Who Is Driving Me Home

I had heard snatches of a song about “driving you home” a couple of times while shopping and had been wanting to hear the entire song. I finally did hear the entire song, while dining out alone.  The line I remember best, and probably the title of the song, is “Who’s gonna drive you home tonight.”

For the past year and a half, no one has been driving me home. Without Greg there is no one to drive me home. No one to drive me to the movies. No one to drive me to a nice restaurant. No one to drive me to a concert. No one to drive me down back roads in the wee hours of the morning.

No one to drive me through life.

I’m driving myself these days. To the places mentioned above. Then I drive myself home, where I sit in the truck and wonder why I even have a good vehicle, for I have no one with whom I can share the open road and busy city streets, and glorious scenery along the way.

Friends sometimes travel with me, but it’s not the same as having Greg accompanying me, for they return to their homes, leaving me missing Greg and our travels through life.

No one is driving me home tonight.

Dining Alone

Greg and I were together for forty-two years. In those years, probably ninety-five percent of our meals were eaten in restaurants or as take-out meals. Our work schedules weren’t conducive to meal preparation at home. Add in our propensity to decide at the last minute what we’d like for supper, and meal planning became an impossibility. So, we were familiar with what restaurants in several towns served our favorite foods, available at a moment’s notice.

Most of the time we were together at meal time. Since Greg’s death I have eaten out by myself several times, in different towns and in different types of restaurants. When I mention this to other widows, most of them say they either can’t face eating out alone, or it took a few years before they were comfortable eating out alone.

I was mulling this over recently and remembered that even before Greg’s death, I dined out alone several times a month. Sometimes Greg was in another town on business or golfing. Other times he’d be finished with his work for the day and go home before I was ready for an evening meal.

(Don’t misinterpret that previous statement. Greg worked hard and worked long hours. My part of the business was time-consuming. A job it might take me a week to get ready to print, Greg could print in a couple of hours – just the nature of the beast.)

So, I often dined out alone. At McDonald’s. At Betty’s OK Country Cooking. At Tray’s Garden. At Taco Bell. At Wendy’s. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. I never thought anything about it; it was just the way a particular day happened to go.

Yes, I would prefer dining out with Greg sitting at the table with me. We might discuss the events of the day or what we’d like to do on the weekend. If we had had a hard day of tiring and tedious work we might sit quietly, lost in our thoughts but still together, letting the stress of the day dissipate and our moods lighten.

I do spur of the moment dining out, lock the door at work and by the time I get the truck started I am wanting to eat supper in a restaurant instead of at home. Yes, it is sad to eat alone, without Greg’s presence, but I do dine out alone.

Grief Trumps Everything

I am a winter person. Cool temperatures suit me much better than the heat of summer. Snow coming down lifts my mood like very few other things do.

When I was a child, snow on the ground meant that I spent the entire day outside, sledding or just walking through snow-covered fields. One moonlit night, Momma made the neighbor boy go home at eleven-thirty because she was ready to go to bed; we had been sledding since seven that morning.

My darling Greg and I liked to drive around when it was snowing, especially when it was one of those snowfalls without wind, and large fluffy flakes looked like feathers gently floating down. We had many pleasant drives on snowy days, a couple of harrowing drives, and a magical drive one winter night when the snow was sparkling in the headlights and each flake seemed to bounce a few times before settling to the ground.

This week, however, even though the snowfall has been pretty and the pasture is beautiful, with snow clinging to tree trunks and branches, I cannot enjoy my time of year for Greg is not here to share it with. I miss our drives, his appreciation of the beauty God sent, and the pleasure we had enjoying a beautiful day and each other’s presence.

I went to Greg’s grave Friday afternoon, looked out over the snow-covered bottom and talked to Greg for a few minutes, then walked to the branch and followed a deer trail back to the house. While I appreciated the quiet and beauty of the snowy scenery, my heart was heavy with grief and I could not bring myself to stay outside on that wonderful winter afternoon as I used to do.

Looking at the snow blanketing the front yard, I have a sadness in my heart that I doubt will ever lift. Grief is tied to so many things, some to be expected, like holidays; other things, like the show, are unexpected and hit me with more strength than I ever thought possible.

Grief trumps everything.