It has been a little while in coming and, given what this weekend is, I wasn’t surprised when I boiled over today and had to leave work early. The combination of stresses in my life just got to be too much so I left rather than say or do something that could come back to haunt me.
Thirty-two years ago this week my sister Amy was in the hospital dying of leukemia. On the 18th she suffered grand mal seizures, and on the 20th she was transfered to St. Louis to a much larger hospital. The 24th was another day of seizures and intolerable pain for her as her body was ravaged by the cancer. On Christmas Day her symptoms eased and she had a few moments of peace before dying. It took me thirty years and a tremendous amount of work to finally put to rest the guilt and anger I didn’t understand at the time, and suffered with privately year after year.
The past several years has seen a return of a joyous Christmas for me, one of magic and beauty, giving and wonder. Michele played a pivotal role in this transformation. Learning to celebrate her birthday on the 24th was also a part of my growth. Along with Christmas my family had started to treat birthdays rather perfunctorily. Michele would have none of that.
So this weekend I am faced with three major events: the anniversary of Amy’s death, the first birthday spent without Michele, and the first Christmas spent alone too. All in two days time. Adding to this the impending loss of my job (14 working days away now), fear over my mother’s declining health, and some serious financial issues and I’m looking at a really joyous holiday weekend.
A rather minor and insignificant oversight at work today proved to be the straw and I just lost control. Rather than sit at my desk sobbing uncontrollably or lash out in rage I beat a hasty retreat and came to my apartment. I cried for a while and then called a very good friend who is an excellent listener. She called me back and I was able to dump all the anger, sorrow, fear, and helplessness out. It felt very good to just dump everything. I am exhausted now, but in a good way.
Moving through the next few days, and then the next couple of weeks is going to be very difficult. Nothing feels normal any more, and it is a sad commentary on my life that the best part of my day is being at work. Or it was until two weeks ago. I know that friends and family are all going to call to see how I am over the weekend. On the one hand this feels very good and on the other I am dreading their intrusion. never have I felt more acutely the truism that being loved is really about accepting what people give you and not expecting what you want.
On Monday it will be seventy-seven days since Michele died. On Wednesday I would have known her for ten years, three thousand, six hundred and fifty days. Today I feel a hundred thousand days old.
Several years ago I got hooked on the idea of electronic books. Thanks to a free reader for the Palm OS from eReader and a huge selection of titles there as well, I’ve amassed quite a collection of books on my hard drive.
The problem is tracking which ones I’ve read and which ones I haven’t. For lack of a better structure I create a folder for each author inside the ebookz folder, and I place their titles inside. Some times I purchase three or four new titles at a time, and they all disappear into various author folders. After reading the first one I often can’t remember which other ones I’ve recently purchased but not yet read.
Thankfully eReader provides an electronic bookshelf that lists all the books I’ve purchased, in purchase order. So periodically I visit the site, not to buy new books, but to discover which books I already own buy may have lost in the shuffle.
I don’t even know where to start about Christmas this year. I’m tempted to just say, “bah, humbug.” However, that feels too much like giving up and I’m not ready to go there.
At my own choosing I’ve set this weekend up to be entirely on my own, doing only what I want. Thanksgiving was good, and I appreciated having other people around to shelter me from the stark reality of a formerly special holiday without Michele. Once I realized that I was going to be okay then I wanted time by myself to commune with my memories of Michele and our Thanksgivings together. I resolved to spend her birthday and Christmas doing only things I wanted to do, and, more importantly, free to do whatever I needed in the moment to be okay. Spending those days (the 24th and 25th) with my family would erect numerous barriers to my need for flexibility around these two events.
So my current thinking is that Saturday I’ll visit the grocery store for the things I need to make Arroyz con Pollo and chili, and the video store for a movie or three. I know that turkey is traditional, but that was our favorite meal and I just can’t bring myself to make it and then eat it alone. I’d like to bake a cake for her birthday, but I can’t eat an entire only solo - maybe I’ll take the left over into work Tuesday and let my co-workers polish it off for me.
Christmas Day I want to watch all the old Christmas movies we own ending with It’s a Wonderful Life, one of her favorites; mine too. I’ll have eggnog and cookies to snack on, and take a nap or three. I’m sure there’ll be a good cry in there someplace. During our relationship I worked hard over a number of years to put the sorrow of Amy’s death into a better perspective and that ultimately allowed me to start having joy and magic around Christmas again. I know that I am still grieving her death but I want to try and at least celebrate the memories I have of her to offset my sadness. I feel it is appropriate to express both now, and healthy to have some balance between them.
I wish for all of you a Merry Christmas, filled with love and appreciation for the real gifts in your life. The gifts of friendship, of companionship, of love. Don’t get so lost in the commercial trappings that you lose your connection with the joy, wonder, and magic of sharing yourself with others.
The saga of my US Airlines exception refund continues. Shortly after Michele’s death I contacted Expedia about getting a refund for plane tickets we were never going to use. After some initial difficulty getting the paperwork into the pipeline, Expedia at least is working on it for me. Since it had been a month since they passed the paperwork on to US Air I thought I’d call them today for an update.
Imagine my surprise to learn that US Air hasn’t contacted Expedia at all. Picture the shock when I discovered that calling the US Air Refund Customer Service center toll-free number gets a recording saying that “we can’t take your call right now.” The woman at Expedia was very nice and she did try to reach US Air multiple times while I was on the phone with her. In the end she said we’d have to try again tomorrow.
Equipped with the ticket numbers and the US Air toll-free number I called myself a few minutes ago. The initial greeting tells you all about their useful web page where you can get all your questions answered online and please go there now. The first menu offers several enticing false options that will only lead to automated response systems. After listening to several choices I hear one that sounds like I’ll connect to a human. This sub-menu starts with its own greeting that tries to sell you on the sleek, modern benefits of their Internet site, and here’s the overly long and complicated web address so you can please go there now. Repeated. Twice.
Eventually I get a sub-sub-menu with an option to speak to a customer service representative. I poke that button and endure the obligatory “this message may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” spiel, and then a series of clicks. Next a message stating that I must have my 13-digit ticket numbers ready. More clicks. And finally:
“We are unable to take your call at this time. Please call again.”
Click.
Dial tone.
Shit.
This weekend I made my first solo road trip in almost nine years. Michele and I were good partners in the car and we enjoyed time spent traveling, whether listening to audio books, playing Twenty Questions, or just sharing the passing scenery.
It was strange to drive so far alone. I talked out loud to her quite a bit, but the silence at times was overpowering. I found myself becoming more and more manic in an effort to keep from facing the empty seat along side of me. Michele frequently wanted to stop at rest areas; in fact I often kidded her that she should write a book, Rest Areas I Have Known. In our trips to the east coast and back we often stopped at the same points along the way. Friday, and again this morning, I didn’t stop at any of the rest areas. But I was acutely aware of them nonetheless.
Returning to the apartment and seeing my cats was good. I’ve always believed that home is where the heart is, and since October I have not really considered this apartment home as my heart is with Michele. However, a part of my heart is with my two wonderful feline companions. Not seeing them for a couple of days was hard, and, just like when Michele and I traveled, starting off for “home” added a poignancy for little Taz and Nekko. As I write this, seated in the oversized chair, they are both on the chair with me, sleeping. I still feel homeless in a sense, but I had a good homecoming after my journey this weekend.
Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey towards my future took a step this weekend.
A few weeks after Michele’s death I went to a bar with some people from work to see a fellow work mate and his band play. It was good, and it got me out of the apartment for a few hours at a time when I need diversions. In the days that followed my bass-playing friend and I discussed music quite a bit. He gave me a CD called One Fair Summer Evening by Nanci Griffith. Although more “country” than I normally prefer, her voice is liquid smooth and the live recording is very good.
One song off the album in particular has really touched me. Her version of From A Distance is incredible. In the introduction she explains that the song means something different to “every ear that hears it.” For me it makes me think of Michele, in particular of her watching over me from a distance. Even though she is no longer here physically she is still a part of my life. I listen to that track every day, sometimes twice a day. It really is very good.
If you have iTunes (and why wouldn’t you have it?) you can get the song via this link: {{ $image := .ResourceGetMatch “badgeitunes61x15dark.gif” }}
Today, quite out of the blue, I received an offer to purchase my domain name. I’ve had zanshin.net registered since February 1996; i.e., this site will be ten years old in just a few weeks.
I really don’t know what to think about the offer as I’ve never considered not having zanshin as my domain. My initial reaction is that it would be far to weird to not have it; besides I’m finally getting some good traffic to the site, and my google rank is growing, and zanshin.net is the number one result returned when you google my name.
Having just lost Michele, who came into my life ten years ago this month, I don’t think I’m in the mood to part with another, huge part of myself. For now anyway, I’ll be declining the offer.
The hardest part about going through this grief process isn’t that other people can’t experience what I am experiencing. They couldn’t experience what I was going through when everything was great either. No, the hardest part is the loss of the one place where I was assured of a response that worked for me. No matter what the situation I knew that I could vent, spew, cry, rage, sulk, or whatever until I had expressed the emotional reaction to an outside stimulus. Michele never tried to hurry that process or fix anything for me until I was done with my emotional work. I learned over time how to do that for her as well.
Today when something happens in my life that has a larger than normal emotional impact I have no safe place to discuss it or sort through it. I have tried to rely upon my friends but what I fear I am doing is driving them away with the sheet weight of the emotions I bring to bear on them. Michele and I forged an incredibly strong platform together that supported us through thick and thin. I am coming to realize that none of my friends will be able to step in and shore things up. Not all the way. Maybe all my friends combined and in rotation could give me most of what I lost and now need. But it isn’t what they signed up for, and I fear my lack of tack through grief is starting to damage some friendships.
We all have habits that support us and allow us to function in daily life. Over the course of the ten years I knew Michele I developed many habits that worked for me, and complimented our relationship. Those habits that she was a part of are now causing me more pain that comfort, more stress than relief, more sorrow than joy. Letting go of those parts of me that were exclusive to Michele is excruciatingly painful. It means letting go of a part of me, forever. Even if I find a new partner down the road, and even if I have a wonderful full relationship with that person, the Mark that Michele knew died with her. And the Mark that is left behind is struggling to develop new habits, new coping mechanisms for this strange and terrifying new reality. Leaning on my friends has helped, but it is adding to my pain. This new raw Mark doesn’t know how to interact with friends from before. Like a stroke survivor relearning how to walk or speak, I must relearn how to be in the friendships that have survived her death.
And learning anything new when all seems pointless is more difficult that I can imagine or overcome. I am afraid that I will now start to retreat even further from society as a whole and the small circle of friends I have in specific. I want their advice and I don’t want it, I want them to help and I want them to leave me alone. I am a mass of contradictions and opposing forces, ready to dissolve into tears or fly off the handle. I want to be cared for and I want to be left alone.
I no longer know who I am or recognize myself. I am having to learn a whole new personality while dealing with the world at large like nothing ever happened. I feel as if I am insane for the world makes no sense to me any more.
it was cold here last Friday.
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To my mind there are several kinds of naps, with a nap being any sleep outside of the normal go-to-bed-at-night-and-get-up-in-the-morning sleep.
Chair Nap Any nap where you are more or less upright in position. Chairs, couches, and airplane seats all provide locations for chair naps. These are usually more of a doze than actual sleep; often times you are dimly aware of what is going on around you and you cycle between wakefulness and sleep.
Couch Nap Couches support two kinds of napping, upright and supine. Laying down on the couch usually leads to a deeper nap, perhaps even longer. Sometimes an afghan or blanket is employed for warmth or comfort. Very satisfying overall.
On the Bed Nap Moving on from the couch we have naps taken on the bed. Here pillows can be employed, and you are already conditioned that this is a place for sleeping. These naps can be several hours and are quite decadent. Laying down in the middle of the day? Luxury.
In the Bed Nap At the top of the nap hierarchy is a form of napping barely distinguishable from overnight sleeping. All clothing is removed and whatever is worn to bed is put on. You nap under the sheet and covers. These are serious naps, usually taken when ill or extremely tired. However, on occasion they can be quite restorative and rejuvenating.
Today I had a short chair nap, followed by a longer on the bed nap with blanket. Very nice indeed.