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.