Christmas

 Dear Will:

I missed you yesterday but I didn’t cry, except a little when listening to “In the Bleak Midwinter” but then that always makes me tear up a bit.

I set a place for you at breakfast.

I had champagne and an ersatz cream cheese omelette with sour cream and caviar. I like sometimes having champagne and caviar for a meal just because I can. It used to be only a traveler’s frivolity. But I realized that I can also enjoy it at home. You wouldn’t like it.

We shared 47 or 48 Christmases with each other, the first nearly two decades at the Hanson then Hanson/Williams house.  Christmases in which everyone received a multitude of presents. We continued the tradition of many presents when we had our own Christmases in the Bend house.  As late at 2023 we each had a few presents under the tree, though I bought all of them except for those from my sister and maybe a friend or two.  

It strikes me, as I write this, how much I have forgotten.  You were always our memory palace.  Until the palace burned down. 

We shared our first Christmas season in the Bend house in 1990 with my Mom who had “pre-inherited” to us a bunch of furniture a short time before. She was so tiny when she visited and almost disappeared under the covers of our big bed. She told me in private how she was happy to see the two of us so settled (unsaid: “after your period of separation.”) She died on January 8, 1991, just a year older than I am now.

We had many wonderful Christmas times together here in Bend, beginning with the housewarming party that first December when I had all my invited friends and colleagues bring Christmas decorations.  I wanted to introduce you and enjoy the party “flow through” of our new house. And for years after that I could connect each one of those Christmas decorations with the person who brought it. The only ones I can actually remember now are the ones from Lilli Ann LF and Hal G.  Lilli Ann, my first friend in Bend, gave us a gold colored bauble with a picture of her baby Kit on it.  Hal gave us a silver star that I, decades later, gave to Trinity to put on one of its trees and in the complications after Christmas, it got lost.  I was sad for awhile about that because Hal, my second friend in Bend and one that I hoped you would get to know because you’d both taught similar things, died two years later of prostate cancer. I remember you saying that you purposefully didn’t get to know him because you didn’t want to lose another friend.

So yesterday, Christmas day, the household was up early.  I had a protein shake before church. I was altar guild and reader for the 10:00 am service in Trinity.  I read the selection from Titus with great gusto. During clean up, three other AG women who weren’t on duty just stepped up to help. That felt great.

Among the things I can’t remember is how I spent Christmas Day, 2021, after you screamed at me and then, a short time later, went into your death coma. 

I don’t remember how long ago I bought the “new tree” after the one of many decades started shedding. I’ve been trying to get rid of it and will probably just take it to the dump to the dump to the dump dump dump around the 12th Day of Christmas. I still have many of our old tree decorations in storage in the basement, including the last of those I made as a child and two that Sally brought back from Mexico in 1963.

I can no longer bear a tree in the house but my need for retail therapy got me to buy myself a tree forest.

I am making a new way for myself. 

Love,

Kake

Last Piece written for Writing Love and Loss

We had our last Writing Love and Loss class tonight.  I missed last week because of google calendar user error.  I wrote this for tonight.

----------------------------

December 16, 2021

As we were waiting for the funeral home to carry my husband’s body away, I talked about oral sex. 

In what I assume now were slightly hysterical tones, I talked about how we got together in 1971 when I was barely 18 and he was 41.  How I’d followed him home after my Aunt Huldah’s birthday party, a late-into-the-night gab feast where a reefer was passed around my grandfather’s great, round, oak table. I told the hospice nurse and my friend Stacey the story of how I had seduced the skinny, bearded English professor. I reveled in having experienced such a non-traditional beginning for a marriage of almost five decades.

I called our for-profit hospice early that Boxing Day after waking and finding him in the same position in the hospital bed that he’d held since the terrible morning before. His temperature was 105 and he was unconscious.  I called the hospice but no one could get to me until 3 pm.  When the nurse arrived she almost immediately “called it,” as they say on medical TV.

I had thought I would want to clean him, as I had the old fellow who had been my hospice client back in the 90s.  That gentlemen, who was almost as skinny at his death as Will became, was my “client” (I was a volunteer) for almost 6 months.  As he was dying of lung cancer, he was also teaching me to play the guitar. He left the earth with far more of himself than my sweetheart.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at his death. I got the call that his dying was active right before I was to give a test at the college where I worked. I felt a responsibility to the school and my students and so missed my client’s actual death.  But when I finally arrived at his home, I was able to help the hospice nurse clean his body.  I had imagined at the time that I might do the same for my older husband some day.

But the day in 2021 when Will died, the nurse wasn’t focused on cleaning him.  She just did her job then waited with my friend and me as I babbled.   I was exhausted and giddy with relief. For the seven years I lived with his dementia I knew it would end in death. My goal had been to postpone the end as long as possible – until it wasn’t.  Until his 6 foot frame reduced to 112 pounds and he was eating only lemon drops and protein juice.

At the end, his life force was so strong that his body held on past its time.  The Hospice chaplain and I had spent hours the previous week, the week Will entered the hospital bed, telling him about the glories of the “other side.” Pastor Noah spoke mostly about the joy of being with Jesus.  I told my old sweetheart he would meet up with the cat and dog he had loved, June Jumpha and Princess Birdy.

 And then he was dead. At last the long struggle was over. I imagined in that moment that I would soon dive into dating, find a man or woman friend with benefits and become a Merry Widow.  For some reason, because I’d experienced pretty severe grief for the final four of the dementia years, I thought I’d be freed.  

Instead, my heart and mind became a scene of devastation.  I hadn’t understood that in spite of our life as friends, as private people, as psychologically separate individuals, being with him for fifty years was my foundation. He made it possible for me to live with my melancholia and manias without flying into madness. His were the eyes and arms that told me, no matter how great my sin, I would always be loved.

I have not felt at home in the world since he left it.

Thanksgiving

 Dear Will:

Will at kitchen table in Los Gatos

I’ve been remembering all the different Thanksgivings we shared. I’m sure we began by going to Huldah Bell’s, sitting around my grandfather’s great round table with David Fortsch, K.C and Marcy, Ford, and maybe others. So much food and wonderful talk and silliness. David always finishing up the remaining salad. Wonderful food that Huldah worked on through the morning (with a few helpers chopping and setting table).

 

Did we ever have one of our own Thanksgivings while we lived in Pocatello? Or were we always at Huldah’s or other friends?  Carl and Judith’s?

And what about when I was in Utah? Did I drive home at Thanksgiving?  I don’t remember.  You were the one who kept track of our lives details … until you couldn’t.  I don’t remember having Thanksgiving with anyone in Utah.

We began to make our own holidays once we began sharing our best life in Bend.  Oh, I remember that you never liked Bend.  But I don’t think you ever liked anywhere you lived except Chicago. And neither of us were ever skilled, talented, or ambitious enough to live in a city.  I know you would have liked to live in Berkeley and there was that one year when I could have gone to work in San Jose — but I think, as much as you loved the City, you would have been miserable in any housing we could afford if I’d taken the job at San Jose State.

with Betsy's cat in the dining room, Los Gatos

Here in Bend, we sometimes made our own Thanksgiving, sometimes ate with friends like Eleanor S.-L and “the Girls” (your name for them) Dorothy and Becky.  In the late nineties we went to the Thanksgiving dinners provided to familyless congregants of the Methodist church. I remember that the men of the church did the cooking.  I think that the last time we went the quality wasn’t up to your expectations.

And I don’t remember what we did once your dementia set in and you stopped noticing the holidays.

Oh.  And I remember one of the loveliest Thanksgivings — the first November I was in Bend, when you flew in to Portland and we went to that wonderful Bed and Breakfast, with its Victorian gew gnaws and were invited to their Family Thanksgiving.  And they gave us a bottle of champagne and we spent the night and the next night getting tipsy and making love.

We had wonderful times together when we each relaxed and enjoyed the world around us.  I miss your cooking. I miss being with you with others. I miss your silliness. I miss your ability to love me with food. 

So today I did my best to love myself with food.  I made sausage gravy with sausage and oat milk and ersatz butter.  I made stuffing from a box. I baked potatoes and made my version of Susan Stamberg’s mother-in-law’s cranberry relish.  I bought two slabs of Ovengold turkey from the Newport Market.  

Love you forever,

Kake

Crisis

 I went into crisis yesterday. A bunch of events lined up along with the bodily injury called surgery and this old brain skittered to the bad place of hungering for peace through self punishment and a friend was there on the phone to talk me down. I don't want to give details. All actions seem predictable in hindsight, with physical, mental, and technological issues lining up and the old brain getting excited and the new brain not strong enough in the circumstances. But time heals.

copy of slide from COCC Theatre

Dear Will:

I needed you so yesterday.

Love,

Kake

.  

Churchy

 Awhile back I  was asked to present one of the stewardship speeches at church.  I spoke briefly the words pasted below. Three people said after it was the best pitch they ever heard:

I wrote my first thousand-dollar check to Trinity Episcopal Church on March 8, 2013, two years before I began attending regularly.  You know that date. The day the Bend Bulletin ran the story about the fire.

 

It was at that moment I realized how important the actual building called Trinity Episcopal Church was to me, even though I wasn’t an Episcopalian yet. Beauty in art, architecture, and language has long been the primary tool through which God seduces me into belief.

I love this building.

 

But it wasn’t until I retired from teaching to become a dementia carer that I became interested in regular attendance. I needed the support of a believing community. And as I learned more about the Via Media, the middle way of Anglicanism, and the focus on  using reason to interpret scripture, I began to appreciate the theology as well. And as I grew to understand the theology and history of the Episcopal tradition, I met the people of Trinity and became inspired by this loving and service-oriented community.

 

And most importantly, I found a tradition that had a decades-long history of supporting the queer community, of which my late husband and I were a part.

 

In other words, I came for the church, I came for the steeple, but I stayed when I opened the door and saw all the people.

 

So, OK.  I really dislike endless stewardship appeals. So bottom line:  You know that life is expensive and our broadcast studio, personnel, and both buildings don’t run on fairy dust. Let me remind you of

First Timothy 5:18: “For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. And, The laborer is worthy of his hire”. 

 

Remember – you are a necessary support for all the beauty of the work and structure of this congregation. Remember to be generous.

Some Writing

 Well, once again I've failed NaNoWriMo.  I just couldn't stay focused enough or disciplined enough.  Oh well. 

But, I did write some good stuff for my Writing on Love and Loss class at Sarah Lawrence.  Here's something I procrastinated about writing and then 15 minutes before class started I whipped out most of it, taking some time by not listening to other online students to fine tune it.  When I read it aloud, I had three people sending up hearts.

Terri Linton's prompt was "For this week, please think about and write into: grief as a part of daily life."

Here's what I wrote:

Living with grief is knowing that your beloved dead die every day.

Will and Max

 

You wake up every morning and there they are – dead.

 

You do your morning routine and they’re not there.

 

They are not there when you want to talk about something you like.  Sometimes we might imagine them there. A year and a half after my husband’s death I could finally watch film noir again.  I’d been avoiding all shared pleasures as they were too much associated with him and thus too hard to consume.  But I felt ready to dive into a couple of unseen 1950s gems on the Criterion Channel. As I was watching the black and white movie on my big screen tv, the corner of my eye saw his familiar shape sitting in my new red chair, a piece of furniture he never saw, his legs crossed in that way he had, one foot wiggling.

 

And I looked at the chair and called his name but he was gone.

 

I have found out that this is common for those who mourn, imagining seeing the lost.

 

And having to remember, as one must remember again and again, that the beloved is gone and with him those hunks of the self he made it possible for one to build. Made it possible for me to build.

 

I am now 35 months from his death I and can go for as long as a couple of weeks without a tear tsunami and think “Well, I’ve moved ahead” only to find myself back in the trenches of loss – loss of self, loss of community, loss of purpose.

 

Then my grief therapist, like a superhero, swoops in to remind me that heavy grief comes in waves, that I’ve been hurting this much before, and that I have also had wonderful days and will have more in the future.

 

She also says that I don’t have to be any more functional than I am.

Classes

 

Not the Sequel but the Original

I'm taking a variety of writing classes this fall: some from Sarah Lawrence and one from COCC (oh, don't get me started on the teaching style in the latter class -- I'm just too old and set in my ways to love a teacher who improvises the class, doesn't go by the syllabus, and says things like, "I haven't read Dickens but I imagine Dickens would write like this . . .").

For the Sarah Lawrence memoir class on Love and Loss, I wrote the following and shared it with the class yesterday and got some nice comments.  The prompt was to write something about loving service in 100 words.

 Christmas Gift

 

The final act of love I performed for my sweetheart of 50 years was cleaning the shit off his shrunken body. But he didn’t experience it as love. In his dementia, he thought me a childhood abuser and screamed curses. “I’ll kill you,” he shouted.  At that moment, in one stroke, his extreme rage allowed him to perform his final act of love for me -- disappearing into the feverish coma that ended in his death on Boxing Day. I was relieved that our suffering was over. I didn’t realize this respite was just a brief pause before I shattered.

 

 

 I wonder if writing and sharing this yesterday was the reason his spirit was finally back this morning, sitting down on the bed around 3:50 when Sequel woke me for no good reason.  I told him "Hello, Sweetheart" and then went back to sleep.

 

Puppy Whipped

 Wow.  

Sequel jumping Poppy

Having this puppy here is kicking my butt.  Winston is acting weird about his food. The cat is more demanding than ever when she isn't fleeing to outside or downstairs.

 The good thing is I didn't cry last week.  First week since Will died that I haven't cried for a full week.  Why? Because I was anxious and annoyed and irritated all week and that didn't leave as much time for sadness.

But previously, all the stress of managing the puppy was making me miss Will more. This week, the week that began with a friend's death at 75 and ended with another friend

But my therapist and I laughed a lot together this morning because I knew this was going to be hard and I am now experiencing the previously mentally accepted hardness. It is hard. I don't regret making this decision, though. Having her and meeting her needs for exercise, mental stimulation, food, sleep, and poo/pee time has once again convinced me that I made the right decision to not be a parent.  I'll be able to stand this for the short time a puppy takes to grow up (2 years) but I never would have made it the length of time it takes to launch a higher level primate into the universe!

I just now had a nice talk with Marie Hedeman, Sequel's breeder, about some of the issues we've been having and she gave me some great advice about taking the girl's food away an hour earlier than I've been doing, covering the ground with red or black pepper, and playing with her hard for a full half hour before we go to bed.

New Puppy

Dear Will:

I have a new puppy who looks just like Birdy but is far more wiggly and bitey than Birdy was.  But I remember we got Birdy at about a month later in her development.  But just as with Birdy, I'm not getting much sleep.

My struggle with her makes me miss my former fellow puppy wrangler.  I'm crying almost every day again. 

Some of these tears are about Kathy.  You remember her. You used to complain about how she had no other conversation but her children. She was a great leader at COCC and is facing death with strength and panache. I hope that I will be able to follow her lead when my time comes in two to twenty years.(I know I could just as easily die tomorrow as in two years but I'm basing my claim of two to twenty on the general peacefulness and healthyish nature of my existence.)

Sequel is beautiful, of course, and came to Bend with a full groom and painted nails. And beauty, as you know, is a prime motivator for me. Sadly, she also needs a bath now and I'm not looking forward to managing a shark in the tub.

Winston is annoyed with her and has spoken to her sharply.  I am so looking forward to December when we can start going to puppy socialization classes.

Missing you every fucking day.

Kake

Surprises Yet Again!

 Well, I should not have been surprised by this surprise.

My birthday morning at the Sylvia Beach Hotel

A few of years before his death I made a couple of collections of our letters and cards and put them in saved cookie tins.  I kept the tins near Will’s daytime chair so that he could look through them. The tins got moved around after his death and found a final spot downstairs. I hadn’t looked into them since I made them.  A few days ago I opened one of these tins, expecting to find a stack of cards from myself to Will.  And yes, there were a few cards from me. But there were also a few other things mixed in, including an unsigned note from a long-ago person I don’t know, written in a thin, right-leaning script.

The issue at hand was whether Will’s work at the University of Chicago was the equivalent of a DA at Idaho State University. As Will spoke of it, he’d been unceremoniously given an increased teaching load at some point, perhaps when the college became a university, simply because he didn’t have a doctorate. As he told the story; the only other person to be so targeted was one of the few female professors, also hired before change from four year. (I always appreciated this part of the story, as it illustrated once again how he identified with women.)   This note seems to be the last page of a set of responses to six or seven questions. 

“In conclusion I might note that I have done a fairly careful analysis of Professor Huck’s transcript from Chicago and I believe a strong case can be made for the claim that Huck’s graduate work there is equivalent to a D.A.  In this case the A.M. in Religion and Art would be the primary degree.The work done towards the D.B would be taken as an interdisciplinary component.The supervised fieldwork would be analogous to the teaching component.  I would be pleased to present this case but believe it is best preserved until the committee has the interaction sought in the questions posed above.”

Yes, dear readers, it ends on a question that makes me question.  With whom was the committee seeking to interact? Someone special from the University of Chicago? One of the stars from whom Will took classes?

How and when Will found his keepsake and then slipped it into this box is beyond my knowing. But how fitting for this to pop up when I was yearning so for him - this physical reminder of one of his core stories: how he fought the academic dragon and won. 

And how nice for the heavens to play with me again.

Even Better

 Well, in spite of all my whining yesterday, I managed to get the following done:

1) Went in to the office around 5:30 until 8

2) Went to monthly book club at 9 and had plenty to say about Fever in the Heartland by Tim Egan. Great book -- a horrible true story about the era when Indiana was owned by the KKK, told like a novel.

3) Walked the dog twice, once in a new-to-us park, Alpenglow, where Winston was admired by the Jehovah's Witness ladies.

4) Went to my expensive Exercise Coach workout.

Miss Poppy invites you to her Only Fans page. 😉

5) Took Miss Poppy to a meet and greet at Muddy Paws, where her nails will be done in a week.

6) Took two baskets (about 20 cans and bottles) of paint, fertilizer, and poison to the hazardous waste collection at Knott landfill and discovered the construction on 27th.

7) Raked the front yard and got the needles into the yard waste bin and watered both front and backyard. Also chopped off the limb of the laurel that would have been in the way of the fence builders coming on Monday.

8) Exchanged information with my house and pet sitter.

9) Re-watched two episodes of you-know-what. (And noticed how Joyce became spicier as Tom's retirement approached. See the episode Secrets and Spies

10) And of course wrote and rewrote yesterday's post, which originally had far more whinging than it does now.

Better

One of these will be my new best friend.

After posting yesterday and then going to meet with Sarah, my grief therapist, I felt much better. I'm still having trouble with my reactivity to disappointment and she explained to me that my emotion was anxiety about losing control. I have huge mental issues around control. This might arise from being tied up to be babysat when I was a kid.  Might not. Maybe everything I'm experiencing is normal and I just haven't heard people talk about it.

I still have a big interior desire to feel safe and being out of control in any way is problematic for me. My logical brain knows this is ridiculous because life isn't safe or predictable. I am not in control of much outside of my house and inside my house, well, I have a cat.

I'm okay when I can let go and let God, when I'm not worrying about what is happening next. When I'm high. Sarah told me I can use the skills I use when I travel to take care of myself when not traveling. I'm fully able to manage the difficulties of traveling by myself even when, as I showed yesterday, I'm in full-on grief tsunami.  I can drive and cry. And I can be having fun and still cry. Unfortunately, not traveling means I'm in Bend where I don't fit in.

I am okay with crying every few days. I miss well Will. Sometimes I even miss sick Will. And every week at least once I have the memory of putting my hand on the cold, embalmed face of Dead Will because that was the last time I saw him. So crying is okay. Crying is normal and natural for the kind of widow I am.  What is still challenging are these other mental things:

1) I continue to have trouble caring about what I am doing in the world. I would like to care about writing enough to deal with the discomfort of writing and the promise of cruel and biting comments if I ever put it into the world. This is ridiculous because no one actually cares about my writing. So I wouldn't get negative reviews because I wouldn't get ANY reviews. 

 I would like to care about the suffering of others enough to deal with the discomfort of volunteering around other people and working in the chaos that is part of many volunteer organizations. At least with this issue, I have money that I can put in my place.

I don't understand why my "will do" isn't stronger than my "won't do." I don't understand why wanting to do something doesn't provide me with enough mental energy to actually do it, if the "it" is uncomfortable and challenging.

 I have no motivation.

2) And then when I AM motivated, when I DO care about what I'm doing, I freak the fuck out when things go wrong. I react to rejection in such a huge way.  Even tiny things.  Like I'm probably not getting into a COCC class on which, for some reason, my brain had based my entire fall writing project on.  My brain kept telling me, "OK, I'll take this class and get the motivation, being around other people, to continue with one of the novels." So when I found out Tuesday that I probably wouldn't get in, my brain started telling me how terrible I was, how I'd never do anything worthwhile, and why did I even bother trying? 

Would Eyegor please steal me a different brain?

But no need to worry about me.  I'm fine.

And I will soon have a baby to take care of and won't have time for anymore of this whining.

 

 

Sad Movies

 

I made this little video in the hot set at the Oregon Film Museum (which should be called the Oregon Goonies Museum). I was in wretched shape when I left the coast on August 23. The male voice at the beginning was just a guy that I asked to "press the button" on the camera. As you can see, I didn't think about getting rid of the card that shows that I'm on a set until the very end.  This other movie is a filmification of a Powerpoint I made in 2021 as a way of dealing with the grief I was experiencing then.

Thank God for my Grief Therapist

 So I've been off and on having a challenging time this summer.  Travel has been great but whenever I've been in Bend I've not been healthy.  Lately, the negative self esteem has been riding me pretty hard along with the grief and my fear and anxiety.

I started crying at the beach and since then each day has had a period of tears.  The trigger? Watching three Bette Davis movies on TCM - including a 30s mob movie I'd never seen, in which she plays a hooker and Humphrey Bogart is the fighting district attorney who talks her into being a snitch (and yes, she did get stitches).  And then listening to a TCM podcast about John Ford. The presence of Will's non-presence was ... well ... present.

My grief therapist reminded me that grief comes in waves and that I am not a monster.  She understands that when she says nice things about me and my brain is in a particular place, I deny them. Nevertheless, I trust her so she must think that I am not a monster. And she's someone I tell everything to.  Including that I don't believe her when she says I'm a human being.  Then we laugh together because of the mental gymnastics my brain does that are not healthful for me.  And then I feel easier when I can bring my present reality to the light -- I feel like the heaviness dissipates.

I wish my brain didn't have this need to hate myself. If I retry psilocybin I will use this as a target -- my narcissistic self loathing. 

The new puppy should help with that as well.  And I have more work to make the house puppified.  I have to redo the puppy gate and put the gate with a cat door onto the cat's closet.  Also want to go through the huge tangle of dead (?) technology, figure out what wires I need and what I don't, which means having to finally get the two VCR/DVD players set up. I want to watch the video of our Russia trip and see if Will is on it.  I think we watched it shortly after our trip at a party?

Which reminds me I've also never watched my '89 Quake video. 

ITV's Bentley production, Midsomer Murders S19E5

Ah.  I see I'm drifting.  Back to John Barnaby and Death By Persuasion, a wonderful blend of Austen idolatry and technophobia focused on drones.

Love

Dear Will --

Back around the turn of the century I trained my heart to stop falling in love.  Or rather, I trained it to tell my brain when I was falling in love so that I could stop having a relationship with the person it was reaching toward.  I did this because I loved you and I loved god and I wanted to be a good person and I had come to understand that the poets were wrong, that the movies were wrong, that the entire romantic industrial complex was a fraudulent enterprise.

Loving you and caring for you was a different kind of love than the one the movies were about. It wasn't as pleasant. It didn't come with any highs. It never saved me from my depressions. But it was holier and better for me.

Unfortunately, the other times in my life when I've been as sad and frightened of the world as I am now I was able to move forward by falling in love.  I won't do that anymore. Probably can't.  I'm hoping that the new puppy will serve something of the function of a beloved object.

I've been cleaning up downstairs and I ran across your old teaching Norton and took some pictures of your notes on Andrew Marvel's "The Definition of Love."

I see where you have written "Despair, hope, & fate control Love's whole world." I wonder now if this was what you were feeling at the time you were teaching. You so rarely said anything at all about your feelings, good or bad.  You just seemed to act on them and left me trying to interpret your actions to figure out your emotions.

The book marks I found were from a 1982 desk calendar, though there is nothing to indicate when you wrote these notes -- they could have been written anytime before you retired, anytime you were teaching BritLit. Nevertheless, I like to think of this as part of your lecture during our separation, because the poem speaks of spiritual connection through separation.  It's a paradox of the sort that the metaphysical poets liked.

I know you enjoyed teaching these poets in part, as you once said about Donne, because they required interpretation.

I was always touched by poetry.  Whatever I read under a teacher's guidance became important to my thought.  I drew it in and considered it.  I didn't understand that people who actually taught poetry or any other form of art appreciation, could become impervious to the meaning and feeling contained within the poems. They could talk about what they read without needing to be moved by it. I always had trouble understanding that - the idea that you could teach something and not understand that people might be moved to act upon the text that you were teaching. If something is important enough to be taught, it's important enough to be taken in, thought about, and acted upon. But when I would ask you what you personally thought about certain ideas you talked about, you would say, "read so and so" about that, rather than giving your personal opinion. I didn't understand why you would do that.  I still don't.

There's so much else I never understood about you. I didn't understand how your brain worked. I didn't understand why you would get so angry at certain things and people. I didn't understand, through the first 10 years, why you wouldn't talk to me about emotions or relationships, why you would listen to me share big heart things with you and then go on talking about the garden or dinner. I didn't understand why you ignored me, why you were silent, why you didn't seem to care about my thoughts and feelings.

If I'd been an adult when we got together, and if I'd had a completely formed brain, I really would have left you early on. We probably never would have married.

But I wasn't and we did. In my 1970s letters to Lee I regularly wrote that I needed to leave you. But something in both of us kept us together, as though it were important to the universe that we remain bonded. Later, when I asked you why you never divorced me, you gave me two different answers at two different times: "Because I didn't believe in divorce," and "Because I loved you."

I never looked into your eyes but I felt that chain of love connecting us, a chain that prevented us both from abandoning the "project" of our marriage (oh, you would have hated that term, but there you go.)

The feeling of "being in love" was, for me, the tip top of the mountain emotional experience ... and I know it was absolutely heroin. I knew this by 1982 when we saw Liquid Sky, a film that made the link between love and heroin explicit. Romantic/Erotic love made me happy, got rid of my underlying sadness about being myself, made me feel worthy to be alive. I remember your explanation, back around 1980, about why companionship was better than being in love.  At that time, at the age of 27, I didn't accept or believe you and we went into the hard time of C. and separation.

But C. turned out to be just what my heart wanted -- an abusive narcissist who "love-bombed" me, used illness as emotional blackmail, and once I left you started telling me what a terrible person I was.  He too was a gift from the universe -- attractive, intelligent, Harvard educated.

I remember when I read that poem at the free read in the Bengal Lounge.  He had liked the poem and I read it very dramatically and got applause and as soon as I sat down he slammed my reading, telling me it was horrible. I wasn't demure enough.  He was a person who, unlike you, seemed to find me attractive (which you never did, as I was always too fat) until the time I said I was attractive as a friend of ours and he laughed at me and said I wasn't and never would be. And then, in Utah, there were all the terrible arguments with him telling me the he loved me but that I was a terrible person. Finally he said we should break up and I said that was a good idea. I remember a final meeting with him in my apartment where I was so scared he would do something violent and I was agreeing with everything he said just to get him out. 

And after that there was J. and dead Mike and getting out of Utah.

And it all worked out.  Sure, there was the bump of S. and my deep embarrassment over that. But by then you had accepted without approval my wandering heart and it's peccadilloes. It was after that experience that I finally studied the concept of romantic love and realized that it was a mental illness. Even though "falling in love with" C, then J, then S, helped me initially, motivating me to continue with my life at difficult times, it wasn't a helpful strategy in the long term. These loves were ultimately damaging to me as each one began with the other treating me as wonderful and ended with the other treating me as a monster.

When I am in love I am a monster. Only you, Will, had the magic to tame that monster by considering me a beloved, if bothersome, friend.  We were indeed parallel lines who could never completely meet but were forever bound. 

Are forever bound.

Love,

Kake

Weather and Memory

 Dear Will --

Will and Birdy at the beach, 2016

You would have brought the tomatoes in off the deck last night. And you would have been right, because it was literally freezing outside when Winston and I woke up this morning. At least Alexa told us that it was.

My recent trip to the beach reminded me of those times I got us rooms in places that turned out to be shitty -- the sweet but loud hotels in San Francisco and New York and that crazy New York room where the Sikh hotelier talked our ears off. My travel leadership wasn't always as smart as it could have been. And I have to tell you that Winston agrees with you about wet cold being rougher than dry cold. He did not like going outside to do his business on the coast.

So now I'm starting to make the house puppy friendly again. The kitchen will once again be blocked off. I need to finish cleaning up the downstairs, getting stuff off the floors and stored someplace. I managed to finally throw out all the old, saved wrapping paper this week. I also need to get rid of a bunch of paint cans and other dangerous stuff. I might even clean out the garage, we'll see.

I don't think you would have liked the opera in Santa Fe. You weren't that big a fan of new stuff. So there are benefits to being on my own. But it's always so hard to come home when you aren't visibly present. I've been high and done little worthwhile for four days. I read in church. I met with the Tuesday group twice this week, once live for a lunch and once online to discuss the sermon.  It was good to meet Larry live for the first time as he traveled to the PNW from the IMW.

I don't actually remember the 2016 trip to the beach from which this picture comes. There is so much I don't remember because of my a. b. normal brain.

I'm looking forward to having a big dog again, so I have someone to hug every day.

Our anniversary was yesterday.  Remember how it took us such a long time to even celebrate it - I don't think it was until we got back together in 1990 that we started to do so. And then when did we make it a custom to go to The Original Pancake House? Well, it wouldn't have been until after they opened it in 1997! I remember how you loved the Dutch babies.

I probably terrified that guy at the Oregon Film Museum, I was missing you so hard that day.

Love you now and always

Kake

No Magic Mike

Hunks at Midtown Ballroom

Well, yesterday started off crappy but then got okay.

My friend Stacey and her S.O. came over for dinner last night and it was very pleasant. I made a tuna salad (for the first time in four years) and Chad brought beers to taste. I booted them out afterwards so I could get ready to go out on the town. So nice to have good friends that one can just tell, "time to go."

I had a VIP ticket to Hunks .  It turned out to be an enjoyably sad experience for which I didn't stay long. I was happy I went for the short time I did because I once again experienced something I no longer need in my life. (Like outdoor concerts and festivals.) I love crossing out future FOMO events -- it's almost as fun getting rid of old clothes.

OK. First of all, I need to confess that, in spite of my age, I still enjoy looking at an exceptional muscley male form. The fact that I'm following Thoren Bradley's wood chopping is all the proof I think I need to offer. So it's not the male body I was rejecting when I walked out. It was the scene.

I need a nice setting for sexy times and the Midtown ex-roller rink wasn't it. It's a giant barn of a place. The fog machine onstage made barely a dent in the atmosphere. Strip clubs and whore houses should be comfy. They should have soft seating and a close, friendly atmosphere. The Midtown Barn had neither. The classic metal folding chairs were cold and hard. The front row chairs were well separated for the moments of personal regard sure to come later in the evening but the spacing made the setting even more hollow. If I were younger and sitting in a comfortable chair with screaming friends around me, I might have been in the mood to drink to the point where I couldn't feel the lack of glamour. My one shot of tequila didn't do the trick.

Following the directions that came with my ticket, I got to the event space early when there were about ten other women there. Eventually there may have been as many as a hundred people in the hall which seats a thousand. Most of the other women were in groups and there was at least one hen party that I recognized from the pink cross-chest ribbon being worn  by a Maid of Honor.

Once I sat down I was approached three times by fully clothed "dancers," who checked in to see if I wanted to go up on stage (I didn't) or if I had enough one dollar bills (I didn't as this hadn't been advertised as necessary so I bought $20 worth). They pushed and pushed, verbally.  It turned out that being on stage would have cost me another $20, which was made clear in a later loud, garbled, announcement. 

The show, scheduled to start at 8:00 didn't get going till around 8:25.  The performers did one badly choreographed routine with chairs and hip thrusts and lots of violent movements, including pounding fists on their thighs. The women around me were screaming wildly. There was a lot of fuss with the lighting -- colors, flashing lights, etc -- which just seemed sad as the brightness emphasized the large, 2/3 empty space.

After the first number there were more loud announcements (that I had trouble understanding in the echoing gloom) as the dancers came through the audience promoting the idea of being onstage, talking to individual women, etc.

And that was when I left. I stopped for a minute at the front door to tell the security gal, "It's just not my scene." And she said, "Yeah, and it's mostly this ..." and pointed at the guys shilling for more money. 

Basically, the whole scene was hugely exploitive. Exploitive of the men who were doing the work and probably not being paid enough so they did what all sex-workers must, be constantly selling. And exploitive of the audience who were being pushed to spend, spend, spend. The announcer even said, "Have more drinks. When you drink more, we look better."

So I was very glad that I went to this display of the egalitarian exploitation available in late-stage capitalism. But even more glad that I left and came home to a dog who loves me and a cat who tolerates me.  

I give myself props for trying new things and props for leaving when it wasn't fun.

I thought I was done

 having 2 a.m. mornings when I wake up frightened, heart racing, realizing he is dead and I'm alone.

fuck this shit

HOW IT IS

 Last week was a good week as it clarified what the best of my new life could be like.

I had a mix of bad grief moments and great connection with friends.

I got called "exciting," "remarkable," and a "deep thinker" who encourages others to think deeply.  And I got to comfort someone who had experienced a recent loss and who also has a screwy family issue.

On Saturday I videocalled (Oi, we're "living in the future," as my dead-friend Mike used to say) with my friends Diana (morning) and David (evening), both of whom I love and it's always so nice to check in with them.

I got a bit of work done on the house, both by me and by a gal who stained my deck for $400 less than the blokes who did it a couple of years ago.

Yesterday, I met up with a high school buddy who was going through town to visit with one of her closest friends. We went to church together and then had coffee before she needed to move on.  It was very pleasant to talk with another child free person who has had a successful career and a somewhat complex personal life -- another person who loves opera and traveling (I was able to impress her with my tales of the Met and La Scala).

We had a great sermon yesterday focusing on food (because the Gospel was John 6:1-21). Tears just started running down my face because it made me think of Will. My friend understood. I was happy and sad at the same time.

I also got high and rewatched (for the umpteenth time) three of the Season 1 (1998-9) episodes of Midsomer Murders. Samsung freetv played the entire first season for binging purposes over the weekend. How many times have I seen Death of a Hollow Man?  This time I enjoyed especially the scenes outside the theatre, as I stood on that very square to take a picture of it.

Taken during my visit, May 29, 2024

Still from S1E3 Midsomer Murders, 1998

The real and the cinematic, the actual and the pretend, were never supremely clear for Will and I, we both enjoyed being inside the movie. When we were in Paris in 1997, he actually said that to me, that it was like being inside a French film.  That's one reason I was so very happy to be on my super-fans tour. Not only was I seeing beautiful countryside, but I was also being inside a movie.

Theologically, this connects to the Platonic concept of this world being a shadow of the real world of pure forms.

And as far as shadows are concerned, Sir John Nettles is one of my favorites.

Flippered

 Monday and yesterday were hard days. The heavy grief came back and with it the mental twistiness.

The Sisterhood of Widows Facebook group is so helpful, even though it ISN'T run by the author of The Grieving Brain, as I thought it was (there are two Mary Frances' doing grief analysis I found out, though the gal who runs the FB group is Mary Francis, with an i). There are women on there three and seven years out that still hurt.  One woman, 15 years out, reminded everyone that the loss and the feeling of loss are forever.

I got stuck in a loop on Monday trying to explain myself to a friend.  She gave me good advice about getting friends: to show up, be amiable, and have low expectations.  This advice was pretty much what I did in my classrooms, in which I loved everybody and, after the first five years, stopped expecting anybody to work the way I thought they "should." I just haven't wanted to be a "fake" person while I'm looking for connections.  But like many other people, I need to make the choice between authenticity and connection.

from Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

I got angry Monday with an online poetry teacher for not knowing what iambic pentameter is and giggling when she said she didn't know.  I dropped the class but what I told her was that she was energetic and cared about her practice but that I had thought we'd do more writing and sharing in the class and it wasn't for me.  But yesterday's teacher was much better and we did lots of shared writing.

I'm also annoyed because my eyes are going and soon I'll need to wear glasses all the time again, as I did from 1964 (4th grade) to 2008 (eye surgery).  It annoys me that everything has an outlined blur around it when I'm driving now.

Another irritation is that my guts are a mess.  On the other hand, I'm very lucky that my bones and joints seem okay with just a minor, annoying amount of osteoarthritis in my neck and spine.

As for blessings, I am so thankful for the Tuesday morning group and I told them that - that after EFM folded, meeting with them helped me stay alive.

WHAT IS MY PORPOISE!  Argh.  I have no function. 

So, even though there's no reason for me to be alive, it's okay that I'm alive.  It's literally just fine that I'm still alive, even though I have no purpose and serve no function. It's okay. If all I'm able to be is a stoner slacker, that's okay. If stoner-slacker is the very best identity I'm able to produce right now, that is acceptable to God.

But wait!  HELP IS ON THE WAY!  My new puppy is waiting to be born and is expected tomorrow. Maybe by fall there will be someone new and exciting in my life! Can't be a slacker with a puppy in the house!

I am, indeed, a very lucky person that most of my pain is in my old noggin'.  I've been dealing with mental pain and confusion my whole life!  I should be good at it by now!  And there is, after all, a great freedom in no one giving a fuck where I go and what I do each day. At some point, with God's grace, I'll figure out what to do with all this liberty.

 

Questions

 Dear Will -

Do you remember the last time I was flopping about like this, back in 1979 when I was wondering what I was supposed to do with my life, when I'd been unable to do much of anything except sleep and watch TV for a year and I asked you about what I should do and said that I wanted to make a difference and wanted to save people and you said something like, "isn't saving one person enough?"

And now you are free from the need to be saved.

Yet I'm still here asking that question. Except now I'm so angry and cranky with people and I'm not sure I care anymore.

I want to care.  Jesus asks me to care. But I'm ready to say, "I'm okay with not making it off the wheel this time around."

Thank god I have a dog.

Missing you every day.

Kake

Missing you

Dear Will:

Yesterday morning one of the women in the FB widows' group offered the metaphor of a shoebox with all the stuff of our lives in the box and someone takes out the most important thing and then we need to reorganize the box.  I responded that it was more like the box was thrown out and now I need to figure out how to go forward without a container.

Love you forever,

Kake

Sometimes I'm Glad

Kake and Will in Philly, 2015 (last trip)

 Dear Will:

There are times these days when I'm glad your physical body is gone. Like during this now-more-common heat wave. If you were still alive I'd be freaking out and going crazy trying to keep you comfortable.  Now I only need worry about myself.

I wish you were here, though, for the little everyday conversations and comments. I miss the everydayness so much. And then, as I'm missing you, I remember the terrible days of the dementia care. And then when I remember the earliest days of the dementia, it makes me think of the rage of some of my democrat FB friends who support Biden when they are told his brain isn't functioning at its best. I'm afraid to state my personal opinion on FB (I've been seeing the signs of incipient dementia for two years) because it goes against the beliefs of my friends and so many Americans these days don't hold space for opinions different from their own. The last time I made that claim about Biden in front of a friend I got told off in such a way that I was clearly not allowed to have an opinion based on my own difficult personal experience.  This rage is just like YOUR rage when things started falling apart - like the washing machine and the toilet -- because of decisions you were making. You did not want to believe that your brain was dying.  Who would? Those early days of rage, before you semi-accepted that you had dementia, were terrible for both of us. I was walking on eggshells, trying to keep you safe, trying to keep our lives safe. Then, sometime before the pandemic, you became more comfortable with how things were. That was a blessing. Those years in between the first fights and the final failing weren't bad.

And even when you were dying, you were still present. There was a being in the house.  I met with a recently widowed church acquaintance on Wednesday and she said she missed having a presence in her house. Her husband took longer to die than you did and was stuck in his bed for six months before he passed.  You were still hauling yourself up days before you died.

I had a couple of glimmers at yesterday's book club.  One woman said, "you're hard on yourself, aren't you?" She was referencing things I said at the previous meeting. It's good for me to hear this as it reminds me I don't need to judge myself for not being as creative and active as I often think I "should" be. This comment echoed what Sarah said during our zoom meeting on Tuesday.  I was getting down on myself for not being as fully active and functional as I had hoped to me. Sarah echoed back to me what I was saying and once again encouraged me to accept who I seem to be, even if that person considers herself (and, yes, even though I am nonbinary I just fucking refuse to use "they") a "slacker."  So the glimmer was that someone saw me being mean to myself and commented on it.

The other glimmer was that another woman said that she had seen your gravestone.  When I said your name aloud she recognized it and said you were nice looking.  Yes, you were.  Especially for your "graduation" picture. 

Love you and miss you.

Kake