sleep and tenderness

ahhh sleep. In bed by 7 last night, awake at my usual 5, but lounged there instead of getting up. It's not just the sleep that eased me a little. It was - oddly or not - sitting there in bed reliving that day. How beautiful the sky was. How much we loved, and needed, that place. I looked at dog-wash island. I saw us there on other trips, soaping boris up, and I saw us there on our last trip, you trying to hold on to the top of a tree, yelling out, letting go. You died just off of dog-wash island, trying to hold on to a tree, yelling out, disappearing. Oh my god.

And in that oh my god  I felt such fierce tenderness and love for myself. How hard this is, how lonely, how scary and how sad. How hard this is. Hard.

And I think this morning how I get to the same place: refusal to do things I do not want to do, unwillingness to suffer through annoying situations, a desire to do whatever brings me any goodness at all and fighting for it if need be ~ I get to the same place I get to when the rage has control of me. I still kick over stupid things, wasteful things, but - in this moment, anyway, I want to kick them over because I love me. Because you died just off of dog-wash island on a beautiful sunny day in July. Because I couldn't stop it, even when I ran into the water and fought those currents myself. Because of all the things I had to do, all the phone calls, all the "arrangements," all of everything.

 It is so much nicer on me to feel tenderness rather than rage. I think this is the goal for me, the direction to lean - not that life can be good, or that life can be anything, but finding ways to access, maybe even eventually sustain, this tenderness. A fierceness for myself that isn't so much the raging Kali stomping out the world.

 .

irked

Is it horrible that this annoyed me:
http://www.ananda.org/community/blog/kristy/4036/gods-grace-and-the-healing-power-of-prayer/

Okay, annoyed maybe isn't the right word. Wait. Yes it is. Their story isn't my story, and while I am glad that their son lived, I can't deny my reaction. I don't want to know how prayers and meditations miraculously healed someone. I want to know how someone who has lived their life with prayers and meditations, with practices and trust, lives with the fact that the one they love DID NOT SURVIVE. Nine million prayers for his survival that day would have not done a thing if he was not meant to live. I don't think that focused meditation can change an outcome. Nine trillion people praying and focusing while the wardens searched for matt would not have made that outcome different than it was.

It is so easy to say that god was by your side when things work out. It is so easy to say that your prayers and meditation made the shift. It is so easy to trust in divine goodness, in the reassurances of the Mother when difficult things turn out right. Turn out - right. When things turn out wrong, does that mean your prayers weren't enough? That only if your practice had been stronger, this would be alright? Such hubris. That equation isn't even wrong.

I need the stories of how you live, with smashed and broken faith, knowing that your prayers for certain outcomes are misplaced. The stories that I need to hear are the ones where you find a way to live in a world that isn't right, and no amount of prayers or meditations can make it right. Where you find a way to live without turning bitter and angry or just lost; without manufacturing a meaning that isn't there, without becoming a falseness to yourself. Everything does not always Turn Out Alright. I need to hear some people with deep faith show me how you live with that.

.

un-nameable

There is a movie in my instant queue called "the loss of nameless things." I haven't watched it yet, but I like the title.

The things I have lost in me don't have names anyone would recognize. I get afraid even I will cease to recognize them, the feeling of them, with or without their names. That sucks.

And something I realized this morning, which does have a name:

I lost my ability to imagine good things.
I don't imagine bad things, I just don't imagine. At all.

The loss of interest in imagining - I don't think that loss can be named.



.

dark

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

~ T.S. Eliot ~

In the Before, I had no problem with "dark." In fact, when I was seeing clients, or writing for various papers, I often talked about fear of the dark, fear of darkness, the endless pitting of darkness versus light, how silly it all was. Darkness is nothing to fear; darkness is just an inner turn, a waiting. Most things start in darkness. All germination begins in dark (well, okay, except for a few flower seeds that need light to germinate...). Anyway. Darkness is not now, and never has been, a metaphor for lostness or evil or anything negative at all, for me. Why do I say this? Well, because I like this Eliot poem very much. And because all my metaphors and analogies of life in the Before instantly became useless emptiness the moment the lead warden stepped out of the woods and said, "I'm sorry, but he's passed."

The darkness is the light, and the stillness is dancing.


.

updates and rude behavior

the updates portion:

Reminding myself that boris is injured, not sick, helped calm me down immensely. And, as cathy commented on my last post - whatever happens, I will just deal with it. Teeth clenched, reciting mantra: "deal with it."

Happily, the vet appointment went really well. The vet actually spent 45 minutes with the dog and I; we discussed options while boris politely expressed his desire to leave. He has new ~as needed~ pain medicine, he's otherwise strong and healthy, and I have a few options, ranging from relatively cheap but heavily pharmaceutical through moderately expensive with no side effects all the way up to expensive surgery. I always do better when I have actual information, rather than blind panicking fears. So. All is feeling better on the dog front. He's still limpy, but we will deal with it.

As for the "rude behavior" part of this post - we have a grocery store in town here that insists on those aggravating and annoying "rewards card" things. I hate them on principle. I also don't like the particular store, either. However - I have had matt's rewards card thing on my keychain since he stopped having need of it. It's old and beaten and worn. I go to the crappy grocery store sometimes just to use his card. So today, I went to said store, and before I could say anything, the crazy cashier person RIPPED THE CARD off my keys, tossed it in the trash and said "you can't use this one anymore." She then whipped out forms for me to fill out for a new one. I think I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. I actually forgot to pay, at first, I was so shocked. Normally those cashiers remark at how beat up the card is and ask if I want a new one. Not this time. How fitting that jackie's post on WV today addresses just such forced removals of our husbands' things.

Everything else was in complete slow motion, while I wondered if I should tell her to give me the old card back. If I should educate her with direct eye-contact whilst saying simply "could you retrieve that card for me please. It belonged to my husband before he died." Instead, I went out to my car, where I then sat for a good 7 or so minutes wondering if I would go back in and do just that. Wondering whether - I don't know. Whether I was ready to not have his card anymore, wondered if driving away without retrieving it was okay with me or not, imagining whether I would regret not getting it back so that I could decide if I was done holding the little scrap of plastic that his fingertips had worn.

I sat there wondering how good it would feel to see her eyes widen and her jaw drop, to hear her stammer an apology as she reached down into the trash to get my dead husband's card for me. I thought about all the tender, newly grieving people she would not ever do that to, having been politely but firmly corrected. Made aware. That a stupid rewards card is not always just a rewards card, and you should ask before you decide what someone is done with.

In the end, I drove off without making my cashier re-education efforts. Though I did imagine the conversation she'd have had, when she got home from work, all about the woman whose card she threw away.

Ah, to be so oblivious. To not have to grit your teeth and deal with it.





.

Rough times lately.

But also lots of very early mornings of silence, tea, thomas merton - and piles of tissues.


“I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home. ...Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.”

― Thomas Merton
        The Seven Storey Mountain



“I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.”

― Thomas Merton
              The Sign of Jonas


.

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.


.

and another.

Another random water death by someone fit and healthy.

I learned today that our friend David died last week, as the newspaper said, "during the swimming portion of the triathlon." He was 20 years older than matt, and matt had described him as "someone who probably used to be in good shape, but has become stiff and tense." David was both things - in good shape, and stiff and tense. He moved with a tremor you'd only notice if you were the kind to notice things. He was angry and self-righteous, anxious, controlling, and brilliant in his chosen field.

We were coffee shop friends. Matt had been working with David on some design renovations for his house in the week before his own random water death. When Matt died, this stiff, formal, somewhat angry man offered his time to me, saying, "I'm pretty good with these sorts of things."

I was just thinking of him the other day - David, that is. Matt I think about all the time. Was just randomly wondering what he was up to, how his summer was going. Driving down to the coffee shop today, I was thinking of how, when someone dies, when some random accident happens, we say "it hit close to home." I was thinking how people probably said that when their friend Matt died, that such a tragedy happened so close to home, and how for me, it wasn't "close to home," it WAS home.

I walked in to the coffee shop and sat down with a friend. We did our normal catch up on things. And then he very gently and slowly told me: there is some news. Some news in the way of sudden death. And then he said his name: David. He told me the details are not released. He told me he wanted to tell me before I read it somewhere, or overheard it in some less-than-gentle way. While reading the tribute on his employer's webpage, I came to the part where David was taken from the water during the triathlon. My friend said quietly - "it was water. That was the other thing I didn't want you to find out about alone."

What is odd to me about this is my lack of grief, I guess I'd call it. Now, David and I were not in any way close. I hadn't seen him for months. It is bizarre that he is gone, just - poof! but I feel inured to that somehow. He and his ex-wife were hostile with each other, so there is no one like me, there is no one whose life was twined with his, no one whose home took this direct hit. Maybe that is why. Does that seem rude? Dismissive? It's like seeing what happened to me, what happened to matt, from this outsider's view, this casual connection point of view, where it is not my life that has been hit. The loose-knit community absorbs it, people are shocked, but no one's life, no one's daily life, is personally changed.

And maybe because it HAS happened to me, the shock is different. I already know that weird random shit happens weirdly and randomly. I already know that the world blows up, and what happens after it does. For the people "close to home," things have a momentary rift, and then ease back to normal, perhaps with a fleeting tint of "life is short."  People who take a direct hit know there is no normal anymore.

I'm not crying. I'm not sad about David. Do I need a five tombstone movie to be sure I'm still in here? Am I callous and shut down? I don't know. My friend and I sat there talking about it, talking about the details and funerals and all these things. A man came in wearing glasses a bit like David's. I said, "I thought that was him, even though we sit here talking about his funeral, I looked up and was ready to say hi to him." My friend told me he had been doing that all day. David was many circles out from the center of my home. His death will make no difference in most of my daily life. But he is one more person I will not look up to see coming through the door, no matter what the corner of my eye thinks it sees.

It's making me feel somewhat cocky. Somewhat - I don't know - fearless isn't quite the right word. Within the freak out panic of my mother around the weather coming through this weekend I feel myself bristle and think - dude, you have no idea. You die whenever you die, and there is not a thing in this world that will change it or stop it or anything else, so stop freaking out. Having only heard about David barely two hours ago, I feel a cavalier smart-ass-ness in me - get over yourself. Stop being jerks. Stop freaking out. Random shit will pluck you from this place, from this life, or it won't. Nothing you can do. You aren't safe, and you aren't in danger either.

It's really quite a bit smart-ass. Maybe I do need a movie.


.

meat.

This post involves the slaughter of meat birds on a small farm. If you are sensitive to imagery involving animals, you may want to skip this one.


Before today, the only creature I have knowingly and directly killed was a severely injured flicker that was being euthanized at the bird rehab where I volunteered. With the exception of mosquitoes, ticks, and fruit flies, I do not kill anything with reckless abandon. I relocate spiders. I bring injured mice outside for the owls to eat. My laying hens will live out their lives long after they stop (sporadically) laying eggs. I was a vegetarian for a very long time, and now I eat meat. I like to know where my meat comes from and how it was raised. I knew if I was going to eat animals, I would eventually need to be directly part of their deaths. Today, I was.

I knew this day was coming. I'm signed up for a nose-to-tail hog processing in the fall. I thought maybe I should be involved in the deaths of smaller animals before I went on to the larger mammals. I've had several opportunities to help with small farm meat bird processing. Once was the week before Camp Widow, and I just felt too raw and sensitive to do it then. I almost backed out today.

I got up at 5 am to have some time to calm myself down before heading out to the farm. I kept panicking. I wasn't sure I was strong enough, or calm enough, to do this today. It wasn't until a brief text volley with a friend that I realized I was expecting to be traumatized. I was expecting to have matt's death come flooding back to me. I was expecting him to die again, there on that farm with the chickens. I was terrified to be that close to death again, and what it might do to me. It may be weird to say, but realizing he would not die again instantly relaxed me. I went from fighting back panic to being almost excited.

I drove the hour to the farm and found my friends just waiting for me to arrive. K and I went directly out to gather the ducks. Who were huge. I had my first wave of panic. Ducks are big. I won't go into deep descriptions here, as it is disturbing to me to recall and would likely be disturbing to read. Well, okay, it will still be possibly disturbing. I can't tell this story for myself without some graphic parts.

So in the barest of details, the slaughter of birds is not the calm and quick affair I had read it would be. It is graphic and visceral and loud and upsetting. I played the scientist and asked why there was so much thrashing, and why could it not be done more quickly. My friend (an acquaintance, really) said "they don't feel anything after the first few seconds. That's all just muscle spasms." Seriously? Have you ever been a bird with its throat cut? How do you, how does anyone, know whether they feel anything or not? That sure did not seem like 'muscle spasms" to me. That looked like struggling. Later, as the production line got going, there would be a bird struggling at one end of the table while people eviscerated or plucked cooling birds in the middle. It seemed so incongruous, to have this struggle happening and no one - I don't know - witnessing it. There was a prayer said before the first bird, but it was not enough for me. I felt like first dismissing, and then ignoring, the struggling was just a way of trying to make it okay for the humans involved. Now, mind you - these people take very good care of their animals. They raise them with respect and care. They are not cavalier killers. I think it is just a human tendency to mitigate what we view as suffering by telling ourselves it is not so bad as it looks, or by ignoring it altogether. I am a terrible liar, especially to myself. I cannot say that someone elses' experience is not so bad just to make myself feel better. I cannot pretend I am not complicit in pain or difficulty just so I can eat with less guilt.

Matt and I talked about raising meat animals and how that would be for us. He was a fly-fisherman. He hated killing fish. He did it with a prayer and a thank you, as swiftly and cleanly as he could. He refused to make it pretty, but moreso, he refused to close his eyes and pretend suffering wasn't happening. He did what he could to lessen the suffering, but he would not pretend it wasn't there and that he was not the cause of it. Once the killing was over, there was no sentimentalizing - we said thanks, and we ate fish.

I needed him there with me today. I imagine he would have come up with something to make the process more gentle, or more swift. I wanted to hear him talking to the animals, calling them "my friend," coming to them with his strong, gentle hands. He could be calm in the face of death. In the face of anything. But even more, I needed him to talk about all this with me. To talk about being open to death, to understand and witness it without making it pretty, to be present to our actions and still want to eat meat at the end of it all. These kinds of discussions were normal for us.

I want this now. I need this now, as my life comes closer and closer to the death of animals I have raised. I want to be able to stand there and calmly round up the meat birds, not turn away when they are put into the cone. Not stand there with my mouth hanging open while the bird thrashes around and everyone else just goes about the other tasks at hand. Not pretend that death isn't happening, that I have taken a life that was not mine. I don't know what I would do differently. Just - to do this, to be so close to death itself, to be the one choosing it, ordering it, dealing it out - I so much need him here. It would not make it pretty. But his perspective and his unshakable calm would change things for me. To do this without him is so entirely sad.

I have been in a daze since coming home. It's only when I sat down to eat (raviolis, thank you very much. no meat for tonight) that I really started to cry. I cannot believe I have to live this life without him here. That there will be more deaths, more meat, more days when our doing it together would have made everything alright when it is not. I miss how he refused to make things pretty, how he came to things with such a gentleness, such clear peaceful goodness.

And what I miss, what I miss what I miss what I miss is my love here to talk with about this. To hear his voice. To see that little light in his eye and that gentle smile. To see how it is that he leads an animal to slaughter. To see what this experience is like when done with him. I always knew this day was coming, if I was going to continue eating meat. But I thought he would be beside me. I knew he would. And he is not.

My mother cannot understand how I can do this. How I can, even in theory, raise an animal knowing I will eventually eat it. My mother eats meat. Grocery store, factory farmed meat. My argument - however unsuccessful - is that I would rather eat a creature I love, that I know has been loved, than eat one no one has ever cared a thing about. I cannot be complicit in a life unattended and unloved no matter how cheap that might make dinner. And here is the point, for me, in all of this. I want my heart open enough to witness this. To hold on to this. I want to love and care for creatures knowing full well they are going to die. That I am responsible for their death, as well as their life, and that this is part of love. I do not want to look at anyone I love, meat or not meat, and ignore the fact that death is part of us. I can't make that pretty, and I can't pretend it doesn't hurt.



.

home

I'm back.  Boris had a lovely time with my father; the chickens and cats and gardens survived just fine. I think I may have spent an entire eternity on lay-over at o'hare. And, in other news, I have internet at home again.

When I picked up Boris, my mother asked if san diego was "worth it." I don't know that I can answer that, and certainly not in any words she would understand. I don't think I can create an equation where travel + money spent is < or > camp widow. I missed matt in new ways, found him missing in new ways. I took my first trip somewhere without him, and it was very wrong. The way we travel together, our rhythm of adventure, is gone. I am going to live, and I am not too thrilled about that. There will be trips and adventures, and he will not come. There are whole new places to explore, and we will not explore them together. I sat in a place I should not be, with people I should not know. I left more lonely and more sad than I arrived.

Walking in to the reception area on Friday was overwhelming. All these people. All these people, and every single one of them is widowed. Every single one. Usually, in crowds, I go into "city mode" - walking quickly with determination and focus, with a bit of the "fuck off" vibe so as to not attract the random proposals I seem to pick up from men with heavy accents. But then I realized, in this crowd, everyone is like me. This sea of people wearing green lanyard nametags, and not one of them deserves or needs the brush by or blank gaze. I kept thinking "but they're all so young," and then remembered - me too. I am one of them. There was a lot of that this weekend. A lot of reminding, as if I could forget, that I belong here. I am one of them. This is wrong. There was a lot of this is wrong.

I also got to spend long hours wandering around with a friend, sitting in churches and eating figs (figs. Local ones. My farmers' markets do not have figs. Or avocados. Or dates.) I did not get confused or pitying looks when I told Dan and Jackie about the confusion and stammering I caused my hotel's young check-in girl when I asked her to check where the widow conference was, and that I had to say the word "widow" more times in less than two minutes than I have in a very long time. I got to sit by the pool holding hands and crying with people I love (though studiously avoiding looking at the pool with all those flashback inducing people in there). I got to sit outside and discuss this life without the annoying need to translate and explain everything I'm saying, as I do with the non-initiated.  I got to touch and hold on to people I already loved from a distance. I got to put my arms around people and just stand there, linked, talking within our group - a party I enjoyed, rather than tried to escape. I had hands on my back, arms around my shoulders. I got to meet other 'accident widows,' which is a rare and wonderful thing. The meeting, that is, not the accident. There is something that passes between us, unspoken and not needing to be said. Exhaustion kicked my butt, and I didn't get to spend nearly enough time out and about, but I feel like our connections will continue to grow. In that, it was exactly what I wanted - physical roots to take back into the non-physical world.

I also learned that my bed is not nearly comfy enough, and I need hotel-level amendments.

There are a few things I would like to see at future Camps - maybe an organized field trip somewhere, like the botanical gardens or something. To be out somewhere doing something, without needing to shout over music, would be great. (NOT the SD zoo! Good lord what an over-priced mass of ill behaved humanity.) I also found myself very much wishing you were there Amanda - to key out insects and plant life with me.

At the hotel itself, having a room set up with chairs and coffee/tea would be nice. A widowed-only space, like a cafe with exclusive membership. I know there were plenty of chairs everywhere, and starbucks did a brisk business, but a designated hang out place would be nice. In grand irony, we shared the hotel and conference center with a huge contingent of spandex clad "fitness supplement" people in town for their sales convention. Big banners outside read "STAY YOUNG FOREVER!" Poor dears. They also wore green lanyards. Big thick ribbony ones. They were all very perky.

In a macabre but totally within character way, I found myself wanting some kind of listing, with names removed, of causes of death, causes of widow-ment ~ was I the only drowning there? There was one widowed by fire, one by air; was the earth element represented? How many sudden deaths, and how?

I am a bit dreading the questions from people here - how was it? Did you have a good time? What was it like? I have no answers for this. I especially have no answers for anyone who has not gone through the hazing it takes to get here. That is one big thing I take from this weekend - how much nicer it is to not explain. To know that explanation is not necessary. I left San Diego thinking I wouldn't be back, that I don't need any more Camps. But then, I impulsively signed up to volunteer for the east coast event in 2012. It's still wrong, and I am apparently going to live.


Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
Those who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart.

— Rabindranath Tagore

.

all that can be...

My
Kid
Is
Home.

I don't usually say anything about my step-son. He lived with us. We were very excited for his 18th birthday. On so many levels and for so many reasons. My step-son's birthday is July 13th. His dad drowned on July 12th.  We had stopped off for a quick swim before picking him up at the airport later that day. My kid just turned 20. That is insane. He moved out of state soon after matt died.

He called me last month to tell me he wanted to move back home. Today, he arrived. Wearing his dad's shoes. He has started to fill out a bit like his dad. He arrived with his car full of all of his belongings. He is looking for a job. We just spent 3 hours hanging out, normal, sweet, silly. He knows all my jokes; I know all of his.

My kid has been gone for just shy of two years. I have only seen him once in that time.

The other living member of my family is home. All that can be right in this world - well. All that can be righted is righted when my kid is near by.

Here is how I think of this - almost all the time, I am calling out into the world and nothing stops it. There is no echo back to me. When I am with someone who knows matt, they catch. They cast out their own memories. Between the two of us, matt exists. He is three dimensional and real. When my kid is here, our life exists. He was real. We were real. We lived. It is all as normal as it can be.

And a small detail thing - the whole time my kid was here at the coffee shop sitting across from me, there was a man across the cafe, facing me, who had matt's hair and matt's beard, the same small bald spot starting on top of his head, matt's coloring. Never seen the guy before, and he left right after my kid. I choose to believe it was a physical reminder, a suggestion, that my love is orchestrating what he can, being here with us. That he has been doing what he can to keep our connection strong. Our family. Maybe he isn't. But I will take it.

_

changes

So much has been swirling around in the last several months on the housing front. None of it "started" by me, and none of it requiring that I do anything. Just lots of different options coming up, people around me changing, offering, suggesting. My landlords moved out. They appear to be in conflict with each other over whether to put the house on the market or not, so for now, it's just empty (other than me). Just change. Could be a change that works for me, could not be. At the moment, the biggest effect on me is that they took the internet with them when they moved. I have a pretty short fuse for - well, most things - these days, so the search for new internet options tends to fizzle at the first annoyance. House-wide cable will be shut off soon, and though I tend to be more on-line than tv watching, the complete lack of distraction is a bit concerning. Not enough physical work to be done here to balance out the vast hours of time I will not be entertained (or annoyed) by streaming netflix.

I have a house I might move to. I think my heart has already moved in. My mind is slow to say it out loud. To leave this last place we lived, to leave the physical evidence of our life, to leave the home and streets and buildings that say "he was here" back to me. But I think he may be more clear, out there, that I might be more clear. Away from the ugliness I can't stop seeing, Such a short fuse I have, scales so heavily weighted with ugly. The new house has fields-in-the-making, projects, gardens to reclaim, an art studio and kiln, a little barn, a tiny pond. It has hard wood floors and fireplaces. Matt was out there to check out some renovations but was snuffed out before he got to them. That is a graphic statement I hadn't meant to type, but there it is. The owners are friends of his, moving out of the country, wanting to care for him by caring for me. Seriously - I type this stuff and wonder why I haven't already moved. Slow things done slowly, or as a friend said to me - the first time your soul moves after being wounded so severely, I bet it is like a part of your body coming to life after long injury: exciting and scary and painful and slow.

Do you want to see the house? It's on flickr, so if you want to see, leave me a comment and I'll send you the link. (if you're wondering, being out there makes catering delivery/travel longer, but doable.)

In other news and changes, the farm where I've been working has changed hands. I had taken myself out of it, feeling like it had turned jagged and weird in the transition. But now I am back, having met with the new people and been offered something I have looked for for years: full time farm work with good people doing good work. It was not all good, or even instantly good. It is a very long drive from the new house to the farm. It twisted me intensely, this "decision" between a place that suits my heart and this place that suits - well, practical things, I guess: income, experience building, those things. A huge storm blew up in me. It was quite uncomfortable. However, it did show me how much my heart wants to live in the other house. So, for now, my answer is Both. How or if that will work, my answer is both. There are a lot of unknowns everywhere, even in the practical realms. Changes.

I saw some movies. Most of them surprise 4 tombstone movies. Maybe next time I venture out for internet access, I will put up my reviews. I will tell you that a book got me through the anniversary week: At Hell's Gate, by Claude Anshin Thomas. I'd seen a description of his workshops on meditation for veterans many months ago. A month or so ago, I ordered his book via inter-library loan, and checked out his website while I was waiting. On his website, I read some of his personal journal writing - it's graphic. It's violent. It is the sort of thing I cannot allow into me, as even Before, violent images stay in my mind and my dreams for a very long time. So I ignored the book when it arrived. Avoided it. It was in the car to be returned to the library for at least a week. And then, the day, the actual date day, I opened it. And read. Yes, there is a passage that describes violence, in fact, it was the same event I'd read about online. But this time, it was - tamer. The intensely violent details were not there. And I kept reading.

This book, and acupuncture, saved me last week. Yeah, probably god and love and all that "saved" me too, but it was this book that got to me. For one, he reminds me of Matt in so many ways. But what makes me recommend it to you out there is that he does not make anything pretty. He does not FIX anything. So many people spout off this pseudo-buddhist crap about "breathe and know that everything is exactly perfect as it is," and "the only thing present is now, and it is beautiful." Mr. Thomas says (and I paraphrase, rather than quote): ~ I wanted to punch the nun who told me that, the others who told me that a million times over. Instead I screamed that the past is here right now and it is not beautiful here and breathing will not make it alright! The world is not right, and nothing can make it be that. ~

Awesome. He talks throughout this book about mindfulness and meditation not making things suddenly okay, or even ever okay. You cannot chant your way into blissfulness. He even says that this itself, this desire or this directive to "be okay with all that is" is in fact a denial, a shaming and suppressing of pain. As though pain were bad, as though only a cinderella transformation will do, as though if you are suffering, you are clearly not in your true self, not in your center, and certainly not a good buddhist-christian-jew-hindu-anyone. So much I heard in those first months was similar to what he heard: breathe and know everything is fine. All that matters is this moment. Your true self knows you aren't really in pain. Between that and the incessant you can do it! cheerleading from people whose beloved was safe and alive, I felt like punching a few nuns myself.

I needed this guy, not just last week, but now. I needed to hear that what the practice of mindfulness can do, and does do, is allow you a different relationship with pain. A changing relationship with pain. For him, mindfulness is a way to live here, in this world that is so full of pain, with wounds that won't ever fully heal. It gives him an anchor.

I returned it to the library (c - you can ILL it) and bought one of my own. I need to read it and re-read it, remember what he says, what he practices, what he lives and what he lives with.

Okay my people, that is all I've got. Getting burned out on the out and aboutedness of internet access, and I've gone past the point where I can sum up my experience and recommendation of that book in any good or coherent way. Best to stop typing, then.

_

~

I am having a shitty
lonely
painful
day
and it is barely 9 o'clock.

a brief beautiful

I hadn't thought the upcoming 2 year mark was affecting me. Maybe it isn't. I mean, being weepy, exhausted, having flashbacks, all those things are not new, and certainly don't belong to any one day over another. But the last two days I have been so tender, so down.

Do you have those days when you just go looking for a break, a wee little reprieve, and find your "reprieves" cause more damage than they're worth? I decide to read awhile - fiction, even - and find the main character is an "accident" widow. I turn on the tv instead, and hear Steven Colbert making fun of drowning. Awesome. Nature shows: all water. Lots of water. I head to the garden, and find it has been almost completely destroyed by woodchucks. Go out for a walk and see parents screaming at small children, couples arguing, pop culture and general ugliness. I feel relentlessly ground down.

Took the long walk into town yesterday to sit in our coffee shop, just get out and about for awhile. I should never read the paper. I know this. I really, really know this. And yet, I do it, when I'm out and about like this. I do entirely skip the front page and all that gloom and violence. I caught the headlines of the editorial page though, and those drew me in. Some news about the portland diocese I find deeply disturbing. If matt had known in the Before, I am quite sure he would have mentioned it. So much incongruity in the church, in politics, in everything it seems. The church broke his heart so many times with all their - wrongness. He knew what it could be, what he wanted to help it be, but in the end, he decided he could not walk that path. Anyway. So I read this, sitting in our cafe, at the same table where we were sitting this time TWO years ago, with exactly two weeks left in his life, in my life, though we had no idea. Sitting there, feeling so indescribably deeply sad - for matt and what his church continued to be and to do, for me, feeling shown just continual evidence of ugliness, for me, for all that has happened and all that is and how he is still not here anymore. How is it I have lived 23 months and two weeks without seeing that face, without holding those hands. Fuck.

Anyway. I left. Walked and wandered, hoping I would find something redeemable. Seeing us everywhere. I went to buy bread. I came back, and stopped in a teahouse I haven't seen before. I walked in and immediately started to cry. I don't know. I guess I can't write about it in the way I felt it. Years ago, I had wanted to start a tea house here. These people have made something very close to the image I held. The food on the menu suits my being. It is calm and peaceful (at least it was while I was there). There are all sorts of lovely things on the tea menu about beauty, like beauty being possible in an impossible life. The colors are right for me, soothing and correct. The architecture, the photographs, even the stories in the menu. It reminded me of my travels so many years ago, which made me calm and sad all at the same time. Thinking how matt would respond to this place, how I would have been teary even if he were here, and he would have teased me about it, but also understood. I don't know. It did something for me, something restorative and beautiful. I walked in overwhelmed with ugly, and came out with a wee bit of beauty.

Walking home, I thought about how it doesn't help. I mean, it doesn't fix things. In the Before (to adopt a phrase, thank you A), in the Before, I was often overwhelmed by ugly. Like this - my scales were usually heavily weighted to beauty and goodness. Occasionally, the weight would creep up on the ugly side, or a massive boulder of yuck would suddenly slam down. But when ugly slammed down on my scales, I had matt to lend his weight to the other side, I had my own faith and resilience to get those scales righted again, to lean back to the side of beauty. For this last nearly but not quite two years, the weight on the side of ugly has been, and still is, heavier than I can lift. There is no effective counter-balance. Getting those scales to tip back and truly favor beautiful - well, I'm not sure that can happen again. But what I got yesterday, in that one little tea shop, over a thoughtful and beautiful tea, was a few little weights added to the beauty side. Not enough of course. But some. For a few moments, tiny little grams of goodness were added to my world.

So now there is a sign on my fridge for me - "do not add weight to the ugly side." I think, for now, I can use this. I don't know that it works to really go out looking for beautiful weights to add to my scales. When they come, they do not tip the balance or right the world. But there is beautiful, and I will take it. And try not to add more ugly to that other side. And also, try not to cry all over the nice owner of the beautiful teahouse. Bring tissues next time.

_____________________________________

odd out

I want to not do this anymore.

I can see on fb that my step-son is tagging himself in a photo album entitled "best of my dad." My step-son is MIA in part due to age appropriate non-adult fraternizing, and also largely due to the fact that I am a huge painful reminder of our life. Our contact is sporadic. It doesn't matter that we are family. We are painful family.

I was reprimanded by someone today for being a non-responsive friend, which is fine, and accurate. The problem is that this person thinks we have been close friends for 15 years, and that is not an idea I share. Clearly, we have very different definitions of "close friendship." I am tired of peoples' expectations of me that aren't based in truth for me. Which only really blows because the person who would totally get that, who had himself experienced those wayward expectations from others, is fucking dead. It used to be awesome to be me, and I was loved for exactly me. Now, being me irritates and wounds people.

I am thinking about leaving this state. I am thinking again of those vows of silence. I am tired of the effort of interaction I find exhausting these days, in a million different ways. I am thinking that, clearly, humans and I are just not well suited to each other, and I should just bake them things and be on my way. I had my people. I had my family. Matt's mother calls to tell me she doesn't think she would be surviving this is not for her new partner, that no one could survive such a thing without a good partner by their side. I want to, but do not, say the obvious. Ages ago, my father-in-law's wife told me, "I know he is staying alive for me. I know he is only trying because I am here beside him and with him." Why is it that I am meant to survive this, the one closest, the one without. That's rhetorical and ridiculous.

I have no point, and I am just bitching now. Just bitching because this is insane, and I am tired, and I want my love back, and I no longer want to survive this shit at all. Wait. I never wanted to.
Enough. I have things to do.


*********

3 things

Yesterday was not so bad. Wait. That's not true. Driving out there, being so near to the river, looking down that road, then coming back, past the fire station parking lot with those familiar ambulances - that all hurt. And seeing me, seeing myself there, the road where I was found, being back there again. And all the places we have been, all the familiar roads, trips, all the places we have been. All of that. Was horrible and hard. I came home and slept for hours. And that part was good. And I felt better. In small ways, slowly. What came to me, and remains today, is being willing to feel comfort. Being willing to be comforted. That came from wondering about these hearts I find, the earache medicines, the dog tags and birthday songs, and what I am supposed to do with them, or know from them. There is no "do," really. But today, and yesterday, what I hear, for me, in tenderness and kindness for myself, is to be willing to feel comfort. Not fixing, not replacing, not promising anything at all, but willing to feel comfort. I can take that one, today.

And there is this too, from Gillian this morning:

Because I think (in my limited experience) that grief will learn to hide itself over the years only to reveal its presence when it wants to. That although the grief we feel now might soften, might eventually evolve into an accepted and familiar part of our being, I suspect that later we will have times when it will wound us afresh all over again and possibly in a completely different way. And I think it might be important to set aside specific moments in life if only to feel our grief once more. To acknowledge that although we continue to live and breath and love, something important has been painfully altered, and it remains altered.

Something important has been painfully altered, and it remains altered. It is a beautiful day here today, our dog is at my feet, I ran this morning, and I have tea. Again and again I tell myself: be willing to feel comfort.


This is a mish-mash post - I also wanted to say something about camp widow. I didn't write anything for the contest thing. Aside from being not much into, I don't know - contest things, I also couldn't afford the airfare and hotel should I win the conference costs. Well. Let me rephrase that. Airfare and lodging would wipe out my savings account, and that's not terribly practical. East coast to West coast airfare in itself is craziness. And, I don't love conferences. Workshops and such - meh. But as the weekend comes up, as the windows for even reasonably/astronomically priced airfares begin to close, I am bummed out. It's not the workshops I care about.

I want to physically be with these people I love. I want to know people in actual real life, to have shared real life experiences, to have and continue friendships that have an actual basis in physical reality. I want to have tangible things to refer to when we are not in the same room or same state or same continent. I want to have shared things that are not only internet shared. I may be a writer by trade, but I am not good in print. As I've said before, just being together silently doesn't really go over so well on-line. You can't really order breakfast together on-line, or point out a cool bird, or hand somebody a tissue. Typing is not a substitute for spending actual time together. I want actual, tangible friendships. Not, you know, lots of them, but enough. And to be super honest, I want to be one of the cool kids. There are friendships happening, or deepening friendships, that I am not "in on," and that bums me out. I feel left out of something good.



And lastly - to validate and acknowledge the comment leaving difficulties - blogger is still being cranky, especially (as I've found) if you are using Explorer rather than Firefox. And, if you keep getting redirected to log-in, so far, I've found you can log in with your name and url, rather than that pesky annoying google account thing. Or, send me a message. Hi ferree!


++++++++++++++++ PS - I have to go back out there today, too, to pick up what I had dropped off for repair.

*

I think I will start a new thing: when I read your words, and feel them, and have nothing to say, I am going to leave you a *. Like the Jewish tradition of leaving a stone on a gravestone, to tell someone you've been there, that you love them and you're there.

A description of that stone-leaving practice:

1) It is a sign to others who come to the grave when I am not there that they and I are not the only ones who remember. The stones I see on the grave when I come are a reminder to me that others have come to visit the grave. My loved one is remembered by many others and his/her life continues to have an impact on others, even if I do not see them.

2) When I pick up the stone it sends a message to me. I can still feel my loved one. I can still touch and be touched by him/her. I can still feel the impact that has been made on my life. Their life, love, teachings, values, and morals still make an impression on me. When I put the stone down, it is a reminder to me that I can no longer take this person with me physically. I can only take him/her with me in my heart and my mind and the actions I do because he/she taught me to do them. Their values, morals, ideals live on and continue to impress me - just as the stone has made an impression on my hands - so too their life has made an impression on me that continues.


So, no, you're not dead. I don't mean to imply I'm leaving asterix on your metaphorical grave. But when I read your words, I feel my love for matt in what your words bring out in me. I know I am not the only one who remembers. Through what you've written, I feel my kinship with you though we probably haven't physically met, and I can feel the love you have for your own love. If you have odd * show up in your comments, that is me ~ nothing to say, but you have made an impression, and I'm here. I put my stone down: your words have an impact on me. The impression continues, even though I do not see you.

______________________________________________________________***

blog oddness

seems blogger has been having issues. Not sure they are entirely fixed yet, but at least I can log in. Anyhoo - just a note to say - hi. Still here. Trying to comment, sometimes I can't.

And in "late to the rapture party" news, I was thinking yesterday ~ in early summer of 2009, it rained for around 40 days and 40 nights. There was a flood. And it did in fact destroy the world. Clearly, it didn't occur to either of us that that water was who she was.

So many worlds destroyed all the time. Who's to say which rapture comes, which flood, which armageddon. And - if people are looking for jesus to come back all full of brimstone and judgment and pain, they are thinking of the wrong guy.

_________________________________________

of other men

Well. In case anyone is burningly curious about whether I have run into the man from the earlier post, yes. I did. Today. Today has been one of those days where I am just sad. Just sad, without rage or irritability or anything else. Just sadness, heavy and pure. The dog and I spent most of the day outside so he could chase rocks and I could transplant things, leaving the garden intermittently to shove the broody chicken off the infertile eggs. I wanted a coffee. Well. I didn't. I have another cold, and I wanted to go back to bed. But I also needed to do a few errands, and wanted a coffee first, to get through them. I am so heavy with sad today, I didn't want to take the chance of running into anyone who might want to talk to me, so I waited until late afternoon to go. The place was nearly empty. I sat, drank my coffee, read my book.


Guy from last week came in and sat down. This time, I didn't feel awkward. I felt calm. And sad.  I wondered if it showed. I wondered if he was the kind of person who would notice. What was different for me this time was that I felt more prepared, more familiar with how it felt to leave big gaps in my side of the "information." With the weight of sad on me so clear today, I felt more tender towards myself, I guess. We talked for a bit, mostly he talked. I knew he was flirting. I stepped over whatever he laid down. As Matt and I used to say, it's not that I don't recognize the social cues, it's just that I don't care to acknowledge them.


After I left and did my errands, I kept imagining all the questions that could be asked, by him or anyone, and how I might answer them. Last week, that completely messed me up and made me panic. Today, I know that I am practicing. Practicing, in my mind, and with people who don't know me yet, how I answer things. How I share who I am, how I say hello. Not just in love. That may not be part of my road again this time around. But how I greet anyone. The panic gave me a bit of an opportunity to remind myself to slow down a bit, to trust myself.

So. No panic. Just watching. Just noticing. Calm. Still sad.


__________________________________________

of gods and men

.

It's been awhile since I've given you any movie reviews.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/ofgodsandmen/

I saw this today. Is it playing near you? Go see it. Yes, it has death. I'm not sure how many tombstones to give it. Three? Four? There are no poignant actual death scenes. There is violence. There are tears, and they are quiet. There were a couple of scenes I had to cover my eyes, but not my ears. The calling of bullsh*t on god and on faith is done so beautifully and right. I cried through most of it, but a lot of that was because it was so intensely beautiful, even knowing what was to come. Even when what was to come had come.

I needed this movie. Especially when this world has seen so much violence, so much faith used as a platform of violence; especially when people celebrate death so easily, as though it changes anything. Especially when my normal sensitivity to the ugliness of humankind has become so unbearable without my love and my team here beside me. Especially now. Today.

So, my people, even though there is death, even though it is sad and beautiful, even though it earns tombstones and I don't know how many, it is worth it. To me, anyway. Today.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PS - I guess technically, Of Gods and Men doesn't belong in the Tombstone Rating System, as you know right upfront from the previews and synopsis that death is involved. No sneaky hidden agendas in this movie.
****************************************************