Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Blog

  • A Lesson in Dying

    I spend way more time on Facebook than I should, but there are rewards. Today there was a long list of Facebook posts I had made, from previous years. 

    This was the last post on the list, from thirteen years ago.

    “May 2, 2010: Today Bill planted four tomato seedlings. Emma and I went swimming, even though it was 64 degrees.” 

    Bill was in the garden, planting tomatoes. The tumors were growing in his abdomen. He knew he was dying, and that it was very likely he would not see those tomatoes bear fruit. Nor would he eat any of it. But he believed in the future and the goodness of home-grown tomatoes. The cancer slowed him down, but it did not stop him from living. Bill knew he was fortunate, that not everyone could keep going.

    Eleven weeks later on July 14, 2010, Bill died, in our bedroom, surrounded by family, held by love. 

    And in late summer, I harvested the tomatoes that he had planted.

    May 2, 2023

  • Turning 80

    I celebrated my 80th birthday a month ago, and one of my friends asked me how it felt to be 80. Mostly I feel surprised and amazed.

    You would think I would know that 80 comes after 79, but I feel as though this 80th birthday came out of no where. It snuck up on me. I don’t feel 80, though when I see candid photographs I have to acknowledge that I am old. I don’t have as many wrinkles as some of my friends, but there is that jawline and the aging neck. 

    I also hear the clock ticking more loudly. Both my parents died in their early 80s. My mother had a heart condition, and I was recently diagnosed with a heart condition, too. I am trying to take care of that problem, with medications and a cardiac ablation, and I need to build my stamina back, too. 

    I have great plans for this new decade, but perhaps I will not get all ten years. The road behind me stretches back for many miles, and the road ahead cannot be as long…nor would I want it to be. But I hope to travel, to explore new places, to spend time in beloved places. I hope to self publish two books. I hope to spend time with family and friends. I hope to stay healthy and in my home.

    A dear friend told me that her rabbi gave a blessing to one of his congregants who was turning 80, and told the woman that according to Jewish tradition, she had now reached the age of strength—strength that comes from eight decades of life experiences and lessons.

    So I have reached the age of strength. May it be so. And may the road lead onward.

    Kristin Moyer

    February 3, 2023

  • New Year’s Eve 2022

    Over the bare hill 

In the fog

Beyond the dark trunks of the persimmons
Beyond the dens of the red fox
Beyond the pond with its crust of ice

The new year lies waiting

Tonight

With my birthday in tow

Perhaps a barge for this new octogenarian

Or a skiff

Or a kayak

Or a sailboat

To sail into the future


December 31, 2022

  • Let There Be Light

    It is December, with the winter solstice approaching, the season of light!

    But I am having trouble producing light here on my hilltop. 

    First it was the four walk lights edging the pavers leading from my car park. All four lights were working, and then suddenly one evening, they were not. 

    I went out to the electrical corner the next morning. The transformer was plugged in and its face was glowing, meaning it was getting power. I tried turning the switch to off and then on again, and the walk lights came on. I set the timer to six hours, and that evening the walk lights worked. 

    But two nights ago, the walk lights were off again. I tried the same rescue operation, and last night the walk lights were shining again. For how long is anyone’s guess. 

    Inside the house the Christmas lights are frustrating me. The set of wax candles on the mantel has fresh batteries but I can’t get the remote control to turn them on at five pm, for six hours.

    I am having the same problem with the battery-powered candles in the windows. They all have fresh batteries, but I can’t get the remote control to work their timers either. Two worked, but not the other ten. 

    Yesterday after reading the manufacturers’ instructions online, I learned the secret: you have to turn on all these candles manually at the base first before using the remote to set the timers. I waited until almost five pm, and then followed the instructions. And it worked. The house was lovely with flickering light. I will write a note of instruction and put it in the storage boxes, so that next Christmas I will not be frustrated. I am almost 80, and I forget things.

    Yesterday I also brought the Fraser fir inside, set it in the stand by myself, and put on the strands of small clear lights. First I plugged in each strand to be sure the whole strand of 100 was working. But when I got the first strand carefully draped around the top most section of the tree, the second 50 lights were dark, so I had to take the lights off, muttering and climbing on and off the step ladder, and replace it with a new strand. 

    Finally I had all the lights on the tree, and I sat on the couch to admire my work.

    Bill had always put the lights on the tree, and Bill had set up most of the window candles—his favorite Christmas decoration and one that he was not in a hurry to take down after Christmas. Sometimes the window candles were up until Easter; they were the old plug-in kind.

    This is my thirteenth Christmas without Bill, and it is hard even after this passage of time to make the light shine without him.  

    I sit in the dark living room, the lights shining on the tree, the candles flickering on the mantel and in the windows, signaling to the dark sky and to the stardust that I am here. 

    December 12, 2022

  • Where Do You Come From?

    October 7, 2022

    A few weeks ago, I was at a dinner party and toward the end of the evening, I launched a question: where do you come from? where have you lived? where has been your home? Each friend responded, and their stories revealed facets of their lives we previously did not know. Many of them moved frequently, due to parents’ jobs or vocations, and those frequent moves shaped them. A few grew up in just a few homes, in the same town or a few towns, and that also shaped them.

    I returned to my own home that night, and thought about where do I come from. I grew up as an Army brat, and although we did not move as frequently as some military families, we moved about 15 times before I graduated from high school, living in five different states. You have to learn to make friends fast, or you don’t have any. You have to learn to be flexible and adapt quickly. It also provides perspective that growing up in one town does not give you. I certainly saw my segregated high school town differently from my classmates who had lived there all their lives. 

    A song floated into my head the night of the dinner party, a hymn that we sing at my UU church. The title comes from a Paul Gauguin painting: Where Do We Come From?

    Where do we come from?

    What are we?

    Where are we going?

    Mystery, mystery, life is a riddle and a mystery.

  • Passages

    The tattered books are over fifty years old

Thick board books, with moving wheels 

Showing trucks and fire engines

Beloved by my son

And I hand them now to Kevin the store clerk

Kind and caring to me at the wild bird store

Whose little boy Henry was two yesterday

And who likes books…

That the adventure may go on.


Kristin Moyer
July 12, 2022

  • Summer, 1972, Washington DC

    Pre Roe v. Wade

    We lined up on the Mall

In the hot summer sun and waited

In our white dresses and slacks and shirts

With our signs Freedom of Choice

And finally the march began to move

Off the Mall onto the streets, all of us chanting,

Around a narrow corner where enraged faces

Screamed and shook jars of tiny bodies

Then onto Constitution Avenue

And the marble dome of the Capitol 

Floating like a mirage of Justice 


Kristin Moyer 
June 24, 2022

  • Deep Diving

    In the darkened room
Gel cold on my chest

“Hold your breath”

And like a diver
looking for treasure

I hold my breath
and turn my head 

to see for the first time

Beating for eighty years

The chambers 
of my heart



May 5, 2022
Kristin Moyer

  • Fall 1926

    The man walks down the lane
Between the rows of elms he planted
To the mailbox by the dusty road

Opens the door on the box
Empty
No letter from his girl

His first born child so little at birth 
Tears had come to his eyes
Fearing for her life

But she survived and grew
Smart as a whip
A good girl

Now off in the city
Gone to college
Too busy to write

The man turns 
Empty handed
Chores to do in the barn

No foreshadowing 
Of the stroke that will come
In the spring 



Kristin Moyer
For my grandfather

  • Web of Life

    March 5, 2022

With every wedding we attend

We are there again
Facing our loved one
Our hands clasped
Faces aglow

And with every deathbed we attend

The river smooth or storm tossed
We are there again
Holding a hand
Seeing the light fade

held in this cradle
Of memory and love



Kristin Moyer