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A Season of DreadDAY SEVEN
By Staff Writer COLLINS CONNER In the dim light of Mama Mia's Italian restaurant in Milwaukee, Linda Howe listens to her sisters' thoughts on their love for one another. "My faith has never been stronger," Linda tells her sisters the day after Christmas 1995. "I don't know when or what or whatever my future holds, but I'm not panicked about it." It wasn't yet Halloween, but the people in Linda Howe's grief support group saw heartache ahead. "The anticipation is getting terrible because my husband went to the hospital on Thanksgiving Day," a widow named Trudy told the group in October. "I can feel it building. I can feel the tenseness. Am I going to relive it all over again on Thanksgiving and Christmas? That's what's scary." For the next six meetings, that's all they talked about. Donald: "I keep finding things she put on the Christmas tree. I can't go through them. I just don't want to mess with them." Arnold: "I still receive cards to Mr. and Mrs." Eleanor: "I wrote five cards and kept crying." Carl: "If it weren't for my son, I wouldn't have Christmas." To these distraught people, November and December were mine fields. They couldn't bear to celebrate the holidays like they always had. But they lacked the strength or ambition to find new customs. They didn't want to be alone. They weren't good company in a crowd. Anything -- a favorite carol, the smell of pine, a taste of yam -- anything could blow apart their fragile control. Linda was no different. But she had a plan. To get through Thanksgiving and Christmas days, she had volunteered to take on extra church duties. "I knew I was needed at church, so I'm using my church to bury all these feelings," she told the support group. To fill the rest of the season, she had booked two trips, to Hawaii after Thanksgiving and to Wisconsin after Christmas. "I know maybe it's fear in my first year, but it's something I'm definitely doing." Linda's season started with her birthday, Nov. 2. Her church friends took her to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes and had the waitresses bring a plate of muffins, lit by a candle. "I figured it would be a man jumping out of a cake," Linda joked. "I guess when you hit 51, you get a bran muffin!" She spent Thanksgiving with Milt's sister Nancy Nickerson and her family. They had turkey and all the trimmings. Linda and Nancy cooked and ate, laughed and reminisced. For all her dread, the dinner at Nancy's put Linda in a holiday mood. Then she came home to a spiritless house. Linda had promised Milt in August that, if he died before Christmas, she wouldn't put up a tree. But now she felt off kilter without it, as though she were as absent from the holiday as Milt. "This is stupid," she thought."Put the thing up." She assembled their old artificial tree in her kitchen. The tree listed. She righted it. The cardboard wedge fell out of the stand. She shoved it back in. Still the tree leaned. "Milton, where are you when I need you?" she said, laughing. She lashed the tree to the walls with a spider web of florist wire. "Okay," she thought, "acid test time. I guess I'll try to wiggle it." The wires snapped. She gave up. She bought another artificial tree, put it together and hung the first ornament, a shell cross she bought in Milt's memory. She marked it "Aug. 11, 1995," the date of his death. She hung her mom's Mickey Mouse ornament. Two ancient foil angels from Milt's first Christmas in 1940. A walnut shell with a face painted on it. A bear in a wreath that said, "Wise men still seek Him." Unwrapping the ornaments was like unwrapping her life, memory by memory. "1991. I was in Tijuana . . . This was our first ornament together . . . getting pretty shabby looking. This is the ornament I got for my 25th wedding anniversary, Christmas of '88. "I can see why this is a million dollar tree to me. There's no way anything could replace it." Although the new tree was smaller than the old one, she managed to hang all her ornaments. Later, she saw what was missing. "There are no presents under my tree to open. I got no one to give to."
Linda got this final Christmas ornament for Milt and marked it with the date of his death, Aug. 11, 1995. On Nov. 29, Linda went to Hawaii for two weeks to visit her daughter Ramona "Monie" Barnett, her son-in-law Joe and their two children. She thought the visit would be a great adventure, like her trip to Virginia with its Glamour Shots and roller coaster rides. She and Monie planned to take a midnight cruise. Linda bought evening dresses for them to wear. But she found Joe and Monie in turmoil. Joe had lost his chance for promotion and was ready to quit the Navy. Night after night, they hashed out his options. They canceled their cruise plans. Linda took them shopping and helped Monie buy a $4,000 keyboard. She came home to New Port Richey feeling like a failure. There had been no adventure and, with all the money she had spent, she hadn't solved Monie and Joe's problems. She plunged into holiday activities at church, visiting shut-ins, giving food to a struggling family, helping the children of a young widow find their mom a Christmas present. She had promised to play the organ at holiday services. But she was weary from her trip to Hawaii, drained from trying to boost Monie and Joe's spirits. The extra work at Peace Lutheran consumed her last speck of energy. She went home each night to her silent house and felt bereft and neglected. "They think I'm super human," she told Patti Colligan, her counselor. Patti said: "What gives people that impression, I wonder?" "Cause I'm strong. They think I don't need that extra hug or anything. . . . I feel like I've been doing this all my life, carrying the load of all these things." "You must enjoy being a martyr." "I guess so. I guess so." She didn't like Patti goading her. Tears ran down her face. She laid her glasses on the table and swiped at the streams, crumbling tissue after tissue, building a wet wad. "You can't carry everybody else's load when your own is heavier than you can bear," Patti said. "We need to replenish ourselves. We're only graced with so much energy." While Patti talked, Linda folded her arms, tight, across her chest. "Why are you holding that anger to you?" Patti asked. "It's going to make you sick. It takes a lot of emotional energy to grieve. When you put on a mask, it takes even more energy. You need to let go, Linda. Your whole world has changed." "Yeah," Linda said, "mightily."
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