A little over a month ago I relearned how to cry. Yesterday I relearned how to sob.
Piss-poor effort really, somewhere between hiccups and repeated belching.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
okay
I suppose that at this point what I'd most like is for my wife to pat me on the back and say "Good boy. You're doing okay. Keep it up." Is that so unreasonable?
days
One month ago, 31 days, the world turned upside down.
Not a good day today, but there are no good days. There are worse days and worst days.
Which brings up the conversations I had and still have. "I'm sorry for your loss," they say. Or, "My condolences." Then when signing off they say "Have a great day!" Or, "Have a wonderful day!" There are no great days any more, or wonderful ones, and the worst days of more than a month ago seem beatific in comparison.
I wish I could turn back the clock. When I look at something dated, bearing a date more than a month ago, I yearn for the past, to become part of the past, to live there forever--or to change certain critical events that led up to what happened a month ago.
My link to reality is less strong than it probably looks. I could so easily drift into a universe where my wife is alive and a month ago never happened or happened differently. Or I could talk to my wife and hear her answering me and walking beside me. So tempting to just let that happen. But I know she is gone and morover I feel she is gone. The presence that was there in my head up until a month ago is not there now. Which is probably just my way of looking at things, though I send out tendrils of thought to explore and searh for her presence; I await the ghostly brush of her hand, her presence in dreams, the sound of breathing next to me. I don't remember any dream I have had recently, but I don't think my wife was in them. I wish she were.
One aspect of my unstable grasp on reality is that I have never had a personal loss anywhere like this before. My grandfather died 52 years ago; that is my only experience with something like this. It is hard for me to understand fully that I cannot change things by closing my eyes and crossing my fingers and hoping very hard, or by pressing a reset button on a game machine. But no, that doesn't work here. Wish it would.
On my way downtown today I passed the newly landscaped building that my wife wanted to take a picture of a couple of days before she left on the plane. I walked on the same sidewalks that my wife and had walked on. Probably there are residues from our shoes that linger in those places that bloodhound might scent and identify. I went to the bakery that I liked to take my wife to. Everywhere memories.
I saw a construction sign that read "Delano & Mackenzie." Flashback to 2001 when my wife and I were walking on a street in Miami at night. Across from where we walked, a big block of stone in the shadows of the evening, there was the Hotel Delano, that we looked at curiously.
I could leave town and go somewhere neither of us ever went before and she would still be there. There is no escape.
There is little that I do that does not evoke ghosts and memories of my wife. I did pick up a book by Lincoln Child that kept me distracted, until it grew weak at the end. Some of the other books I have been reading were read by my wife, which is little help at all.
Not a good day today, but there are no good days. There are worse days and worst days.
Which brings up the conversations I had and still have. "I'm sorry for your loss," they say. Or, "My condolences." Then when signing off they say "Have a great day!" Or, "Have a wonderful day!" There are no great days any more, or wonderful ones, and the worst days of more than a month ago seem beatific in comparison.
I wish I could turn back the clock. When I look at something dated, bearing a date more than a month ago, I yearn for the past, to become part of the past, to live there forever--or to change certain critical events that led up to what happened a month ago.
My link to reality is less strong than it probably looks. I could so easily drift into a universe where my wife is alive and a month ago never happened or happened differently. Or I could talk to my wife and hear her answering me and walking beside me. So tempting to just let that happen. But I know she is gone and morover I feel she is gone. The presence that was there in my head up until a month ago is not there now. Which is probably just my way of looking at things, though I send out tendrils of thought to explore and searh for her presence; I await the ghostly brush of her hand, her presence in dreams, the sound of breathing next to me. I don't remember any dream I have had recently, but I don't think my wife was in them. I wish she were.
One aspect of my unstable grasp on reality is that I have never had a personal loss anywhere like this before. My grandfather died 52 years ago; that is my only experience with something like this. It is hard for me to understand fully that I cannot change things by closing my eyes and crossing my fingers and hoping very hard, or by pressing a reset button on a game machine. But no, that doesn't work here. Wish it would.
On my way downtown today I passed the newly landscaped building that my wife wanted to take a picture of a couple of days before she left on the plane. I walked on the same sidewalks that my wife and had walked on. Probably there are residues from our shoes that linger in those places that bloodhound might scent and identify. I went to the bakery that I liked to take my wife to. Everywhere memories.
I saw a construction sign that read "Delano & Mackenzie." Flashback to 2001 when my wife and I were walking on a street in Miami at night. Across from where we walked, a big block of stone in the shadows of the evening, there was the Hotel Delano, that we looked at curiously.
I could leave town and go somewhere neither of us ever went before and she would still be there. There is no escape.
There is little that I do that does not evoke ghosts and memories of my wife. I did pick up a book by Lincoln Child that kept me distracted, until it grew weak at the end. Some of the other books I have been reading were read by my wife, which is little help at all.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
diligence
I am trying to make my wife proud of me. Not that I believe she knows what I do or do not do. It's more of a testament or the performance of an obligation or a memorial. Something like giri.
Out of my need for distraction, preferably simple physical labor, is born, I hope, diligence.
My wife was a worker in a different class from most of us. When she was in her mid-teens, she was holding down 1-2 jobs in addition to going to school and getting good grades. From that time until she was in her late 30s, she was never without at least one job for more a day.
While in college and in labor before the birth of one of her children, she is said to have called for her books so she could prepare for a test that was coming up. I believe it. Over ten years ago when she was hospitalized over a vomiting spell she asked me to bring her computer and papers to her room so she could get some work done.
Her work normally required several all-nighters a month, and sometimes two or more weeks of working on 2-3 hours sleep a night. And that did not include her investment plans and property management, which took up more of her time. This year was especially severe. She basically worked herself to death. I urged her to get up and walk a few blocks several times a day. She felt there was no time.
I told her recently that she and her health were most important and that she needed to look out for No. 1. She looked at me like I was some alien form of life and snorted.
Taking it easy has never been a problem with me. I am unable to work through the night, and will quit by 1 a.m. even when the work must be done. I can work up quite a sweat, sometimes, but that's about it.
In this time of crisis, surrounded by evidence and artifacts of my wife's labors and plans, I am trying to change, a little. To make her proud of me.
Out of my need for distraction, preferably simple physical labor, is born, I hope, diligence.
My wife was a worker in a different class from most of us. When she was in her mid-teens, she was holding down 1-2 jobs in addition to going to school and getting good grades. From that time until she was in her late 30s, she was never without at least one job for more a day.
While in college and in labor before the birth of one of her children, she is said to have called for her books so she could prepare for a test that was coming up. I believe it. Over ten years ago when she was hospitalized over a vomiting spell she asked me to bring her computer and papers to her room so she could get some work done.
Her work normally required several all-nighters a month, and sometimes two or more weeks of working on 2-3 hours sleep a night. And that did not include her investment plans and property management, which took up more of her time. This year was especially severe. She basically worked herself to death. I urged her to get up and walk a few blocks several times a day. She felt there was no time.
I told her recently that she and her health were most important and that she needed to look out for No. 1. She looked at me like I was some alien form of life and snorted.
Taking it easy has never been a problem with me. I am unable to work through the night, and will quit by 1 a.m. even when the work must be done. I can work up quite a sweat, sometimes, but that's about it.
In this time of crisis, surrounded by evidence and artifacts of my wife's labors and plans, I am trying to change, a little. To make her proud of me.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Cleaning
What I am cleaning out are things that I had kept around for my wife.
Couple of weeks ago I cleaned out my main email box. So much there I saved, for months, years even, to take up with my wife when the opportunity presented itself. Some emails concerned health tips that were too relevant as it turned out. Trash.
So many videos too, that I collected in the hopes of seeing with my wife someday. Chick flicks, historical flicks. Movies we saw together but will never see again. Trash.
Same with a number of books. Trash.
Same too with so many plans. Hopes and plans for vacations, trips, events, places. Trash.
But not all of those last. I am working on a goal for the future: to revisit the places where my wife and I were happiest, and to visit for her those places where we both wanted to go but never did.
Couple of weeks ago I cleaned out my main email box. So much there I saved, for months, years even, to take up with my wife when the opportunity presented itself. Some emails concerned health tips that were too relevant as it turned out. Trash.
So many videos too, that I collected in the hopes of seeing with my wife someday. Chick flicks, historical flicks. Movies we saw together but will never see again. Trash.
Same with a number of books. Trash.
Same too with so many plans. Hopes and plans for vacations, trips, events, places. Trash.
But not all of those last. I am working on a goal for the future: to revisit the places where my wife and I were happiest, and to visit for her those places where we both wanted to go but never did.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
death
"I'll die before you," she said repeatedly. "I want to die before you."
And I would glare and retreat to the lonely inner cages where I have lived most of my life.
Not that she was morbid or obsessed with dying. It started when her mother died when she was in her mid-60s and she came to be diagnosed as a diabetic. Not a Type 2 adult-onset diabetic, but what is now starting to be called Type One and a Half, a diabetic whose cells quit producing insulin and whose remaining cells are insulin resistant. Not a type treatable by weight loss.
"Bad genes," she said. A conclusion that is echoed by her brothers and sisters who see doom approaching.
"Your mother will outlive me," she said accusingly, as my mother crept toward the century mark and I was caretaker of my mother and not of my wife.
My father died at 72. However his sister died recently at 102, I only found out this spring. My mother's grandmother died the year I was born at 99. I never told my wife that. Mostly because there was so much else to talk about.
Even before all this I was worried. There is a hypothesis around that mammalian species are pre-programmed to live a set number of heartbeats. Shrews and tiny rodnts that have a jitterbug heartbeat life extremely short active lives. Longer lived mammals like elephants and humans have a slow heart beat. Dr. Kenneth Cooper who named and started aerobic exercise talked about how aerobic exercise while it increased pulse rate during exercise reduced it overall, thus "saving" heartbeats and adding, he implied, to our lifespan. A "fixed-heartbeat" theory which may or may not have somehting in it.
In the early hours of morning I would feel my wife's pulse; the beats would be motoring along at near 85 beats per minute. My own pulse rate would drop in the wee hours to the 60s and recently to the low 50s. I told myself none of that meant anything.
Blood tests done two months before my wife's passing showed her chlesterol to be under 300 and triglycerides to be over 150, which was actually an improvement over what the numbers had been years ago. But those numbers were twice mine.
Had I plied my wife with Vitamin D and baby aspirin and forced her to test her blood sugar, she would still be here, for a while. 95% sure.
And now my wife's prophecies and genetics proved right and I am alone. I am alone in my head; her presence that I carried with me however far apart we were physically is gone. I am a ghostly being floating through life, motivation and joy gone.
As I stare down a bleak corridor of possible decades barring accident or cancer I think "What a curse!" Not that it is more than I deserve, in some Twilight Zone moral play where the wicked and neglectful are punished.
And I would glare and retreat to the lonely inner cages where I have lived most of my life.
Not that she was morbid or obsessed with dying. It started when her mother died when she was in her mid-60s and she came to be diagnosed as a diabetic. Not a Type 2 adult-onset diabetic, but what is now starting to be called Type One and a Half, a diabetic whose cells quit producing insulin and whose remaining cells are insulin resistant. Not a type treatable by weight loss.
"Bad genes," she said. A conclusion that is echoed by her brothers and sisters who see doom approaching.
"Your mother will outlive me," she said accusingly, as my mother crept toward the century mark and I was caretaker of my mother and not of my wife.
My father died at 72. However his sister died recently at 102, I only found out this spring. My mother's grandmother died the year I was born at 99. I never told my wife that. Mostly because there was so much else to talk about.
Even before all this I was worried. There is a hypothesis around that mammalian species are pre-programmed to live a set number of heartbeats. Shrews and tiny rodnts that have a jitterbug heartbeat life extremely short active lives. Longer lived mammals like elephants and humans have a slow heart beat. Dr. Kenneth Cooper who named and started aerobic exercise talked about how aerobic exercise while it increased pulse rate during exercise reduced it overall, thus "saving" heartbeats and adding, he implied, to our lifespan. A "fixed-heartbeat" theory which may or may not have somehting in it.
In the early hours of morning I would feel my wife's pulse; the beats would be motoring along at near 85 beats per minute. My own pulse rate would drop in the wee hours to the 60s and recently to the low 50s. I told myself none of that meant anything.
Blood tests done two months before my wife's passing showed her chlesterol to be under 300 and triglycerides to be over 150, which was actually an improvement over what the numbers had been years ago. But those numbers were twice mine.
Had I plied my wife with Vitamin D and baby aspirin and forced her to test her blood sugar, she would still be here, for a while. 95% sure.
And now my wife's prophecies and genetics proved right and I am alone. I am alone in my head; her presence that I carried with me however far apart we were physically is gone. I am a ghostly being floating through life, motivation and joy gone.
As I stare down a bleak corridor of possible decades barring accident or cancer I think "What a curse!" Not that it is more than I deserve, in some Twilight Zone moral play where the wicked and neglectful are punished.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Bad
Been three weeks now. This was not the worst day by any means. But if I didn't have three dogs, multiple cats and an elderly parent to look after, this would have been my last day. When I think of what has happened, my chest gets tight and I ball up my fists and feel rage.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Memories
Got a call minutes ago from a friend expressing condolences, a friend who took us to eat once when we were in NYC. He said he was having a tree planted in Israel in my wife's name. She would like that. Not that she fully supports all the State of Israel does but that she would want to reforest deserts, and was ever fascinated with Israel and the story of the Jewish people. At her bedside there were several books about Israel and Jewish history, a couple that I had given her. There were also a couple of books by Noam Chomsky she found for herself, but I did not mention them to the friend, whose leanings are quite conservative and Republican.
Memories are everywhere. As I drive her car my hands touch the places her hands touched. As I walk on errands I walk on sidewalks where my wife walked too. I checked my voice mail and found messages from her from a week or so before it happened. Archived now, to preserve her voice for a time when I can hear it without breaking in pieces.
Her children tell me "We have to work and carry on; it is what she would want." That is easier to say when they have their own lives and husbands and wives and children. I have three dogs, some cats, an aged parent, and nothing else or hope for anything else. Memories only and a bare skeleton of what was a life. I am a ghost walking in shadowy gardens of memory.
Soon I will analyze and separate out the feelings that I am experiencing, because only here do I reveal myself. There are those among the family who encouraged me to talk, but I will not burden them.
Memories are everywhere. As I drive her car my hands touch the places her hands touched. As I walk on errands I walk on sidewalks where my wife walked too. I checked my voice mail and found messages from her from a week or so before it happened. Archived now, to preserve her voice for a time when I can hear it without breaking in pieces.
Her children tell me "We have to work and carry on; it is what she would want." That is easier to say when they have their own lives and husbands and wives and children. I have three dogs, some cats, an aged parent, and nothing else or hope for anything else. Memories only and a bare skeleton of what was a life. I am a ghost walking in shadowy gardens of memory.
Soon I will analyze and separate out the feelings that I am experiencing, because only here do I reveal myself. There are those among the family who encouraged me to talk, but I will not burden them.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
duty
Through the process, the 5 1/2 hour rosary-prayer vigil, the closing ceremony next day at the funeral home, the funeral mass, the graveside service complete with mariachis singing several songs in Spanish concluding with "Ave Maria" which brings tears to my eyes in the best of times, the white dove released, the dirt scattered handful by handful into the grave, the lunch following, I have tried to play my part with the dignity and politeness my wife is entitled to.
I shook dozens of hands, hugged and was hugged by hundreds of people I did and did not know, cried silently for hours on end. I did not -- did not have the chance really -- to hug or kiss my wife goodbye that Saturday she left on the plane. I kissed her, what was left of her, goodbye as she lay there in the coffin, touching her hand where it was bruised by the IV. I put a sunflower in her coffin before it was closed, rejecting the rose I was offered. It was a grand funeral of tradition and ceremony worthy of a duchess but not worthy of my wife.
Alone I went to her graveside Sunday morning and sang the song she had asked me to sing over her grave. (She knew she would die first, but not yet.)
I did my job. That part at least. The rest goes on. The responsibility of keeping a small empire together continues and increases. But oh the hole in my life is so great. It's all hole really, all emptiness and duty and task. I must be worthy.
I shook dozens of hands, hugged and was hugged by hundreds of people I did and did not know, cried silently for hours on end. I did not -- did not have the chance really -- to hug or kiss my wife goodbye that Saturday she left on the plane. I kissed her, what was left of her, goodbye as she lay there in the coffin, touching her hand where it was bruised by the IV. I put a sunflower in her coffin before it was closed, rejecting the rose I was offered. It was a grand funeral of tradition and ceremony worthy of a duchess but not worthy of my wife.
Alone I went to her graveside Sunday morning and sang the song she had asked me to sing over her grave. (She knew she would die first, but not yet.)
I did my job. That part at least. The rest goes on. The responsibility of keeping a small empire together continues and increases. But oh the hole in my life is so great. It's all hole really, all emptiness and duty and task. I must be worthy.
Monday, July 2, 2012
rage
This morning I got up angry. Angry at the illogic of what happened. Free floatin anger. Tonight, I am angry with myself.
Others are saying how this was inevitable, or God's will or fate. Nuts to that. It was preventable, or more accurately, postponeable. It did not have to happen, yet.
I had it in my power to prevent it, probably. In at least half a dozen ways leading up to the final day. My errors and omissions. I did not act and now my love is dead and gone.
Others are saying how this was inevitable, or God's will or fate. Nuts to that. It was preventable, or more accurately, postponeable. It did not have to happen, yet.
I had it in my power to prevent it, probably. In at least half a dozen ways leading up to the final day. My errors and omissions. I did not act and now my love is dead and gone.
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