Bergman

 Dear Will:

I remember us meeting after the movie, The Virgin Spring.  But when I found a story about Cinema 6 in the Idaho State Journal at Newspapers.com, it said that the movie was scheduled for October 17.  Yet in my memory it was in September, when allegedly The Belles of St. Trinian's was playing.

Idaho State Journal, Sept.30, 1971

You were always the one with the good memory until you weren't.  I should have asked you a long time ago.  Oh well.

I don't remember seeing the movie.  I do remember thinking about how Mom had complained about the film a few years previous when it had played at the Saratoga art theatre, so I was probably feeling like, "This is a great film but I still need to close my eyes."  I doubt I was triggered by the rape scene because I hadn't yet been raped.

Bergman was so important to both of us in those early days and was a key influence on my theology at the time.

I watched the movie again, yesterday, for the first time in over five decades.  Actually, I skimmed through it, watching certain scenes, cruising quickly through others, admiring the use of silence, the crisp cinematography, and the naked body of Max Von Sydow, which was so much like yours.

I am missing the well version of you horribly right now.  

I got the Birdy sculpture on Sunday but I don't know if it will fit on your grave.  If it doesn't, I'll just buy a traditional stone and have her placed in the yard.  It's a beautiful sculpture and looks just like her.

Love, always, Kake

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 Cue music 

Thanks, Ennio Morricone.

The Good:  It was so great to have Thanksgiving dinner provided by my friend Amy.  I hadn't seen her in such a long time, it seemed.  My friends from school work and are busy.  It was good to see other folks and to feel connected to people and have a good meal.  I got tired and left early (I'd awakened at 3:15 that morning and didn't get back to bed.  The food, an indigenous feast, was terrific.  I've gotten over my feelings of being dropped from this friendship group.  That may be thanks to the magnets which have been exercising my brains for the past couple of weeks.  I'm better able to see and accept the reality of how people come and go from one's life and it doesn't mean that one is a bad, evil, person.

The Bad:  Last year on this day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a person with whom I'd been friends for three years decided I was a whore and cut me out of his life.  I cried all Saturday afternoon and again through the church service the next day.  I had come to love this person as a friend.  And remember, I was still in the state of mind that rejection meant that I was an evil person.  I was also in the last two months of Will's life.

The Ugly: memories of last year.  Of Will at 113 pounds.  Of the shit and piss and managing those last two months.  It was so very hard for him to die.  The animal in him was powerful and it fought those last two months.  That was an ugly time.

Back to the Good:  But I did it.  I provided love and care and cleaned up shit and slept in a shitty bed one or two nights to stay with him and keep him loved.  The good included the Trinity Choir coming to sing to me.  I did it.  I got through it.  I got through my heart becoming a dumpster fire.

Back to the Good:  When I was very young, I asked God to let me live for love.  I thought I was talking about romance.  But what is dementia care but giving oneself over to Love?

It's a good thing to be sad without being depressed.

So...what I need now is to face the coming month less like a weepy widow and more like a gunfighter.  I will come out of this slough of despond stronger than before.  

And maybe with a good hat.

This sucks and is gonna suck

 

Image stolen from leuschkeangeli Shop on Redbubble

 So I've been trying to find a way out of not having the next six weeks suck balls.  Not that sucking balls is a bad thing, at least as I remember the task.  But when used to describe something one doesn't like, it loses its literal meaning and becomes an expression of, well in this case, anxiety and anger.

I told Sarah, my grief therapist, that I was trying to find a way to make last Christmas not hurt so much.  I have been thinking that I should see the beginning of Will's dying in his own shit as a "gift" from God on Christmas morning.  On Christmas morning I was cleaning him and calling for help to the Hospice that didn't have anyone scheduled to visit me that day, of course.  He was screaming at me that he would kill me.  The hospice nurse arrived and we were able to change him.  I dosed him with morphine.  Shortly after that he went to sleep and never woke up.  On the morning of Boxing Day he was running the killing temperature.  I called hospice for immediate assistance.  She didn't get to me until the afternoon and as soon as the nurse saw him she said, "It will be soon."  And it was.

So when I told Sarah that I was trying to come up with a story to make reality more bearable she told me to stop it.  To face the reality.  She also gave me the tools of the mental safe space and "storage trunk." I've been given them before but didn't use them particularly well.

My reality is that I'm very sad but not suicidal.  The reality is that every time I see a fucking Christmas decoration I'm angry.  (So, not a good idea to go shopping with me!  Unless you want to hear me say "fuck you" to the Christmas decorations in Costco and Safeway.)

My reality is that I enjoy being in church and doing church work, so the Christian meaning of this time of year doesn't make me as sad as the secular part of this time of year.  ("Suck dick, blow up balloon Grinch and Rudolph!  Up yer ass, lifelike rooftop Santa!")

Only two of the Gospels mention the birth of Jesus, Matthew and Luke, and each was written later than Mark, who doesn't mention it.  In Luke, Mary and Joe start off in Galilee and in Matthew they start off in Nazareth.  And there are other differences -- only Matt talks about the wise guys and only Luke mentions the shepherds. So many Christians don't understand that the classic image of the Nativity, with both wise men (and the Gospels don't say how many) and shepherds blends two different stories.

So, I love the mix of Gospel stories because they're so human in their creation and use.  Meaning people have killed other people over holiday greetings.  Oi, I'm cranky this morning.  And sad.

But I cheered myself up a bit, thinking about them.  And I still love Mr. Dickens' take on the whole situation.  

"And what are you going to do about Thanksgiving?" Sarah asked.

I'll wait and see if anyone wants to eat with me and if I receive no invitations, I'll head out to a restaurant.  I will be in my safe space in my head and blaming no one for being busy and not thinking about me (here you see me crossing my arms and patting myself with alternating hands just below my shoulders - it's part of the EMDR training.)

I still don't know how I'm actually going to get through Christmas itself.  The altar guild is very short-handed but I don't want to be in town on Christmas.  I will remember how alone I was that week, how the hospice people failed me.  How hard the dying was. But altar guild is FUN!  Yesterday at our meeting, when Jed asked us to introduce ourselves and why we are on altar guild, I said it was a natural outgrown of my degree in technical theatre.

I guess I need to remember that I have a very good life and that "weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning." (KJV Psalm 30:5)

Huldah's Table

Screen capture of Huldah Bell from a video, circa 1990

 Dear Will:

I'm writing to you in answer to my assignment in Cindy's class:  "My mother's kitchen . . ."

Well, you know that aunt Huldah's kitchen was much more welcoming than Mom's.  And Huldah even enjoyed cooking. But it's her dining room I'm remembering right now.  Where we first talked.  Do you remember?  You had come over to the house that night, Thursday, October 21, 1971, to celebrate my aunt's birthday.  I had just moved in with her that August to go to school at Idaho State.  Huldah was the last Hanson living in a house first purchased by my purported great grandfather to shelter his official and unofficial children.   Huldah's draft-age son and his wife at the time were also living with her.

The dining room was the largest in that 1896 house, built just seven years after the founding of the city.  Perhaps its size was based on the large family customary in those days.

I remember the room as dark and warm, with polished wood trim giving shape to old wallpaper. At one side was the archway leading to the front door. Opposite that was the swinging door that led to the kitchen, where all but celebratory meals were eaten.  In the center of the room was a great round table. To the side of the table was a bay window with a small cushioned seat and a view of the neighbor's yard.  Opposite were two doors, one to a bedroom that I would inhabit through my first school year, and one to the house's single bathroom.  The bathroom had the most decorations of any room in the house, including a roll of newsprint beside the roll of toilet paper to give folks the opportunity to write graffiti while they were seated.

The table itself was beautiful.  Large enough to seat twelve to fourteen people, it was probably a rich American walnut with a deep color from decades of dining and polishing.  Most of the time it was stacked with books and magazines as people ate their meals in the kitchen at a small square vinyl-topped table that sat six.

The night of Huldah's 56th birthday, chairs and benches were gathered from the kitchen and elsewhere to make places for the friends my aunt had invited over.  Most at the table were middle aged, unmarried people.  The youngsters included me, my twenty-something cousin and his wife.  The room smelled of roast turkey, bourbon and cigarette smoke.  There was a lot of laughter and drinking.  You seemed happy and comfortable in my aunt's space.  You were her good friend long before she introduced us.  Interesting that dementia wound up killing you both.

But back to that first night.  Remember, I'd already sent you that flirtatious note, earlier in October.  So I had my barely 18 year old eye on you: the tall, skinny, long haired, bearded professor with the beautiful eyes and smile.

I don't remember if we flirted over the great oak table. Probably, because  I pretty much flirted with everybody in those days.  Hell, I would have fucked a snake I was so horny all the time.  At the end of the meal my cousin brought out a couple of doobies that were passed around the table, sans bogarting.  Then around 1:00 am you decided to walk the three blocks to your apartment.  I decided to go with you.  When we reached your door I insisted you kiss me and invite me inside. There I made sure one thing led to another.

I thought that night was just a roll in the hay.  That roll lasted 50 years, 66 days, and fifteen hours.  

But who's counting.

Me.

Love always,

Kake

"What's with her?"

Photo by Mary Jeanne Kuhar

 A church friend of mine told me that someone had come up to her after church on October 30 and asked about my odd behavior.  You see, I wore a costume to church.  It was Halloween Weekend, after all, and costumes were everywhere.  So I did myself all up in white, including wings and halo.  When I got to church I saw that I was the only one.  I started to stew.  Do I take my wings and halo off and bow to conformity?  Should I not be a weirdo?  Or do I sell my bluff of bravery and were the outfit up to the pulpit, read the wonderful passage from Isaiah in which God bitches about rituals performed by folks who don't have their heart in it, lead the psalm,and went back to my seat in the back.  

I guess my friend responded to the dude questioning my sanity by saying something about me being full of life and energy and a little different.

And then later this same week, on Thursday, I finally came out as non-binary to the "Women of Trinity" at the quarterly potluck and got to explain the difference between "trans" and "non-binary".  I asked them to contact our fearless leader if anyone didn't want me attending women's group activities.

One of the great things about the contemporary Episcopal Church is that, ritualistic as it is, it has space for weirdos.