An Epiphany before Epiphany

 Dear Will --

I think I have finally survived your death.

Love,

Kake

HOLIDAY LESSON

 

Therapist Sarah said that if I were part of a holiday grief group she would give me the assignment to write up for next year what I learned from this year about what healing at this time of year means to me.

She also did this really cool therapist thing in which she redefined [or encouraged me to redefine] my isolating as contemplating.

Whatever -- words define us so next year I'll be contemplating.  

Probably from Thanksgiving until ... hmmm ... New Year's Day?  Epiphany? We'll see  how the next two weeks go, whether or not the rage really subsides, as I think it will.  

What might work for me next year based on what I learned this year.

Pull away from people starting the week of Thanksgiving.

Consume each of my foundational Christmas stories at least once. (The Baby story, the Old Man story, and the American mercantile story).

See only those people who I know like me and them only in small amounts.

Take myself to entertainment opportunities.

Give myself permission to change my mind (especially about entertainment opportunities).

When the absence grows too large, lie down on the grave and weep.

Do church work. Welcome the Baby.

Have no expectations of others or myself.

 

She also wanted me to think each day about what small hope was achievable each day. I'll hold on to that one.

 

After Christmas

 Christmas was hard.

Boxing Day, the actual anniversary, went by without much pain.

After I did altar guild clean up on Monday, Christmas Day, I took Winston out to the cemetery where I sat on Will's grave and wept for almost a half hour.  Later that day I went to visit friend Stacey where we drank some of my leftover Advent Calendar whiskey and she gave me some good advice. Then I went back home.

I texted my sister and her kids in the evening saying Merry Christmas. That was challenging since I didn't feel very merry.

Will before I was born

Yesterday I watched more TV, hung out with Winston, did grocery shopping. But in the morning I was able to host the Tuesday Group and it was so good being with that group of people. They have been of huge support to me, especially since I lost EFM.

It's time to start rebuilding my resilience in this new world of being alone.

Managing Christmas

 It's 6:50 a.m. I was awake at 3:30, got out of bed at 4:30.

I'm a little high. The movie musical Scrooge is playing on my 65 inch TV.  This is one of my top Christmas movies.

Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970)

I don't have to be a coherent human being until about 8:30.  Church service isn't until 10 and I plan to go in and check everything at 9:00.  I'm soloing on altar guild this morning.

Yesterday I did altar guild set up for the "regular" 8:00 am service.  I also read the epistle.  I planned to attend an evening church service at a friend's church because I like the preacher there.  Unfortunately, the tears started rolling shortly after I sat down.  They didn't have Kleenex in the pews and I hadn't carried in a handkerchief because I wasn't expecting to cry. So I left.

I started howling in the car. When I got home I had a good, long cry then fell asleep in front of the tv.

What set me off? I don't know.  Maybe it was the same reason I left a theatre presentation last week -- because the presence of so many happy strangers triggered tears.  Or maybe it was because the lovely church I was visiting had a screen.  Suddenly Will's voice was in my head commenting on the screen in a church. Then I remembered his voice was gone forever.

Last year I was in the middle of the magnets and ketamine therapies at this time so Christmas had a cushion. 

This year, the memory of the last 10 days has returned full force.  And of course Will's death brings up my future dying and my own great fear of those coming days, whether soon or in decades. Like gazillions of humans before me, I struggle with fear of dying, especially dying alone with only paid help around me. I tell myself that a lot of people have this fear.  Well, that helps me feel normal, but doesn't erase the fear.

 

Dear Will.

My mind keeps remembering putting my hand on your cold, dead face as Kevin pulled back the soft reeds of the woven coffin. They'd already filled you with preservative because there were too many winter deaths to freeze you.  When I told the medium that I was remembering this he asked me why I needed to touch your face.  I had to think about that.  Eventually I said, "to prove to myself that he was dead."  But I don't think that was the reason. I think I was having trouble then, as I am now, letting you go. I think I just needed to be in touch with the body of my love one more time.

Will in his final days, December 16, 2021

Love forever,

Kake

 

Too Needy

 I am too needy.

Aspirational lyrics

If a lot of people tell you the same thing then it must be true. After all, I am the variable in all of my failed relationships.

That's why I'm not reaching out much over the holidays.

I think I want to bust through this fear of being without Will and the only way I will do that is to be alone as much as possible. It was my mistake my first year to think friendship can replace a missing partner. No one can replace Will. And I've finally settled into the realization that this pain of missing Will is the rest of my life. I know it will get better.  Or at least it will get different.  This year is different than last year -- it's been harder. I believe the coming year will be easier.

Right now I am pretty afraid of being around people for fear I'll do something that will make them dislike me because that is my experience of me. Will accepted (though he didn't approve) of all of me.  There will never be anyone else who can do that.  That's another thing I need to accept - that for the rest of my life I'll need to act better than I am and not let people see the "real" me, not if I want to keep my friends.

My commitment to myself is that I will no longer hate myself and hurt myself for being an asshole.  I'll just avoid situations in which I might act like one, to the extent that I can.

It's my first December in almost three decades when I haven't been on some sort of anti-depressant.  Unless you count weed.  I am consuming way too much weed.  Well, way too much for someone who has a purpose in the world.  But perhaps just the right amount for someone free from purpose -- perhaps just perfect for a floater and slacker.

I have plans for January. If I can stop hurting so much. I want to get clean but only if I figure out a way manage the grief better and to manage my need for other higher level primates. Once I stop needing people to like the "authentic" me I think I'll be okay.  I plan to reread my old interpersonal communication text to figure out how to be with people again.

Metaphors

 I didn't expect to be so dysfunctional at this point in my widowhood but here we are.  When I posted this on a widows' FB site, a few folks said this was "sad but accurate."

Medium Medium Addendum

Things I forgot to write yesterday.

1. While his saying that Will wanted me to stay in the house seemed absolutely right for what a Spirit Will might want, and also corresponds to a former psychic's statement that spirit Will thought I should wait six

Barbie Dream House by Mattel

months before deciding anything, his use of the words "Dream Home" went clunk. Rang false. We bought the house as-is and Will laid out the furniture and books (thousands and thousands of books) but we never did much to the interior of the house. The carpets came with the house. We occasionally got rid of some furniture but it took many years because Will was always loath to get rid of anything or spend money on anything new.  I, however, have created my own "dreamy" space upstairs, getting rid of all the furniture we shared before his dementia.

2. He handled Will's teaching Bible more than he handled a tie of dubious provenance. (May have been purchased second hand - I don't remember. Pre-dementia Will would have remembered where and when.)

3. Speaking for Will he gave me two assignments: one was to read the 23rd psalm once a day for a week and the other was to write a love letter to Will for a week and then open and read them and find they're for me. This second assignment is a classic psychologist's tactic.

4. He said I had just two friends but that's not true - I can think of at least five people I can call on for support. I'm blessed in having friends. My big confusion up until recently is that I thought that having a lot of strings attached to my balloon would replace the big rope that was anchoring it.  I was wrong.  There is no replacement for Will.  There is no way to "fix" the pain of him not being in my life. I need to learn to live around the hole.

And once again, I want to underline the communication truism that it takes at least two beings to communicate. I used to say "sentient beings" in my classrooms, thinking about other mammals who communicate - dogs, cats, horses, whales, elephants, well, everybody! Though know one knows what the fox says. 

What I said to my wonderful grief therapist yesterday was that I was crying hard all the time I was there AND I was analyzing his communication behaviors. My analytical brain is not completely dead! "It's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE"

As for the dude's sitting too close to me and me getting freaked out about it, my therapist told me that the first time she tried to get close to me during a grief storm before Will's death, I backed away from her. So it's not just men I'm uncomfortable with getting close to me.  It may be people larger than I? People who are people? But she did agree that he should have been able to read my discomfort and responded to it.

Medium Medium

So I drove 40 minutes to visit a highly recommended medium to see if I could get some peace around Will's death as I am still experiencing deep grief and would like to be a bit more functional in the world than I seem to be at the present moment.

Did the visit function in that way?  Yes and no.

lemongrass

Yes

 The space felt safe and I was greeted by the spouse who also made the setting feel safe.

The chair I sat in was comfortable.

I was able to say out loud to spirit Will that I was proud of all he did and that I'd not said that to him enough.

During the channeling and "reading" I was given reassurances that Will

1. loved me
2. was sorry for being such a hard man
3. didn't want me to be in such pain still
   
4. wanted me to stay in the house
5.  was present in the house
6. was still my protector

The psychic also said that Will said to be selfish and take care of myself for the next two months.  This corresponds with what a psychic I talked to in the summer said - that I shouldn't think about moving for at least six months.  Both measures correspond to February, beginning of March - so some linkage as to shared spiritual reality. The psychic, either as Will or himself, said that he understood that life was hard because I was alone (without kids). It felt good to get that assurance.

One other thing said: "He slept on the right side of the bed." True. 

Another thing the psychic said that I appreciated was that I don't need to pay attention to friends who tell me I'm too emotional.  It was fun the way he said it, waving his long arms almost like Will would have, saying that I should wave them away.

The psychic seemed to me to believe in what he was saying: he made direct eye contact, spoke clearly when he was not channeling, and sat with confidence in his body posture. His voice was warm and expressed caring through vocal quality. 

His presence largely expressed compassion and he mostly behaved compassionately, as did his spouse.

During the channeling, his body posture curved down and he spoke in a gutteral whisper I strained to hear, even as I put my ear wearing the hearing aid down next to his head. He was a soft talker even in regular speech.

He performed a ceremony of rubbing my hands with a lemongrass oil and then he held the back of my hands during the channeling. He was bending over the clasped hands so he would have been smelling the lemon grass and since I know that lemongrass opens up a connection to the brain, that all made sense to me.

A couple of the reassurances suggest that a true contact with spirit was made. #2 How could the psychic have known that Will was a hard man?  That rang true.#4 And how could he have known that I had been thinking of moving?

Most of what the psychic said during my visit was aimed at helping me and providing me with support and reassurance, no matter from what side of the veil the reassurance came.

No

 Here is why I left the meeting quickly and I'm not going back.

First, most of what he told me was explainable as a highly skilled "cold reading." 

1. What would a widow still grieving need?  Reassurance. 
2. What would a former caregiver need to hear? That a good job was done.
3. Even the "hard man" might have been a good guess as he'd already asked about children and been told we had none.
4. The house.  What he actually might have said is "he said 'you're staying'?" ie, it was a cold reading hook.  But frankly, I don't remember.
   

Second, I really disliked that he moved his chair way too close to mine even when we weren't doing the channeling ritual.  I felt very uncomfortable, what with my PTSD sirens going off along with the tinnitus. I wanted to back up but either the chair was too big or I was feeling like I should treat this guy as though I weren't suddenly afraid. The old belief that one shows respect to "good men" by pretending the leftover trauma of "bad men" doesn't exist.

When he rubbed the lemongrass oil into my palms he said it was to calm me down because my energy was so high - I was crying most of the time I was there. Frankly, I didn't want to hear One. More. Person. tell me to fucking calm down.

He tried to fucking up-sell me. He started saying, "We're going to get through this". Like, I should fucking drive forty fucking miles again to sit with a guy who sits too close to me? And is a psychic who can't read my discomfort?  Nope.  Nopey nopey nope. Aaaaannnnnd .... that underlying river of rage returned. (How do you like the alliteration?) I, who wanted to blurt out 'you're fucking cold reading me' instead took a moment to politely express my disinterest in returning. And he said, "But of course that's okay." A man giving me permission to live my life the way I want to live it. Nice. Just . . . nice.

And finally, unlike the last psychic gal I spoke to on zoom, he didn't explain his process -- ie: wasn't transparent. Simply assumed that I would "believe" what was happening. To be fair, he did ask if I had questions but by that time I was so ready to get out of there I just put my jacket on and skedaddled.

Overall

I had the experience I did because I am the person I am. 

Others have had and will have other experiences. I went because I heard very positive things. The people who went to him before may not have rape-associated PTSD that gets activated during times of stress. Nor may they have been afflicted with underlying rage and a lifetime of being a rhetorician. Yet, as someone who enjoys her own company, I like being given permission to take two more months off from worrying about whether or not I'm an asshole.

Medium

Philly, our last trip, 2015

 Dear Will:I'm going to see a highly-recommended medium today. 

I'm sure the you on this side of the veil wouldn't have approved because it's a connection to a world other than the material and you were all about the material world.

I'm going to take the Bible you taught from and a tie, if I still have one that you wore. I trashed or gave away most of your things in 2022.

Anyway, if he can contact your spirit, I want you to know how proud I was of you for being that little boy who survived. You were a fucking annoying little boy at times, for sure.  But you stuck it out a long time on the planet. You made a great career of 33 years, in spite of your differences from your colleagues and friends.  But then, so many of them were crazy too -- and now long dead, most all before you.  You who lived to be 91 even though in your mind you were 65 those last four years. 

You and Miss Birdy, Christmas 2017

I'm sorry you did not die peacefully.  I'm sorry you needed to rage at me before your last stroke, the one that put you into your death coma.  The one that began on Christmas. But I can look at it and see that I wasn't Kake when you were raging at me.  I was someone from your deep past who hurt you in a terrible way.

I hope that during your final coma your heart on this side
found peace.

I love you still and always will (excuse the rhyme).

Kake

 

Private Joke

 Dear Will --

I got this whiskey advent calendar and when I opened it up what should I see?

 

And I laughed and said out loud, "Wo ist der David?"

 And of course the answer was

 

Will and me laughing sometime after living in Firenze

 

When will I be ok?

 I missed another appointment yesterday.  I am crying every day. I am angry all the time when I'm not high. Another friend told me last week that it took energy to be my friend. I am lonely but I don't want to be a bother so it's just easier to not contact anyone.

Thank God (really) for Covid last week so I didn't have to explain why I only wanted to be with Winston, Poppy, and Will on Thanksgiving.

I'm doing my best not to read "it costs me to be your friend" as "Kake is a bad person."

How am I going to get through the next month?  Answer: get up.  cry. walk dog. do stuff. cry. eat. pet cat. go to bed.  repeat.

Is this the rest of my life?

That's Kookee Kookee

San Francisco Memories

 Dear Will —

We had so much fun for so many years in San Francisco.  I have happy memories of our time here.  One day especially I was remembering today.  Early this morning I grabbed a cable car, hoping to get as far as California street, but the car was forced to turn around early because of blocked streets associated with APEC — Asian Pacific Economic Conference - and President Biden’s traveling around the city.

Anyway, I was remembering that 1974 cable car trip we took from downtown to right here, next to Ghirardelli Square when we raced to see a movie either at either Ghirardelli or The Cannery.  We jumped off the car and ran to the theatre.  All for a poor reward! We were going to see what turned out to be one of the worst movies ever:  Peter Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller.  We laughed for years later about that.

When I came back from my ride that went nowhere this morning, the lobby of my hotel was filled with uniformed secret service agents — a sea of about 40 men and women in blue with straps and backpacks.  A little scary.  But I guess they were just going off shift.

I’m going to have dinner at the opera house tonight.  I plan to Lyft out of the hotel extra early, just in case.

I’ve been pushing hard at the old Sally scar since I’ve been here — I can see the Bridge from my room.  I don’t feel grief for her anymore — just a kind of sadness for our family and the trickle down effects of murder and suicide.

My sister and I were collateral damage from my parent’s responses to Sally’s actions.  I am so happy you were my sweetheart by the time she finished her task.  I’m sorry my own mental illness made our lives difficult for a few years but thank God we got back together after my time in Salt Lake.

I’m finally learning, slowly, to be okay without you but it’s really hard.  Even in your dementia you were still yourself, though I assume I was a variety of people — including your mother.

I will love you always.

Kake

Detritus

I've been going through my own books now, slowly, as I move them from room to room trying to figure out what I want to keep and what I want to toss.  Here's a book you'd think I would have tossed out decades ago.  It's well over fifty years old, beat up, broken, and pretty much pointless, what with access to the interwebs.  And yet, and yet.

It held the little note you see next to it.  This little note was slipped across a table to me by my one-time cousin-in-law, now long gone.  It invites me to a surprise part for my Aunt Huldah Bell.  It was after this party that I followed Will to his apartment three blocks away and seduced him to start the life that I am now mourning.

The note says, "We're having a party for Huldah Thurs. at 6:00 -- a surprise."

Decision - Staying in Bend

After thinking most of the summer that I was going to move to some Coast next year, I've made the decision to continue living in Bend, even though I don't like the high desert.  This is my thinking and the context in which it occurred.

The context: Last week I was in deep grief AND I was sick and in pain from a diverticulitis attack. It was also one of the loveliest autumn weeks I've seen.  During that time I realized:

The animal sculpture corner

1. 1. 1.  I love my nest -- the space of art I have created upstairs. It feels safe, welcoming, and mine.  I can't imagine getting all my art into a smaller space. I look at all I've collected and I don't want to get rid of it until I have to. The corner with my mini bronzes all sheltering around one of my own poems. The corner with the pictures of the sea and bridges. The wall with the Marion icons and religious work. The wall with the "best" pieces - Dali, Bartow, Kerns (the collectibles). My comfy bedroom with a rainbow on one wall and the Milky Way on another.  And what about my 65 inch TV and its special handmade table?

 
2.  Bend has plenty of medical care for old people unlike some seaside towns and I'm fuckin' 70 years old and not the healthiest monkey in the tree.  Even though I felt good this summer, my week of cramps and hurting when I peed reminded me that I'm "up there."
 

3.  I am lazy and moving sucks, and I mean in a major way. Eventually I will need to move into an old folks home.  If I move before that, I will have to move twice before I die rather than once.  Fuck that.  Seriously.  Fuck that up the ass and sideways. I was kidding myself when I thought I, as a person, had the energy to move before I have to.

4.  I love my perch at The Haven.

Another morning view at The Haven

5. My finance gal, one of the people in charge of sussing out whether or not I'm getting demented, strongly approves of my keeping my house here.  When I called her yesterday to ask her to draw down some cash so I can pay my property taxes, I told her my decision and she was very happy about it.

6.  Autumn in Bend has been absolutely stunning this year.  I like the four seasons (actually, I love The Four Seasons but that's another matter).

7.  Will is buried here.

8. I have living friends here as well.

9.  I still love Trinity Bend, in spite of my experience of being abandoned to my grief the first year of widowhood,

Downtimes

 Dear Will --

I've been going in to the office but only during the hours I set when you were alive. I haven't been able to write anything worthwhile, anything toward the memoir this week.  I've been stuck, interacting with screens too much - too much Charlotte Dobre, Tank Tolman, and others.

by Marissa at Jessee Monuments, Powell Butte

I don't completely understand how I'm living my life. I'm trying to believe in my ability to recoup. This week has been hard I think because it was a response to last week's travel, tombstone placement, and altar guilding both Saturday and Sunday. The work wasn't hard but I wanted to be "up" for it but this week has been a challenge. I've cried and hurt a lot. 

I went to a grief group yesterday.  For some reason right now it's helpful to be in a group with people hit and hurt "worse than" I.  At least I perceive it that way. But then I have a mind that does that comparison thing. 

My mom used to tell me, whenever I complained about my privileged life, "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." That is, I should always be aware that however bad my life feels, it is always much better than someone elses.

A lot of the time that works, at least on a cognitive level. But sometimes my emotions simply overwhelm my ability to think reasonably.

Well, you know that only too well. It's why I'm writing to you now, because of my love and grief not letting me let you go. It was a bone of contention through much of our marriage because I needed more verbal intimacy than you could give me. And it was why I could care for you until you died, because my love overwhelmed my fear, anxiety, and reasoning. Throughout our relationship you couldn't really grok what I was talking about when I talked about complex emotions and the subconscious and all that. I used to blame you because I thought you were choosing to hide yourself from me. I thought you were choosing to not see me, to make me invisible. I was so angry. That's one of the reasons I made connections with others -- because I needed to be able to express my rage.  I needed to be with people who seemed like they could see me when you wouldn't.

If I had known it was a matter of you "couldn't" rather than "wouldn't" would it have made a difference to my 20something self?

I don't know. She is so far away, the past so past.

Speaking of connections, were you flashing me a couple of weeks ago? I was just nodding off in front of my giant telly, between wakefulness and sleep, when I saw you out of the corner of my eye - you before 2015. For a moment the past and present collided - and then the visitation was over. 

I love those milleseconds when the last  9 years disappear.

Love always.

 

Memoir stuff

 My friend and fellow poet Judy Montgomery recently suggested that I write a memoir piece about Will.  Her comment was perfectly timed because I'd just decided to change the focus of my memoir to my long marriage.  I realized my experience in managing the twists and turns of a long commitment might be the most interesting thing I can talk about with others.

But ugh, long form prose.  

Yet my poetry brain hasn't really returned either.  Sigh.

And then there's the way memory works or in my case didn't. Recently I came to the startling realization that for years I'd been thinking that I was raped and later busted when I was nineteen.  Nope. Those two events occurred the year I was 18.

And the weird way that memory gets "dinged" by a bell. This morning at the office the giant monitors are running a silent series of attractive videos including undersea through waving weeds and over cities by drone.  As I went to get coffee I saw over my head a triangular slice of a red bridge of familiar shape. And I thought again of Sally.

by Drone Snap

Eternal Return

Dear Will:

This letter from Sally has been following me around for a few years.  I found it while you were dying.  Today it turned up in the car, I think because I took it to show to my grief therapist awhile back. It's a letter that illustrates to me one of the key problems of my family of origin -- the denial of reality and the covering up of difficult emotions.

Here in this letter are jokes, comments about what she's having for dinner, and other "light" topics. There's nothing here about how her mind is recovering from the madness that lead her to kill her child.  Nothing here about the despair and voices that lead her to cut her wrists and would later lead her over a cliff near Monterey and finally off the Golden Gate Bridge.  

 I don't miss Sally.  We were never close.  I was closer to my second oldest sister, the one who tied me up and hurt me while babysitting. My early relationship with her added some of the kinks to my "love map." But Sally's explosion and it's general disappearance from family discussion fueled my desire to live in the opposite direction, to express my true feelings when they occurred.  

I miss you so much right now because you supported me in expression.  When I was broken and terrified you held me and comforted me. You saw the craziness in my family and me and loved me anyway.  

And now I'm alone with my craziness, which evokes sadness.  I know I have friends who care for me but it's not the same as having you here. Nothing is the same.

I miss you so much.

 

 

 

 

Dear Will - I saw this picture in the Cody Museum today and wanted to tell you about the folks who used to live where you were born.

Yeats

Dear Will —

You loved Yeats the most when I first met you. Shall I be inspired? You showed pictures of Maud Gunn as your ideal of womanhood.  I could never match up. 

IN KINSALE

Roses blown in pink and red

Remind me that you’re dead, you’re dead.

"He Wasn't Perfect"

 Dear Will:

Methodist Church photo, late 90s

You were a fucking pain in the tookas.

I'm tired of missing you.  At least I'm tired of missing Well Will. I truly believe that God meant for us to be together and put us together but not for the comfort of either of us. I will be writing about all this, fucking finally, as I put together another chapter of my memoir.

I always hated tax season, once I started working, because it usually involved yelling at me for not getting everything perfectly together.

You yelled at the servants. You were mean to wait staff and clerks.

You had little or no self-awareness but refused to say that. Instead you early on made me feel bad for talking about things like my feelings and concerns and asking about yours. Even after we started doing our once a week check in in the mid-90s, you couldn't stay present in our relationship. You had to talk about things in the news.

You didn't tell me I was beautiful or even attractive because it would not have been true to your experience. I was too fat and had too large breasts.

You didn't learn to perform the physical behaviors I needed for complete satisfaction. Not that I didn't enjoy our sex, but that was because I made sure that I performed the behaviors I needed as well as those you needed.m

You didn't share about any previous relationships.

You exploded at people who referenced our age difference.

You were "timid" or, as other folks might put it, cowardly. Once in San Francisco we were in the Mission at night leaving a movie theatre and I told you to walk bravely, like I did, like you carried a weapon and were sure of yourself. There were thugs on the street but it was brightly lit and I knew that together walking bravely we'd be fine but you fucking skittered and I had to trot to keep up with you and I knew we looked like the tourists we were.

You were explosive. There were many times I "walked on egg shells" because of your anger. Though after you moved to Bend you weren't mean to me because I forbade it, I think you displaced your problems with me onto various politicians who you then obsessed about.

Did we have to have a European relationship? I wish you had been able to talk about relationships. I didn't want to "cheat". I wanted an open, negotiated relationship. You wanted me but only in a way that was comfortable to you...at least until my breakdown, and then you were good and took care of me, though you still wouldn't pay for a psychiatrist. (Just like my parents.)

You assumed early on that a troubled 19 year old girl who would seduce a man the second time she met him was the same as a self-controlled 35 year old woman in terms of functionality.

I now believe that many of our issues occurred because you were not capable of going inside yourself because you were high-functioning autistic or had some kind of neurodivergence. Turns our that I too am neurodivergent in a minor way (I'm a highly sensitive person - like 60 million other Americans).

I have, of course, forgiven everything that hurt me. If I hadn't, I may not have cared for you in the horrible  years of your dementia. I refuse to say I was happy to do it. It was awful. The repeated stories. The fights over what was actually happening. The anger. The shit. The pee.

Underneath all your wackiness was a little boy who never matured, who always wanted to be first in class, who had to defend himself in his family and at school (you never told me this but I'm projecting typicality onto your Nebraska farm upbringing). You were a tall skinny kid who loved to read, did theatre, and had certain pansy behaviors. Throughout your adult life, until she died, you always went home to your Mom in the summers.  (Well, when you were teaching, tiny Minatare might have been more pleasant than Pocatello. Of course, you didn't talk about any of that much.) And then you met me a year after your Mom died and didn't warn me. If you'd been born into my generation rather than 1930, I believe you would have been a happy gay man.

On the plus side, in spite of your always available crankiness, you were never physically violent. You were rarely purposefully mean. Late in life, when I asked you once why you yelled at a clerk when she wasn't responsible for the pricing, you looked shamefaced and said you didn't know. I think that much of your brain was not in your control.  

You were loving and caring. You gave great hugs.

And when I looked into your eyes, even on the day before the day before you died, when you looked at me with those eyes and told me you loved me, there was a strong rope of soul connection between us. You were still there. I was still there. That connection of 50 years was still there.

Even when when we separated because I wanted to spend time with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, I could not leave you. I could not break the bond and you decided (well, I never really knew how your brain worked so maybe it wasn't a decision) not to divorce your wicked spouse. I thank God for that for so many reasons.

Our life together was challenging, boring, and beautiful.

God put two pains in the ass together for both of their benefit, so neither would be lonely.  (Genesis 2:18)

Hawaiian Shirt Moments

So yesterday I lost half a day because I went to Macy's.

I was shopping for the perfect shoulder bag to wear with my giant Rick Steves backpack. But I had to walk through menswear first. And I saw this year's Hawaiian shirts and my brain went, "Will would like one of those shirts ...  we could get it for him ... if he weren't DEAD!.  Forever! And he's not coming back."

And the rest of the day I had crying spells -- in my car, in the house, in front of the TV which was playing old episodes of NCIS and Midsomer Murders. My younger sister named this experience the "Hawaiian Shirt Moment" when I finally called her shortly before I went to bed. It was good to hear her voice.  She is a widow and has also experienced these moments, as have all grief stricken people, I think. That moment when you're OK, when you're not planning to think about the lost Other, but then, whammo, something reminds you.

My therapist says that grief is the relationship I have with Will now. My friend Stacey, when I texted her yesterday, told me to "pivot". But if I pivot from Grief, it feels like pivoting away from love, the only person who has ever seemed to love me for mySelf, even though he disapproved of parts of that Self. He was a difficult man and I am an emotion driven (Enneagram Type 4) lunatic but we fit each other. There will be nobody else for me.  Everyone else I've ever met or loved has wanted me to "fit" their ideas of what I should be. And fuck that. I'm not working to "fit" another person ever again.

And, yes, there's also my lack of attractiveness. I'm old and fat and out of shape so there's also no point in me looking for anyone just to be disappointed and then grieve more. Also, I have way too much ink on my skin for most people of my generation.

I'm not special in my experience. This is how so many lonely old Norté American's live. We are not a family oriented people. What family I have wasn't at Will's funeral and don't call or connect with me unless I contact them first. This is not strange because as children we girls were all forced into family relationships in ways that weren't fun so it's natural to reject that. Also, as boomers, we were taught that our own lives were the most important. We were called the "Me Generation" and at least one researcher has found that we are generally more narcissistic than millennials. I have experienced a kind of negative narcissism ("yes, everything that goes wrong is my fault and I'm a bad person") since childhood and am self-absorbed. When I'm in mental pain I generally beat myself up for being so stupid as to be experiencing mental pain.

My self-absorption led to a misunderstanding of how friendship works in America among white folks.  There were a number of people who I thought of as friends who didn't contact me when I was in the deep depths of widowhood and needed connection. At this point hearing from them in any way is less fun then talking with a complete stranger at a supermarket because, in a very un-Christian way, I carry rage and resentment.

But people were there. People are there. If I'd called, if I call, I wouldn't, I won't be alone. I know that. I may be an asshole but I'm not an idiot. There are people who think they like me and people want to be good and good people respond to cries for help so if I asked for help it would be given. But if I called as often as I need help they would get angry at me.  

And this did happen. Shortly after Will died, a close friend got angry with me for asking for more help than he could give me. He got angry. He pointed fingers. He said I lacked perspective.  Well, if that's how somebody I loved and had lunch with once a month for years was going to treat me, why should I reach out to anyone else? I learned my lesson -- reach out, get punched.

So I just don't know how to do friendship. My crazy brain has wanted the people who I thought of as friends to be present without my asking. I wanted people who I'd spent so much time with to know that I was broken and in pain without me having to ask. That a person from a family with a suicide, a person who has been treated for  depression for 30 years, might need some comforting after her partner of 50 years has died. But that's not how friendship relationships work.

Yet my brain has had trouble dealing with that knowledge. When I think about what an asshole I am and how people don't like assholes and how I'm going to need to live the rest of my life alone, I get sad. Even with the ketamine therapy, with the psilocybin therapy, my brain still goes to the old neural cow-paths of imagining people finally missing me and saying, "If only I'd known."

I wanted people to see that I wasn't just waving.

And I feel shame and embarrassment about my need. About the way my brain works. About my pain. About my refusal to beg people to care about me.

I didn't have that kind of caring relationship with anybody but Will. And he's gone. When I told Stacey about my loneliness and expectations Stacey very intelligently told me that I seemed to want a partner, not a friend. She was right. And the only partner for me is Will. So it sounds like I'm choosing my own suffering. And why should ANYONE but a therapist talk with a person who is choosing their own suffering. Fortunately, I have enough money to pay to have someone care about me. And that is a blessing. I'm lucky to have access to therapy.

And I also have the presence in the house.

Last night, the presence touched the bed near my head and I reached my hand out into air, hoping the presence would physically touch ME so I could "be sure."  Of course nothing touched my hand reaching out in the dark.

 "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

Maybe I just need more dogs.

 

Decisions

 Cindy's writing class prompt was about making a decision.   

by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

 

 

 WHAT IS A DECISION?

 

 

Scene 1: A Therapist’s Office.

 

Camera begins in closeup on a computer screen with the image of an online headline, “Giants Win World Series Again.” Camera slowly pulls out to reveal the therapist, a handsome Italian-Native American man of late middle age sitting on an expensive office chair. He wears a Pendleton wool sweater with Pacific-Northwest tribal markings. His hair is poofed into an elaborate comb-over. He is facing the camera.

 

Therapist 1:  What you don’t realize, Kake, is that staying with him is a decision.

 

EDIT: Wipe screen to

 

Scene 2: A Therapist’s Office

 

Camera opens on wide shot of colorful office. A tall, long-haired GenX woman stands at the door. She is dressed in a long flowing shirt, leggings, and a facemask. She welcomes a short, similarly face-masked woman into her room. As I enter, we both take off our masks. Through the scene, the camera remains in long shot, behind my head, looking at my therapist as we both sit down.

 

Me (sniffling): So we finally got Hospice going.

 

Therapist 2: I hope you know how brave you are.

 

Me: Huh?

 

Therapist 2: Every day the past five years you could have made a different decision.

 

Me: You mean I could have institutionalized him?

 

The therapist nods her head.

 

Me: I didn’t know that was a decision.

 

********      

 

I have never made an important decision using logic.  I have always followed my heart. And when it came time to care for my spouse, my heart led so strongly that it took being told a few times that I was actually making a decision.  A decision which never felt like a decision.

It’s not that I never thought I wouldn't choose to “place” him.  I actually called a few memory care establishments early on. We had the money. I started this research after Therapist 1 first saw the “thousand yard stare” in a photograph and asked if Will had dementia.  I said, “I don’t know.” I had thought what I was seeing was just normal aging forgetfulness. We already had most of our household bills, at one time his task, on automatic withdrawal. And he sometimes repeated stories. But at that time he could still find his way downtown and back on foot without getting lost.

Will before his final (26th) 65 birthday

 

Nevertheless, once warned, I did everything a spouse becoming a carer is supposed to do. I retired early at 60. I tried to get him to a neurologist. (That never, ever happened.) I learned as much as I could about dementia and spent time at Alz.org. Fortunately, the State of Oregon offers free family training through OregonCare Partners and I was able to attend two workshops by Teepa Snow, a nationally known expert. I also hired a local company called Bend Senior CareManagement to make sure Will could age in place in our home should I die while he was still alive. And when I logged into Facebook dementia carer group sites, and read about my future, I actually thought that at some time, if I had to start scraping human shit off the carpet, I would have him placed.

 

And that placement never happened, even though the shit did. And I still didn't feel like I made a decision.

 

Picking a tax accountant was a decision. Making sure my spouse wasn’t bothered by taxes anymore wasn’t. Hiring a concierge doctor to get a diagnosis was a decision. Not telling him he had dementia wasn’t. Putting the hospice hospital bed in the front room was a decision. Sleeping on the floor beside it wasn’t.

 

Making a decision requires seeing a choice and when I looked into his old familiar eyes my only choice was love our way.

 

He slipped into his death coma on Christmas Day, 2021. Just before, he was cursing me for trying to clean the shit off him. But he had told me he loved me the day before so I carry both memories, as well as that of placing my hand on his cold, un-made-up face in his reed coffin just before it was lowered into earth.To be sure he was dead. To tell him good-bye.

 

And that wasn’t a decision either.

Aaaaaaand.....We're Back!

 Well, I was wrong.

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash

I made a mistake in thinking that I could end this blog.  Turns out that I didn't stop crying and missing him. I was in pretty good shape through February when I went on a wonderful trip with my sister to New Orleans.  Then in March it all hit me again. Memories of caregiving. Memories of his death. And good memories of how travel used to be for us. Memories of how he supported me even when I was foolish and in trouble with The Authorities. Memories of his hugs.

It was a fucking Lenty Lent.  Easter didn't bring a whole lot of relief.

I have a writing assignment from Cindy, a memoir teacher at Sarah Lawrence, to write about friendship.  My first draft began, "my best friend is dead."  I scrapped that one and I'm going to write something funnier about how I don't know the rules of friendship and/or about how I don't know the hidden rules about doing friendship.  Maybe something about the "Telephone Song" from Bye Bye Birdy and how I've always hated talking on the phone so in my youth I had few girlfriends.

AND the Presence touched down on the bed again last night. I'd thought it was gone.

The presence.  Last summer when I was living downstairs, the Presence walked around upstairs so I heard footsteps.  Now the Presence sometimes presses down the mattress at the foot of the bed.  

"Now the only thing that gives me hope
is my love of a certain dope
Rose tints my world
keeps me safe from my trouble and pain."

Yes, I pray.  Yes, I believe that "with God, all things are possible." (Though I also believe that the Creator doesn't fuck around with physics).

As my grief therapist said a few months ago, "You've never been a widow before.  There's no right way."  So here I am, a year and four months in and still bursting into tears in public.

So I move on, giving myself treats and challenges. This morning I bought unknown seats at three new operas being performed in San Francisco. They were reduced price because it's a "do it yourself" subscription.  So I know I'm going down to the City at least three times during the next school year. Basically, the offer was a 26% discount if one buys a series and chooses the area in which one is to sit.  Will always put us in "the gods."  So I'm spending the money he wouldn't by sitting in the Grand Tier Premium somewhere (I'll know by summer).

I spend a lot of time by myself by choice.  I am blessed with good friends who will be there if I ask but there is no one to whom I'm especially important.  Big whoop.  I know.  Boo hoo.  But this has been my condition for years. And at least I am child free so that having children who ignore me isn't on my heart. 

I "just" need to get used to this existential aloneness the depth and length of which I'm just beginning to realize are immeasurable.

Fin - Epiphany

End title of Truffaut's Jules et Jim

I woke up this morning with a strong image from last night's dream.  I haven't remembered my dreams for years, due to my heavy marijuana use.  I've now been sober for a month and my dreams are returning. 

The image was of a tall man thin man in a black suit and bowler hat walking away from me.  His arms hang down at his side with his hands slightly behind his back.  He is waving his hands, bent at the wrists, back and forth behind his butt. Something tells me the image is of Bill Nighy.

Our dreams make use of the detritus of the day to tell us something important. This image, built on the recent trailers for Living, the new Bill Nighy film, is telling me that the Will living in my unconscious is saying, "Goodbye." 

 

 

 

 

Good-bye, sweetheart.

 

More Pictures in No Particular Order

On our porch, Pocatello, '70s. I disposed of this coat after he died.

Reading in the book corner, Bend, late 90s.

The deck in Bend, a visit from my step mom and dad, early 90s

He is wearing a shirt from Mildred's (Pierce - super queer reference) Restaurant in San Francisco. The chair he purchased with the Pocatello house in 1973.

 

Visiting Pocatello, late 90s, early 00s.

Being goofy trying to stick his finger in the nose of a famous person on a subway wall.

In Florence, 2001, age 71

Pictures in No Particular Order 1

In Los Gatos before we were married

With a future doctor, early80s

 

 

 

with a niece, 70s or 80s

 

 

 

early time in Bend, '92(?)

being goofy in Pocatello, late 70s, early 80s