Detritus

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

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

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

Decision - Staying in Bend

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

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

The animal sculpture corner

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

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

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

4.  I love my perch at The Haven.

Another morning view at The Haven

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

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

7.  Will is buried here.

8. I have living friends here as well.

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

Downtimes

 Dear Will --

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

by Marissa at Jessee Monuments, Powell Butte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love those milleseconds when the last  9 years disappear.

Love always.

 

Memoir stuff

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

But ugh, long form prose.  

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

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

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

by Drone Snap

Eternal Return

Dear Will:

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

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

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

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

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

I miss you so much.

 

 

 

 

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

Yeats

Dear Will —

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

IN KINSALE

Roses blown in pink and red

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