Enlarging the (Google+) circle

Or, A Lesson In the Fine Art of Subtlety

Warning!            Warning!            Warning!
The following post is extremely graphic¹ in nature.

Alas and alack! It appears that perhaps some of my dear readers remain uninformed regarding the means by which to add another person to a Google+ circle.  For example, perhaps someone has a brother who has demonstrated that he loves his younger sister more by already adding her to his Google+ circle at least a week ago and to whom she has yet to reciprocate such feelings, however limited they be in comparison to his.  Or maybe one has a son or even a brother-in-law... it doesn't matter since I shall graciously provide the information to rectify this situation in my Jon Best's Creatively-Named "How to Add Someone to a Google+ Circle" Guide.

My lady in red (or whatever color[s] she chose to wear)

Today's Recent Widower Review comes courtesy of Chris De Bergh^22¾

I've never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight
I've never seen you shine so bright

Every day she grew lovelier in my eyes.

I've never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance
They're looking for a little romance, given half a chance

I might have a few objections to that.

And I have never seen that dress you're wearing
Or the highlights in your hair that catch your eyes,

Then again, my wife was a prolific shopper, although there were several pieces of clothing (but only one dress) that I don't ever recall seeing her wear, some with tags still on them.  As the three packages of men's dress socks and three tubes of shower body wash that I found unopened further demonstrate, she always seemed to be buying items to use for later but then never got around to using them.  Furthermore, she wasn't much of a dress wearer, because I only found the one aforementioned dress.

I have been blind

But then again, we all seem to be in our own little ways.  I'm no exception to that.

The lady in red...

I haven't really come across much of her clothing that is red.  She did have a pair of pink pajamas and two (actually four, but two of them were quite small and designed to be worn with their respective piece among the other two and thus I wouldn't consider them separate) other garments that I would call sleepwear except however often I may have seen her wear them to bed, I don't recall her actually getting to sleep in them.

...is dancing with me, cheek to cheek

If we ever danced together, I don't recall it.  It doesn't seem to be an activity that she enjoyed.

There's nobody here, it's just you and me

And sometimes one or two of three grandsons, one daughter, or one sister living with us, if I remember correctly.  Although I think the total time would be less than a year.  Also, she went to visit various family frequently, so sometimes it wasn't even just her and me.

It's where I want to be

Always and forever, love of my life.

but I hardly know this beauty by my side

Maybe I should have asked more, but she didn't seem to like revealing much of her past life before she met me.

I'll never forget the way you look tonight

Sometimes such visions haunt me, sometimes they comfort me, and sometimes they do both.

I've never seen you looking so gorgeous as you did tonight
I've never seen you shine so bright, you were amazing
I've never seen so many people want to be there by your side

And now we're back to a slight variation of the first few lines.  Although she was amazing.  Nor would I mind people wanting to be by her side (well, depending on the reason) like I would men wanting to dance with her while looking for romance.

And when you turned to me and smiled, it took my breath away
And I have never had such a feeling
Such a feeling of complete and utter love, as I do tonight

... and every other night.  The rest is mostly chorus and repetition until the last line, so I'll just skip to that:

I love you

 I can't think of anything to add to that.

Until (a) death (certificate) do us part, Part 1

Gather 'round, one and all, to hear a tale of one of my greater facepalmingest moments¹.  My step-daughter had just given me my wife's urn and ashes along with her death certificate and some other papers concerning her cremation (my wife's. that is, not my step-daughter's... just thought I should make that clear).  I proceeded to put the ashes on the floor beside and place the papers in my coat's inner pocket shortly before she (that "she" would be referring to my step-daughter this time) and her husband drove me to the North County Transit Center to await the train that would take me home to Los Angeles.  Shortly after we said our goodbyes, I felt too warm and took my coat off, folding it over my arm.  As the train arrived, I put the coat back on just before I boarded.  Finally I got home, took my wife's urn (with the ashes still inside) over to my sister-in-law's place, where I spent some time before going back to my apartment.  I checked for the papers and discovered they weren't in my coat pocket.  Ok, so maybe I left them at sister-in-law's, but asking her reveals that's a dead end.  So I search my room, but turn up nothing.  So part of Sunday is spent searching once more and finding the e-mail addresses of lost and found for MetroLink and the North County Transit Center and explaining what happened and asking them to get in contact me on the off chance someone has turned them in.  Long odds, I know, but better than no odds at all.
Monday comes, but it's Memorial Day.  About the only news concerning the death certificate is that I discover I cannot order it online.  Looks like my only option is to go down to the Los Angeles County Public Health building (LACPH; remember that acronym- I'm probably going to be using it tomorrow) and buy a new copy (or two, since I'm already going to be there, I might as well get an extra).  But that part of the tale is for another day....

¹ I would add "of my life" here, except that would be redundant. I don't think I've ever had a facepalmingest (or any other) moment in anyone else's life but my own.

She's Baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Finally, the Lorena has returned to Los Angeles^{1, 2}
And for one brief and shining moment,she was even here, back home in what was previously our apartment.³  But for better or worse, I took her over to her sister's place... and tears began to flow⁴.  And when that was all over, they began to flow again.  In between, there was time for me to eat three chicken tortillas and some reheated Mexican-style pinto beans interrupted by periods of comforting her sister and our (i.e., my and my wife's) niece and answering or declining to answer questions from our 5(?)-year-old grandniece⁵ (Is that tía Lore in there?  Can she get out?  Can you open it?).  Some time during all of this, I offered to let them keep her ashes for a brief yet unspecified amount of time and they agreed.  Thus, she is currently being memorialized in a vigil there with the whole burning candles around her "urn" ⁶.

¹ And not only can't I smell what the Lorena is cooking, I doubt that she is cooking.
² And, yes, it is time to play "how many cultural references can you spot and identify in this post".
³ The "where she belongs" is, of course, implied.
⁴ As a male, I can neither confirm nor deny that any such tears proceeded from me, but let the reader(s) figure it out.
⁵ This is the same grandniece who once (when my wife was still alive) asked me "Is your tía Lore home?". In an effort to correct her, I explained that Lorena was not my tía ("aunt"), but my esposa ("wife").  After which she asked, "Oh, so is your tía esposa home?".
⁶ It looks more or less like this⁷:

except:

1. it's dark blue instead of black;
2. it has a label with her name and the name of and information for the cremation service (Cremation Services, Inc., 2570 Fortune Way Suite D Vista, CA 92081, 760-727-8906); and,
3. most importantly, it is closed and possibly sealed.

⁷ This is in no way meant as a criticism or complaint against the service. On the contrary, one of the things that most impressed me about them is that while they offer (more expensive) alternatives, they didn't try to upsell any of them to me by suggesting that paying more equates to loving my wife more⁸, which I have read is a common tactic among funerary services. Not the most creatively named, but highly recommended by yours truly.  Now if they only offered a referral fee if I can get someone to mention that he or she heard of their service here....
⁸ Then again, that was probably a smart and/or fortunate move on their part when dealing with me because I would have immediately asked them whether that was what they meant if they had.

(NS)FAQ #2: Why "Loreto"?

One question I have received several times, especially among hispanohablantes ("Spanish-speakers", for you English-speakers) is why my wife's name was "Loreto" rather than "Loreta" since "o"-ending first names tend to indicate males and "a"-ending names tend to indicate females.  When someone first posed this question to me, I thought it might have to do with her being the eldest child in her family and there are quite a few guys who want their first child to be male.  However, that overlooked a more obvious answer, one that came to me the night before her final viewing as I sat my sister-in-law's living room in Vista, CA and saw a poster for this city:

(That would be Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico)

A cautionary tale

I cannot recall the month, much less the date, it happened.  I thought I had narrowed down the time frame by finding a purchase made at the Salinas Amtrak followed by another at an Inglewood Costco, but their date of April 25, 2011 marks them as about a year too late.  While the exact "when" remains a mystery, the "what" I remember all too well despite dismissing it as trifling at the time.  My wife had returned to our Salinas, California apartment after visiting her sister in Los Angeles.  While there, she said, she went to the hospital with abdominal pain and the doctors discovered a lump/mass (masa) in that area of her body.  Maybe it was fear of the effect of hospital bills on our financial situation (we weren't too far from almost losing our apartment due to back rent we eventually paid off and both of us being temporarily unemployed) or perhaps I didn't want to believe that it was what it almost definitely was, but I should have rushed her to Natividad Hospital or pretty much anywhere to have it checked out.  I didn't.
And so I am left here to wonder: would they have caught it in time if I had?  Would it have made a difference?  Would she still be alive, perhaps even well?  What kind of husband was/am I, to allow that to have happened to her?
 I cannot prevent questions like these from haunting my thoughts or wounding my heart.  But that is as far as I will let them go in crippling my life and destroying my future.  Yes, I made those choices.  Yes, I own up to my failures.  However, I am human.  I recognize my imperfections.  The past remains unchangeable, but I can repent of what I have done and use the knowledge I have gained from my errors to make better choices now and in the future.  The story has not finished and I feel joy over that.

Coming Monday, May 9, 2016 to an Internet near you....

It's... "The Blog". But not just any blog, but this very blog. I finally have it more or less set up how I want but will probably continue to make minor tweaks. However, I want to add a few static pages. Furthermore, I am considering creating a duplicate blog in Spanish since many of my step-family and family-in-law do not speak English.