After my husband died, I sometimes slowly and sometimes abruptly dealt with the changes in my life.  Taking his name off the bank account and health insurance, filing the paperwork for life insurance and waiting for the autopsy report to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit were all challenging feats I dealt with in the first 6 months after my loss.

FInding out the car was not inspected, overdue for registration, and had a flat tire while adding gas to the tank one day was a bit embarrassing.  Calling the chimney guy to help me rid the warm brick cavity of a giant squirrel’s nest was a good call.  And replacing the back deck before it caved in on someone walking across it was a good call on my part.

When the weather warms up after a long cold winter, I get very excited about planting some fresh annuals and watching the perennial plants I took from my dad’s garden begin to grow.

My dad loved to get his hands dirty in the gardens around our yard.  If there was extra space, he would arrange a wildflower garden.  He would occasionally stop along the side of the highway on trips to Maine to discover and then transplant a beloved jack in the pulpit or columbine that no one had seen before.  The south east corner of our yard was designated for vegetables and he certainly had the magic touch for growing pumpkins.

As an adult I have lived in a number of places and we always did the landscaping ourselves.  When I first met Mike he owned and operated his own landscaping business. He knew all the ins and outs of mowing a lawn and planting seeds and fertilizing.  He had weed whackers, blowers, several types of mowers and many useful yard tools.

Continue reading “More challenges after the loss of a spouse. Who will clean the yard?”