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Young widow reclaims her life through writing
Tragedy pushes Carole Brody Fleet to help others dealing with loss

Carole Brody Fleet offers advice and humor in the book Widows Wear Stilettos to help young widows cope with loss.
ANA VENEGAS: ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

By SAM MILLER
Orange County Register


SANTA ANA, CALIF. — Carole Brody smiled when she saw the police lights flashing in her rear view.

She knew it was just Mike. Mike Fleet, an all-star Santa Ana, Calif., cop, responsible for seizing more than $50 million in drug money and 20,000 kilos of cocaine. Uncle Mike to Carole's young daughter, Kendall, and one of Carole's best friends.

A few weeks earlier, Mike asked Carole why they weren't a couple.

"Need a list?" she asked him. "City girl, cowboy. Jew, Baptist. Democrat, Republican." Besides, she said, they were too close as friends; it'd never work.

He courted her anyway. He'd sneak into her office and leave flowers, and visit her at lunch.

He'd park along her route to work. When she drove by, he'd pull up behind her and turn on the flashing lights.

When she spotted him, she pulled over and smiled as he handed her a muffin and juice.

They were married in 1995.

It shook her out of a rut, personal and professional. She was coming off a divorce. Her job as a paralegal wasn't as fulfilling as she'd hoped.

Being married to Mike made life exciting again — "as idyllic as marriage can be," she says now.

She learned to ride horses for him, and he learned to speak Hebrew for her.

Nothing had changed from their years as friends. She called him Fleet as she always had, and he still teased her. They hosted huge holiday parties and danced together at the Crazy Horse.

He was riding one day when a stray dog spooked his horse, Star. A tree branch knocked him unconscious. It didn't seem serious, but a week later his arm started twitching. Then the other arm.

"We can't say with absolute certainty that that accident caused something, but I can tell you this: I had a completely healthy husband the day before the accident. And after that accident, nothing was ever the same again," Carole says.

Mike's body deteriorated from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In 2000, while 10-year-old Kendall held him, Mike Fleet died in his living room.

It was one of the biggest police funerals Santa Ana had seen. Nearly 1,000 people from law enforcement agencies came from all over the state.

Bagpipes played Amazing Grace. Canine-unit officers gave the dogs a simultaneous command to bark.

Carole watched the flag being folded and realized the police chief was going to present it to her, the widow.

The widow.

It sounded so wrong.

I'm not a widow, she thought.

Widows wear sensible shoes. I wear low-rise pants and miniskirts. I listen to heavy metal and drink martinis.

Widows have got to be married for 60 years.

I'm not a widow!

She looked for support groups, but the widows she met didn't seem much like her. They were older, sharing pictures of grandkids.

She felt like she was dealing with something different. She still had to earn an income. She had to figure out when it was OK to start dating again, to be physical with another man.

There was no group for her. So she shut down.

She was eating dreadfully, exercising never. For the first time in her adult life, she quit wearing makeup. "Why bother? There's no one around to care."

And Mike's illness had made her mad.

"Who was this God? I spent my whole life being a good daughter, a good Jew, now I'm a good wife, a good mother. And Mike? This man had dedicated his entire life; two tours of duty in Vietnam, and an entire life to the protection of the community. And this is the reward?"

Slowly, things got better.

She asked her rabbi "Why me" and got a surprising response.

"Why not you?" he told her. "If not you, then who?"

"That's when I began to think, bad things really do happen to good people, and it's horrendous. But my mission became, how am I going to make good come out of this? I can't go into the fetal position."

Then it was her daughter's turn to jolt her.

Kendall convinced her one night to go watch a movie, a Susan Sarandon comedy about a middle-age woman picking up rich men. Carole came downstairs in faded leggings and an oversize sweatshirt.

"You're not going out like that," Kendall told her.

She went back upstairs to change and put on makeup.

"I looked at myself for the first time in two years," she says.

One night she was watching a TV show about servicemen killed in Iraq and their young widows.

"I'd been there, and I'd grown, and I'd sufficiently recovered. And I thought, you know, there's a book here," she says.

She grabbed a legal pad and jotted ideas.

A chapter on the insensitive things people say. ("It was his time." "You'll get over it when you find a new man.")

A chapter on being a single mother. On dating. On finance. On beauty advice.

And a title: Widows Wear Stilettos.

The book will be published in August. It's touching and funny, a blend of memoir and advice that includes a recipe for Mike's green-bean casserole, a workout music mix and fashion advice: Wear a miniskirt or a low-cut top, she writes, but never at the same time.

She launched widowswearstilettos.com in fall 2006, and she says she now gets more than 800 e-mails a week from widows. Some are as young as 17; some are in their 80s.

She counsels young widows on the phone, and she'll be the speaker on a "Fight Frump" cruise in April.

After some horrendous attempts at romance — one guy proposed to her on the first date — she's in love again, with a businessman she's been dating since September.

She's still heartbroken to have lost Mike, but she's past the period of mourning.

"As far as being the hurt woman, I don't see myself that way. I see myself as having taken tragedy and turned it into triumph. I'm trying to take as many people with me as I possibly can on that journey."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/5445049.html