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