Last Monday, I waited all day for a storm that never came.
Beaufort County schools had been canceled – even the dump on St. Helena was closed, I heard – and so I waited nervously for the thing I’ve dreaded most since my husband died six months ago.
Doing weather alone.
I didn’t expect to do weather alone so soon. Mid-March? It’s usually pretty tame, save for the careening back and forth between spring and winter temps. That, I expect. What I do not expect in March are severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail. I figured I had till summer before I’d face that kind of weather alone.
And, to reiterate, the storm never came. So maybe I do. Crossing my fingers and lifting myself in prayer. (Hey, if I don’t lift me, who will?)
I am not looking forward to Hurricane Season. I never do, but this year I’m filled with a deeper dread. Doing Hurricane Season alone is not something I signed on for. Better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health? Sure! Till death do us part. I figured that would happen, too, eventually. But doing Hurricane Season solo? I guess my mind had suppressed that possibility.
As with so many things, Jeff and I had very different hurricane styles. He was chill. I was angsty. He never wanted to evacuate. I always wanted to evacuate. He wanted to play it by ear. I wanted to make hotel reservations five days in advance. He wanted to leave at the last minute, to avoid the crowd. I wanted to leave super early, to avoid the crowd.
These differences were irritating. I irritated him and he irritated me. It strikes me that maybe, just maybe, Hurricane Season could be less stressful now, not more stressful, since I’ll have nobody to argue with. Maybe?
Nah. I’ll just argue with myself. Or Jeff’s voice in my head. I’ll find something to stress about during my first solo hurricane, on that you can rely. It’s just who I am.
Over the past few months, I’ve been facing down a lot of “firsts” without Jeff. There was the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, the first Jeff’s birthday, and the first Beaufort International Film Festival, just to name a few.
And when I say I’ve been “facing down” these firsts, what I mean is that they happened and I’m still alive.
Just last weekend, I survived my first Oscar Night without Jeff. The Academy Awards were always a big deal for us. Not just the ceremony, mind you, but the entire season. (Yes, we made it a season!) Every year, we went out of our way to see all the nominated films before Oscar night, preferably on the big screen. It was almost a moral imperative! As the Oscars drew near, we’d take off work in the middle of a Wednesday or a Thursday – guilt free – and drive to the Bluffton Cinemark just to get a movie in under the wire. It was Oscar season, for crying out loud! We had our priorities!
Look, I know this sounds silly to many of you. I’ve heard all the sneering from the peanut gallery known as Facebook. Hollywood is out of touch. Too woke. They don’t make movies for “real Americans.” Nobody cares about the Oscars anymore… I know, I know.
But we did. Jeff and I cared. I still do. But Oscar Night snuck up on me this year – I’ve been distracted – and by the time I realized it was here, I had only seen three of the ten films nominated for Best Picture. One I watched on Netflix (Train Dreams) and another at USCB (Hamnet) as part of their Monday Night Movies series. The only nominated film I saw at the Cinemark all year was F1, and I saw it with Jeff. The memory is so fresh it guts me. How quickly and brutally life can change.
Anyway, it seems that without my partner in crime, I was less inclined to play hooky from work this year, so I wasn’t very invested in the proceedings. Which made it even easier than usual to uphold my personal Oscars tradition of going to bed about an hour into the ceremony and reading about the winners online the next morning. I’d like to believe Jeff was smiling down on me for keeping at least that part of our annual ritual alive.
Next up, I’ll be doing Easter without Jeff. I won’t lie and say that Easter was as special to my husband as the Oscars, but it was the one time a year he set foot in church, and that was special to me. Especially since he did it for me.
Every year, I’d look out from my regular perch in the First Presbyterian choir loft and feel tears stinging my eyes. Because there he would be, with our daughter, uncomfortable and squirmy in his coat and tie, singing hymns and saying prayers and mouthing the Apostles Creed. Jeff did not grow up in the church, so these practices were somewhat alien to him. They did not come naturally, but he always gave it the old college try on Easter, and I found that very moving. How I will miss seeing that “this is so weird” look on his face, the one he could barely hide. It used to make me angry – when I first went back to church, almost two decades ago – but I had grown to find it endearing.
Jeff was exactly who he was, all the time, and he never pretended to be anybody else. As an overly polite, southern-bred people pleaser, I admired him for that… when it wasn’t ticking me off.
I guess the thing I’m dreading most – besides a hurricane – is the prospect of facing World War III without my husband. I hope my fear is as wildly exaggerated as it sounds, but it’s always wise to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, don’t you think?
Obviously, this does not fall into the category I’ve been writing about here – Things I Always Did with Jeff but Now Must Do Alone. We never did a World War together, so I have no traditions or rituals to uphold. Somehow, this is cold comfort.
It reminds me of something funny, though – and funny is always welcome these days. Jeff used to pick up a couple of packs of Crystal Light Lemonade every time we went to Publix. Granted, we drank a lot of the stuff, but he overstocked to an absurd level. By the time he died, we had so many boxes of Crystal Light Lemonade stacked under our kitchen table, we were starting to look like an episode of Hoarders. I often teased him about being a survivalist, calling him “Prepper.”
“What, exactly, are you prepping for?” I’d ask, as he threw a couple more boxes into the cart.
“Hey, you’ll thank me for this one day,” he’d laugh. “When World War III comes, we’ll probably lose our internet and our power, but we will never run out of Crystal Light!”
Last week, I ran out of Crystal Light. It only took six months.
Much like our time together – mine and Jeff’s – I thought it would last a lot longer.
