Category: Being a man

I’ve been bordering on being blue for the past few days. 

I don’t really know what’s causing the problem but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jerry, our life together, acknowledging that I was happy and feeling sad about missing him and the goofy life we made.

I was tossing a bunch of little things that were junk when Jerry put them into the junk drawer and they were still junk when I pulled them out of the junk drawer. That man couldn’t throw anything away!

(I smiled as I typed that.)

Then a wave of sadness washed over me. The dog had been walked, but I felt like I needed to step outside. The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and as I looked over the back yard I noticed weeds had sprung up with a vengeance.

I went down stairs with the intent to just do poo patrol. Once I’d completed that chore, I thought, “Might as well do the weed whacking too.”

That felt good. I took all the weeds down to nubs, Then I did the patch of grass & weeds between my fence and the next door neighbor. During one of the winter storms, some limbs had broken off of one of his trees and were laying in the way. I moved them, then cut the weeds which had been growing under the limbs. The battery on the weed whacker died just as I finished the last pass against the fence.

“Great Timing,” I thought as I put the weed whacker away. Slipping the battery into the charger I noticed it was the bigger battery that came with my chainsaw.

This led to checking the oil in the chainsaw, and since I was holding the saw, I grabbed a charged battery pack, shrugged and headed out of the garage. Happily I went out to the side of the house where the limbs lay and started cutting them into small manageable pieces. 

From the winter damage I’ve seen on the tree that lost these limbs, I’m not sure it will survive. That’s sad because it’s a beautiful tree. Similarly, the butterfly bush in front of my house is looking pretty shabby too. I’m hoping it will recover but I’m not holding my breath.

The singing of my chainsaw blade made me happy. I’d noticed some of my neighbor’s Mountain Lilacs were overgrowing the power pole we share. So before he gets an abatement ticket or worse, Edison “Helps’ by butchering the plants, I started pruning.

Well, I had the chainsaw in my hand…  

I cleaned up all the trimmings, came inside covered in sawdust and debris from weed whacking, and asked Jerry if there was anything else I should do before I cleaned up.

Yeah…

My heart stopped for a second. In that breathless moment I figured out part of the blues I’d been feeling.

You see, I always did the outside work.

I can run the snow thrower and always could. In winters, Jerry wanted to help and contribute. But Jerry had shitty balance, doubly so on ice, so we agreed that he ran the snow thrower. I was pleased with this arrangement because while he was holding onto the machine, the odds of a fall were greatly reduced.

When It came to yard work, trimming, digging, planting, painting, and that kind of stuff. I did the work, Jerry supervised. He made sure that I was staying hydrated, and wasn’t out in the sun for too long.

Jerry told me enjoyed watching me working in the yard. He said I looked hot, and he liked my confident strut and my confidence while using the tools.

At the time, I’d never thought that I could be hot looking doing chores. For me, it was just chores. Other guys, looked hot doing construction, or farming, or whatever. I never thought about myself that way, but I was happy knowing I was good enough for him.

I suppose what I’d been secretly dreading was this “first” spring.

Last year, I was just going through the motions still “numb” from his passing.

This year, I’m getting back to something like “normal” and those normal things remind me what’s missing.

One “missing” ritual is this. In the first days of Spring, We’d have discussions about planting spring flowers, or changes in the yard, and trimming of various shrubs and trees. Sometimes there wasn’t much discussion, Jerry would come home with flats of flowers and ask me to plant them. I’d do it because I enjoyed the work and because the flowers made him smile.

It’s that time of year and probably why there was a bit of a sting yesterday. This is a part of the healing process. It’s just going to take time.

The good news is that being outside and doing the usual, normal work felt really good. There’s more to do, but I wanted to see what my arms and shoulders felt like before using the pole saw on some Cottonwood trees that are spindly and overhanging my fence line.

The other good news is that I’m not blue today, it seems a little yard work was all it took to make the blues disappear.

Maybe I’ll go look at some flowers up at the hardware store.