A chat with Claire about the "change."

Welcome to “The Pause!” Every Wednesday (if I can find women of a certain age who are willing to share their experience with me and you) there will be a new post.

Why am I doing this? Well, I’m almost 50 and I would REALLY like to feel less alone in this new chapter of my life. I feel like our culture doesn’t want to talk about menopause. It’s like if you admit that your period has stopped, you are admitting to something shameful or unnatural. Like death, menopause is both inevitable (if you’re lucky enough to grow older) and pretty darn natural. I used to think it was hard to get people to talk about death, but you can double that hesitancy when it comes to chatting about “THE CHANGE.” So let’s change that.

Maybe I don’t watch enough television, but I can only think of two instances in my life where a menopausal woman was reflected in popular media. The first, and oh my gosh, is it dated is from All in the Family. Apparently, Edith’s Problem was groundbreaking for the time and even won an Emmy.

The second is from the film, Fried Green Tomatoes, which has one of my favorite retorts in a film, “Face it girls, I’m older and I have more insurance.”

If you know of any other movies or television shows that focused on a woman going through perimenopause/menopause. Tell me in the comments! I want to see myself on film.

So, before we begin our chat with Claire. Let’s define perimenopause and menopause from Merriam Webster’s online dictionary.

Definition of menopause

1: the natural cessation of menstruation that usually occurs between the ages of 45 and 55also : the period during which such cessation occurs

— called also climacteric

— compare PERIMENOPAUSE

2: cessation of menstruation from other than natural causes

Definition of perimenopause

: the period around the onset of menopause that is often marked by various physical signs (such as hot flashes and menstrual irregularity)

So now that that’s clear, here’s my first willing participant. Claire Lopez is a writer who enjoys hiking and traveling. A former English teacher,her debut novel (Class Letters) highlights a letter writing practice she used in her own classroom to connect with her students. She lives in Texas with her husband and dogs, and dreams of the mountains.

1.      Do you remember your mother or an older woman in your family going through “the change of life?” If so, what was that like?

Unlike most people of their generation, my parents married “late” in life. She was 36 and he was 40. I was born the following year, and my brother three and a half years later. I assume she was 50ish when she hit menopause which would have put me around 13. It was a challenging time for us. Maybe it was the menopause, or maybe I was a bratty adolescent! It could have been either!

2.      Was perimenopause/menopause ever discussed with you by your mother, sister, friend, or a doctor? If so, what did that discussion entail?

I know I never talked to my mother about it, and I don’t remember much from a doctor other than discussing the date of my last period.

3.      Was menopause something you feared or something you looked forward to? (Yay, no more periods! Boo, I’m drowning in my own sweat!)

I didn’t fear menopause; I looked forward to no longer have to deal with my period.

4.      What was your experience like? Did you burst into flames? Grow a mustache? Gain a ton of weight? Lose your hair? Lose your mind? Or was it easy peasy, Tampax can kiss my vageasy?

From what I've read and heard, my experience was relatively tame, I believe. I’d heard of women with night sweats so bad they’d have to change their nightgown and sheets in the middle of the night. I’d wake up and just my chest was sweaty. I may have had a slight issue with mood swings, but my children and the students I taught around that time might be a better judge of my temperament. I certainly remember hot flashes! I felt like the heat meter in my head went from normal temperature to 1000 degrees in a nanosecond or a flash as the case may be. The only thing that seemed to help was a hand held folding fan, and my only recourse seemed to be to buy a dozen and stash them all over my house and classroom. I remember teaching at the front of the classroom, feeling the onset of the hot flash and racing to my desk to find a fan before my head exploded. Good times!

5.      Is there anything you wish you had known before you went through menopause or anything you would have done differently?

I found my first chin hair well over 25 years ago (late 30’s). It never occurred to me that it was a sign my body was changing. I was completely taken aback and deeply embarrassed, especially since the man I was seeing noticed it before I did. By the time I reached perimenopause, my mother had dementia and was no longer a resource for information. But she used to say she’d rather take a nice trip than have a face lift, which seemed to speak to her acceptance of the aging process. While not all aspects of the aging process are a joy (to say the least!) I embrace who I am and where I am on my timeline.

Thank you so much, Claire, for sharing your experience. And you can too! Just reach out via my contact page. If you want me to reach out to you and help me do my little part to help save the USPS. I bought a TON of stamps and if you sign up for my newsletter, I will send you some swag (stickers, bookmarks and now buttons!) from my debut novel Forever 51. (It’s about an eternally menopausal vampire.)

Monday Mourning: The Death of a Spouse

It has been a few years since I had a Monday Mourning post, but then I started the 2020 Quarantine Book Club on Facebook, and one of the authors in the group wrote a book about the death of her spouse, so I figured I’d see if she would be willing to answer the standard questions I used to ask everyone. And she said yes!

Billie Best is the author of “How I Made a Huge Mess of My Life (or Couples Therapy with a Dead Man)” an uplifting memoir that dives deep into the power of women in midlife. With poignant humor and brutal honesty, she takes on her broken marriage, cheating, grief, death, downsizing, starting over, and learning to age well.

Who was the person that died?
My husband, Chet.

How old were you at the time?
I was 54.

How old was Chet?
He was 54.

Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen?
He was diagnosed in June 2008 with Stage 4 lung cancer, and after 5 months of chemo and one month of hospice, he died in January 2009.

Did you and Chet ever talk about death?
We talked about death often from the time of his diagnosis to the time of his death. For several years we had lived on a livestock farm where we raised and killed cows and chickens. We discussed how our animals should be killed, we saw good deaths and bad deaths. We had seen my father-in-law die a miserable death, even though he was in hospice, because he refused to discuss his own death and left it to his wife to decide his care. His wife felt death was intended to be a punishment for all we do wrong in life, so she thought it morally just to withhold pain medication from her husband. The memory of his father humiliated by death, writhing in pain on his death bed, had a huge impact on my husband. He knew he wanted to die with dignity.

During the months before his death Chet researched the many ways of dying and celebrating death. He decided that death was the completion of the cycle of life and must be like birth in reverse. He insisted we put as much planning into his death as we put into our wedding and we did. He forbade me to dial 911. He didn’t want to go to the hospital or be in a body bag. He planned to be naked, wrapped in a white sheet in his cremation casket. He thought if he calmed himself and embraced the process of dying that it would be like falling asleep. He made me promise that after he died only people who loved him would handle his body. He didn’t want to be shipped around like lost luggage and kept in cold storage. He wanted to be kept at home from the time he died until he went to the crematory for his cremation. I promised I would honor his wishes.

What neither of us could have foreseen is that he would die on a Friday afternoon at the beginning of a three-day holiday weekend. In order to honor his wishes, I would need to keep his dead body in our home for five days. Having my husband’s corpse in the house made death feel normal. The spirituality of the initial dying ebbed, and he was just a man, cold as stone in a room with the windows open and the winter breeze blowing through. I learned that death is ordinary. As ordinary as birth. As easy as sleep. Just as he imagined.

Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before Chet died?
My husband and I had experienced the deaths of grandparents, as well as his father. Also, my grandparents and great-grandparents had operated a family funeral home business in the small town where they lived. As a kid I played hide-and-seek with my brothers in the casket showroom. My mother told us stories about styling the hair on corpses her father had embalmed. And my grandmother told us stories about playing tricks on her father, my great-grandfather, by moving the arms and legs of corpses he was embalming. Death was the family business, so it was natural for them to make jokes about it. Interestingly, most of them chose to be cremated.

Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away from you when you were grieving?
People were very supportive of my grief. After Chet died, I invited friends to visit him at our house, we had a party for him, played music and read him poetry. For the people who experienced his dead body in the same place where they had enjoyed dinner with him, sat on the couch with him, watched movies with him, it was a revelation. We were busting taboos, completing the circle of life and embracing the inevitable. It felt radical to have a dead body in the house, and yet once we were all there together celebrating, it felt natural.

Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with this person?
There are many, many things I wish I had done differently with my husband before he died. But that is the story of my marriage, not his death. His death was a beautiful experience.

Was Chet buried or cremated? He was cremated.

Did you learn anything about the grieving process you'd like to share?
Grief is forever. I kept thinking I would get over it, outgrow it, cure myself of it, distract myself from it, forget it, move far enough away from the past to be out of reach of grief. But it’s always there inside me, seen or unseen. At first it was overwhelming, then it sat like a dark cloud over my life, now it drifts in and out of my experience, but it is always there, near or distant, silent or awakened, and I have accepted that it is part of me.

Were any songs played at the memorial service that were important to Chet?
On the day of Chet’s memorial service I had a dinner for 100 people at the farm and afterward we spread his ashes on the land while a bagpipe player stood on the hill above the barnyard and played Amazing Grace. Chet had always loved the mournful moan of bagpipes, and to hear it echoing around us as we took fistfuls of his ashes and sprinkled them about is one of my most treasured memories of the whole experience.

Billie with Chet. Photo by Jason Houston

Thank you Billie Best for sharing your experience on the Monday Mourning blog. It is not easy to talk about death and grief, so I am grateful for your willingness to share your story. We don’t always know what to say when someone is talking about the death of someone they love. So, if you’re here and you don’t comment, please hit the “like” button so we at least know you read the post.

If you’re still here, I have an added bonus for Memorial Day. My book Death Becomes Us, is FREE on Kindle today 5/25/2020. While you’re there, pick up a copy of Billie’s book. I’ve read it and it’s really good!

The 2020 Quarantine Book Club will be interviewing Billie about her book on 7/9/20 at 5pm CST, so if you’ll like to join us, join the Facebook Club.

If you’d like to take part in a future Monday Mourning post and share your experience with my readers, reach out to me! I am also looking for women of a certain age to interview about perimenopause/menopause for my newest blog, The Pause.

Last, but certainly not least, help me save the USPS. I bought a TON of stamps and if you sign up for my newsletter, I will send you some swag (stickers, bookmarks and now buttons!) from my debut novel Forever 51.

Monday Mournings: The Death of a Neighbor during Covid 19

Who was the person that died?

The man who lived directly across from my house, Burch Stevens. My husband grew up in the house we now live in, so he has known Burch for most of his life.

How old were you at the time? 49 years young

How old was the person? I believe Burch had just turned 79 on April 13.

Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen?

It was sudden. About a week before he died, I saw Burch fall and struggle to get up his front steps. My husband Erik ran over to help him into his house.

On Facebook, Burch posted about his fall and that one of his friends was going to come over and build him a handrail for his steps. Independence was very important to Burch. He loved going out for lunch at the Bluebonnet Cafe and he didn’t like that everything, including his favorite restaurant, was shut down due to the pandemic.

A few days later, an older man rang my doorbell and asked if I’d seen Burch lately. He explained that he was his friend and was there to put up a handrail. He said Burch wasn’t answering his phone and he didn’t answer his door. I immediately knew this wasn’t going to turn out well and asked if he’d tried the door. He hadn’t. I rushed across the street and opened Burch’s unlocked front door. Without stepping inside, I could see that he was on the floor and unresponsive. Due to my fear about this virus, I didn’t enter his house. I called 911 and within minutes the police and emergency responders arrived.

Did you and this person ever talk about death?

We never had a face to face conversation about death or end of life wishes, but he did want an autographed copy of my book, which is all about death and death professions. Passing his house one day with my dog, Shelton, he said he enjoyed reading it.

Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before this person died?

Yes, my grandmother, Lola, my mother-in-law, Lovina, who also knew Burch and my dad.

Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away from you when you were grieving?

Since we are all staying at home right now due to CoVid19, I shared on Facebook about what happened and many people expressed their condolences. While my relationship with Burch was neighborly—we gave him cookies at Christmas and he watched our cat while we were out of town—I can’t say that my grief for him was equal to a parent or a friend as I didn’t really know him that well, but I did grieve about his death.

Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with this person?

I wish that I’d checked on him after his fall.

Was he buried or cremated?

I don’t know.

Did you learn anything about the grieving process you'd like to share?

I was surprised by my level of grief for a man that I barely knew. I don’t know if my grief was exacerbated by the stress of our current situation or that we can’t gather and memorialize him, or what? But I broke down and balled about his passing.

At night, I could always hear Burch in his living room playing his guitar. And now that will never happen again. It makes me sad.

Were any songs played at the memorial service that were important to this person?

Like many who have died during this pandemic, their memorial services are being postponed until it is safe to gather. People have been posting condolences on his Facebook page and one of his friends left this song for him. I don’t know if this was one of his favorite bands or what, but it’s all I have. This goes out to Burch! Hope you’re having a hootenanny in Heaven with friends and family.

Thanks for stopping by. If you would like to share your own experience about the death of a loved one, please contact me.