home. She told me that she used to be a waitress at one time and that she had gone out to California with another sister and a brother to find work.
I'm not quite certain how she met my father. Maybe my brother or sister can remember that story.
On my dad's side of the family he had one brother. His father died when my father was a young man so I never got to meet him.
My father's mother, Emma Hewitt, in comparison to my other grandmother, was the complete opposite. She was of German decent. Controlling behavior and opinionated.
I never got to really even know her either. My grandfather died when my dad was young.
She had a couple sisters and a brother. They were from a fairly well to do family in St. Paul, Minnesota and tam a butcher shop.
My father, Walter and his brother, Glen both attended the military Academy Creighton High. After high school, my father attended the University Minnesota and was then commissioned into the United States Army.
Mom, Nona Syverson and dad, Walter Hewitt got married in Iowa on their way to Fort Sam Houston,Texas for his duty station.
They got their wedding photograph made but never purchased a print until my father was captured as a POW. My grandmother Emily encouraged my mother to purchase the print. I never saw this photograph until after my father's death in 1993. Mom said it had just been too painful a period of time.
They had a daughter, Sandra that was born while they were in Texas.
They were then stationed in Manila, Philippines.
It was exotic there and mom told me later that they had quite an escapade arriving and learning about the local people and the environment. It was very enriching to learn their culture.
They purchased some very beautiful things from the Philippines. Carved teakwood chests with a floral motif that depicted the local flair.
Delicate silk embroidered fabric.
At the beginning of the war mom and Sandra had to be evacuated back to the United States on a boat. It was a long and brutal journey.
She arrived in California with Sandra and boarded a train to Minnesota. Sandra was very sick along the way and had vomited all over herself and mom's only clothing. It was a miserable trip for both of them. I can only imagine what a horrific trip like that was much less with a two year old.
Mom and Sandra took refuge in St. Paul with daddy's mother. They were allowed to stay out at the lake cottage. The cottage was small. Daddy and grandpa Hewitt had built it on the shores of Turtle Lake. The winter was harsh and there was only a pot bellied stove to help keep them warm. The lake froze and mom did not drive or have a car in order to leave the property. My grandmother did not exactly make life very easy on my mom. I often wondered why she just didn't live in town with her. I once asked her about this and she told me that her mother-in-law never approved of her eldest, college educated, Army Officer son should have married a simple farm girl. At that, mom moved out to the lake but when conditions were getting worse decided to go to Ulen and brave even worse weather conditions at her mother's home.
This is when grandma Syverson suggested she try to purchase their wedding photograph.
It was eighteen dollars. Somehow they scraped up the money to buy it. In it my father is wearing his military dress white uniform. Mom is wearing a dress she made. She told me it was a white brocade fabric and had royal blue velvet trim on the short bolero jacket. Mom was a very talented seamstress and could knit anything, too. She made us many dresses and knit several intricate Nordic patterned sweaters.
Mom stayed in Ulen while my father endured the fall of the Philippines. He told us stories of painting his car a dark brownish green Army color then driving it through the jungle for the leaves and other debris to be imbedded on the surface. Great camouflage!
He endured the Bataan Death March. I did not know the atrocities of this event until many years later. He once swallowed a small octopus with a head the size of a plumb. He was choking on it and turning blue. The Japanese guard slapped him on the back and he managed to get it down whole and alive. Daddy had stolen it from the small aquarium the Japanese man in charge had outside his building. It's a wonder daddy wasn't killed for stealing but the guard did not see what he was choking on.
Not long ago I came across some original documents of war crimes that were described by my father and several other prisoners of war that survived. My father returned for the War Crimes Trial. Several Japanese guards were sentenced to their deaths based on his testimony. He spent years after the war helping former prisoners and those from the Philippines who had been commissioned into the US Army to obtain compensation for their valor. There is a treasure trove of information I will need to read to fully understand
what he did to survive. I find myself in tears after just a few pages read. It will take time.
After the war was over and he came home, the local newspaper ran his story and homecoming with my mother. It is a sweet article but hardly gives the one reading it the truth of the nightmares he had endured. History already being forgotten.
By the time the remaining four children were added to the family over the next fifteen years, you couldn't tell anything like that had ever happened to our family.
We were launched by that time into the fifties and a booming economy. Daddy
made the Army his career. Mom made our home wherever we were stationed.
She was constantly adapting to different living conditions with five children.
Dad was away from home a lot. Mom did not drive. For the life of me I can not
relate to what she had to do compared to my life as a military wife.
So, reflecting on my parents and their upbringing and life experiences I can now look at myself in a different way. My life was sheltered and I had not experienced the hardships and pain they had. My future was their dream. They made that happen for me. I learned from them how to adapt and how to parent. Their gift of a better life than what they had was paid in full by their love.
I am a widow at the age of fifty-nine. I should realize how very fortunate I have been my entire life.
I had never given that title a thought that it could ever belong to me before I was a much older woman. How was I going to do this? There are many days, weeks, months and years ahead for me to learn how to adapt. I will do well. I know that there are others that have shown me what it takes to survive under much worse circumstances. I have accepted my past. It is up to me to accept my future, too.
Cathy Windham
3/27/13
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