When people say “truth is stranger than fiction”...well, they know it to be true.  I now add my voice to the mix.

I realize I haven’t written in a week or so, at least for public consumption.  Sometimes it takes a few days to be able to filter out the gems from the slush pile which has become my life as a...widow.  Goodness, writing that word is strange.  Oh well, I suppose I have had so many pigeonhole names, adding another, just the latest is okay.  Some of the ones I have had are a little bit like trying on Cinderella’s slipper...I am looking for a good fit.

I was...a child, a daughter, a teenager, a sister, a wife, a mother, a divorcé, a single, a whore, an actress, a model, a writer, a wife again, a lecturer, a jewelry designer, a business owner, a caretaker, a volunteer, a civil rights activist, a military brat, an editor, an artist, and a few other things.  Now I get to be a widow.  I am all of these and defined by none of these.

Being a widow entails a whole new set of problems and I suspect it will contain a few joys too.  This is a time each day is a discovery, of both important things like knowing you have to take the power handed you, to relinquishing some power over things you have little control of.  

It is a time for putting one foot in front of the other and hoping you can accomplish what seems like baby steps in a new, unasked for position in life.

There are things which could have happened when you are a couple and would hash it out, or just share.   You no longer can do this.  The old “gut instinct” proves to be extremely helpful, as long as you realize it is subject to change as you also undergo changes in other areas.

I went to my husband’s forty year class reunion last Saturday night.  I had no plans to go, but let a few of his friends persuade me.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to go to a genuine Beverly Hills 90210 class reunion? 

I went with him to his twentieth and thirtieth year reunions.  I knew I had seen the paper flyer announcing it, he brought it home.  I remembered his excitement at the thought of reconnecting with his friends.  Then he died, just 15 days before it.  I threw the announcement in the trash, it was his reunion. The class of '69.

Some of his friends called when they heard the news.  One, the former news director at a television station, said I should come anyway because many would like an opportunity to express their feeling of loss.  Another friend and then another echoed the exact sentiments, asking me to be their guest.  I agreed to go...in part because these were his friends, our friends...the ones we hung out and double or triple dated with.  The ones who we partied with during the late 70’s and 80’s.

These were the real Beverly Hills High kids, some of whom had known my husband since kindergarten.  Others used to play poker with him, or date him or....well, he was loved by many.  

So I drove to LA, dressed in a dress I bought in Las Vegas, slapped a smile on my face and had one of his friends pick me up and take me, so I would not have to walk into the reunion alone.  (I took a self-photo just before being picked up.)

Some of them were closer than others to me; Judy, wife of one of his friends was my maid of honor at our wedding.  I only had one attendant, our wedding was small, for maybe forty people total.  This couple was also out to dinner with us the night before our wedding. I wanted to--no, I also needed to see these people one more time.  

What I discovered is I still love Judy, she hasn’t changed except to become wiser...we laughed about all of us singing “Chili Bean” to Michael Jackson’s song, “Billie Jean” while driving up Doheny Drive...definitely high on life, and probably some other recreational enhancement of those high times.  It was the early 80’s and like many others we partied...but only on weekends. 

Nearly all of us were working for a living.  Oddly enough those, whose parents knew the wisdom of making their children work, had the brightest and most successful time in later life.  Those “trust fund babies”...at least the men, would take a dive, some literally off of a balcony after a tragic night of murders, others off of a financial cliff, or drug overdoses. 

Tough times for Beverly Hills High, yet probably no different in the outcomes of so many other school classes.  

Through the three decades some of the kids didn’t fare so well.  Take A.G., his father passed away early on, leaving him a vast fortune.  His first wedding was in Las Vegas...I didn’t know him then, but later on you could watch him burn through the money, as well as a succession of wives; the high school sweetheart one, another a supermodel and the last an artist.  He had homes all over the country and world, for a time.

Each one of the spouses had his children...and then took much of his money in the subsequent divorces.   Messy all of them.  He ended up broke and sleeping on the couches of his friends.

I saw him Saturday, searched him out.  I found him wild eyed but oddly calm.   He remembered me, as well as the last time he saw me (ten years ago) I was a blonde.   Or he had just seen my husband and I it on the endless loop of the past two reunions, like I did as we spoke.  His back was to the television and I was looking over his shoulder, mesmerized at the sight of my husband and I looking so youthful, beautiful and happy.  How odd to see us so alive while he was not, and I felt numb.  Yet watching the interviews of us made me feel less alone.  

Another was a philanderer, a serial one, as they often are.  He learned how to be a good one from a master, his father.  He burned through several wives, always with “the” mistress on the side.  I got to meet her Saturday night too, finally.  Oddly, he stayed with the same one, but had discarded two or three wives, I lost track actually.  He doesn’t look so good.  He was always kind to me in the past, tonight was no different.  Well, it was...this time he was at a loss for words.    

Many people didn’t know what to say...hell, I didn’t either.  They would say, “I’m so sorry”, or, “He was a charismatic man” or, “So glad you came.” 

Some of the so-called beautiful people were not...either inside nor outside. 

Another fell completely apart when she was introduced to me.  Wailing loudly, crying like a baby, snot dripping on my shoulder as I held her and patted her on the pack, “It’s okay, it will be okay.  Can I get you a tissue?”  

“Screech.”  Damn, that was a direct assault on my right eardrum, and I politely tried to pry her heaving, sobbing body away to rummage through my purse and get her a tissue.  She nearly pierced my eardrum.

Not all were so strange.  I was “cornered” in the ladies room where I heard a tale of my husband taking a woman to her junior high prom, a woman he barely knew, but asked to go because nobody else did.  “He picked me up in a Rolls Royce that night.  I’ll never forget his kindness.”  I shuffled from foot to foot, in an effort to wait for an empty stall.  

“I want you to know...” I began, “...Lance never changed from the person you describe, he was like this the entire thirty years I was with him.  He was a kind man, always thinking of others.”

Eventually the stall door opened, saving me from ruining my outfit and a perfectly embarrassing problem.  One of them anyway.

Based on my experiences Saturday night, here are some things you should not say/do to a grieving widow:

1.   “I hear your husband made tons and tons of money in show business.”   This shows your complete ignorance and negates any earlier statement professing how well you knew him.

2.    “I had a dream about him one week before he died.  He was walking up a hill to the reunion...but he couldn’t make it.”  Oh thank you for sharing this.

3.    “Did he have a will?”  Unless you are an attorney or you are  the state, it’s none of your business.

4.  “I have known him since we were four.”  Oh, that must be why I never heard your name in thirty years.

5.  “We just had to come to the 40th reunion...you never know who won’t make it to the 50th ya know.”  Uh-h-h yeah, I do.

6.  Shove a video camera, lights and a so called friend (with bad breath) with a microphone in her face and say, “This is blank-blank and her husband blank died two weeks ago.  Are you having fun tonight?”  What do you think, it was his class reunion.  

I am glad I went, but not sure I’ll be looking at the CD of the event, even though a renown editor in Hollywood, and friend of ours will be editing all of the footage.  Some things do not need a replay.