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