Age:[ 38 ] Gender:[ M ]

Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 10:31:34 -0500
From: Poppa  <qjm005=at=email.sps.mot.com> 
To: Bardo of Death Studies 
Subject: Re: Revisiting, a Year later...

Jerral,

Please feel free to post my update in whatever way you think it might help
others visiting your memorials!

Yes, many times over the last year, I have visited that page and reflected on
what was happening in my life.  You are providing a valuable service to the
grief stricken community.  Please keep up the good work!

It is so very hard for those early in the season of grief to see any kind of
hope for a future.

-Poppa


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Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 16:48:42 -0500
From: Poppa <qjm005=at=email.sps.mot.com>
To: Bardo=at=Bardo.ORG
Subject: Revisiting, a Year later...

I don't know how often you get follow-up posts from people but I thought
I'd drop you a few lines to let you know how things have developed for
me since I posted on your page.

On June 5, 1997 I posted a memorial titled 
	
"In Memory Of My Beloved Shalimar".

After that posting I began to reflect on just badly I was hurting, and I
sought out a support group for widows and widowers.  I found just the
group I was looking for.  It was internet email based and populated with
some of the most wonderful folks I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

These people saved my life.  You see, I had gotten into the habit of
driving 120 mph everywhere I went.  I could never kill myself, but if I
happened to "accidentally" lose control of a speeding car....   Well you
get the point.

I started spending my sleepless nights sending internet messages back
and forth with those other Widow/ers.  People who knew exactly how I
felt and what I was going through.  Some of them had just lost their
spouse, others were 4, or 5 years or more into their grief...

Together we cried, and laughed, and then cried some more....  This group
of special people had also set up a IRC Chat room where we would spend
long hours each night talking about whatever we were feeling and what
was on our minds....

The pain didn't go away, but through the sharing it became bearable, and
with that I became less reckless...

In september of 97, about 30 of us decided to meet in Dallas, and spend
a weekend just visiting and hugging, and putting faces with all the
names....

That weekend I met Jeanne... She had been in our Widow/ers group longer
than me, her husband had died 5 years before.  She was a beautiful and
perky little lady, and she'll tell you she was attracted to me right
away, but I was still in a lot of pain and nowhere ready to even think
about dating yet...  I was somehow blind to the fact that she was
attracted to me, though I did enjoy her hugs!

After the weekend was over, a profound feeling of loneliness and sadness
settled over me...  If anything I seemed to have suffered some kind of
set back...  I had 2 wonderful days filled with compassion and
friendship, and then all at once I was so very alone.....

Slowly, over the next couple of weeks, I began to shake out of it....
I had to prepare for a business trip to Austin, Tx.  and one of my
Cyberfriends remembered that Jeanne lived in Austin.   Since I was going
to be in town for the entire week, I dropped Jeanne an email asking if
she would like to grab some chinese while I was in town.... She agreed,
and we decided to go out that Friday.

Friday, October 3, 1997 Changed my life forever.  Jeanne and I spent
hours talking before during and after dinner....  She was so warm and
wonderful, Beautiful and Intelligent, and she had the most incredible
blue eyes...  I lost myself in those eyes as we talked...  Around
midnight I forced myself to leave.  She had to work the next day and I
had hundreds of miles between me and home....  So I gave her a hug and
headed back to Ft. Worth.....

Over the next 2 weeks we sent a LOT of emails back and forth...  and
spent a LOT of time in chat...  The content of those emails and chat
messages... got increasingly more intimate, and in turn progressed to
phone calls....  Within a few weeks I found myself still working in Ft.
Worth and Living in Austin.  The commute was murder!!

On the 15th of December 1997 I was able to arrange a transfer to my
companies Austin branch, and on January 18, 1998 Jeanne and I were
married!!

I had learned that the human heart is like a house with many rooms....
Just because someone new moves in, there is no reason for the other
occupants to leave.   I will always Love my Shally, just as Jeanne will
always Love her Connie.  The pain of the losses we have lived through
will never go away...  It's just that the Love in our lives out weighs
the sadness....

Both Jeanne and I understand that it was the Love and the Loss of our
former spouses that had enabled us to feel as strongly for each other as
we do.  Were it not for those other Loves and Losses we would not be the
people we are today.

Marriage after the loss of a spouse brings it's own wonders and it's own
fears....  We are under no illusions of our own mortality...  We
understand that a couple almost never die's together...  that in time
one of us will have to once again relive that terrible loss....

It's not bravery, or courage that causes us to risk that oblivion.... We
simply Love each other so much there IS no other choice.....

You'll notice that in my original post, almost a year ago,  I signed it
-Poppa Xanth....

Well Xanth was a nickname I picked up many years ago.... and without
Shally there can be no Xanth,  that part of me died when she did on
Halloween of 1996.

Now and forever more it's simply,

-Poppa

Remember, the plural of Spouse is Spice.  That's why alone life is so
bland!!