I rarely read this group anymore because of all the political stuff and vulgar invective that I'd rather skip, but I may still have a few friends here from back in the day so I'm posting this update.
Movin' on here means movin' on after spouse loss. I lost my Mary back in 2011. Some will recall my postings, and some were grateful for them as they provided some insight to what they might expect if they are so unfortunate as to not die first.
I really am movin' on. It's been a long low crawl up a hill of sharp rocks, that's how it goes. Grieving for a lost beloved spouse is never "done" but we can learn to live with the loss and find joy in life going forward. Some never do; it requires more than a little determination to avoid getting "stuck" in grief.
I wrote this for a group that very recently spun off of the grief support group that we all attended. We're calling it the movin' on group, a group of fellow travelers that have become very good friends and are now far more interested in pursuit of growth, joy and fun than in sharing tears and sad stories. The latter is absolutely necessary and hugely healing for those in early grief, but we do NOT want to "tell our stories" yet again, nor hear more sad stories of others. Been there, done that, we're ready to move on. There don't seem to be any groups for those ready to move on so we're creating one.
We have expressed interest and willingness to "be there" for newbies. Rejected: either we're in the fold or we're not. Roger that! Bye!
We were told by the lead facilitator of the grief group, and her psychologist advisor, that we will fail because other "movin' on" groups that have been attempted always failed.
Perhaps it hasn't been tried before by a group like ours. We don't think we'll fail.
The update:
I make no attempt at brevity here, so feel free to skip if it is uninteresting after a paragraph or twenty lines; I won't be offended. It is a movin' on story, a minor triumph and milestone for me that has me grinning. I hope y'all find a grin here too. I have always enjoyed tinkering, inventing and making things, particularly working with metal: welding, machining, etc. Metal always seemed challengingly intractable so I enjoyed accquiring skills and tools with which to impose my will upon it and alter it to suit my purpose. One very useful metalworking skill is welding. In about
1975 I started accquiring tools and skills, teaching myself as I went along. One very useful welding technology is known as TIG which stands for Tungsten-Inert-Gas. The source of (intense) heat is an electrical arc between a tungsten electrode and the workpiece. The molten metal in the region of the arc is protected from oxidation by a flow of inert gas, helium or argon. A very neat thing about TIG, once known as "Heliarc", is that it makes welding of aluminum easy to do. I was thrilled that day in the late '80's when I finally found a used TIG machine that I could afford. I'd been looking for years. I set out to teach myself TIG welding. Part of the joy was (and is) the journey; learning and improving at a useful skill and enjoying an ability to make or repair metal things that I had previously been unable to do. That always seemed more useful to me than pursuit of excellence (or even marginal competence) in playing golf. Life is full of little surprises. All was going nicely -- until, after a heart attack and quintuple bypass, my cardiolgist decided that I should have an ICD (implanted cardioverter defibrillator). Yeah, OK, whatever -- until the pre-implant briefing about a week before the procedure, when the rather brusque electrophysiologist who would do the implant informed me that by the way, I must stay away from powerful magnets -- and any form of arc welding. WHOA! SAY WHUT? He looked at me oddly. He said that if the ICD were erroniously tripped it would feel like being kicked in the chest by a mule. I was inclined to doubt that said little twerp --uh, esteemed Dr who would be operating on me and messing with my beating heart -- had ever been kicked in the chest by a mule, but I managed to skip mentioning that. I said that welding was something that I did and wanted to continue doing. He looked at me like I was nuts. "Are you a weldor?" "No, I'm retired" "So, is welding a quality of life issue with you, or what?" The obviously expected answer probably was "well, no, I guess not". But I thought about that for a bit, then responded, "yes, I think it is. It's part of what I retired early to have time to do and greatly enjoy doing". His response was, essentially: "too bad. You will have to give that up". I was not inclined to give up quite so easily. I had one week between that meeting and the scheduled procedure to learn what I could, so I got busy! I learned from some incredibly helpful and caring people at Boston Scientific what technical parameters about arc welding might affect an ICD, in quantified and measurable terms. I got a phone call from one of the top technical people at Boston Scientific, who was at the top of a ski lift in Colorado at the time, who said, "I heard that you have a question I might be able to answer". Tawk about caring support! I designed and made instrumentation, and had one lab instrument flown in from a good friend in PA. Overnight air shipping was $150 each way. I didn't care. I did measurements and tests. My dear late wife Mary helped me as I sat on a lab stool, instrumented like a crash dummy, doing research in my shop. She'd said that she would take a course and learn TIG welding if I was unable to do it, and I knew she meant it and would have been very good at it -- but dammit, I WANNA DO MY OWN WELDING! I found that I'd be OK with other forms of arc welding but things looked a bit iffy with TIG. Darn! When they wheeled me in to the O.R. on a gurney, there was a crowd at the door to the O.R.: several physicians and several technical reps from both Boston Scientific and Medtronic. They said I'd become a bit famous around there because of my determined inquiries and crash-project research. I'd challenged the paradigm from "you cannot and must not do arc welding" to discovering how I might do arc welding safely -- and I made my research methodology and data freely available in public domain. I subsequently found that, though I'd previously used my TIG at least twice a week, I was able to get along without it OK most days. Part of that was that I'd determined that other forms of welding I knew how to do and was/am equipped to do would be unquestionably safe if practiced with due diligence to certain precautions. That worked most days. Then Mary unexpectedly died and my life blew apart as only we fellow travelers can even begin to understand. I didn't care about doing stuff in the shop anymore. Just getting out of bed was a major milestone some days; some days I didn't bother to do so. We all know the drill. I was surprised to notice a few days ago that I'd made NO drawings in 2012. (Mary died in 3/11) I have annual folders of drawings going back to 1999 and old ones preceeding that, but there is no 2012 drawing folder on any of my computers. I guess I was focussed on other activities and explorations in preparation and process of "movin' on", discovering my "new normal" and "reinventing myself" (Urp, retch, barf, gag, I HATE those undefined and diaphonous psychobabblebullshit terms.) Then, recently, a project came up that said to me, "Foreman, it is now high time for you to find out if you can again enjoy using your TIG kit and skills as part of your movin' on, or just politely lay down and die". I'd thought I might be able to do that safely if I wore a garment that would shield me from electrical fields but I'd not had the courage to try it. My measurements back in 2010 showed that I'd be OK with the magnetic fields, but the electrical fields near my manly chest from my TIG exceeded what the top technical people at BSC regarded as safe. Gotta pay attention to that, but any conductive enclosure theoretically should provide a "Faraday shield" against electric fields. No data extant proving that but no expert opinion disagreed. Movin' right along, Foreman en pointe here... I'd found some conductive cloth from which a shielding garment might be crafted, and Mary (accomplished quilter and exquisite crafter with fabric) said that she'd sew me such a garment with one of her seven sewing machines. I know it was on "her list" because I found sketches in her sewing room. Hey, we were together for a day shy of 30 years, I probably had a few projects I "owed" her when I got around to it. We'd made a point and a priority of enjoying each other every single day. That was job 1 even before my heart attack (and recovery) and her later terminal illness, right up until the day before her unexpected (to me) departure. I am so glad that we did that! We were a small team all the way. The project is rather mundane, but it purely hollered "TIG" to me, possibly because I've "moved on" to the point where I was ready to go for it. The job: repairing an aluminum sliding screen door, patio sized, from cabin out to deck overlooking lake. I was quite happy to hire the rescreening done; I HATE repairing screen doors. Been there, done that, happy to hire it done. But the Bozo at Wagner Hardware in Glenwood barfed up my patio sliding screen door when I had them re-screen it. After he'd thoroughly botched the job, he wouldn't make it right saying "your door is junk!" Well yeah, thanks to him it was in kinda tough shape. He'd managed to bend or break internal corner pieces. Idiot! I'd attempted to design another repair approach that required no welding, and even machined a bunch of parts to do it, but subequently discovered that it ain't gonna work --and now that I must remove and scrap that bungler's screen anyway, I may as well take the door apart and do it right. The inserts are made of .049" aluminum; pretty thin stuff. I guess that'd be about 3/64", about like a cheap aluminum cookie sheet. They had welded miter joints but Bozo of Glenwood managed to break the welds. They were rather thin welds, sufficient to get the door sold and installed. I made mending plates of .090" aluminum, considerably more substantial stuff. Hokay, moment of truth: do I fasten it with rivets -- or man up and TIG it? I don' have no steenkin' rivets, and I need the back side to be smooth as a baby's bottom. I went to the shop and sat on the stool by the TIG welder. No observer would ever have imagined the thoughts going thru my head: "oh shit or dear, Foreman, do you really think this is a good idea?" "Yes, Foreman, it is a good idea. Life is partly about TIG welding, so suck it up and get to it." "Wull wull wull, gulp....." and so on. I draped myself with my conductive cloth serape and Faraday shield. Note to self: need a snap or something on the back of the serape. Mary was going to sew me a vest from the material but she never got around to it. Suitably prepped, I started rooting around in my little tackle box of tungstens and collets and whut-all; gotta prepare, right? Geez, do I use lanthanated or zirconiated tungsten on aluminum -- it's been almost 4 years! Maybe I should go look it up on the web ... ("Foreman, quit farting around. You know it's zirconated for allie, lanthanated for steel, find some self-confidence and get to it ya jackwagon!") Thank you R. Lee Ermie, roger that, getting with it. Got everything all set up: 1/16" tungsten oughtta be about right for this job. Maybe about 125 amps. I haven't totally forgotten everything, I guess. I clamped and jigged the job. Eventually the moment of truth became inevitable. I opened the valve on the argon bottle. The supply-side gage came up to 1000 PSI; lotsa plenty inert gas, no excuse there. I turned on Mr. Miller the welder, heard that familiar hummmmm as it eagerly awaited my bidding. My foot hovered over the foot pedal current control. I did a preflight check of the controls. Preflight, is that an ominous intuition, oh shit oh dear? Is there a mule lurking behind Mr. Miller waiting to kick me in the chest? I stepped on the pedal lightly so the gas could purge the lines. That turns on the high-voltage high-frequency start. No problem, I'm still on the stool smiling smugly. YAY! The HF arc-start is what produces the electric fields I was concerned about so I was grinning. Aw, hell, let's go! I went. Disuse and advancing age have eroded my skill a bit in the years since I last did any TIG welding, but I haven't forgotten how to do it. These certainly aren't "pretty" welds, but they're definitely sound welds and they're in a place where they won't show anyway. The next three pieces will be considerably better. The last one might be a work of beauty to thrill the hawrt of a weldor. (Ed note: a welder is a machine, a weldor is a person who does welding) I used to be pretty good at this, perhaps I can be again. I'm a happy camper either way, movin' on.