Wow - Good Work Today

 Sarah and I did some good but exhausting work today.

Byzantine devil

We were both deeply present and I talked with her more honestly than I have with other therapists.

We had an interesting discussion about the concept of "worthiness."  She was thinking/saying that my core issue is that I don't feel "worthy" and for me the core issue is "i am bad".  She thought they meant the same thing but for me they don't.  Not being "worthy" suggests or connotes to me that there is an "average" person (B student) who can't become extra special, ie, get the A.  On the other hand,  being a bad person means that one is starting below the average line - that being bad is an F for Failure student of life.

Can I get rid of the core source of my depression? Can I stop the despair cycle?

It would be nice to be healed, like the stooped woman. Luke 13.  Pastor Joseph Yoo had a great, one minute sermon on that in which he identified mental self wounding as analogous to the physical image of the bent over woman.

At one point today I got very angry with Sarah and instead of hiding my anger I told her. She saw the anger as a defensive move. I saw it as something else but we were able to process it and I stood my ground and was honest with her.

See, along with my core belief against myself, I also believe that no one (but Will) is dependable over time and that loving someone is no proof that the very next day after they tell you that you can count on them forever they will not walk out on you and call you toxic and abusive. How somebody is to me today is no proof that they will be that way tomorrow. People are not the sun.  

It feels risky to be as honest as I'm being with Sarah. But it's riskier not to be. 

I remember doing therapy with Phil and how even though we did good work together, some of it got ruined by his stupid Jungian insistence that I was feminine.  I told Sarah today that at one point my brain was telling me that "What if Sarah is like every other therapist and wants to force me into her framework." She was able to hear me and not get defensive, unlike past therapists.

EMDR

 I'm back to once a week with Sarah and we're going to do some EMDR to work on hitting all the places in my brain where I received the information that I was disposable, as I did last week.

That's where my brain goes to when I'm struggling - I'm bad and if I'm punished enough by someone things will get better.

Today, one of the first things I told her when I walked in was an epiphany I had on the dogwalk this morning:  Between first grade (age 7?), when my first memory of some kind of abuse occurs, and Will's death, the amount of time when I could be fully myself with the people who loved me most was FOUR MONTHS, the months between my family leaving Pocatello in 1971 and when Will yelled at me for seeing Dwight over the holidays in January 1972.  I could never tell mom what was happening to me because it would make her sad.  Will and I worked out a relationship where he didn't have to know who I was because it made him sad.

from South Denver Therapy

I've done some EMDR on the kidnap and rape but It might be useful to return it not as a violent act but as the experience of being "nothinged", especially in regards to the fact that my older sister then lied about it telling everyone I made it up and how I got absolutely no support except Will's love. 

Sarah says she wants to help me believe that I am not a terrible person who deserves to be punished whenever anybody gets upset with me.

If it's possible for this to happen, it will be amazing.

EMDR .... changing the brain.

Sarah explained to me that my reactivity is like a soldier's reactivity.   She said that when stuff like last Wednesday happens, and I'm laid low through a variety of experiential aspects, it's like when a soldier hears a backfire and falls face-down on the floor. It's reactivity to multiple and powerful messages over time.  And our work with the EMDR will be to search out the most telling moments during which I received the information that my opinion, mySelf, and my body were nothing.  The work of retraining my brain is to put chronemic space between the backfire and the response.

It's funny.  Because of the rape experience, I've always felt some connection to combat vets. This will be another link.

The Expert

 Mary Francis runs the carefully curated widow's FB group I'm in and she ran her most recent blogpost   in the group this morning. We're not allowed to share anything specific from the group but here are some paragraphs from her website.

from the Rock Hall in Cleveland

"The death of your spouse will put you into your own uniquely grief journey.  The truth is everyone’s marriage is different.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that your grief will not necessarily be the same as another widow’s.

Your loss is influenced by your marriage, manner of their death, your emotional support, age and background.  Don’t compare your grief journey to others or make assumptions about just how long your grief will last.  Take a one-day-at-a-time approach that allows you to grieve at your own pace.

Don’t be afraid to talk about the person he was and the memories that allow for both laughter and tears.  It’s important not to ignore your grief and to talk about the death of your spouse if you need to.  It’s okay to speak from both your heart and your head.

You may feel confused, disoriented, fearful, guilty and angry all at the same time.  These emotions are all normal and healthy so permit yourself to feel and don’t be surprised if surges of grief suddenly come out of nowhere.  Seek out those people who encourage you to be yourself and are willing to acknowledge your feelings."

She ends with a peroration to go out and experience life.  Well, I've done that. I have taken three trips overseas since Will died (Deutschland, Ireland, Scotland). I've seen the opera in San Francisco four times. I've been to the Willamettte Coridor, the Oregon Beaches, Denver, Cody, Missoula, Seattle, Santa Fe, and fuckin' Cleveland (which rocks).

And I got a danged poodle puppy that completely changed my daily life. 

I have grabbed life by the proverbials and I still fall apart and cry sometimes because I'm living as half of what I once was and the cauterized edges still ooze pus. 

Will, during a time of crisis, once told me, "you do not need my approval" to live my life. Because my church has been so important to me, I've allowed myself to forget that I don't need its approval either.  Because I've felt so existentially alone, I've let critics into my brain that hadn't lived there since Will and I married and his became the most important inner voice. 

Will was like my mom (his face so like hers that a postman once thought they were siblings) in that he both appreciated my ferality and was appalled by it.  But he loved me nevertheless.  The last day I saw that love was December 24, 2021. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dark Passengers Skip the Line

Still from (c) Good Morning America interview with Michael C. Hall

 I'm really enjoying the new Dexter show.  It's actually inspirational.  Not that I'm going to become a cereal killer.  Too much mess and not really my deal. But the concept of the interior anti-social drive (and yes .... one of the medical labels I've been given by lovers in the past is "sociopath") is an interesting "healing tool". Last week I faced an existential crisis and I've been struggling to figure out how to deal with it and then ... I remembered the power I once possessed to live through the various traumas of the clusterfuck and other hard times. Turns out I still have that mind rider.  It's just not very nice so I haven't let it out in a looooong time. 

But before noting the power, I have to say I love Michael C Hall's face.  I think my face is a little similar, with its deep lines and hardness. I remember seeing him live over a decade ago in 2014's The Realistic Joneses and I assume the star power in the play (w. Tracy Letts, Marisa Tomei, and Toni Collette) was responsible for getting a surrealistic drama on Broadway.  Same reason Godot is heading there where I will see it ON MY BIRTHDAY! (I can't go on we must go on I can't go on dude!).

But I don't have star power.  What I do have is a tiny little itsy bitsy teeny weeny dark passenger who holds a power that my regular every day brain doesn't have. 

I experienced that power, in my youth, as an actual "mind switch" - as an experiential and almost physiological change in my brain when I stepped into that other self.  That self is still present, it turns out, it's strength just waiting to be called on.  Now, it's also a strength that has gotten me shit deep in trouble in the past so, like the cloak of invisibility, or a regular towel, it should be used appropriately, like any magical salvific tool.

For example.  I was walking Winston in Compass Park this morning and I saw a guy with a yardwork truck and trailer set-up putting away a mower and getting ready to get into his truck.  He was wearing a black tank top and he had every right and really, considering his build, every responsibility to be wearing that tank top.  

Still from The Realistic Joneses

So I hollered across NWXing Drive,  "Hey!  Thank you!"

He hollered back, "For what?"

"For wearing a tank top today!"

He paused a moment and then smiled.  "I'm thanking myself now too."

 

 

So tired

O tempora, o mores!

 of all this.  

My senior year in high school, a year during which I was often depressed and suicidal, this was my favorite song on the White Album.

The friends who love me don't want me to be still grieving, even though I've told them over and over that it will take at least 4 1/2 years for the deep grief to end.  They want me to be better right now. I know they want the best for me but they have no idea who I am or what is to live in my mind from day to day.

I've decided it will be easier just to lie from now on. 

Many of the widows in the FB group do that.  They've given up being honest with the people around them in their desire to spare their friends suffering. Maybe lying to my friends from now on will be my way of showing them love, not making them have to deal with a crazy person. As Kathy Walsh and Mel Robbins  suggest, treat having friends as a job, not a natural source of affection and salvation.

It's interesting that both my parents AND Will refused to let me get decent mental health therapy when I was young and poor and they could have paid for it.  When I finally was able to afford a psychologist, my second year at COCC, she told me maybe I should leave Will.

How many therapists have I had since high school, starting with Mr. Anderson? (Who told me sex was like ice cream -- delicious, but you didn't want it all the time.)

Let's see ... I tried the ISU free student therapists, when Will wouldn't pay for help, but just got angry when they judged me right out of the gate because my view of sex was wrong.

I went to the free shrinks at Utah for a bit, just to get anti-depressants (which I no longer use). After taking the MMPI the lead psychiatrist there told me I had serious anger issues, that I had schizo-affective disorder, and that graduate school was worsening, not bettering my mental health.

When I got to Bend I started off with group therapy through one school year. (Several years later one of the other people in that group would turn up in my interpersonal communication class.) At that point I believed I had multiple personalities because there was such a gigantic switch between what I would consider my workaday mind and my personal relationship mind. I often experienced my thinking as coming from two different places. 

After that, Susan Dragovich was my first psychologist to see regularly.  I quit her when I thought she started repeating herself.

And this is it. Once I feel a therapist has done everything they possibly can for me I act like I'm well (and I will be well enough to function for awhile going forward) even if I'm not.

Since 1990 I think I've had 10 different therapists over the 38 years I've been here.

One of the ladies in the Widows group said she uses therapy like her friends get pedicures -- as a form of self care.  

Another lady made the excellent comment that when she and her spouse, who both came out of abusive backgrounds, they created a world of two so when she lost him there was no one else.  And that's kind of how I feel. Maybe I should talk with Sarah about "trauma informed grief therapy".

I am so grateful to have friends who care about me.  

And I am grateful to have enough money to buy the intimacy and support that my friends can't give me.   

I've been asking Jesus to take the wheel but He's been acting like he lost his license.

 

Whiny Middle Class Wyte Person

Let me start this by saying I have everything in the world I could possibly need and have absolutely no right to be as anxious and sad as I am. 

So I asked the widow's FB group about it.

Photo by Ahmet Kurt on Unsplash

I'll ask Sarah next week if she thinks another therapist would be more effective for me.

It's all too much. 

I'm fine in the day to day.  I have money. I have my house.  I have art.  I'm just also grieving and unhappy while being fine.  I need nothing but rescue and I know I need to rescue myself. 

Here's the deal.  As I told the person who wanted to get me a social worker at the hospital, I know all the things about how to relieve my suffering. I just can't do it. Finding friends, asking for help, eating healthy -- all are pretty damn heavy lifting.

So, another whiny middle class white person is sad.  Who gives an actual fuck. 

Wheeless Bus

 My friend Diana messaged me to say that it looked like yesterday the wheels fell off the bus.

And yes, indeed, yesterday was a terrible, horrible, very bad day, all because of MY EMOTIONS. If I didn't feel so much, if I weren't such a fucking typical EType4, it would actually have been a breeze.  All my life I've wanted to be someone else, someone who wasn't so reactive, who didn't have so many feelings. Yesterday was a great example of why. I could have been as cool as Steve Irwin petting a crocodile and taken it all in stride.  But oh no.  I had an emotional breakdown.

The bad day was partially in response to a medical scare but was mostly a grief burst.  I've been struggling lately as this summer, when I'm not traveling, I've been reminded more of Will and how much I miss having someone to hold me and love me.

Leftovers the morning after an EKG

Anyway, this is what happened.

I woke up early (2:30 ish) Wednesday morning to deal with the puppy's upset guts.  I took her outside.  She needed to go out one more time before I finally got up at 3:30.  The morning continued (coffee, weed, protein drink) and I took Sequel for her 45 minute walk and also got her to the dog park for a run and rassle.  I also got Mr. Winston out for a short walk.

Then I went to the Exercise Coach at 9:40, for some reason crying on the way there.  I was just feeling sad and tired.  Sherri asked how I felt and I told her, not good, and that I'd been having chest pains for three days.  She suggested strongly that I go to the doctor or to an emergency room. 

Now, here we have the "mom or dad" option.  If I was working with my mom genes, I would have just got on with everything and not worried about it and not even mentioned the 3 days of chest pains and the 3 hours of sleep.  But no, my dad genes were at work and a got all panicky that the pain, which I felt at the same place on my back, was heart trouble.  

So I called Fall Creek and told them about the pain.  They said come in at 11:00.  So I went home, made sure the dogs were empty of pee, and went to my doctors.  There, a tattooed tech gave me the EKG and a Dr. Jessica explained my next options where were going to the emergency room or getting some tests taken care of on my own feet.

So even though they sent the info through cyberspace, I also had Zach at the Doc's office print out the orders my doc wanted -- to CORA for a chest xray and  then to St. Charles for bloodwork.  It all actually went quite fast.  CORA is in a construction mess but was VERY fast. Sadly, the chest x-ray does not make up for my missing booby squishings.

The blood work was very busy ... so many findings. I finally was able to go home for a little while but almost as soon as I got home and got the dogs out once more I got a call that I had to go to the emergency room for a CT Scan because I had an elevated D-Dimer. So I went back to the hospital and the tears just kept coming.

I felt so much fear and loneliness.  I wanted Will so bad. As an EType4, when I am at my lowest I am rescue-seeking.  This is one reason I won't ask for help because to me it's a sign of mental weakness.  Also, I'm a fucking Boomer. Boomers don't ask for help. So anyway, I was also getting triggered big time as the last time I was in the emergency room it was when I spent 8 hours there with a bloody towel around my sliced wrist, waiting for surgery. So as crazy and whiny as I was yesterday, I did my best to make wisecracks with every tech, doctor, and nurse I met while also falling apart.

Everybody was really nice to me.  Some even laughed at my jokes (the old, corny, routine of repeating the person's self description as though it's their last name, as in, "Hi, I'm Stuart, phlebotomist". "Hi, Stuart Phlebotomist".  The importance of the oral comma.

I was asked twice if I wanted to see a social worker and I said "yes" the second time but they never got to me.  I did, however, get a printout of ideas for dealing with adult anxiety. I was home by 5:30.

After I got home I texted Sarah and she texted right back, saying she'd call me in 15 minutes. which she did.  She helped me right away by reminding me of the profound work we've done together and reminding me that I'm not the outlier I often think I am.  I also got texts from Stacy and Betsy expressing their concern.  

So, all in all, in hindsight the worst part of the day was my anxiety, grief, and fear, not what was actually happening. Everyone was caring.  No one hurt me. The phlebotomist who made a mistake didn't hurt me when he did it. The other phlebotomist was perfect.

 

 

The Social Conundrum

Photo by Spencer Sembrat on Unsplash

A week ago I posted this to an FB widows group:

 "So here's a core issue for me and I'm wondering if anyone else is feeling this: I am terribly lonely AND I don't like most people very much. So I'm kinda stuck between "I'm so sad and alone" and "gosh, these people are boring." 

Some women wrote "ditto," "same," or "every day."

Others mentioned experiences they had in which they had been invited someplace and just wanted to leave once they got there. One lady says that after her daughter invited her to a gathering which proved unhappy, "I find most people annoying." Another notes that she thinks she "should socialize but I don't want to."  And another, "I feel so alone but I don’t want people around I just want the one person that can’t be here."  And another, "Thank you for this post! Thanks also for all of you who have agreed! I thought it was just me! Now I feel one less thing to wonder how odd I am about."

I got over 40 comments on this, all of them saying that they are in the same place,  so I later added this 

"EDIT: I've turned off commenting so this post doesn't get too long. Thanks to all of you who helped me feel not so alone in my stuckness." 

 And there ya go.  I'm not special.  My misery loves finding out others feel the same way I do so I can stop adding, "I'm worse than everybody else" to my sad thoughtstack.

Jesus tells me to love everyone. To me, love means treating people with respect and caring when one is confronted with them.  Of course, Jesus  also wants me to go out and find people to love and I don't have the energy to do that at this point in time and if my current introversion adds to my time in purgatory, so be it.

I had a dream when I was in fifth or sixth grade that god talked to me and told me that after I died I would spend time in purgatory.   It felt like a relief to learn that.

Church pictures

 

FB Post and Responses

 I've been having trouble "getting anywhere" so I posted this note to the Widows FB group I follow:

 3 1/2 years in and I'm having trouble getting going again. I'm very lucky to be financially secure so I don't work. But I don't know what I care about. I used to do art and write but without my spouse there to show drafts and pictures to, I don't anymore. I'm very "other directed" and have no "others" that I care about enough to show stuff to so I don't make stuff. There's nothing productive that I want to do just for myself. All I do when I'm not traveling, is smoke weed, watch TV, and walk my dogs. I can't write except for blog posts. I can't do art anymore. I see other people to talk to for about 5 hours each week and the rest of the time I'm by myself. Having read "Let Them", I now know what it takes to have friends as an adult and I think that someday I'll have the energy to make friends again but right now it looks like too much work. I have a grief therapist who says it goes as it goes and to experience what I'm experiencing. Does anyone have any idea how to care about being productive again when there's not a financial incentive? 

 I got great responses including from women who have been grieving for longer than I and are having the same problem. The primary idea is that I need to "make myself" and "push myself" to get out of the house and I realize that that's right. It doesn't come naturally. I largely just don't want to do stuff and the only way to get stuff done is to give myself a stern talking to and get off my but and do it. I was gratified to note that a couple of women said that even when they push themselves to go out they don't feel connected and whole anymore.  Misery lovesa da company.

Tomorrow, maybe. I think Allan Sherman had a song about doing things tomorrow because "tomorrow never comes."

Coming in to The Haven is helpful. It reminds me that at times I've cared about being a writer, about creating things and maybe I will again.

I've been working, a sentence or bullet point at a time, on a memoir of our marriage. Are we still married? For time and eternity? He is in the house, or his spirit is, but Matthew's Jesus is very clear that there is no "giving in marriage" in the afterlife. Were we together in a past life and will we be together in the next? I wonder about these things.

Will I understand our life if I write about it?

Will I understand myself if I write about it? 

 

That Gosh Darn Rage

I am now going to The Haven in the afternoon, hoping that the free beer will make up for not being here in the early morning. I look at the river full of boaters and feel anger.  I drive through town and see all the new buildings and feel anger. I forget things and feel anger. My computer doesn't work right and I feel anger. 

And the inner violence since September.  That's been interesting. 

The world is a terrible beautiful place. I feel so much sadness for Texas and Gaza and Ukraine. All this horror in the world.  I'm am lucky to be safe.  Then why am I so sad and angry so much of the time?  Because I'm a crazy asshole.

I'm just as sad and angry and violent as any MAGA -- but I'm not stupid, so I guess that's the difference.  

I'm angry in part because I'm sober right now.  I really should get off weed because it's super bad for my health but really, who cares?  I just hope the heart attack that takes me out does it quickly and completely.  I hope I don't stroke out. But I've got enough $$ to pay people to take care of me since I don't have children or a young wife. I've fixed my will so that Lilli Ann will get some money and take control of the animals when I go.  It cost me $380 to change one name to another name in my will. Fuck lawyers.

Dear Will:

Do you remember when we joked about this Shakespearean sonnet? 

We're all cracked!

Sonnet 135: Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will

One will of mine, to make thy large Will more.

   Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

   Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

 You were sexy smart when we first got together. I wonder how much of my own rage you carried for me in your crankiness?

I think about you every time I'm at the dog park and a pup comes over for one of my dog's treats and I say to them, "Is yo name Miss Sequel?" I remember you quoting Louise Beavers' line from Holiday Inn ("Is yo name Miss Linda?") to the kitties when they were complaining. So I quote her and think of you.

I feel like the famous joke, 

    "Dr., after my hand surgery, will I be able to play the violin?"
     "Why, of course" 
    "That's funny, I never could before."

I wasn't mentally healthy before you died, there's no reason to assume I'm going to be mentally healthy in the future, no matter how much therapy I get.  It's just not something I ever was. As you know.

Thanks for playing with the light again. Thanks for continuing to care about me.

You know, as I work on my memoir, I'm reminded that it might have saved both of us from a lot of pain if you'd ever told me that I was attractive to you or that you were in love with me.

But, that's blood under the bridge.

Miss you terribly,

Kake 

 

 

And Yet Another Forgotten Poem

 Your Mouth A Cave

 

 

I fell and fell and fell

for one year, black

the bouldered walls 

the circle of stone

in that one episode

you know the one

where the British detective

is always too late to prevent

the second murder, the body

in the well.

                        The first

murder is without metaphor.

 

But I was falling down that

well, that cave, it’s stony

circle glittering with stars

green cities drowning in

the half-green moon below.

 

I kept it’s image on my phone.

 

In midst of two thousand

shots of friends and flowers

and dogs, our dogs, and San

Francisco, New York, Seattle,

 

there in the middle of things,

in medias res, is your

 

dead face, mouth agape.

 

For one year I kept

that image with me near

that other one of our dead dog

remembering that curly hair

against my face

after the death chemical

coursed through her.

 

Birdy about to receive the needle.

Another Forgotten Poem

Miró's Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit, 1947,

In España

 

 

Our first time in Europe

Miro was everywhere in Madrid.

 

Oh Ghost, do you remember?

The gallery, the museum, the

 

posters on the busses, how the

wild squiggles and balls commanded

 

walls around the city. How

we found the little restaurant

 

Rick Steves recommended,

before he was Ricksteves.com,

 

there beside the railroad bridge

that bore a Miro-like graffito.

 

How the tiny fried fish were

so delicious, bones and all.

 

And now you’re in the earth,

bones and all, but not this

 

presence. This unpredictable

presence. How like you it is.

 

How like this strange and beautiful

symbology of black, white, blue,

and red, the spiders and sperm,

the bodiless hands, and sweet

notes the memory of you

arising like a Miro unrolling

on an early, pre-intel laptop screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kakehuck (c) 2023 

 

 

Back at The Haven

 After letting a couple thousand dollars of unused time slip away from me I am finally back at the Haven, looking out the window at the boarders on the river.  It would be fun to be out there if I had someone to go with.  Someday.  

I've decided to start coming in at 3 pm for a beer and some time at the computer.  Mid-afternoon and early evening is a lousy time to be at home or with the dogs anyway. So Sequel and Winston are inside.   I don't know where Miss Poppy is but she'll show up when I go back home.

Dear Will:

I thought of you last week when I spent $7 on a handful of apricots. I remembered the fourth Salt Lake residence, the polygamous house, with the giant ancient apricot tree in the neighbors' yard.  I remembered getting up on the roof and bagging pounds and pounds of cots. You made jam that we froze and ate the rest of the year.

Missing you,

Love, Kake

As I review the writing I'm going to be putting together at The Haven this month, I ran into this poem, written since Will died but I don't know when.

WILL AND HIS GRACE

(c) kake huck 2023

You were happy
when that poem about 
us fucking on the side
of an almost empty highway
in the middle of Nevada
made it into an anthology

but not so joyful
when I performed
my money-making,
award winning
poem about the woman
artist I delighted in
New Mexico ...
it displayed my naked
pirate heart.

Nevertheless, when
I asked how you managed
living with those poems
with those confessions,
(by which I meant, of course,
with me)

you said, with your gangly,
earthy, angelic grace, "It's
just a life in the arts, I guess."

And put your arm around
my shoulders.

 

So this is a thing . . .

 I wrote this last Sunday

Watching digitized 1992 Will

On Friday I was in the bedroom and asked Alexa to play OPB on TuneIn while I was changing clothes. I hated the news as soon as it came on so said, "Alexa Stop!" and she did.  Then I asked her to play a particular song from Amazon music ...  Statler Bros., maybe.  I finished dressing before the song was over and asked her to turn off.  She did.  Then as I was leaving the room she popped back on playing something.  I told her, "Alexa stop" and she didn't.  I told her again.  She didn't.  So I stood there listening to the words, "Hard times come again no more ..."  The piece, by some camerata, ended and an announcer came on and said that the song was from Ken Burns Civil War. When I told Alexa to stop once more, she did.

Will loved this song.  He loved Americana and played the Ken Burns' Civil War soundtrack often for a few years after we watched it.  I know he would not like or does not like how sad I remain. Perhaps this technical difficulty was him speaking to me once more. That's how I felt when I heard it.

 

 

Moving In Mind

 Dear Will:

We didn’t move in 2014 because you had developed dementia and it would have further damaged you.

I haven’t had the energy to move since you died. I may never have the energy, as much as I dislike Bend and don’t like to think about dying there.  So I’ve been on a trip looking at the valley, thinking about whether or not I want to move over here. I made half assed preparations for this trip and have had a bit of a half-assed time, but I for sure figured out that I don’t want to move to Corvallis.

Three Ladies from The Magic Flute

Right now I’m sitting in the Magic Flute room at McMenamins Grand Lodge. Since this Hotel is constructed in the reframed old people’s Masonic Grand Lodge, it’s very appropriate to have Mozart playing 24/7 in this room.  It may even be the opera itself.  At this moment in time it IS the overture playing.

My grief is much more manageable, though I’ve been crying at odd times. When I dropped in on Steve and Kate I cried on the way up their gravel driveway because you were with me the last time I saw them.

I still get frustrated too quickly and get angry and irritated when things don’t go my way.  I need to work harder on chilling out.

Love you always,

Kake

Visiting Marion

 Dear Will --

Our friend Marion is sure that she's going to be visiting spirits with our friend Lorna soon.  Lorna is for sure dying and Marion feels it as her Parkinsons is getting more difficult to manage.

On Sunday I brought a collections of pictures of you to share with her.  It was good talking about you with the only other person here who really knew you, at least as far as it was possible to know the Cat Who Walked By Himself (and all people and places were alike to him.) 

I still miss you every day but the grief is lighter, softer, and not quite so physical.

Love, 

Kake 

 

 

A Toddlin' Town!

 Dear Will --

from abc news

The new Pope was born in Chicago the same year you were going to school there!  Ish.  Within a year. (I forget your exact years - just remember you got to Poky in 1957.)  He's just two years younger than I.  He's spent most of his life outside of the US, most of it in Peru.

Anyway, that's pretty interesting to me, the pope born in Chicago.  I know you had in life a bit of a bias against "popery". 

I hope he keeps the late Francis' commitment to social justice and love.

I must admit I love the drama and pageantry of the catholic tradition.  I also love the postmodern touch of bishops wearing their long, black cassocks in the courtyards, looking at their phones. I had my eyes on the live feed during the book club discussion this morning.

I've been listening to a book called Let Them -- recommended to me by two folks at church.  It doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know but that I have forgotten during dementia-care and widowhood. It's a mix of stoicism, zen, and pop psychology.  The author tells a story early on that convict me -- about getting upset at friends not connecting with her and being driven crazy by seeing social media posts of a friend group on a trip "without me."  At the time she was very sad.  But later, when she wrote the book, after applying what she calls the "let them theory," she sees the role she plays in her own unhappiness.  The greatest unhappiness comes from wanting life to be different than it is.  The Buddha would say suffering is a result of desire.  End desire, especially the desire for things to be different than they are, and you end unhappiness.  That's the concept, anyway.  And the book is all about that  -- letting people do and be who they are.  I knew all this when I taught and I was very able to be quite detached from what students thought of me.

Your decline and death, however, kind of broke my ability to manage my emotions, even though I taught for 30 years about managing emotions.  Sigh.

But things are getting better.  The book is a good reminder for me.  And I'm getting more skilled at getting along in the world without needing to control everything around me. 

The book is helpful with new-to-me info on adult friendships -- which I really didn't think much about until I retired. And then I let my focus first on my "new work" - as a celebrant - and then my focus on you captured my limited ability to hang with people. Also it's what every fucking therapist has told me - that I need to "rescue myself" (with God's help, I always add).

You've told me through mediums to choose to be happy.  It's been hard until recently.  I still miss you. I still grieve.  But I'm also getting better at being happy around other people.

As long as there aren't too many of them all at once.

Love,

Kake

In the Midst of Life

 we are in death.  "A truer word was never said," continues Sabina, who I'll always see as Adrianne Davidson, who performed the role of the Eternal Other Woman in our high school production of The Skin of Our Teeth, a much shortened version of the too-long original play by Thornton Wilder. Although Wikipedia has forced me to pause for a moment as I fantasize about the 1942 Broadway version with Miss Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, Frederick March as George Antrobus, and Montgomery Clift as Henry.

I quoted this line from the Book of Common Prayer (service for the dead) during our 8am zoomy sermon discussion group.  These folks are such a saving grace for me. Anyway, we're all old.  I'm second youngest. We had a great discussion circling around Gaye Lawson's sermon on fear and hope (bouncing off the Gospel reading, John 19-31). Part of the discussion was around death as we talked about a group member's learning that his senior living facility refuses to put information about clients' deaths in their in-house bulletin. 

Mainstream American culture deals so poorly with death. 

Anyway, this thoughts rose up again yesterday when I got this email notification:

 

Last year around May 4th was the last time I saw Kathy.  She was very calm about her approaching demise, one that she herself controlled. As my friend Lorna is.

I will take hope and inspiration from them.

Thank you

 Dear Will. --

Thank you for showing up again to turn off the lights without the help of Alexa.

Love you,

Kake 

PS: My friend David thinks I'm a bit delulu because he's such a strict materialist -- but his beloved wife is LDS so he's comfortable with loving someone who just believes.

Another Friend Transitioning

 Dear Will -- 

Another of our friends, more my friend, is transitioning soon - in a month or so.  Maybe your souls will run into each other.

Another couple of friends have experienced a less permanent but more wrenching transition as the husband has had to enter memory care.

 I didn't know when I worked on The Skin of Our Teeth in high school that Sabina was quoting a medieval chant, Media vita in morte sumus , when she says, "In the midst of life we are in death.  A truer word was never said." I have quoted Sabina since then, combining this statement with her famous, "Eat your ice cream while it's on your plate, that's my philosophy."

I cried in church on Sunday during the beautiful sermon. I contributed money to the flowers this year and dedicated some to you.  

Sometimes I want to stop missing you.  But then I worry that I will lose our relationship.  Three years ago Sarah told me that grief is now our relationship.  If this pain is what it takes to keep our relationship, I'm still willing to feel it.

As if I had a choice.

love always

kake

Interesting Times

 While I feel very blessed to have investments that should cover my commitment to memory care some years from now, I am kinda pissed off to have lost forty grand over the past couple of weeks. 

It cost me $1900 to have my taxes done, another mark that I'm well-to-do, as was the $295 charge to change a single name in my last will.

Note to MAGA: I just wish George Soros had paid me to be in the protest on Saturday.

My friend Carol had an idea of how to deal with all my friendship losses, including those from a quarter century ago that my grief therapist says I carry around like a big rock in my backpack.   Carol suggested a ritual and I think that's a terrific idea -- a ritual to release myself from caring about the people who don't care about me anymore. A ritual to remind myself that if people don't want to spend time with me, that's about them, not about me. I get to stop thinking about what a terrible, horrible, very bad person I am. And just laugh when someone who has told me they don't have time for me expresses concerns for my health to another person.  So I've been working out what would be a good series of actions and words to tell myself that if people don't want to hang with me it's okay and their loss, not mine.  Illegitimi non carborundum.

On the home front, I finally received the Vietnamese crocheted Will doll.  Sadly, it has black hair which I didn't notice when I reviewed the doll so I've had to paint the hair threads silver. Now this doll will help me watch new movies and old film noir without feeling so alone.

Bad Wednesday

So the day after I felt so good I went into a deep decline. Wednesday was terrible. After my workout I started crying and cried off and on for about an hour and I had a repeat of that later in the day, crying for a few hours.  

About what?

Missing my best friend.  Missing having anyone willing to check in on me regularly. Very narcissistic pains. Feeling alone in the world. Believing that I'm going to die alone and unwept in a city I despise.

I'd started off the morning thinking I would write about one of the great friendships I'd seen, admired, and envied.  A friendship I thought I'd be able to copy someday but never have.  The friendship of Bruce Loebs and Bob Swanson at ISU.  They had coffee together at Elmers most mornings through at least 30 years. 

Whatever it is inside a person that makes that kind of friendship possible, I've never had it, though I've hungered for it. 

Because I was thinking about him I looked up Bruce and found out that he died in 2022 and that his son Blake, a person I remember as a beautiful young man but hadn't seen since the early 80s, had preceded him in death. Bruce was a great boss and helped me get out of Pocatello. When I was first in the theatre department there, I was part of a group that teased Bruce by being noisy outside his office and making him run out and shush-yell at us. Then in my masters program, when I turned from Theatre (with its awful teachers) to speech, he became my thesis director and boss of my first teaching gig.  When I became a teacher,   I turned into the person who ran out of my office to shush people. 

And that's the kind of humorous insight I can have this morning. On Wednesday the mental pain was so severe that I could do little else but cry and walk the dogs. The mental pain was physical in that I couldn't stop crying -- the sobs came from my gut and wouldn't quit. But I didn't call anyone and I wasn't suicidal nor did I think about cutting myself. And even in those times when I have been self harming, I haven't really wanted to die or hurt -- I've just wanted the interior pain to stop.

On the plus side this week, I had coffee with another widow, got a nice note from one of my nephews, and had a good videochat with my friend Diana.  

I also decided to unfriend the folks on Facebook who didn't have time for me and not think of them as my friends anymore.  Both of them gave me nice presents in the past that I'm now going to take to the Humane Society because they just mean sorrow to me now.  One of the presents actually frees up wall space so I need to buy another picture of a Scottish loch.

Sage Advice Today

 I've been having a lot of sadness for the past couple of months ... lots of tears through February.  Sarah and I decided to go back to a once a week schedule. Today she gave me a lot of good advice some of which I could hear through my sobbing.  

Monty Python Pictures Ltd.

1. She reminded me that many others who grieve have the same problem with loss of friends.  It's true that misery loves company but that's mostly because the pain of ongoing depression and grief in a world which wants everyone to be happy all the fucking time makes one feel like an outsider.  I have felt like a truly terrible person because of my experience with friends not wanting to be friends with me anymore.  If I were a likeable person, wouldn't people want to be with me? I told Sarah about dead Kathy's advice to be amiable Sarah talked about advice she'd given other grievers whose friends no longer want to be friends with them.  "You are not terrible people.  But you [ed: and the pain you carry] ARE terrifying to people."

2. She said, "Decision-fatigue is a thing." I have gone from making decisions only in a few select areas to making decisions about all the things (like a normal person) and I get tired of having to be the one in charge of my life when there used to be someone else carrying the weight with me.  And I know that Jesus says "My yoke is easy and my burden in light" but I am actually finding being Christian these days is also challenging.  Thanks, Dan McLellan.

3. She told me to get rest but easier said than done. I've been getting along on a broken sleep of about 6 hours when it's not 5 -- waking up most nights at 2:30 or 3.

4. One aspect of my sadness is my inability to know who I am and what I want and yet knowing that living in a place I hate so deeply isn't it.  Sarah came up with this visual metaphor.  She waved her hand in the air saying that "this is inside" scattered and amorphous. And then she dropped her hand like locking something down and said, "Yet you are imprisoned in Bend."  And that's it.  I feel stuck here.  imprisoned.  There is nothing for me here except a few people, my house, and a beautiful church.  But I can serve in any church. I have too much freedom in my head and not enough freedom in my life (because of my own fear).

5. She also reminded me, yet again, that I have been much more functional than I am right now and I probably will be again (whether or not I believe it).

6. She reminded me again that now that much of the initial feelings of loss have subsided, what I'm feeling is the requirement that I learn to live in the world on my own and that just still feels overwhelming to me and, after 50 years of bonding with another person until they became my ground of being, that's not so surprising.  "This is the first time you've been a widow." It's very hard for me to project further into the future than my next altar guild job.

 7. She also checked in to ask if I'd thought about cutting myself and I haven't had those thoughts. 

8. She also said that raising a dog, let alone taking care of two dogs on one's own is a challenge.  I had confessed that I don't love Sequel yet. I am caring for her but she hasn't been making herself lovable. She threatened me last week - teeth bared and everything. She is definitely not my baybe. But I am her pack leader and I made a commitment to her. But I know she would much rather be in a houseful of other puppies. Nevertheless, I don't want to send her away to dog sleep-away camp and won't give her up.

9. Sarah agreed that living in America during the crumbling of empire is exhausting all by itself.

Mental Breakdown

 I had a breakdown at the end of the service Sunday.

I made a mistake and read the wrong reading - totally my own fault. I practiced the right reading but the Liturgy was marked incorrectly (I'd marked it -- and somehow found the wrong reading in Exodus - totally sober). Then I apologized and had to decide whether to back up and chose the correct reading or go on with the psalm and I went on with the psalm which I got through correctly.

I sat down and was so embarrassed and started to feel like god was telling me to step down. I started hating on myself and missing Will and I fell into that deep well which usually only the people I feel closest to see and I was hiccup crying. My friend from the Tuesday group, Barbara,  came to me and told me that people care about me and "love" me but I don't feel the love of "people"  though I'm glad Barbara considers me a friend.  Then Susan and Nancy, her Mom, and Elizabeth the priest came over where I was picking up stuff to do my altar guild thing and they assured me that everyone makes mistakes. They finally calmed me down. Susan talked about her own therapist and her struggle with low self esteem.

Nancy gave me a hug and said not to believe "the enemy."  My friend Rev. Noah also uses that term.  Maybe it would be helpful to think of that force of self hatred as "the enemy." Maybe I'd be more interested in fighting it if it were outside of me.

I've been feeling really scared and hopeless about the world.  I keep thinking about buying a bigger, more dangerous gun.

Oh well. Protest against the Grifter this afternoon.  I hope that cheers me up. 

Missed Connections

 Dear Will:

A few events I wish I could tell you about, though I'm just as happy you're not alive to experience the era of the Grifter-in-Chief.  You were so scared when we came back to all the yellow ribbons in December, 2001. The McCarthy era gave you a bone deep fear of fascists.

The death of a lovely woman who was a terrible poet that you made fun of for years because I'd forced you to sit through a reading we shared. When one of my book group friends told me about her passing, I instantly felt a connection to you.

The final days of Marty's store. I remember when we joked for months about the billboard on Revere with her and her son in boxing gloves because they had the two different stores. And how delighted you were to get gossip about the son from Nancy W.

And in a happy circumstance, Sequel and I were walking the loop at Riverbend Park and near the metal draw horses we ran into an old friend of Birdy's! Not the dog ... he had gone over the rainbow bridge, but the female primate recognized me as Birdy's packleader.  She was also a long ago former student.  She understood Sequel's name immediately!

 And finally, I was thinking about Jim A.'s tomato comments and how much we laughed at them for years after the meeting in Chicago.

I'm more often able to miss you now without crying.

Love always,

kake

 

BLECH Taxes

When I took in a folder of 1099s and other documents to my accountant today, I joshed with Dan, the administrative assistant.  He said the banks were slow getting the 1099s out and I said "Who knows if there's going to be a government in April or even if we'll have to pay taxes ever again."  Jk.

The Tribute Money by Peter Paul Rubens

 Back in the day, pre-2012, when Will did our taxes, every year was a struggle because until I actually did the taxes myself, I didn't really understand the process.  In the two years I was actually in charge of personally doing the taxes, I made mistakes each year, once in the government's favor, once in ours.  Now, because of the complexity of my finances (those two trusts), I have an accounting firm.

Nevertheless, I still need to collect the data of all my donations (sometimes given when I'm high) so I actually need to roll through my four main email accounts and my Paypal. (Used to be going through my checkbooks.) I no longer keep track of mileage to the doctor and Costco, however.  That's just a bit too much detail.

Looks like I've got good medical deductions this year since I no longer have dental insurance and had three major dental events. My donations were under 17 grand I think, though I'm not completely finished figuring them out.

This year my accountant's business has a new online program to help folks work through what they need to think about.  There are a lot of questions, some of which I have to leave up to the Ed Jones folks to answer as most of what goes on in my investments happens while I'm not watching.  For example, I know I have foreign investments but I don't know what they are or what they're doing (unless I actually read my portfolio). I trust the people who watch out for me.

Other questions focused on all the various things that might count as deductions. I found out that I hadn't paid two of my estimated taxes (I thought I had but the online machinery I used didn't work).  So paid those late. There was also a question about "gifts" and I found out that while no gifts under eighteen grand are counted, the IRS was interested in any amount of forgiven debt. I forgave an eight thousand dollar debt this year so I reported that but I'm not sure, from reading the rules, whether or not the forgivee will have to pay taxes on it. I don't think there are any tax associated implications for me.

I still have a few more documents to get in before Thursday, my deadline.  And then, if I've behaved as I have in the past, there will still be a few things missing and Chelsea will have to email me a list. 

I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by the whole business IF MY STREET WERE SNOWPLOWED. I know -- has nothing to do with the feds or the state but still, it's my most annoying relationship with any government agency.

Oh well. "Whose picture is on the coin?" Caesar's. So send all your fucking coins back to the dude.

I used to have a friend who protested government actions by not paying his taxes. I'd like to think I'd never do that but who knows what the future holds as our empire crumbles. Sometimes I think the Grifter in Chief is just chickens coming home to roost for a country that spent a century destabilizing other countries. I'm happy well Will isn't here to see what's happening but he'd be proud of me for continuing to take care of my few responsibilities.