just drained

.


I am tired of living this.
Preaching to the choir, I realize.

I am tired of all of it,
and tired of the person I am these days,
tired of being down and annoyed and sad at the person I am.

I'd like to go now.

~

Hey babe. Your son is so sweet. He calls me on his way out of work. Calls to see if I want to come have tea with him. He is the only one who talks about you like normal. He's the only one who doesn't seem to give me that pity face I am so tired of. He doesn't give me "meaningful touches" to show he empathizes. Anyway. He is a good kid babe. Handsome. I saw him up at the counter, from the back, and saw shades of your musculature rippling under his shirt. He says he is glad you didn't have to ever get old and sick and be trapped in a hospital bed. That if you had to choose, you would have chosen this way, though older, and not to cause us any pain.

Free to the end, my love.

And, Jake and I were discussing how you used to come up behind and knock our knees out. He told me how some friends of his do that to him now, but he always turns around expecting it to be you. Just the look on his face as he demonstrates for me, I can see, though he doesn't say it, that he is disappointed when it isn't.

I dreamed this morning something long and involved, but in the end, I was laughing. It was a painful dream, but still, in the end, I was laughing. And as I woke up, I thought - man it was so good to laugh.


For our birthday season this year, I am going to learn how to slaughter and butcher a pig. How insane is that. I am camping for the weekend on-site; the first time since way Before. Probably for the first time since we drove cross-country, since we hadn't taken overnight hikes in quite awhile. Remember our very first trip? I hadn't eaten pork in almost 15 years, but we stopped on the way to the mountains and bought thick cut, local bacon. You cooked it over the fire while I was still asleep inside the tent. From there to slaughtering pigs. So much time has passed. So much everything.

I am so tired. I am so tired of coming home after these long ass days that are beating me up and know you are not here. At all. I am tired of missing you, of needing to miss you. Of why I miss you. There is no - good thing. There is no good thing at the end of my day, no rest. Just, as Julia just wrote, just getting up to do it all again. 


That's all. I miss you. I am older than you now, and you won't catch up on these birthdays you have no need of anymore.



.

rivers and tides

My son went to visit some of his old high school teachers today. Some of them didn't know his dad died. I don't know how they missed it, though he had graduated and school was done for the summer when it happened. Anyway. On being asked how his dad was, J told the teacher that his dad had drowned, and the teacher was shocked - that it happened, and that one of his students had just drowned in the same river this weekend. It's a long river, and I knew instantly where the student's death had happened. J. insisted it happened in the same place as his dad, but I know the sound of his voice when he starts making up parts of a story to sound even more dramatic. I just now looked it up: different part of the river, miles and miles apart. But still, same river. Google search also listed another news story of drowning that happened this weekend just up the coast from here - a man swept out to sea, his 4 friends stranded on a rock, after being hit by a large wave. And all I can think is - this is supposed to be rare. Drowning is supposed to be rare.



.

26-1

one of those days
where the number hits me
a glimpse of what
two years is
in the outside world
how is that possible it has been
over two years
you have been gone,
since you have been
here




.

not a victory march

I was already going to post this, and then I remembered that Jeff Buckley drowned.








.

the old guy

.


There is an old man who lives up the road from me. Every day, we pass each other, each on our respective morning walks - me with Boris, the old guy on his own. At first we just walked past. Then there was a nod of recognition, followed months later by "good morning." Lately there has been a "how are you" spoken as we walk by. Today as I was walking up the hill, the old man, coming down the hill, pointed at me and smiled. "You and I, we seem to run into each other a lot, don't we."

"Every day," I said.

"How are you today honey?"

"I'm alright," I lied. Completely lied. I have already spent most of the morning crying, and just now got it together enough to get outside with Bo. "And you? How are you today?"

"Well," the old guy shifted and smiled. "I get out, I'm moving and walking around. That's what counts, that's what is each day, that is what I have."

I feel my eyes well up at this. Thank goodness my sunglasses are quite large. We are somehow still walking in slow opposite directions and yet standing close.

Then he asks, "are you married?"

I choke. "I'm widowed," I manage to say, though I am clearly crying now - I can feel tears rolling down my cheeks, caught by the lower rim of my glasses.

"Oh honey. Oh honey I am sorry to hear that."

"Me too," I said.

"You take each day, you take it by each day. That is all you can do."

It's a blur now, how that ended, how that moment passed. I think we were already passing each other as he asked the question that got him that response. By the time I said thank you and half turned away, I already had tears breaking through the containment of my sunglasses, dripping off their edge.







.

a photo for HBPG

.

crazy

It used to be, in the Before, if I was feeling stressed or anxious, I could look around at my reality and root myself in it. Sweetheart, look: everything is fine. If it is ever not fine, you will deal with that then. My go-to way of calming down, of finding an anchor, is irrelevant and suspect now. I cannot look around and say that anything is fine. Reality is crazy. Reality is wrong.

Lately, I've been feeling completely upside-down, confused, waking up thinking this has all been a dream - really, not just wishful thinking - I'm forgetting where I am and where I've been. It's a bit like the early days: I leave myself notes to remember what day it is and what time I am supposed to be somewhere; I find myself thinking it's morning when Boris and I are out for an afternoon walk. I start to answer a question I've been asked and feel like I'm not making any sense. Part of all this mind muddledness is trauma, part of the picture of trauma. There are also lots of changes going on, new stressors, new uncertainties. I've started working full time hours for the first time in two years. But the biggest most huge thing of course is that this life is utterly entirely unreal. It's insane. It's not logical. It can't be real. Everyone going on about their lives, sun comes up, sun goes down, tra la la, it all just happens, and excuse me, but are you aware that matt DIED? It has been over two years I have lived in this insane reality. Of course I'm f-ing nuts.

I don't know why it's worse this week. The confusion and sense that I'm asleep and dreaming this has been so intense. The weirdness of the world, the discordance of all of everything - it's all just getting me. National Public Radio plays all day in the barn, so I hear more news in a day than I usually do in a month or more. Between the news stories on bath salts and reality tv in the Netherlands, I'm starting to feel like I'm living in a Jasper Fforde novel. No wonder I can't seem to get a grip on anything; the world's gone totally squiffy.


.

In the Hands of Love

.


God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;
How can we pretend to act on our own?
In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes Love hoists me into the air
Sometimes Love flings me to the ground.
Love swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The Lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have surrendered themselves to love's commands.
Like millwheels they turn, day and night, day and night,
Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

.