PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I'm in the coziest pajamas I own - light blue polar fleece - and it's noon. Yeah. That's what Saturdays were meant to be. I have a big pot of turkey 'n' noodles simmering on the stove, knitting in the big chair, and I put a holiday wreath on the door this morning. I'm going to do the tree tomorrow, during the Chiefs game. This means most of the ornaments are going to end up on the side of the tree that allows me to see the tv.... and then there will be the ones that are flung when I yell.
I'm heading out to do some of my shopping early in the morning - the idea of going out right now makes me want to go lie down - and then we should be pretty well set for the family get-together we're hosting for James' family in two weeks.

I wasn't going to decorate (again) this year. For whatever reason, it sort of wears me out, the idea of spending all that time to create something pretty & then tear it down three weeks later. I suppose I could leave everything up through May, that might make it feel more worthwhile.. heh.... Usually by the second week of January, it Must! Come! Down! if not sooner than that. But, since we're hosting, we need to make it festive, and, it's probably going to be a little therapeutic, because doing nothing at all would have felt a little - mournful. Like I was avoiding the whole thing. People have said things to me, out of concern, worried that the holidays will be hard, tough, unbearable, whatever. The highlighting of the "holidays" always catches me by surprise. Every day is tough. Every day is hard. Except now, and just now, as in yesterday, I had a day where it seemed like I'd forgotten to put on my grieving cloak. And of course I felt a wave of residual guilt, because our grief is such a handy measure, a universal ruler by which we illustrate to ourselves and the rest of the world "This Is How Much I Loved Him." But in that minute, which began when my mind started and realized I'd just been Plain Happy and not thought about him, or felt the now-so-familiar sadness that wraps around me, I realized that this is how it's supposed to go. This is not a clear, plowed, paved road. The grieving cloak never leaves us, but we eventually don't wear it 24 hours a day. This is a herky-jerky ever-changing path, that sometimes feels like you're racing down a mountain in the dark, tripping and branches hitting you in the face, and then suddenly you're in a clearing, bright light & birds, and then you're not again. And I suppose that seeing families gather, and exchanging cards and gifts, and the absence of that happening with my dad, that does create a formula that is visible to everyone, a logic problem that at the end says, this will be hard. It's just hard to explain to those who mean so well, that far too often, it's a random trigger, and some days are easier and some days are hard and some days are dreadful and now, some mornings, are more like they used to be, before he died. The hospice nurse said, the night he died, that I would always have this point in my life, when he was alive, and when he was dead. I see that point, a linear continuum with that horrible black dot and I measure my feelings and actions against either side of that point.

He loved logic so, and I aced the logic classes I took in college, because they were lovely puzzles. We never talked about the fact I took those classes to please him. To show him I was his daughter. I was terribly proud of how well I did, because I knew it made him proud. If A then B. If B then C. Tildes, arrows, supersets. Their lines and relationships diagrammed one conclusion, or even multiple conclusions, but always with a universal truth, a clear line of reasoning. Validation. If A then B. Grief is the most anti-logical thing I have encountered in my life. It is not a subject to be aced. But at night, I feel my brain trying to diagram it. If A. If B. Where is C? There is no C. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. There were no maybes in the logic I studied. Only universal truths. Mine is how much I loved him.