tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82081745594697427502024-03-08T08:27:21.192-08:00After the fire, the fire still burnsOne widow tries to figure out life after death...her own.Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-53524193332965662422015-11-18T15:08:00.001-08:002015-12-15T21:28:36.949-08:00Different every time<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought I was an expert on grief. Or at least an expert on my own grief. I thought I knew what to expect of myself when it came to dealing with the loss of a loved one, considering I’ve gotten the master class in the 9 years since A died. I thought I knew what was coming for me with the imminent death of my beloved friend, B, and although obviously losing a best friend and losing a true love are not the same, I supposed that my grief for her would follow a similar pattern of ups and downs and feelings unique to ME.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She’s been gone 2 months now, and the truth of the matter is, I didn’t know shit, because my reaction this time is nothing like I expected. I cried for days and nights and months on end when A died, aching, breathless sobs until I could do nothing but stare into space. For B, I have had some tough moments like that, but I can count them on one hand, and remember them specifically. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a long while at the end, and since, I’ve felt nothing about it. And when I have managed to catch a glimpse of how I’m really feeling, the sadness is largely intellectual. What I’m really feeling is anger. A lot of simmering anger. And I’ve been wondering if that numbness is denial and self-protection, or whether I’m too pissed to be sad.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a lot to be angry about, and not all of it is selfish, though I admit a fair bit of it really is. I’m angry that I lost one of my best friends of my whole life. I don’t have so many close friends; I can’t afford to lose any, and yet I keep losing them anyway. I’m angry that I lost ANYONE I loved, in that bit of widow magical thinking that goes “Being widowed is bad enough; I should be exempt from bad shit from here out.” (I know it’s ridiculous, but I know I feel it on some level, and I suspect I’m not the only widow who does.) I’m angry that my other best friend has been widowed, and that they had so little time together. They found each other in mid-life, and while they had more time than A and I did, of course it’s never enough when you love someone. I’m angry that B’s mom (widowed 7 years ago) lost her baby, even if her baby was 57 years old. I’m angry that she left the state for one last goodbye visit with friends and family back home, and never made it back here. I never really got to say goodbye. Again. And I’m angry at that relentless, cruel bastard, cancer, who takes so much from people long before it finally takes their last breath from them.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am angry FOR B, at how much she lost as the cancer spread. Her job, her hobbies, her energy, all taken from her. Her ability to feel good at all. Her physical relationship with her spouse. Her memory, every time they zapped the brain tumors. Bit by bit, her life and world shrunk until it didn’t extend beyond the chair she sat in, and still, she didn’t want to go. She appreciated life in a way I’m not sure I’m capable of.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am beyond angry at the medical industry, who at every turn in this process treated B’s cancer like it was no big deal, and about all the waiting on top of waiting for this test and that scan and this insurance approval and that appointment when it was obvious from the beginning that time was not on her side. Weeks and weeks wasted due to inefficiency, miscommunication between her medical professionals, a fair amount of ball-dropping, and what I can only assume is professional apathy; it wasn’t their cancer, after all. And that while they insisted up and down that this cancer was entirely different from the cancer they took out of her 3 years before, it seems likely that in fact, it wasn’t different--she was stage 4 at diagnosis this time around, with mets to the brain that soon went into the bone, and colon cancer likes to go to the lung, which is where this “different” cancer started. But they never did chemo after the surgery 3 years ago, and they didn’t do heavy-duty chemo when they found this, dicking around for 6 months before trying the big guns, which were just too late. Of course the oncologist is going to say it was a totally discrete cancer event; for him to suggest otherwise would be to admit that he blew it 3 years ago. Would it have made a difference? No one can know that; but there was enough incompetence to place a fair amount of reasonable doubt upon the situation.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not that it matters now, of course; we can’t get her back.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It hurts that she isn’t at her house when I go over there. It hurts that we no longer have our Sunday night dinners, because it was always a couple thing, and her wife, P, just doesn’t want to do it on her own. Which is totally understandable.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had a panicked moment the other day, because I’d told my mom I was fine with German chocolate cake for my birthday, and then remembered “B doesn’t like coconut!” And then was sad when I realized it didn’t matter.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it’s not that the sadness isn’t there; it’s just that it’s overshadowed by anger. And it feels like I skipped right over active grieving and right into the long-term quiet missing and existential crisis. Which is familiar enough, even if the timing seems wrong.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But a lot of the time, when I ask myself how I’m feeling about all this, the answer genuinely seems to be that I’m not feeling at all. Yet it’s not the same numbness I felt after A died and I cried myself to emptiness multiple times a day. And I begin to wonder if I broke my grieving mechanism, grieving for him--if I just plain wore it out through such heavy use for so long. Because I just don’t get as worked up as I used to. I acknowledge pain mentally, academically, but it’s like I refuse to wade in emotionally anymore. Is it because I can’t? Or because I can’t afford to? Is it that I’ve felt so much pain losing A that my heart just refused to go there anymore, on anyone’s behalf?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I felt like I had a clue where I was at when the news of the Paris terrorism came out. 153 (or so...I haven’t confirmed latest numbers) people dead in horrifying planned mass murders and while I freely acknowledge it’s horrible on so many levels, from the personal to the international, emotionally I feel nothing. I don’t know if it’s a question of do not, or cannot, but I’m not engaging with it emotionally. In 2001, after 9/11 and before widowhood, I read the paper and cried for months afterwards, reading about people and the messages they gave their families before they died. I was engaged. But not anymore. I don’t even want to read the news because it’s always bad. And more often than not, I mentally shrug and think, “More sad people in the world. Welcome to the club. Sorry you had to join us.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t think it’s apathy. I care that horrible things happen in my world. But I don’t think I have the bandwidth myself to engage with them whole-heartedly anymore; I’ve got my own sorrows, and it doesn’t do me any good to wallow in someone else’s when there’s not a damn thing I can do about them. And if I’m going to live another 40 years on this planet, I have to protect my heart, broken and scarred though it may be, to the best of my ability, because the hits will keep on coming. I have to maintain something for myself, to keep me going, in the face of tragedy, and the only way I know how to do that is to not borrow more trouble than life was going to throw at me anyway. It sounds selfish; but I’m not convinced it is anything less than survival.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whatever it is, it’ll work itself out. That much I DO know about grief: there’s no point arguing with it; you can’t persuade it. And if this is how I feel right now, I’ll keep feeling it until I feel something else. </span></div>
Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-75122410040095919162015-08-31T00:51:00.001-07:002015-08-31T00:51:49.492-07:00I just don't know<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_signature">So I came home from my friend B's house tonight in a foul mood. I wasn't in a foul mood when I left my house, and nothing horrible happened while I was there that would explain it. I think it was just the reality of tonight: we were supposed to have dinner at our house, but she took me up on the offer I made Friday night that if she wasn't feeling up to it, we would bring dinner to her. As she shuffled to the door, doped up on various pain and anti-nausea meds, she looked tired and sick. Because she <i>is</i> tired and sick.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div><div class="gmail_signature">This new chemo kicks her ass constantly--not the couple of bad days after treatment and then back to normal that the earlier (and useless) rounds gave her. She's still sick from the last round when the new one comes around. And because she is in the first wave of people across the nation to receive this newly approved drug, no one knows what to tell her to expect. She feels like hell. Is it the cancer or the cancer treatment? No one knows. Is it going to be worth the suffering in the end? No one knows that either, of course.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div><div class="gmail_signature">It grows harder and harder to maintain any kind of hope as I see her feeling worse and worse, and growing weaker by the day. Sometimes it's the pain, so bad that she has to take pain meds on top of pain meds for the break-through pain from the cancer in her bones. The radiation beat that back some, but not for long. Sometimes it's the nausea. She tells me she wakes up with both and starts the rounds of meds that are her new and only hobby, aside from a lot of sleeping. Sometimes it's the confusion and memory loss in the days right after brain radiation that gets her down, and I read the repetitive texts my bright, sharp friend sends me, and I feel the tears damming up behind my sternum. If it were working at all, wouldn't she be feeling a tiny bit better? And yet she keeps at it, because she wants to live, and I wonder if it's worth it. I imagine she does, too. That's the problem with this. You don't know whether it was worth it except in hindsight. And by the time you realize it wasn't, you're not here to realize it at all.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div><div class="gmail_signature">While I had considered what it would be like in the aftermath of her death, for me and for everyone else who loves her, I hadn't realized how much a person loses throughout the entire process. Thus far, she's had to let go of her work, her avocation, her normal routines, driving, sex, food in large part (because nothing appeals, or she feels too sick to eat it), and probably a hundred other mundane things that a person should be able to take for granted that I'm not even aware of. How do you keep fighting for life when you have lost so much of what constituted it? You might be able to keep doing it if you knew this was only temporary, something you could suffer through and come out better on the other side. But what happens when it starts looking like you're losing the fight? That it's not going to be temporary? I think this may very well be the cruelest part of advanced cancer: that you lose your life long before you die.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div><div class="gmail_signature">I don't even know what to say anymore. I act normal. I even treat the whole cancer thing as normal, and pretend it's normal when our conversation caroms between hospice and the hope of another trip to guitar camp when this is all over. Because right now, that IS normal. That's what's going on. And I bring little pick-me-ups over in the hopes of raising a smile or two for her and her wife, who is exhausted from taking care of literally everything in their lives. There is so little I can do, and when I do it they thank me so profusely I'm embarrassed; if I could do more, I would. What I can do is so paltry it seems ridiculous.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div><div class="gmail_signature">There is this horrible waiting, with only 2 possible resolutions, the best of which seems increasingly unlikely. I just really don't know how to get right with the idea that this life requires us to leave so many bodies in our wake. It is the best argument for the nonexistence of a loving god that I can think of. No entity that was all about love would ever set up a system where we learn to love people that will just be taken away from us, and ripped out of their own lives-in-progress.</div><div class="gmail_signature"><br></div> </div> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-47380809803998162212015-06-05T19:10:00.001-07:002015-06-06T16:04:22.263-07:00I didn't need this lesson<div dir="ltr">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-7491fa62-c6a1-aa20-7c36-0a334a761647"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amongst the bereaved, especially the newly bereaved, there is occasionally a tendency toward grief Olympics, and I suppose it's not impossible to understand. When you're going through the worst thing you've ever been through, and feeling the worst you've ever felt, you might be forgiven for feeling pretty sure that it's the worst ANYONE has EVER felt. Among the widowed set, there was often a debate about who had it worse: those who'd lost their loves suddenly without warning, or those who'd lost their loves after a long illness. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> died suddenly, but my situation was so unusual that unless others were also hiding details (out of self-preservation instinct) on the widow bulletin board, I was probably alone in my particular situation that made being widowed hard for me, specifically. But I figured out pretty early on that no one gets a break when it comes to death. It sucks if they die suddenly. It sucks when they die slowly. Unless your spouse is an abusive monster, their death just sucks. And I wish to dog I had a word besides "sucks" that could encompass the vast, painful reality of this kind of suckage. Much like today, when I went to look for a "Fuck Cancer" image and decided that "fuck" was inadequate to my feelings of the moment. Usually, it's a useful word for me, but today, it just isn't enough.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because life has seen fit to give me experiential confirmation that there is no grace, no comfort, in watching someone you love die slowly. In this case, it's </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, one of my best friends in the world. She is going to die from metastatic lung cancer, and I fear it will be before the year is out, because it's been terribly aggressive, and getting more so. 3 weeks ago, the only ill effects she felt were right after treatment, side effects from the brain swelling after radiation or from the chemo drugs. Now, she's in pain pretty much all the time. I found out today that they fear pathologic fracture in her femur and don't want her to walk on it. She went from cane, to crutches, to walker, to electic scooter in the last 3 days. She gave her notice at work today, and it seems unlikely she'll go back, because she can't do her job because of the pain, and can't take her pain meds if she wants to be clear-headed enough to do her job. And as she is the major income earner in her household, that's going to hurt on top of everything else they're worrying about.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I got another call a couple hours later, and they said that she is not as at-risk for a fracture as they feared initially, and will radiate all the bone tumors. This is not with any hope that they can stop the cancer; it's just palliative care and should lessen the pain considerably. A small favor in an ocean of terrible.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is where we're at, after months of questionable (at least to my mind) treatment plans and, worse, delays due to incompetence and inefficiency on the part of the medical staff that are supposed to help her and the hell that is dealing with insurance approval, and while there are no guarantees that aggressive treatment early on would have saved her life, I don't think there's one person who's traveled this journey with her, including her, that doesn't wonder WTF they were thinking, because it might have. When you have a lung tumor and mets to the brain already at diagnosis, time is not on your side. But evidently, those involved in oncology in this town weren't feeling any need to rush. Why cancer and mental health patients don't get pushed to the front of the line automatically is beyond me.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given that she was stage 4 at diagnosis, I suppose this time we've had since the fall is somewhat miraculous in itself, but now it's getting bad. Really bad. Canceled get-togethers because she is both in pain and exhausted. Hard talks with her spouse regarding a future they never imagined but have to navigate nonetheless. There is so much to hate in all this, I don't even know where to begin. Because I am sad and angry for her, sad and angry for them, and sad and angry for me, because I'm going to lose my dear friend and there's fuck-all I can do about it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is the worst part. It's a slow-motion car crash unfolding over months, and all you can do is watch and wait for the final impact. Chocolate and flowers and encouraging cards and cracking wise, all my specialties, become increasingly useless in the face of this horrible inevitability. I don't know what comes next, or how fast it'll come. Maybe none of us do.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I find I've been ridiculously blasé about death when I've said I'm not afraid to die. What I really mean is, I'm not afraid to be dead. Either it'll be cool on the other side, or there will be nothing but oblivion, and in either case, I'm fine. Dying, however, is a whole other thing, and it's terrifying. It's terrifying for ME, as I stand by my friend, and I'm not looking it straight in its too-close eye. When I say, "I'm going to die," this is merely an existential truth that acknowledges my, and everyone else's, mortality. But for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">B </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to acknowledge she's going to die must be scary as hell, because it's going to happen sooner than she, and everyone else who loves her, wants it to. How much will it hurt before she goes? How bad will it get? Will she be able to make the exit she wants to? How will her wife cope without her? How do you say goodbye when you don't want to, when you're not ready to, when you'll never be ready to?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And how do I, who know the pain that's coming for her wife, also a close friend of mine, help? I have always said I would never wish widowhood on my worst enemy. I certainly would spare my friends, and I don't want to share this with her. We are close enough; we don't need this horror to bind us. I would that this cup had passed them both by until they were very old. I would wish that for anyone. But there's nothing I can do but be there later and say, "I know." </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Frankly, that's a shitty and altogether inadequate option.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel helpless, sorry for myself for my impending loss, and then annoyed at myself for focusing on how this affects ME when my friend is equally helpless, despite accepting all treatment possible, and is looking at losing her life sooner rather than later. It's a muddle of emotions, it's a mess, and there is no silver lining in this. We just wait and hate that it's happening. </span></div>
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Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-35511889488031768942015-03-15T00:20:00.000-07:002015-03-16T00:26:22.875-07:00A Not-Very-Good, but Heartfelt, Poem on the Occasion of What Should've Been Your 64th BirthdayI make these offers and concessions<br />
as if I were in a position to negotiate<br />
<br />
as if somehow landing on the right combination<br />
of what I'd settle for<br />
would unlock the door you're hidden behind<br />
<br />
as if something could change now<br />
that hasn't in all these preceding years.<br />
<br />
I know it's ridiculous even as I think<br />
the words, the wishes, the want incessant,<br />
to you, to a god I don't believe in,<br />
to a deaf universe.<br />
<br />
I will never change anything. And I will never stop wanting to.<br />
<br />
So my laughter at myself is bitter<br />
and I wish I were an animal who could forget<br />
after awhile<br />
forget what was lost<br />
knowing that all I gained would go with it,<br />
but still thinking I might be better off trading away this<br />
incurable<br />
lifetime<br />
ache.<br />
<br />
I got the shitty end of this stick. You have to admit that.<br />
<br />
But I see these videos of wild animals<br />
raised by humans, then set free.<br />
Their men find them, an ape, a lion, again<br />
after so many years<br />
and what is clear is they've forgotten nothing.<br />
All beating hearts forever changed by love.<br />
<br />
Forever.<br />
<br />
By all accounts, if any of them are to be believed,<br />
my forever is much longer than yours.<br />
And I'm glad for your sake, but<br />
can't quite get over the lack of consolation prize for mine.<br />
<br />
Not one. Not one single new thing has come into my life since you left<br />
that made me say, "Ah! Yes! This makes it worth going on without you.<br />
Sure glad I didn't miss this!"<br />
<br />
I curse our fragile bodies<br />
and time itself and<br />
watch the odds dwindle<br />
for all of us, even as I close the gap between us.<br />
<br />
I have so little left to say to you, because<br />
there is no news on this front.<br />
And because you do not answer my letters or return my calls.<br />
<br />
But I hope my silent yearning clangs<br />
wherever you are<br />
on the hour, the half-hour, and the quarter,<br />
so you know it is not for lack of desire that I<br />
speak so little, but a lack of vocabulary.<br />
<br />
There is no new way to tell you,<br />
"Come home. I'm still here. I miss you."Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-2188464330291237792014-09-08T15:00:00.001-07:002014-09-08T15:05:57.241-07:00Unexploded landmines<div dir="ltr">
You see it in the news all the time, people getting blown up by landmines that have been lying in wait for years and years, long after the conflict has supposedly ended. Stepped on one myself today. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was sitting in the waiting room at my chiropractor's. He shares space with a massage therapist and a naturopath nurse practitioner, and the secretary for the latter was on the phone. I heard her in the middle of an initial call that didn't make much sense, and I wasn't really paying attention because Redbook had an article on Melissa McCarthy I was trying to speed-read before my chiropractor finished with the client before me. But then the secretary must have buzzed her boss, because then the conversation went like this:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"So-and-so passed away. Yeah, the neighbor hadn't seen her in a while, so they had the police do a welfare check. It look like she fell, I guess. She's probably been gone 2-3 days."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Of course the secretary could not know that I was quietly freaking out over on the couch as she told basically my story, about someone else, to someone else. All I can recall feeling is my eyes getting bigger as I listened, and part of me saying "no...no...no...no..." in my head because I didn't want to be hearing this. Of all the legion shitty parts of widowhood, the 2 days I didn't hear from him, growing more and more terrified, and the third day when I was the one who called the apartment manager, and then the cops, and ultimately had my worst fears confirmed is the part I try not to revisit. At all. Even when my thoughts wander there, I make a mental U-turn as quickly as possible. Because it's so horrible, thinking about him lying there, waiting to be found... </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
No. Stop it. Can't think about it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've gotten pretty good about not thinking about it after 8 years. (I almost wrote 6 years, redid the math and my head, and wanted to cry when I realized it was 8; it's been so long.) And yet, because I happened to go to the chiropractor today instead of tomorrow, as I usually do, I got blindsided. If I'd gone tomorrow, I would've missed it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why? If there's a reason for everything (a philosophy I don't necessarily buy into), why did I have to confront this today? If learning to live your life without your loved one who died is a spiritual education, then what the hell am I supposed to get from running into these mines, other than a freshly broken heart, or if not broken, oozing a little at the scar? I take it personally. I know I probably shouldn't, but I do. It's like, "Goddammit, when do I get a break? Haven't I done enough to heal? Why does shit still crop up? If my chiropractor had been on time, if I'd gone tomorrow, if the rain had kept us both home, it wouldn't have. Why did everything align perfectly so that the one client my chiropractor has who would be hurt by overhearing that exact conversation was the only one sitting in the waiting room when it took place? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I know it's not all about me. Some other family now knows exactly how I've felt, and I know I wasn't the first, either. Still, I don't believe in coincidences. It's weird. It made me sad. And it makes me wonder why feeling loss is a life sentence. Perhaps not every day of that life, but dammit, too often.</div>
</div>
Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-7296137852925321282014-07-06T13:50:00.003-07:002014-07-06T13:50:45.333-07:00Aware and oblivious at the same timeAs I have mentioned here <a href="http://afterthefire-phoenix.blogspot.com/2013/04/curse-my-excellent-mix-cd-skills.html" target="_blank">before</a>, I have a friend in California who happens to both elderly and in ill health. This makes planning visits tricky, because she really doesn't like company when she's feeling her worst, and neither of us knows when that will be, so even though I'd like to see her more, I have to wait for the high sign from her to plan a trip out, despite her being just 7 hours away by car. In the meantime, there's always a part of my mind that is on guard with the dread of waiting to receive another death call from California.<br />
<br />
The high sign came about 2 weeks ago, and I immediately pulled up my calendar to figure out which dates would work best for me, settling on July 14-17 as the stretch where the fewest things would have to be canceled. So I must have seen it on my calendar, because it's there (as if I'd ever forget).<br />
<br />
But it wasn't until several days later, as I was telling someone when I'd be gone, that I realized I had scheduled myself to be there on the 8th anniversary of A's death, July 15th. I was worried about dog grooming trips and meetings and gigs and other stuff, I guess--things I have to actually DO. The day A died is just a thing that is, regardless of what I'm doing that day. Though I tend to try not overschedule myself. I like to give myself room to just be alone with my thoughts in the comfortable surroundings of home. On that particular subject, no one cares to hear them anyway.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, I was mildly impressed that that date didn't figure into my trip planning; that it was even possible for me to not ruminate over it and consider changing my plans. On the other hand, I'm going to be in California on that date, <a href="http://afterthefire-phoenix.blogspot.com/2011/08/cant-go-home-again.html" target="_blank">which could be rough</a>. And while my friend loves me, and understands about A...well, let's just say if I were giving out awards for "Best Supporting Friend in a Drama," she wouldn't have necessarily made the list of nominees. So I'm not going to hash it out with her that day, even if I feel a need to. Perhaps I'll just tell her I need a little time at the beach alone to process any feelings that come up, and we'll leave it at that.<br />
<br />
And a little part of me hopes, or more accurately, wishes that my being in California will somehow help him find me more easily and let me know he's around. <br /><br />I don't really know what to expect, but this non-PMS PMS-like irritability I've been feeling lately (and keep forgetting why it might be happening) tells me that I could be in for some rough waters this anniversary. If only they made Dramamine for that.<br />
<br />
<br />Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-2472593150806794702014-06-09T22:59:00.001-07:002014-06-09T23:02:02.240-07:00Yet and stillI was standing in my office this weekend, practicing guitar, playing to a collage frame of A’s pictures, as I sometimes do, because I need a stand-in audience as I rehearse. And because I want him to hear me. I want to play for him, because he is the reason I play at all, and I wish he could hear me now, when I’ve gotten so much better than I was when he was last here to hear me. It’s not really fair that he only heard me when I was sucked. He deserves better.<br />
<br />
I don’t remember the song I was playing, but it wasn’t one I wrote for him, or played because it was a song he liked, though I think there was obviously some emotional content to it, because suddenly, I had tears in my eyes.<br />
<br />
And then yesterday, he was heavy on my mind, as I looked hard at those pictures again, really seeing him, remembering where we were when I took those photos, seeing his personality come through in every one, and, well...there was a lot of sighing. I had no sooner thought to myself, “Why is this all coming up now?” (because it’s been a long while since I’ve felt this stuff hovering so close to the surface) when that thought was followed up with, “Oh right...it’s June.”<br />
<br />
Tonight I had to look up a song to send to my guitar teacher for my lesson tomorrow, and I found it on a mix CD I’d made him as a gift on our first in-person visit. The song I wanted was near the end, so I listened to the rest of the mix while I puttered on the computer, and my heart grew fuller and heavier with every song. So of course, because I’m a masochist, I looked up the email he sent me after I went home from that first trip, with the playlist of that CD because I’d forgotten to keep a copy for myself. Only he’d added some text to a bunch of the titles, little romantic things that would’ve made me fall in love with him right then, if I hadn’t already been so far gone down that particular road. And I read the emails and poems we exchanged that day, about how we missed each other, about how great a trip it’d been, about how we were looking forward to many more. And of course, I was completely farklempt, especially when I read the “many more visits” part. God damn it, we were cheated. I will never get over that.<br />
<br />
Oh yes. It’s June. And this is why I don’t read those old emails as much as I imagined I would back when I first lost him. Because I’m right down the rabbit hole when I do, overwhelmed simultaneously with the full force of the love I felt for him then, and still feel, and the horror and ache of losing him, of being without him all this time.<br />
<br />
It’s been 10 years since we met. Come July, it’ll be 8 years he’s been gone. Last year, I didn’t feel the June ramp-up so much, so I wasn’t expecting it at all this year.<br />
<br />
Wrong again.<br />
<br />
On the one hand, it hurts. There’s no two ways about it. On the other hand, so many times I curiously examine my emotional state when I think of him, or see his picture every day, because it isn’t emotionally fraught, and I wonder how that can be. Other times, I worry that he’s slipped away from me; that if I didn’t have the pictures I’d have nothing at all left. So at this point in the game, I’m thinking it’s okay that it comes back full force sometimes--even if it hurts. I find it reassuring, because it means I haven’t forgotten. He hasn’t slipped away from me. He wasn’t a dream; he was real, and we loved each other truly. He was really here, and he loved me, and he was wonderful, and fuck, I miss him. For all the homage I’ve paid, and the memories I’ve captured, and the nods to him I’ve made in the things I do since he died; for all the healing I’ve done, and the contentment I’ve managed to regain, and the forward progress that is to me, in my deepest heart, nothing less than miraculous, I miss him so. I’ll never not miss him; he was a singular soul, and my life will always be better for having had him in it, and it will always be diminished because he’s no longer here. And that, my friends, is a heartbreak that will last as long as my heart still beats.Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-53307460788628435792013-07-15T22:35:00.001-07:002013-07-15T22:35:48.428-07:007<div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Today marks the 7th anniversary of A's death, and it's that number that's probably giving me the most trouble today. Sure, he's been on my mind more front-and-center (though he's never far from it), and I've been more prone to being farklempt at various moments during the day, because I'm more inclined to allow myself to feel all the feelings I generally push past unless I have no choice, because it doesn't do much good at this point to indulge in them. And I'm more likely to do memorial things today, which are often the key that opens Fibber McGee's emotional closet where I keep all that stuff.<br> <br></div><div>But what weighs on me, what I can't get over, is that it's been 7 years. If you'd asked me 7 years ago if 7 years was a short time or a long time, I would've said a very long time. If I'd filed for bankruptcy when A died, I'd be free and clear now. Widowhood offers no such clemency. I got through high school and most of college in 7 years. It seems like such a vast amount of time; or at least, it used to. <br> <br></div><div>But now, in this one thing, it seems insignificant. As I've thought about it as this sadiversary approached, I was often simultaneously impressed with myself for putting myself back together so well over this time, and wondering where the time went. How did I get here so quickly? How I went from talking to him multiple times in a single day, every day, to having not heard a single word from him in 2,556 days. How I swore in those early days I'd never survive this, never be happy again, and (whispered only to myself) didn't want to be, only to still be here, reasonably content with life. Reasonably, but not entirely; but then again, who is ever entirely content with life? It's probably too much to ask.<br> <br></div><div>It was a bit of a rough early summer, and I find myself frequently wandering old, well-rutted paths of ennui as I look at my life, and think, "Well, this is all fine and occasionally amusing and delightful, but is it interesting and fulfilling enough to warrant another 40 years of it? Really?" I never did manage to come up with a whole bunch of new dreams after he died. I have no bucket list, and whenever I take two minutes to think about making one, nothing comes to mind. <br> <br>Theoretically, I've lived only half my life. In the first half, I've been born and had chicken pox and measles and a catastrophic accident before I hit puberty that left me half-blind. I've had and fought with and lost friends. I've fallen in love a number of times, been married just once and done pretty well at it (knock wood), but we've been on the edge a few times, so I know what that looks like, too. I have had my heart broken horribly, once by family and once by A when he died. I've been widowed, and come back to the land of the living. I've had a bunch of jobs and two careers, and I've already retired. I've suffered chronic pain for well over a decade. I have to seriously ask, what's left? The only things I've missed are having kids (and I wouldn't say I missed it, Bob), being famous, divorce, and terminal illness. The first two aren't going to happen, and the last two I'm happy to avoid if at all possible. But if that's all I haven't experienced, if that's all I have to potentially look forward to...sigh. <br> <br>I don't know how to stop feeling so old, tired, and, more often than I care for, bored with it. Often I pull in my focus to only look at things closely, so I can appreciate a random bright red leaf in a muddy brown lane, or a sweet, simple harmony in a song, or the white hairs in E's beard that didn't used to be there. Like I've had to set my mental camera on life to the <a href="http://cdn.cameratips.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/canon-t2i-macro-mode.gif">little flower</a> setting just so I can enjoy it at all. It's not that I don't know how to enjoy things; I'm actually pretty good at it. It's just that sometimes, I feel like I'm just keeping busy in this thing called life just for the sake of keeping busy; there is no sense of purpose, other than what the moment requires because dinner needs to be made, dogs need to be pet, and laundry needs to be folded. And I don't know if there's some kind of slippery Zen wisdom in such a life, or if I'm doing it wrong. Thing is, if it's the latter, I don't know how to do it right. I used to think I was doing it right, and when the bottom fell out of all my various notions and coping mechanisms after A died, I realized that it was just all mere magical thinking. I didn't know half the things I'd previously thought I was certain about. And living your life any particular, imagined "right" way may benefit you as you're living it (though there's no guarantee of that, either), but it offers no protection whatsoever when the shit hits the fan, when life hits you so hard you collapse for a long time.<br> <br></div><div>But if I'm doing it wrong, is the wrong in the action or the attitude? What action must I take to make sure my inner-childlike wonder isn't drowned out by the old, tired, bored widow? Or, how do I cultivate my natural appreciation of the beautiful minutiae to have more patience and acceptance that truly, this is all I need to do, and there's nothing else to be done, or pondered, or worried about? <br> <br></div><div>If I could walk away from my penchant for existential musing, that might be a really excellent start.<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><br></div><div><br><br></div></div> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-70107481069676612162013-05-25T23:05:00.001-07:002013-05-25T23:05:05.662-07:009 years ago I met the man I loved and lost<div dir="ltr"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } --></style>Nine years ago today, A and I "met." E-mailed, really. Neither of us had the faintest inkling of the relationship that would develop between us that day. <p style="margin-bottom:0in">He loved me to the end of his days. And I love him still; every single day of my life for the last nine years has been affected by him: by his presence, by his love, and for nearly seven years now, by his death and absence. It kills me that the years I loved a living man are already so dwarfed by the years I've been in love with a dead man. But the love is the same, if not deeper.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">An anniversary remembered, and marked, by one alone, is one of the saddest things in the world. </p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">I watched an HBO movie, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_and_Martha_(film)">Mary and Martha</a>, while I ironed yesterday. In it (spoiler alert!), two mothers, both of whom lose their sons to malaria while in Africa, meet. There were all kinds of sad in the movie, but I didn't start crying until Martha comes to the school where her son worked and meets his African girlfriend, and takes the young woman in her arms. I have never been a mother, so while I sympathized with the mothers, it was the young widow that I empathized with. I always do.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">I was reading a magazine tonight, an article that quoted a woman named Lillian Smith, who said, "The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making."</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">And here I am.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">When I let myself really miss him...when I really look at the photos hard...god, it hurts.</p> </div> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-75829213544695345032013-04-30T10:55:00.001-07:002013-04-30T10:55:47.882-07:00Curse my excellent mix CD skills<div dir="ltr"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">Earlier this month, I took a roadtrip to California, to help my friend P settle in to her new place. She retired 6 months before I did, at the age of 75, and had been in the middle of a long run of ill health with few answers when she did that continues unabated. Last summer, a year after her retirement, things had gotten bad enough that she had to go live with her daughter, which is where she's been until this recent move. Until now, she hasn't been well enough to live alone again. I helped her kids pack up and move most of her stuff to storage at Christmastime, and moved it all onto a truck Easter weekend so it could join her in California. Her kids were going to drive the truck out and get her reasonably set up, and I was going to follow a week later to continue the settling in.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">It's been twenty years since I took such a long solo road trip, and I was a little nervous about it, because I have a horrible propensity for falling asleep at the wheel on long drives. Fortunately, or unfortunately perhaps, the wind was so terrible on the highway that it required all my attention and effort to keep the car on the road, so falling asleep wasn't ever a consideration. Keeping me company was my iPod, the music's volume cranked high above the wind and road noise.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">For the last nine years, a group of my fellow bloggers and I have swapped mix CDs every year at Christmas, and I decided to listen to all 9 of them in a row in a bid to not be fiddling with the iPod while driving every time an album ended. Safety first and all that. The thing about these mixes is that they are, in their way, a time capsule, both in the annual theme and the songs themselves, because they reflect what I was listening to, and living with, at the time. </p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">I was tooling down the highway, happily singing along to the mixes, including Year 3, which was the Christmas five months after A died. The theme that year, the organizer told me, was chosen in part because of me, and what I was going through. I faltered a little on "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAezJqZYHkU">A Dream Goes on Forever</a>," but recovered and was going strong right into the penultimate song on that mix, "<a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7iykn_eva-cassidy-i-know-you-by-heart_music#.UX_5XIVUR_k">I Know You by Heart</a>," until, somewhere in the second verse, without warning, I had an instantaneous meltdown. The words were strangled as my throat closed up, tears ran down my face, and I began to sob. None of these things are good things when you're going 80 mph in a dust storm down the interstate, but there was nothing I could do, and no place, really, to pull over.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">I don't know if it was because I was headed to California; I wouldn't have thought so, because I was headed to SoCal, and all my memories with A are in <a href="http://afterthefire-phoenix.blogspot.com/2011/08/cant-go-home-again.html">NorCal</a>. Maybe; it was probably the song itself, because I'd sent a section of it in an e-mail to A as part of a love letter when he was still alive. But I cried harder, and felt his loss more immediately and more deeply, viscerally, than I have in quite some time. I can't remember the last time I cried that hard for him, or ached so much for missing him, but it was all right there in that moment, reminding me how glad I am that I don't feel all that very often anymore. At the same time, it was reassuring, because sometimes I feel like he's "so long ago and so far away," like I've forgotten too much; forgotten more than I ever wanted to. </p> <p style="margin-bottom:0in">The outburst didn't last long. I cried hard for maybe five minutes; probably less. But the melancholy stuck with me for many miles afterward, and on and off throughout the three days I was in California. Because the fact of the matter is, my friend is dying. There is no cure, and the treatments are burdensome, exhausting, and seemingly not of much help to her. I am astonished at how tired, frail, and elderly she seems now, something that was not at all evident previously in our friendship, despite our 30-year age difference. It's not happening in a terrible hurry, but what P is suffering from is no doubt going to take her life eventually. And there is not a damn thing she, or I, can do about it but appreciate the time we have, and expect the inevitable. I remember telling E that he, A, and P were my best friends in the world, of my whole life, and now I was without one. I dread the future where I'm surely going to be without two of them, and all the jokes about their being at my gigs "in spirit" will be all too true, and not a bit funny anymore. I selfishly contemplate my own heartbreak, and fear going through it again, though I am resigned, because I know too well there's nothing I can do. I know that wishing and loving cannot keep someone alive. And I am once again angry in the face of my ultimate helplessness.</p> </div> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-23955179517000040602013-03-21T19:29:00.001-07:002013-03-21T19:42:52.830-07:00Take a decade, leave a decade<style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } </style>Last Friday should've been A's 62nd birthday, the 7th birthday now he's missed. I thought I was getting through the day all right, but by dinnertime, I realized I was kind of out of it. Not as much sad as distracted and finding it hard to concentrate. I was trying to put together a complex dinner of grilled burgers and baked French fries, and was just scatterbrained throughout. As I thought about it later, I realized that it was no doubt the birthday doing it. When these milestone dates come up, or something triggers some subconscious grief, it now manifests more often as more brain flatulence than usual, or irritability, or both.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Two weeks ago, we were back in E's hometown, and while we were there, we visited his aged great-aunt, who is pushing 98 now. She's been ready to leave this world for at least 5 years, maybe more, and frankly, I can't blame her. She's been widowed for some years. She has macular degeneration, dementia, and is so physically frail, she's not supposed to leave her chair, even to go to the bathroom, without assistance, lest she fall...again. She spends all day sitting in a chair, watching TV or her birds at the feeder outside her window, and wonders aloud frequently why she's still here. She does it frequently, because she forgets she just talked about it; she mentioned it at least 5 times in the 45 minutes we were there. She's taken to quizzing her pastor why she's still here when he visits, and he tells her that God has a plan for her. She is lucid enough to ask him what is the point of plan involves her sitting in a chair all her waking hours, unable to move, alone in the world but for an aging niece and the people who work at her facility, barely able to see, her body and mind largely non-functional when it comes to daily living, but not broken enough to get on with dying.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I think it's a fair question. She is not having new experiences. She is not learning new things. She is not meeting new people; neither is she able to enjoy the ones she knows--after a little prompting, she finally remembered E, but as a 4-year-old boy; she didn't remember all the times she'd visited with him as a man, as recently as 5 years ago. And she had no idea who I was, other than a friendly face she could talk to. She is merely waiting for her body to finally give out, and frustrated that it hasn't yet. I can't blame her.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
I'm not a "God's plan" person to begin with. If there is a rhyme or reason to this life, to this universe, (and I'm willing to accept the possibility that there is), it is irrelevant to my living my life if I'm not privy to what it is. If there is one, then I suspect it is something along the lines of us experiencing, learning, growing, and loving in ever-expanding consciousness throughout our lives; if we aren't doing that, for whatever reason, then we are dead, regardless of our breathing lungs and beating hearts. I tend to operate under the idea that if I'm still alive, I still have work to do in this life. But I look at her, and I see no work left to be done, and even if there were, no ability remaining to her to do it. If there are lessons to learn, and insights to come to, they will have to arrive clear as day in front of her in her tiny room; she will not find them in the books she can't read, or the experiences she can't have, or the housemates she can't communicate with because of her problems, and theirs.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
Ever since, I have been nagged by the question of why someone whose life is so obviously at an end, whose experiences have contracted down to televised golf and mealtimes, who is so very ready to go, gets so many years she doesn't want, and sees no end to, and why someone like A, who was in his middle-aged prime, a new grandfather, with a new love in his life, and enjoying his work and his family and me, didn't get even the average number of years humans can expect? He would've gladly had the years that my great-aunt-in-law would gladly dispense with, and those of us who loved him, and her, could not object to the trade, for both their sakes. In this, I cannot ask, "What is the plan?" I can only ask "What the hell is the point?" I find it staggeringly cruel and unjust that the reward for living to a very old age is to lose all your friends, most of your family, your physical and mental faculties, your freedom, such that you yearn for death, even as others are cut down, robbed of years they could've put to better use.</div>
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Like all the rest of such questions, I don't expect any kind of answer. But as I see this play out in my own life, it makes me less philosophical and more angry, in a "WTF?" kind of way. It is this kind of thing, as much as anything, that makes me think there couldn't be any kind of plan at all; a 4-year-old wouldn't come up with a plan this illogical, let alone a higher power.</div>
Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-59973462249356065162013-02-14T16:16:00.004-08:002013-02-14T16:16:40.111-08:00Valentine's Day 2013
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On February 10, 2007, I was sitting in
the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, A's sister to my immediate
left, and several of his closest friends beyond her. We were there
together, wearing shirts with his beautiful face on them (a picture
I took), in his honor, to attend a <a href="http://www.tommyemmanuel.com/" target="_blank">Tommy Emmanuel</a> concert. Tommy was
a favorite of A's, and a topic of some of our earliest conversations.
He told me that he'd just gone to a show at the invitation of a
friend and seen this Australian guy who got more out of an acoustic
guitar than A had ever thought possible. He gave me the name, I
looked him up on iTunes, and was an instant fan. When he died, he
had tickets for two different Tommy Emmanuel shows waiting to be used
within the next month or so; obviously, he never used them. Which
was the inspiration for our group outing to the show in February.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Six years to the week later, this past
Tuesday I found myself sitting in the Fox Theatre in Tucson, my new
boyfriend to my immediate left, my best girlfriends to my right, and
my guitar teacher and his wife in the same row right across the aisle
from us, to see Tommy Emmanuel. It was my 8th time, my friend B's
second, and everyone else was seeing him live for the first time, and
I was excited for them, because Tommy has to be seen to be believed;
he's that amazing. I knew when I bought the tickets, the timing of
Tommy's first show in Tucson was auspicious, resonating with that
tribute show we all attended. But as I sat in the audience among my
friends, I pondered the particular appropriateness of this collection
of folks with me at this show.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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There was my dear friend B, whom I met
at guitar camp, a guitar camp I chose in large part because it
brought me to northern California, and therefore closer to A. I flew
into his town and he drove me to camp that first year, stayed up
there with me the second year, and it was she who told me she'd take
care of me if I fell apart when I went the third year, 6 months after
he died. After he was gone, and she and I became such good friends,
I couldn't help but feel that A wasn't the only reason I was supposed
to go to that particular camp; I was supposed to go there to meet B,
too.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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There was her partner, P, who has
become another dear friend in her own right, and has taken care of
this broken, problematic body of mine for years now, easing my soul
in the process with her kind ways and generous heart. It was on a
trip to visit the two of them, when I was 15 months out, that I had
the first feeling that I was going to be all right. Intellectually,
I knew I would heal in time (though what that would look like, I
hadn't the foggiest). But they took me out, and they loved me
through it, and as I sat on the back of the motorcycle of a friend of
theirs, riding past a beautiful lake as aspen leaves floated down
upon and around us like confetti, I thought, "Life IS good."
And I felt the truth of it in that moment. A always said "Life
is good." It was hard for me to see that up until that point,
and to be honest, at many points thereafter. But with them, I always
come away feeling better: filled up, healed; not just on that trip.
They're that kind of people. And now they live in my city and we see
each other all the time, so I'm very lucky.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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A had been my guitar guru, my
cheerleader, the one who got me playing the guitar after I'd
completely given up. If not for him, I wouldn't be a musician today;
I'm always sure of that, and I told him that often, though he would
never accept credit for it. A year or so after he died, I bought a
set of guitar lesson DVDs, in a fit of pique, actually, angry that he
was no longer here to guide me in my learning to play guitar; one
more loss on top of a mountain of them. But I never did anything
with them, and ended up passing them on to a friend years later. Two
years ago, however, I'd realized I'd run up against my own
limitations as a self-taught guitarist, and I needed a new teacher.
And I was ready for one who wasn't A. As it turns out, I couldn't
have picked a better one. So for him to be there with me at the
Tommy show, his lovely wife at his side, enjoying a guitarist that A
had introduced to me, and I had introduced to everyone there with me,
including my guitar teacher, seemed apropos.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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And finally, my boyfriend. I started
dating again this past summer, somewhat accidentally, but it wasn't
until then that I could even consider it. Of course, being married
makes it less imperative to even think about trying, but that aside,
I wasn't ready or interested. I have had the two great loves of my
life, and didn't expect another; it seemed greedy, somehow. And I
love him, but it is very different, as it must be. It is not the
same kind of relationship I have with E, or had with A. He is
different. Circumstances are different. And I, too, am different.
And as lovely as it is, it makes me think often of A, of the things
that were so effortless with him, the way we clicked and always
understood each other. I still miss that so much. I still miss him
so much. I sometimes wish he hadn't been so wonderful, such a
delightful human being, and a great man; then maybe everyone else in
the world wouldn't suffer so much by comparison.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Still, the fact that I have made
another positive, loving connection in this life is all to the good,
and certainly beyond anything I dared to imagine in the early, or
later, days of my widowhood. I'm sure we all say that, though I
should've known better--I was poly before he died, whereas for most
widows, this is a new concept, loving more than one person infinitely
and equally. And for him to be there at the Tommy show with all of
us, it just kind of felt like the circle was complete in a way.
Because not one of those people, not the one on the stage, nor the
ones sitting with me, would've been in my life if not for A. It is
both strange and amazing to contemplate.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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So here we are again on Valentine's
Day. I was disappointed on Valentine's Day 2006, because A totally
spaced getting me a card. He totally spaced a lot of things that
spring, and in hindsight, I think the heart disease that would kill
him just 5 months later was having an effect on him already; he was
moody and snappish and forgetful; totally unlike himself. Out in the
backyard this afternoon, I heard a hummingbird making a considerable
racket, and I said hello, to A, thanking him for the little winged
messenger, and razzing him that he didn't get me a card this year.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Valentine's Day, 7 years later.
Nothing, and everything, has changed.</div>
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<br />
</div>
Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-26389243844731796522012-10-17T00:35:00.001-07:002012-10-23T21:29:59.912-07:00Extremely Loud & Incredibly CloseThe movie had been on our DVR for weeks. Every time I asked E. if he wanted to watch it, he demurred, and finally I asked him if he wanted to watch it at all, and he said that he did, but had heard it was sad. It's a 9/11-related movie; there's no way it could be otherwise. I told him I'd watch it on my own, when he was out of town. And at 10 o'clock tonight, that's what I did. Two hours later, I had A.'s picture clutched to my chest and tears rolling down my cheeks.<br />
<br />
I remember the quest to find something else to do that would keep the link between us alive in a way more tangible than hope and belief, something I could do for him, something I could do for us, something I could do for me to make him less gone. As bizarre as the child's search was, I understood it completely. The desperation. The frustration of still holding the key, and having no lock to put it in; the key being actions, words, things I wanted to share with him, things I wanted to give to him, things only he would understand; him being the lock I could no longer find.<br />
<br />
I understand the bone-deep need to make sense of something that cannot ever make sense, no matter how many times you revisit it. The only way to make sense of it is to tell yourself that people die sometimes, and sometimes the people that die are people you love. That is the only part of it that makes sense; it's the only part that can, because there's no disputing the truth of it. Everyone knows; it's in all the papers, all the time. You will never be able to make sense of why. Why him. Why me. Why us. Why then. Why heart disease couldn't give us a warning shot across the bow before it shot to kill.<br />
<br />
In the movie, the boy says he was sure he couldn't live without his dad, but he was wrong, and he thinks his dad would be proud of him. Sometimes I am a little sad that I've learned to live without him. I'm also proud that I've managed to get this far, and for the most part, the pride (and the relief) outweigh the sadness. Until I watch a movie I know will open it all up, and leave me with A's picture clutched to my chest and tears rolling down my cheeks.<br />
<br />
Maybe sometimes I need that key for all that I've locked up.<br />
<br />Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-37408213822746626652012-08-30T20:29:00.001-07:002012-08-30T20:29:36.853-07:00Yes. This. "<span class="quote">I will love you forever; whatever happens. Until I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, until I find you again.</span>" <table style="margin-top:10px" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="width:1px;padding:0px 10px 0px 20px" valign="top"> — </td> <td class="quote_source" valign="top"> Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass </td></tr></tbody></table> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-39409127997711430562012-08-04T00:46:00.000-07:002012-08-04T00:48:11.245-07:00Dreaming impossible dreamsI took a nap this afternoon, and had a dream that didn't seem like a dream, because I was only half asleep. I often end up drifting a long time in that netherworld between sleep and wakefulness, and in that time my head seems to be a riot of half-dreams and images that come from who knows where. But in this dream, I dreamed that I had found a photo on my computer of A, a photo I had never seen before. And when I clicked on it, I realized it wasn't just a photo; it was a video. It seemed like he had taken a video of himself with his phone while waiting around in the eye doctor's office. (I know--its bizarrely specific, but that's dreams for you.) And I watched the video entranced, because I have no video of him. To see him alive and smiling and moving was so exciting, and I had received such a gift, to find this video after 6 years. I couldn't imagine where it came from, but I was so glad to have it.<br> <br>When I woke up, I started trying to remember where I could find that video again, and then I became aware that it wasn't real; it'd been a dream. A couldn't have even taken such a video with his phone; the first iPhone didn't even come out until a year after he died, and those didn't have video capability. It's weird for me to think about how much has happened in 6 years, stuff he hasn't seen. He would've had an iPhone for sure. And then I thought about Skype, and how our long-distance chats would've benefited from that. I hadn't even heard of it when he died; we used Yahoo messenger, which had a video option (crappy by today's standards) and it was always freezing up and crashing.<br> <br>What's also weird is how my mind created this video dream out of nothing. That's always fascinated me about dreams: how our minds can create things that we've never seen, or even imagined in our waking life. I think there is more to dreams than we probably realize.<br> <br>Regardless, I haven't dreamed about A in such a very long time, and even though he wasn't "live" in this dream, it was, as always, so good to see him. <br> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-61514453499005618062012-08-01T15:33:00.001-07:002012-08-01T15:33:10.993-07:00This"<span class="quote">I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.</span>" <table style="margin-top:10px" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="width:1px;padding:0px 10px 0px 20px" valign="top"> — </td> <td class="quote_source" valign="top"> Haruki Murakami </td></tr></tbody></table> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-8310993966553004132012-07-17T22:07:00.001-07:002012-07-17T22:07:39.156-07:00The day I found out6 years ago this morning, I called the cops in California to confirm the worst. I had left only the hope of ignorance; I was pretty sure he was gone, but somehow, having it confirmed was a zillion times worse.<br><br>This morning, the first thing I thought about when I woke up was my leaky roof and what we were going to do about it. The above was the second thing I thought about. <br> <br>So, you know, progress. <br> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-57478821310204066092012-07-13T17:53:00.001-07:002012-07-13T17:53:31.653-07:00Photographs & MemoriesEvery July 15th for the last 6 years, I've put up a memorial of sorts on my blog, a picture of A and a few comments, or perhaps a link to a song. Every year, my regular readers tend to ignore it entirely and say a very loud nothing to me about it, and my widow friends generally don't need a reminder, and have usually already sent me supportive messages, because they're understanding and cool like that. We are there for each other, and I am grateful again and again that that's the case.<br> <br>In anticipation of Sunday, then, in search of a photo to use this year that I haven't already used, I was looking through pictures. I have a hundred and some; I wish there were more. I intended to have more--I intended to have years' worth of new ones added to the collection. It's been awhile since I took the time to look at each of them, carefully. It didn't take long before there were tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat.<br> <br>He was real. He was really here. I have the photographic evidence: the freckles that covered every bit of my beautiful Black Irish man that ever saw the sun, the wrinkles on his neck, the abundant salt with just a dash of pepper yet in his hair, his sweet smile, and the frown when he was concentrating. <br> <br>Sometimes he seems so out of reach, so long gone, more dream than memory. Sometimes the gap of 6 years and whatever self-protective mechanisms are in play just isn't something I can bridge. And then I see him in photos as he really was, not the vague ghost in my head, and he's right here, and I fall in love with him at 15 millionth sight. It happens every time.<br> <br>He was here, and he was beautiful, and we loved each other so much, and so well. I miss him beyond the telling.<br> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-37628226107465192312012-07-08T19:03:00.001-07:002012-07-08T19:03:23.213-07:00IrritableI've been irritable the last week or so, getting into it over tiny stupid things with E, and feeling even more like a heel because he's been recovering from surgery. Arguing with someone who's in pain, can't eat, and was hopped up on Percocet is asshole behavior, and I'm guilty of it. I'd been chalking it up to hormones, but I'm no longer PMSing, and that feeling is still there: the hair trigger, the feeling of restlessness, the impatience, the inability to just settle down and do something I actually enjoy; I'm adrift and spoiling for a fight. <br> <br>I started the morning with a spell in the hot tub, and as I was lying there in the bubbles, it finally came to me: it's the week before the sadiversary. That's what this is about.<br><br>For some time now, this is how grief has manifested for me. Not in tears--those come at random, poignant moments that make me misty-eyed; I just get irritable, as if there's a part of me that feels and knows that something is wrong, and it doesn't like it one bit, and dammit, everyone who has the misfortune to come in contact with me and rub me just the slightest bit wrong is going to feel it, too. Maybe it's vestigial rage from the cosmic wrong. I felt plenty of rage in the early days. Not so much now, but I'm generally a content and easygoing person. There are 2 things that consistently get me to feeling this way. If it's not hormones, it's probably A being dead that's riled me up. The bastard keeps doing it; he knows I don't like it, but evidently he's unwilling to resurrect himself for my benefit.<br> <br><a href="http://crashcoursewidow.blogspot.com/">Candice</a> has talked a lot about how, when you're no longer actively grieving, and no longer sad all the time, it's harder to remember that grief is still on your list of things that could be bringing you down. What was once your "well, duh!" explanation for any bad mood is no longer the first thing you think of, and while that's all to the good, it does mean that it often requires a little more excavation to figure out what's eating you now. It's July 8th. I've got just 7 more days to say and think that A's been gone 5 years before it turns to 6. As soon as it occurred to me this morning, I knew that was it. So I gave myself permission to sit with it for the next week and not worry overmuch about my mood, because there's really nothing else I can do anyway. Feel what you feel when you feel it; that's my motto. It's somewhat easier to do when you've figured out WHY you feel what you feel.<br> <br>I ran some errands this afternoon, just needing milk and to get out of the house. As I was driving home from the grocery store, I saw a sign for an estate sale. I will never go to another estate sale, as I've mentioned previously. But the sign got me thinking about A's family, and how they got rid of all his stuff, and my stuff, without a thought for me. And then I thought about his sister. And then I thought about talking to his sister the day we found him. And then I thought I was about to throw up. <br> <br>Even now, 6 years later, remembering that day provokes a terrible physical response that is only diminished in the avoidance of thinking about it. When I dare otherwise, it's right there, the aching hollow feeling in my gut.<br> <br>I don't know what the next week will bring, or whether there'll be a hangover following. What I do know is that I'll get through it; and that I'm still pissed off I have to.<br> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-52891873444955618352012-06-25T17:39:00.001-07:002012-09-16T21:28:31.015-07:00Who says TV keeps people from thinking?<style type="text/css">
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We've been watching the catch-up
marathon of the last 4 seasons of <a href="http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad">Breaking
Bad</a> in anticipation of the Season 5 premiere, which just happens
to fall on the 6th anniversary of A's death. (I should say here if
you haven't watched it, and are going to, there are spoilers ahead.
Though I will say if you're newly widowed, you might consider
avoiding this show, because it's not really going to do you any
favors.)
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I was going to say that the show has
brought up a lot of stuff for me in light of the impending
sadiversary, but I suppose it'd be more accurate to say that the
impending sadiversary, and my being a widow in the first place, makes
me see the show in a certain way that others may not.</div>
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<br /></div>
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On an episode the other night, the
recently relapsed junkie girlfriend (Jane) of the young junkie main
character (Jesse) dies (I'll spare you the ugly details). A few
episodes later, we see the recently rehabbed Jesse dialing his phone,
listening a moment and then hanging up. We see this twice, but don't
hear anything until later, but I turned to E and said, "He's
dialing her voicemail to hear her voice." E said, "Really?
You think so?"</div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course I know so, and as the show
progresses, I'm proven correct. A few moments later, after weighing
the wisdom of sharing how I knew, I say, "The only thing that
kept me from dialing A's phone a hundred million times after he died
was that I figured his family had the phone, and I didn't want to
bother them." Which is totally the truth. I'd probably still
be calling it today, if I could. The last time I heard anything
close to his voice was in a dream I had several years ago now, where
a hummingbird hovered near my ear and called my name in an
approximation of his voice.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I'm 3 weeks out from being 6 years
without A. Funny thing about time: for most of the year, I can
refer to whatever the last anniversary is that passes without much
problem. From July through May, I can say, "He's been gone 5
years" and don't feel the need to add on the months for
accuracy's sake. Sometimes I count it up in my head anyway...or
rather, the math comes easily to me now, any time of year, but not
always. This is a good thing, because I can reckon with the reality
of the time that has passed without much of an emotional charge.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But once June hits, I feel it coming,
and the time I haven't tolled since the last year starts rolling down
upon me, like the beginning of an avalanche. Not a deadly
avalanche--I no longer fear it's going to kill me. But the pebbles
and rocks that precede it hurt nonetheless. I am so aware of this
milestone; this millstone, its weight around my neck forcing my head
down at various moments when for some reason there's a hole in my
defenses and the truth pierces to my core, and my eyes water.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I figure I'll just wait it out; there's
nothing else to do, and I've had 5 years' practice at it.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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This morning I woke up thinking again
about the show, but this time about the meth addicts portrayed on it,
their bodies crumbling as they do anything to return to whatever sweet
oblivion meth offers. When I was young, I didn't do drugs, because I
had neither motive nor opportunity, and they were bad and illegal to
boot. As I've gotten older, I still have no opportunity, and not
really the interest, though I will admit to there being plenty of
times in the last almost-6 years where I could understand the
motivation, the desire for complete and total escape. And at this
point in my life, having that understanding, it is not the danger of
drug use <i>per se</i> that would scare me off; it's that, once
having tasted the high, I'd keep wanting it. Who wouldn't? That is
always the danger of experiencing something beyond the mundane: how
can they keep you down on the Earth after you've seen the Mystery?</div>
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<br /></div>
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I read, I think in <i>Eat, Pray, Love</i>,
about seekers who have achieved states of perfect bliss and
understanding via meditation once, and spend the rest of their lives
chasing it, suffering in their frustration if it doesn't come again.
When you've got it all figured out, and nothing hurts, I could easily
see someone going mad trying to regain that somehow; sometimes I
wonder if it's better not to know what you're missing. You can't
miss what you never had. I tend to think the universe grants us
these moments to give us hope, to keep us going, but it's a
double-edged sword, because even though it may tantalize us up out of
our rut, our deep dark hole our blinders of pain, it doesn't stop
tantalizing us when it's done that job. Once you recognize that
there's so much more than meets the eye, for all of us, natural human
curiosity makes us want to know all of it. And we just can't, it
seems. Dog knows, I've tried.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
And that led me back to thinking about
my experiences with A, and how he communicated with me after he died,
for awhile. Not now; not really. And I think about how desperate I
was for that communication; how hurt and deflated I was when it
tapered off eventually; how I wanted to keep having it forever,
having him forever, or at least until we were on the same side of the
veil.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's all the same, isn't it?
Sometimes, we get a glimpse of the bigger picture, we see through the
veil, we feel real freedom from this earthly illusion, and it is so
good, and so comforting, you can never get enough. You just can't
ever get enough. You can keep chasing it and run yourself into the
ground trying to hold on to something that I can only believe we were
never intended to have all the time, not in this material world,
anyway. If we were, wouldn't it be easier to achieve, and maintain?
The extremes required to attain it, through drugs, or meditation, or
near-death experiences, or bereavement--these are, for the most part,
not things that are good for a person in large quantities.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I know my experiences are real. I
don't doubt them at all. I know people who would do anything to have
just one of the experiences I have had and be satisfied that this
isn't all there is, that there is some kind of reunion ahead for all
of us. And yet I find myself yearning for more. More of him, in
whatever way I can get it. More hope, or rather, a regularly
recharged hope that can carry me through a few more years at a time
without losing faith before the next booster.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm clean. I'm healed. And yet my
body and my mind will never forget what it was like to feel him
running through my veins when he was alive, and to feel his energy
flowing through my body and soul after he left. Dog help the meth
addicts, but I can't blame them for wanting that high again and
again. I get it. If I could buy a few hours of heaven and the man
who lives there now, a few hours' release from this quiet, stoic
knowing and missing, for a few hundred bucks, I'd do it, too.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can't, of course. So I come here,
and spill my guts.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm Phoenix, and I'm a widow.</div>
Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-20894836008967346912012-03-14T12:21:00.005-07:002012-03-14T12:26:49.760-07:00ChangesA funny thing happened on the way to rearranging my home office to become a more usable music studio.<br /><br />I had to move furniture around, as you might imagine. There was the bookcase that held, among other things, the books I'd borrowed from him that became mine after he died. And there was the little cabinet that held what I like to call an <i>ofrenda</i>, but those of you not familiar with Mexican culture would know better (and probably with a slightly more pejorative connotation) as a shrine. On top of it was a picture or two of A, photos of my two dogs that have passed away since A did, and various mementos, symbols, and the requisite candle that I've lit most nights since I first set the thing up. It evolved organically, but has been pretty static for about a year (thank dog), because no one else in my life has died since then.<br /><br />I wanted the bookcase out of my office entirely, so I moved his books into the library to join the general book population for the first time. I carefully placed all the <i>ofrenda</i> items into a little case until I could decide where they'd land once I was done moving things around, save for the big picture that wouldn't fit.<br /><br />I was both impressed with myself and apprehensive as I did it; the books in particular gave me trouble early on. I had a meltdown after I tried to take them out of the box he brought them to me in, and had to put them back. It was a few months before I could try again and <a href="http://grieving.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/two-steps-forward-one-step-back/">succeed</a>. To move them out of my office and out with the rest of my books is a big damn deal. And it only took me 5.25 years (tomorrow, which is also his birthday) to consider doing it.<br /><br />The <i>ofrenda</i> is another thing entirely, but it, too, has been dispersed. As I've slowly gotten my office back into shape after the endless reshuffling, there's really no home for the entirety of it anymore. I put the small things in the keepsake box I have the majority of the A-related stuff in. The pictures and inlay projects now reside on top of my curio cabinet for the moment, awaiting the coming redecoration of this room, at which time I'll probably add them to the gallery wall I'm planning. The prayer wheel now sits on my desk. I moved the candle into my bedroom. And the beer bottle holding an artificial sunflower, a gift from his best friend's wife who made them for his memorial service out of the bottles from the 6-pack he brought to their last gathering (and which I always thought was a little tacky, though I appreciated the sentiment behind it, which is why I kept it so long) went into the recycle bin, the flower joining the other stuff in the keepsake box. The recycle bin! I can hardly believe my audacity, and yet it is clear to me that it's the sensible thing to do, and the time is right.<br /><br />I'm still not sure what the final disposition of these things will be, but it will definitely will be different, and on a smaller scale than what I had before, if it exists as a recognizable shrine at all. It may not. And that's the surprising thing; that this was even possible. That I was ready; I didn't even know I was ready. I hadn't thought about it at all, really, until practicality trumped my faded need for unwavering stability in all things A. That's how it's gone all along, though. Things lose their magic over time, and keeping them in their place is no longer an analogue to keeping myself stable and together. And I think it happens when the magic is no longer needed, because when it happens, it's not painful.<br /><br />In this case, my practical need for a functioning, workable music space is a higher priority than preserving a dedicated mourning space. I can integrate the stuff into my home now, I think, because I have integrated the loss in my soul. It doesn't require a special time, a special place; it's part of me. I think A would be proud, and happy that I'm arranging my life, and my space, around my music, rather than around reminders of my grief. He's probably thinking, "about time, baby."<br /><br />Every time I think I'm beyond any new and remarkable demonstrations of healing, something like this happens, and I think, "whoa--this is big. Go me." It is, I think, wise to respect the pain, and worthwhile to celebrate the healing thereof. I'm a widow; I still want my damn parade (even a tiny little one in my heart) every time I show myself to have healed, survived, and grown. We all deserve that.Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-50304477007682325042012-02-27T19:25:00.003-08:002012-02-27T19:41:21.453-08:00StillAt my massage the other day, I was talking to my therapist (who is also a close friend), and we were gabbing about doctors, and how they chalk things up to middle/old/whatever age, essentially recusing themselves from having to do anything to try to help you. "Useless doctors" is a favorite rant of mine, for sure. I shared an anecdote about A, and how he was a jogger, and when he went to the doctor about his knees that were bothering him on his runs, he basically got a "Whaddayawant? You're 40" kind of response. I commented that what he wanted was knees that were going to work for another 40 years, which actually turned out to be just 15 in his case.<br /><br />The conversation moved on, as did the massage, and at the end, she wrapped various bits of me in hot towels and left me to relax on the table for a bit. In the solitude, I found myself staring up at the ceiling and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere (but obviously triggered by the earlier conversational topic), my mind was shouting: <br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You died! How can you be dead? People don't generally die at 55; it's an abnormally young age to die.</span><br /><br />It was a visceral reaction, felt more than thought, and stunning for its unexpected intensity, and it's unexpectedness, period. Sometimes it's like living in a dream. Well, not my dreams, which are always bizarre in the extreme, but maybe someone else's, where the oddest things are accepted and taken for granted in the dreamscape when they would make no sense at all in waking life. Time, habit, and a lot of hard work have acclimated me to the bizarre occurrence (in my life, if not in the world) that was A's death. But sometimes...sometimes I wake up in the middle of it like this and realize the shock never really went away; it was just dampened for a long time. Not that I'm complaining; you can't keep going if the edge of that knife is not dulled over time. But it's always, always there.<br /><br />5 years, 7 months, 12 days later, and this has not changed: I understand that this is; I will never understand why it is. It still surprises me that it's true.Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-72231328704566114852012-02-14T07:33:00.000-08:002012-02-14T08:18:29.453-08:00Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like youI've been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks, but have been so busy DOING the thing that I haven't sat down and done the writing about it.<br /><br />I find myself in the midst of a bathroom renovation, the second task of which was to gut my shower, pulling down a ton of tile and the drywall behind it. And almost as soon as I began, I was both bemused and amused at how it echoed a detail from A's life.<br /><br />When I first knew A, he and his wife were living separate lives under one roof, and had been for a few years. He was waiting for her to make a move and get the ball rolling on the divorce she'd asked for, and there were several projects around the house he said he'd do to get the house ready for the eventual sale they both expected as a part of the divorce, the largest of which was a bathroom renovation. He said that as bad as living there still was, he wasn't about to come back and work on a house he was no longer living in. He told me that the wall behind the shower had been pulled down completely, and he needed to put up new backer board and retile it. The shower was currently unusable.<br /><br />He moved out to his own apartment the month before we finally met in person, my visit being the impetus to make the move at that time, bathroom and other projects be damned. He liked his new place, though he only lived there for a year and a half before he died. He never did finish the bathroom, or any other projects, for his soon-to-be-ex-wife; it was just one of many things he left unfinished. But I think about it and smile, and think maybe he would, too, about the ultimate, unintentional, "fuck you" it ended up being. "Get someone else to fix your shower, lady. I'm outta here." It's kind of like the jury duty he got out of, though I've joked to him (wherever he is) that it's a damnably extreme gambit for skipping jury duty.<br /><br />As I've stood there sweating, broken tiles flying and a layer of crumbing drywall dust sifting over me, I think of him working on that bathroom, and me being so impressed, because I wouldn't know how to do anything like that, and wouldn't take it on. And I think about who I am now, because I'm doing it. And I think about how I'm finishing the bathroom he started...and maybe it's my job to finish lots of things he started, or at least make my contribution to the inexorable continuation of life. <br /><br />That is not to say that he didn't complete his own life; by some cosmic reckoning, maybe he well and truly did, however incomplete it appears to those of us left behind. But rather, it's more that, for the first time, I've felt in a very real way how it is on the survivors to take what we learned from those we lost, what they gave us, and how they shaped us into the people we are now, and use that going forward. That this is the best kind of ongoing tribute and memorial to those we love and have lost. Early on, I told myself that I couldn't grieve myself into oblivion forever, because I owed it to him to live, to really live instead of just exist, because that's what he'd want, and because he couldn't. But it was all talk, an intellectual consideration. It wasn't until I had tools in hand, picking up in my own life where he left off in his own, though, that I felt it, rather than thought it. I didn't even feel this way as I've moved forward in playing guitar, probably because I was so far behind him that I may not ever catch up, but this bathroom I can finish; maybe that's the difference.<br /><br />Many times since he died, I've hoped that A is proud of me for what I'm doing, how I've healed, who I've become in, and because of, his absence. But surprisingly, I find I'm proud of myself when I suddenly become aware that I am doing something he could've or would've done, or said something he would've, because he was a good, and kind, and patient, and brilliant, and skilled man. My life is very much my own; I am not trying to live his for him, nor could I ever succeed in doing so. But it pleases me when I find my life, or my thoughts, running in familiar traces; for in those moments, our lives coincide once again. These are, in a way, new memories I can make with him, connecting my present, a future he could never foresee, with the past he shared with me and that which we lived together. I'd like to think he sees, knows, and it pleases him, too.Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-57257262475719272532011-11-29T20:49:00.001-08:002011-11-29T20:49:31.428-08:00Mixed feelingsAmong the many things I didn't receive when A died were a bunch of things of my own, including several books. We had swapped a bunch of our favorites that we thought the other would like, and I'm glad we did, because if I hadn't had the books he brought me all the way from California ten months before he died, I would've had nothing of his. I haven't read a single one of those books yet. I don't know what I'm saving them for. But it brings me some comfort to know his fingers touched every single page of them.<br> <br>But this isn't about his books; it's about mine. Particularly the first two books of a series I love that were among his belongings that no doubt ended up at the charity thrift store, it never occurring to anyone to ask me if there was anything of mine, or anything I wanted, at the home of my lover of two years. But I'm not bitter.<br> <br>(Hell yes, I am.)<br><br>I recently checked up on that author, and downloaded her latest book to my Kindle, and along with it, a short story that told of the meeting of the two main characters through the eyes of the man (who happens to be Sherlock Holmes); the original novel told it from the girl's (she was a girl when the books started, anyway) perspective. And that made me want to go back and reread the whole series, which I haven't done since the <i>Little House</i> books a million years ago. But of course, I couldn't, because I don't have the books. The completist in me had often thought about replacing them, but somehow, I couldn't, or didn't. I can't even tell you why I never did. Maybe it was a tiny cross I was hanging myself upon, a reminder of how I'd been wronged by his family, and worse, his ex who evidently took charge of the disposition of his things--she had the legal right, if not the ethical right; I think it may be worse that I don't think it was malicious; I don't think they gave me a thought one way or the other.<br> <br>In any case, tonight, 5 years, 4 months, and 2 weeks after his death, I bought the books again and downloaded them to my Kindle as well. My main impulse was that I wanted to read those books again, but it brings up a whole bunch of other stuff, of course. If he hadn't died, I'd have them, or know who did. If his family could've found it within themselves to care a little more about my feelings, I might have them. I am looking forward to rereading the books (and the story of their May-December romance between people of uncannily like minds), and resentful that I had to buy them twice, and sad because they were the least of what I lost, but they are the tip of that whole iceberg and it all comes back. They just can't be two books that went missing. I'm a widow, and too many damn things in my life are fraught with subtext that only I see and can read. <br> <br>On the surface, it's no big deal. I had to replace two paperbacks. But there's an emotional kick that I can't avoid. I can anticipate it, and I can survive it, but I cannot avoid it. And frankly, I think that's a bitch. Even when you're mostly free of the pain, and the heartache, you're never free and clear. There's always something that can pull it front and center, where it mocks you in your helplessness. You can't fix it any more now than you ever could. And you know that only too well, with more clarity then you had way back in the beginning. Grief and loss? They're emotional herpes: something that won't kill you, but certainly has the power to cause you pain, inconvenience, and to cramp your style. It just pisses me off sometimes. <br> Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8208174559469742750.post-49688042121640887372011-10-24T22:57:00.001-07:002012-02-14T07:29:20.602-08:00UselessThe coworker I mentioned in <a href="http://afterthefire-phoenix.blogspot.com/2011/07/countdown.html">this post</a> has been back to work a couple weeks now. I sent him a condolence e-mail when the news came that his wife had passed, and we've swapped a couple e-mails sharing pertinent poems since he's been back, alluding to his situation, but not really talking about it. I talked more about it than he did, which I suppose is how it always is. I assume people want to talk, want to process; over and over again, because I did, but I find a lot of people really don't. When I was still e-mailing with A's family, I would spill my guts (carefully...I would carefully pour my guts out), and their responses, even in e-mail, seemed to have this palpable feeling of "Whoa there, lady...way too much information/emotion." It's always a sharing mismatch with me. He seems much like he always did, and is walking around, joking and laughing when he isn't hiding out in his office. It may well be that he's relieved to be in a context where the expectations are clear, and not so heart-rending as those he's been in all these months. But I swear I catch him staring blankly at his monitor a lot. I am not surprised. I did a lot of that for almost 2 years.<br /><br />It's been weird, and I've felt frustrated, because my instinct is to reach out to him. I am, to my knowledge, the only other person at the company who's been widowed. I have grief books to share. I have experience. I have the URL of a sometimes wacky, but overall helpful, support website I could give him. I have an open heart and a listening ear. I could, and would, be there for him but for two things: we are only friendly, not actually friends, and he has no reason to confide in me, or to imagine he could; and I am not out as a widow to the world at large, just select segments of it. And I don't see any point in coming out 5 years after the fact to someone at work. Too risky.<br /><br />But I have to say, it was bad enough when my being a closeted poly person interfered with my own grieving; now it's interfering with my ability to be compassionate. Or rather, my ability to demonstrate that compassion. And that sucks. The suckage of that never seems to end. I think about that sometimes, as my parents and my friends and I all grow older. How many times will my ability to empathize be constrained and stifled because it still seems prudent to keep my love of A on a need-to-know basis? How many times will I bite back, "I do know how you feel," because they don't know that I do. Sometimes, I think "fuck it," I'm tired of keeping that secret, and that I'll let the chips fall where they may. But I never do; somehow, beyond the imagined risk, it seems disloyal and cowardly; if I wasn't going to 'fess up when it was happening and he was here and it could've mattered, why would I do it now, when that particular reality is long gone, and only the meanest souls would think less of me for it?<br /><br />So I do what I can, but mostly, I feel I stupid because it ain't much. I don't ask him how he is. I ignore the subject, just like everyone else seems to around the office, and maybe that is, in fact, what he'd prefer. A lot of widows I know have expressed how they got really tired of people asking "How ARE you?" with that look. And it's not like I can ask him. So basically, I'm behaving like any other DGI--Let's all pretend M's wife didn't die, and that it's business as usual for him. I cringed when a coworker ran into him outside my cube, and chirped brightly, "Welcome back!" like he'd been on vacation or something; he spent the last 5 months watching his wife die. Jesus.<br /><br />I guess, if I'm honest, I'm projecting the feelings that arise from my old wounds onto him, and he may be feeling none of that himself. But it's not about me. And maybe that's what I need to remember in my frustration; I have to guess he has other means of support. It is no doubt pure ego to think that he needs what I have to contribute. That makes sense to me; there's just that bit of doubt that nags at me, as I remember how many rats fled my sinking ship, and worry for him: what if I were the one person who might've supported him, but didn't?Phoenixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02772907437207569339noreply@blogger.com2