Better With God's Help

Yesterday I had brief interactions with two old friends (separately) who let me know they don't have any time for me anymore. 

It didn't break me.  (confetti toss, trumpet voluntary)

I did wind up crying for a couple of hours, off and on, but my chest didn't tighten and I didn't seek to harm myself.  I still want to tell each of them how sad they "make" me but I know it's only me making me sad. So I won't tell them. I'll write about it here because I know neither of them reads this. 

my mom used to climb these little hills

Not having my chest tighten was probably the result of the praying I've been doing. I've asked God to soften my heart.  I no longer have any anger at people who don't want to be with me. I understand it.

People want to be around someone who is cheerful and amiable. That's what dead Kathy told me.

Also, young people don't want to be around an old person, and other old people don't want to be around a sad old person.

So I'm doing my best to construct someone likable and happy go lucky.  It's not easy, especially when the tears are ready, especially when seeing people I love who don't love me back and are smiling at me and hugging me and then walking away as if the hug wasn't just like a slap.  But I understand that I'm sad and crazy and difficult and accept that people don't want to be around that. Also, when I do feel good, so many of the jokes that pop into my head are NSFW so I shut the fuck up rather than sharing.  This choice, while respectful, also reminds me that I don't fit in with the people I spend most of my time with.

Kathy would tell me it doesn't matter.  Just suck it up.  Accept the crumbs and call them a meal. That's what loving Jesus is supposed to do -- turn all the emotional love crumbs into a satisfying lunch. I've been praying on that, too. If God wants me to stay alive, I pray, "give me energy and tell me what the actual fuck I'm supposed to be doing."

I know that most everyone on earth has it worse than I.  I am very lucky and privileged to have warmth and food and safety and two poodles. And a cat.  It helps to remind myself of that. It's my narcissism that makes me want people who love me for myself.

Thank God for Diana (hi!). When I was broken on January 3 when I saw what I saw on FB and wanted so much just for the hurting to stop and the only way I knew to do that was to hurt myself, she called me and showed me that there was one person who liked me as I am and that I don't have to build someone to be with her.  I told her how most of my life I have prayed to be somebody different and she told me not to make such a prayer.  She told me I wasn't terrible.  Thank you, Diana.  And thank you again for the wonderful cup that expresses our friendship.

Diana rescued me, which is something broken EType4s seek.  And I recognize that right now I am not healthy.*

The problem is, of course, that I have to want to rescue myself, as I've been told over and over (and over and over and over and over). I need to grow a pair.  But where do I get the energy to want to do that?  I have money, so no need to do anything to get money.  There is no one who needs or depends on me except my animals and today I'll contact my lawyer to make sure to change the care person to my friend Lilli Ann -- she grew up with poodles and I trust her to know how to place one, should I die before them.  

"Now you have all the time to do what you love.  Just do what you love."

And what is that? What do I love to do besides get high and take hot baths like the captain of the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B? In the past I've done art and written.

But what good is a collage if I can't show it to Will? What good is a poem if I can't read it to Will?  

Nevertheless, I keep trying to do things.  I keep taking classes. I keep blogging. I keep trying to surface.

But here's the Catch22 -- I have to be healthy enough to have the energy to rescue myself from my lack of health. How do I get the energy to rescue myself when I need to be rescued? I'll pray on it.

So, as the title says, I'm better.  Lots, lots better.  I'm not angry all the time.  I have had weeks during which I didn't cry (not lately but it's winter so wadayagonnado). I will get through this next month (the anniversaries of the rape and the family tragedy) by remaining in my addiction and then maybe, when spring comes, I'll try again to become mentally healthy and get off the pipe. We'll see. According to my previous calculations, I still have a year and a half for serious grief.

One thing I've learned during this grief journey is that it's not wise to make predictions.  And that's okay. What will be will be.  If God wants me to be more functional, the Good Lord will provide ways for that to happen.

You can't hurry God.  "He may not come when you want Him but he's right on time."

 

 

 

 

* From the Enneagram website

Unhealthy Levels

Level 7: When dreams fail, become self-inhibiting and angry at self, depressed and alienated from self and others, blocked and emotionally paralyzed. Ashamed of self, fatigued and unable to function.

Level 8: Tormented by delusional self-contempt, self-reproaches, self-hatred, and morbid thoughts: everything is a source of torment. Blaming others, they drive away anyone who tries to help them.

Level 9: Despairing, feel hopeless and become self-destructive, possibly abusing alcohol or drugs to escape. In the extreme: emotional breakdown or suicide is likely. Generally corresponds to the Avoidant, Depressive, and Narcissistic personality disorders.

when what I want to be is healthy:

Healthy Levels

Level 1 (At Their Best): Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing and regenerating: able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: self-creative.

Level 2: Self-aware, introspective, on the “search for self,” aware of feelings and inner impulses. Sensitive and intuitive both to self and others: gentle, tactful, compassionate.

Level 3: Highly personal, individualistic, “true to self.” Self-revealing, emotionally honest, humane. Ironic view of self and life: can be serious and funny, vulnerable and emotionally strong.

 

Christmas

 Dear Will:

I missed you yesterday but I didn’t cry, except a little when listening to “In the Bleak Midwinter” but then that always makes me tear up a bit.

I set a place for you at breakfast.

I had champagne and an ersatz cream cheese omelette with sour cream and caviar. I like sometimes having champagne and caviar for a meal just because I can. It used to be only a traveler’s frivolity. But I realized that I can also enjoy it at home. You wouldn’t like it.

We shared 47 or 48 Christmases with each other, the first nearly two decades at the Hanson then Hanson/Williams house.  Christmases in which everyone received a multitude of presents. We continued the tradition of many presents when we had our own Christmases in the Bend house.  As late at 2023 we each had a few presents under the tree, though I bought all of them except for those from my sister and maybe a friend or two.  

It strikes me, as I write this, how much I have forgotten.  You were always our memory palace.  Until the palace burned down. 

We shared our first Christmas season in the Bend house in 1990 with my Mom who had “pre-inherited” to us a bunch of furniture a short time before. She was so tiny when she visited and almost disappeared under the covers of our big bed. She told me in private how she was happy to see the two of us so settled (unsaid: “after your period of separation.”) She died on January 8, 1991, just a year older than I am now.

We had many wonderful Christmas times together here in Bend, beginning with the housewarming party that first December when I had all my invited friends and colleagues bring Christmas decorations.  I wanted to introduce you and enjoy the party “flow through” of our new house. And for years after that I could connect each one of those Christmas decorations with the person who brought it. The only ones I can actually remember now are the ones from Lilli Ann LF and Hal G.  Lilli Ann, my first friend in Bend, gave us a gold colored bauble with a picture of her baby Kit on it.  Hal gave us a silver star that I, decades later, gave to Trinity to put on one of its trees and in the complications after Christmas, it got lost.  I was sad for awhile about that because Hal, my second friend in Bend and one that I hoped you would get to know because you’d both taught similar things, died two years later of prostate cancer. I remember you saying that you purposefully didn’t get to know him because you didn’t want to lose another friend.

So yesterday, Christmas day, the household was up early.  I had a protein shake before church. I was altar guild and reader for the 10:00 am service in Trinity.  I read the selection from Titus with great gusto. During clean up, three other AG women who weren’t on duty just stepped up to help. That felt great.

Among the things I can’t remember is how I spent Christmas Day, 2021, after you screamed at me and then, a short time later, went into your death coma. 

I don’t remember how long ago I bought the “new tree” after the one of many decades started shedding. I’ve been trying to get rid of it and will probably just take it to the dump to the dump to the dump dump dump around the 12th Day of Christmas. I still have many of our old tree decorations in storage in the basement, including the last of those I made as a child and two that Sally brought back from Mexico in 1963.

I can no longer bear a tree in the house but my need for retail therapy got me to buy myself a tree forest.

I am making a new way for myself. 

Love,

Kake

Last Piece written for Writing Love and Loss

We had our last Writing Love and Loss class tonight.  I missed last week because of google calendar user error.  I wrote this for tonight.

----------------------------

December 16, 2021

As we were waiting for the funeral home to carry my husband’s body away, I talked about oral sex. 

In what I assume now were slightly hysterical tones, I talked about how we got together in 1971 when I was barely 18 and he was 41.  How I’d followed him home after my Aunt Huldah’s birthday party, a late-into-the-night gab feast where a reefer was passed around my grandfather’s great, round, oak table. I told the hospice nurse and my friend Stacey the story of how I had seduced the skinny, bearded English professor. I reveled in having experienced such a non-traditional beginning for a marriage of almost five decades.

I called our for-profit hospice early that Boxing Day after waking and finding him in the same position in the hospital bed that he’d held since the terrible morning before. His temperature was 105 and he was unconscious.  I called the hospice but no one could get to me until 3 pm.  When the nurse arrived she almost immediately “called it,” as they say on medical TV.

I had thought I would want to clean him, as I had the old fellow who had been my hospice client back in the 90s.  That gentlemen, who was almost as skinny at his death as Will became, was my “client” (I was a volunteer) for almost 6 months.  As he was dying of lung cancer, he was also teaching me to play the guitar. He left the earth with far more of himself than my sweetheart.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at his death. I got the call that his dying was active right before I was to give a test at the college where I worked. I felt a responsibility to the school and my students and so missed my client’s actual death.  But when I finally arrived at his home, I was able to help the hospice nurse clean his body.  I had imagined at the time that I might do the same for my older husband some day.

But the day in 2021 when Will died, the nurse wasn’t focused on cleaning him.  She just did her job then waited with my friend and me as I babbled.   I was exhausted and giddy with relief. For the seven years I lived with his dementia I knew it would end in death. My goal had been to postpone the end as long as possible – until it wasn’t.  Until his 6 foot frame reduced to 112 pounds and he was eating only lemon drops and protein juice.

At the end, his life force was so strong that his body held on past its time.  The Hospice chaplain and I had spent hours the previous week, the week Will entered the hospital bed, telling him about the glories of the “other side.” Pastor Noah spoke mostly about the joy of being with Jesus.  I told my old sweetheart he would meet up with the cat and dog he had loved, June Jumpha and Princess Birdy.

 And then he was dead. At last the long struggle was over. I imagined in that moment that I would soon dive into dating, find a man or woman friend with benefits and become a Merry Widow.  For some reason, because I’d experienced pretty severe grief for the final four of the dementia years, I thought I’d be freed.  

Instead, my heart and mind became a scene of devastation.  I hadn’t understood that in spite of our life as friends, as private people, as psychologically separate individuals, being with him for fifty years was my foundation. He made it possible for me to live with my melancholia and manias without flying into madness. His were the eyes and arms that told me, no matter how great my sin, I would always be loved.

I have not felt at home in the world since he left it.

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.