Fin - Epiphany

End title of Truffaut's Jules et Jim

I woke up this morning with a strong image from last night's dream.  I haven't remembered my dreams for years, due to my heavy marijuana use.  I've now been sober for a month and my dreams are returning. 

The image was of a tall man thin man in a black suit and bowler hat walking away from me.  His arms hang down at his side with his hands slightly behind his back.  He is waving his hands, bent at the wrists, back and forth behind his butt. Something tells me the image is of Bill Nighy.

Our dreams make use of the detritus of the day to tell us something important. This image, built on the recent trailers for Living, the new Bill Nighy film, is telling me that the Will living in my unconscious is saying, "Goodbye." 

 

 

 

 

Good-bye, sweetheart.

 

More Pictures in No Particular Order

On our porch, Pocatello, '70s. I disposed of this coat after he died.

Reading in the book corner, Bend, late 90s.

The deck in Bend, a visit from my step mom and dad, early 90s

He is wearing a shirt from Mildred's (Pierce - super queer reference) Restaurant in San Francisco. The chair he purchased with the Pocatello house in 1973.

 

Visiting Pocatello, late 90s, early 00s.

Being goofy trying to stick his finger in the nose of a famous person on a subway wall.

In Florence, 2001, age 71

Pictures in No Particular Order 1

In Los Gatos before we were married

With a future doctor, early80s

 

 

 

with a niece, 70s or 80s

 

 

 

early time in Bend, '92(?)

being goofy in Pocatello, late 70s, early 80s

 

Today

was a hard day.  

Photo by Joseph Barrientos on Unsplash

I was in serious emotional pain and then my mind went into the loop of hating myself because I felt ashamed of my pain. And then I wanted to cut myself to get out of the loop.  Finally, I texted Sarah and told her that while I wasn't cutting myself I really, really, wanted to.  She called a little later, just before my dishwasher shift at Family Kitchen, and reminded me that this was an old script and that I am creating a new brain that doesn't need to fall into the old script. She told me to look at a familiar positive picture of Will when I got home to take the image of his death out of my head. She reminded me that Agnes the Velociraptor has my back.  So I kept crying through my first hour of dishwashing and then my brain settled down for the next two hours. I put a piece of paper towel in one ear so I wouldn't hear the fucking Christmas music and listened to OTR detective radio through my hearing aid. It was a pretty easy night as there were only two pans with serious baked on stuff. Now I'm home, drinking American whiskey and will watch a little TV before going to bed with my dog.

Count Down - 7 Days till D-Day

 Death day approaches.

Letting Go

 Dear Will --

I had the realization this morning that the reason I've been so locked into grief is that it's the only relationship I have with you, especially now that your ghost is gone.

This is the first morning I've cried since Thursday when I had my first ketamine treatment.  I was so happy after the treatment.  The drug was powerful and helped me tune into my deep self again, a self that knew how to survive and thrive even with the interior despair and self hate.  A self that managed that despair through magical thinking, humor, and sex.

Sweetheart, I need to tell the Will inside me to set my own will free. Already, the great rock of grief in my chest has been withdrawn. I feel like I can function again, can do things.  So even though I am crying this morning, I know I am becoming free. Not free of my love for you which is for as long as I live, but free from the interior command to bury my mind beside you in the cold, cold ground.

There are people who love and support me, even though I still put two spaces after a period.  If I ever want sex again, there's ample opportunity to connect through the interwebs, if I want to, even for an old unicorn like myself. I have access to more distracting entertainment than ever dreamed of in my one tv station days.  And I still have a relatively good mind, even though my memory sucks (as it has since 6th grade when I couldn't remember the names of all my classmates and had to read their names off the back of a clay skull when I was the announcer for our 6th grade version of A Cask of Amontillado).  I have enough money to support my end life in-care if I get dementia (unless I am diagnosed with Alz or LB dementia, in which case I'll off myself). My bones are still good, I don't have cancer, and I'm not in pain all the time like some of my friends. So, my life is good.

The anniversary of your death is approaching slowly.  I will create a ritual for Boxing Day and then end this blog on that day.  

Or not.  We'll see.

When I Wear Purple

 So Cindy gave us a prompt to write about what we would do when we were "mature" -- based on the famous Jenny Joseph poem, "Warning" that begins, 

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

I got so many kind words for this piece.  Cindy said she would have known that I wrote it even if I hadn't put my name on it.  Another student said that I was the most honest writer she'd ever heard.

 

Kake Wearing Purple

 

I have always worn purple with a red hat, even when I didn’t know it.

 

When I was in eighth grade, I was standing at my locker between classes when another girl said to me, “So you’re Kakie Hanson.  I’ve heard of you.”  I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask, “What have you heard” because I was so shocked anyone knew me at all.  But the way I dressed and acted made me visible to others.  I dressed in clothes my mom made, rarely fashionable.  I acted like “myself.”  My mom always told me, “Be yourself” and I have been because, frankly, there was no other person to be. 

Over time, I’ve learned how to justify, explain, or apologize for my differences from others, sometimes when I couldn’t figure out just what it was others were concerned or complaining about.  I would just apologize.  

 

When I taught college, I began by wearing suits, as any good public speaking teacher would.  But in Central Oregon in 1988, that made me look highly suspicious.  It took a few years to figure out that wearing jeans and a blazer or sweater would make me look more normal (and get me higher teacher evaluations). And I always like to do some color matching in my clothes, which also made me stand out.

 

Here are some remembered reflections on my attire.  When I was teaching, after I wore a striped costume on Halloween, a student complained that I walked around looking like a bee and that I shouldn’t be allowed to teach because I was clearly nuts. A friend once gave me a painting of a peacock saying it reminded her of me. The vice president of instruction once asked me why I dressed to call attention to myself.

 

So pretty much all my life I’ve been annoying someone with both my clothing and my way of being in the world.

 

My favorite story is about New Years, 1980 when I found out that my hip and cool queer best friend had some of the same values as my body fearing Catholic Mom.  Mom had found an old 50s dress for me to wear to my friend Lee’s party in San Francisco.  It was sheer black net with horizontal stripes of black velvet ribbon. It fit skin tight on top and the skirt flared out.  It was intended to be worn with something under the top but it fit pretty skin tight on me.  I didn’t want to wear a dress with a bra showing. So I decided, as the current trend was toward showing body parts, that I would wear it with just a half-slip under and nothing else.  The stripes across the chest were not strategically placed.   When I showed the outfit it to my Mom and my husband, he was okay with it, having seen me in the past in similarly provocative outfits.   But Mom said, “Wouldn’t you like some band-aids with that?” We all laughed and I said, “No.”  I knew women in San Francisco and New York were not afraid of showing nipples so why should I be?

 

And then, when we got up to the tres gay household of my friend in The City and I put on the dress for the party, what did he say?  “Wouldn’t you like some band-aids with that?”

 

So then I knew that it was my older spouse, an eccentric himself, who was the real outlier, not my supposedly radical friend.

 

So when it comes to my clothing, after over a half century of being commented on, I have no fucks left to give.