PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I have been having a pretty good week. Moments that border on ebullient, actually. The weather is bright and sunshiney, and the trees are green, there's good breezes blowing, and nothing earth-shattering or negative is forcing my universe to center around it.

Driving home last night, listening to the news, I had a new experience in the coping department. I explained it later to my husband like this.

In the beginning of grief, it's as though you have a thousand sheets of paper dumped all around you, and there is chaos. Everything is laid out and unorganized. Slowly, you start to shuffle and order and find a folder or three, maybe a box, and you put some of the papers away. A gust of wind can scatter them again, but you are moving ahead. More time passes, and you realize you're never going to get rid of all these pieces of paper, but you do have a system and method and some of the more unmanageable papers are tightly tucked away inside a nice heavy safe. By this I mean, "songs on the radio don't make me burst into tears every day." In other words, progress.

So as I'm listening, a report comes on about Ted Kennedy's brain cancer/tumor. I was shocked, but didn't really feel anything, initially. Until the doctor they interviewed started explaining his type of cancer, and that it wasn't metastatic. Click. My father's cancer had metastasized throughout his body, including his brain.
The approach to treatment was described. Click. I heard my father's voice, so small, trying to control himself and be strong, telling me the cancer had, indeed, gone to his brain.
I heard the doctor from the Mayo clinic say, "You do realize there's nothing I can do for your father, right?" and remembered the utter confusion in my mind, because no, I did not understand that. Spin, Spin, Click.
And I looked around and saw a bright blue sky, sharp, fresh green leaves bursting from the trees, smelled fresh cut grass and remembered that day, when I found out the cancer was in his brain, how I screamed at a co-worker and drove myself home, to sit outside in the blinding sunshine and sob, confused and afraid. Seeing my husband's face unexpectedly appear, for of course he would come home to be with me, even though it never occurred to me he would.

And the safe door swung open to pour those tucked-away papers all over my lap. All of this, that's taken several minutes to write, happened in the span of 60 seconds or less. I found myself with tears streaming down my face, struggling to regain my previous optimistic demeanor, and to maintain control, because I was driving. I wasn't crying for the Kennedys, though I keenly know how hard it must be for them. I cried for myself. My loss. My pain. It was brief, and I went home to get a big hug and to putter with my husband in his garden, to pull some weeds and admire the drip irrigation system he's worked so hard on. Life goes on. My desire - almost two years ago - was to get THROUGH all of this. What I didn't know, and couldn't fathom, is that there is no end point. This will stay with me until I die. In ebbs and flows, my love and sadness will visit me, sometimes expectedly, sometimes out of the bright blue spring sky.

Nobody lied when they said time was the answer. So hard to see in those early months, but it truly truly does heal. Heal, not cure. Sigh. I'm learning so so much.

Labels: grief, life, love, spring

I've had occasion, a couple of times in the past month, to hear someone talking about a parent's death, or a grave illness & their actions as they cope and brace themselves and prepare for the unknown. I hear my voice and my words and feel my .... whatever it is we all radiate that is intangible to see or often describe, but we feel it, and it couches what we say. "Vibe" is just too... trendy. "Aura" is just too....hippy-dippy.

But I've heard my words and the sounds surrounding them, and I know. I know that I know it now. I know what it is to go through it. To live it, to feel it like a fire raging through your conscious, to wish it would leave your bloodstream in a reverse-junkie rage, to know there are a thousand pitfalls, days on end lost, the emptiness, the pain, the mind fucks, the everything that goes with death. I had a salesperson who came in, her father in the hospital, things don't look good, and I heard myself as I expressed my sympathies - no - my empathies. But not in an overwhelming way. (I still can crack myself, and am learning this language, no matter how much I didn't want to.)

I remember how those who know/knew used their wisdom and experience with me. I remember reading Becky's post, the post that came when I stood on the other side of the door, where I believed I KNEW, that I was wise in the ways of death, because we can only comprehend that what we have lived, and nobody wants to believe they suck at being there for someone else, for simply the sole reason of not having gone through the experience. And in the end, it's not that you suck? It's that you just don't know. You can't have that quiet acceptance inside that says, "Yeah," and doesn't need to say anything else, because it all does come down to time. Time, and love, and patience, and understanding, and lots more time. In re-reading her post, this jumped out at me: "understand that the person may not be the greatest friend for a while afterward" for indeed, I have lost friends in this process. I've even been accused of being a horrible friend, and it felt like being stabbed with a machete. But everything does heal. And I'm struck by how much I didn't know, the first time I read her words. The passage through the door certainly changes you - for better, for worse, for a lifetime.

I miss him terribly still. It's more private, it's quieter. I think of him every day when I get in my car, the car I bought with the trade-in from his truck. I think of him when I look at the grass garden we planted in his memory, freshly mulched and looking lovely as the spikes of grasses rise up through their clumps for another season. I am always comforted when he appears in my dreams, and I see the ways we overlap and I can hear his voice if I listen. For everyone who stuck it out, who listened & nodded & tried to understand - thank you.

Labels: grief, life, spring, the next year

I started out my morning by, well, getting up. That's always a good way to start, as opposed to waking up dead, or say, just falling out of bed and crawling around on the floor. AFTER that part, I went to Sutherlands, because they had annuals for $0.69 a four-pack. And hostas in 1# pots for $1.99. Dudes and dudettes, that is Super Cheap! (Oh, maybe I should point out real quicklike that I took today off. I'm going to surprise the Wo with my industrious mad gardenin' skeelz! Hopefully.) So I got a bunch of cheap petunias and three hostas and it was like, $15, and it almost offset the fact that I truly despise shopping at Sutherlands! Talk about a place in need of a makeover.

Then it was on to the KC Gardener's Society annual plant sale. Where I was accosted by every single person working the sale, and I brought the median age down by a good thirty years. It was like fresh blood in the water, and everyone wanted to help me. I ended up buying :cough: a lot of plants. It was sort of the reverse of what I once read about child pickpockets in Other Countries, how they swarm you and distract you and they practice in a warehouse under the tutelage of a Master Evil Pickpocket with a long stick pointing out techniques on a mannequin rigged with bells. So when I say the reverse of that, I mean: Old people piling me up with plants. "Have you heard about Pineapple Sage?" (Ah, yes!) "Did you see we marked the begonias down from $5 to $3.50?" (Um, yes, I was standing next to you when you told her to do it?) And an ongoing list of inquisitive questions about what other plants I wanted, and did I have a list, and what sort of clematis did I have back at my house, and always with each new pot going into my cardboard flat, "You are sure gonna be busy this weekend!" in an excited, chirpy, "we got another one, Vern, and if she buys three more plants we get upgraded to VIP at the Waid's cafeteria!" sort of way. The priceless moment for me was, at the end of ringing all these plants up, the Head Lady asked me if I was a member, and I said, "My husband is," and she asked his name, and I told her, and WITHOUT LOOKING she sternly said, "HE hasn't paid his dues!" It was like meeting the Wizard of Gomer's Parking Lot Plant Sale, she was that all-knowing. So then I paid his dues, in addition to the plants, got my membership discount, and as I balanced two of the three flats in my arms, her cohort bellered, "CARRY OUT!!!!" and I wanted to perhaps have some peace and quiet and a little less attention at that point. And in my haste to pull myself away from the OPPP (Old People Piling Plants), I jumped in my car and started to drive away. Whoops! I needed to also go to Gomer's, and there's just something slightly naughty about buying liquor at 9:15 in the morning, I think. For some unfortunate souls, I suppose it's a ritual, but I had my heart set on getting some of that Patron Coffee Tequila (it's not just for breakfast anymore), and then I picked up a birthday gift and had a very nice chat with the fellow working behind the counter. He upsold me to also buy a small bottle of Patron Orange Liqueur, in case I want to make top-shelf margaritas, and I think I just have a weakness for the bottle design. Oh, and I found the bottle of tequila that we sampled at that dinner and really liked, and it's $52 a bottle. So. That stayed at Gomer's.

But in the end? I spent more money on plants than I did on booze! Maybe I should try to find me one of those agave plants and combine the hobbies.....

Labels: life, spring

Well, if you read my blog via Bloglines, you might be wondering what in HELL this girl's a-doin'. I've been doing a little brushing, scrubbing & cleaning up of the ol' blog, because there's the possibility I'm going to be included in an upcoming article on local bloggers. And there haven't been a ton of adjustments/edits/removal of posts - I'm happy with where I work, and most of the negative stuff I say about other people seems to involve bad drivers or customer service issues. I just want to make sure I'm not unintentionally pissing anyone off. Good thing I'm pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get! What I write and put out on the internets is 99% what you'd get if you started talking to me on that day. Bottom line, everyone who DOES know me, knows I'm smart, crazy, and looking for humor at every turn. I like to think so, anyway. :)

However, I seem to have a blind spot still, and going back through the past year's worth of posts (and pictures) was a bit daunting. I watched the transformation of posts go from squirrelly, ranting goofball to the insanity and grief with my dad's cancer & death. Kudos to you for continuing to read.

Speaking of humor, you know that feeling inside, when you have to pretend you like this person who has power (like a hated boss, or your father-in-law or someone who can give you something you need but may decide on a whim not to?), and you feel your face move into a smile that isn't genuine from the inside, but still appears like a smile on the surface? Sometimes that's what laughing has felt like since he died. It hasn't been that the emotion itself was false, and I've had some crazy times where my stomach ached from laughing, but there was this other piece inside me that frowned, that stood to the side and shook it's head, making the other part (the part laughing) feel false, awkward, uncomfortable. I assume it's all part & parcel of this process. People ask, "So! What's going on?! What's the latest & greatest?" And I feel this dead flatness inside as I force myself to smile and say, "Oh, you know! Spring's coming!" (What the hell kind of answer is that, anyway?) Because we can't spend the rest of our lives weeping and not laughing and instead answering, "Death! That's what happened! My dad's dead and all of this post-death stuff SUCKS! I got the short end of the stick and I'm angry!" I mean, you could? But it would REALLY bring down the mood, and it'd probably keep you stuck in that bad place for a really long time.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not an adept liar, and I'm not terribly great at forced joviality. So that's been my challenge. My dear friend & I decided we would both "fake-it-'til-we-make-it" in respect to our individual situations. It's sort of working, and right now? It's all I've got.

The day before my dad died, I posted these words. They are still gorgeous, and continue to be true.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
-- Emily Dickinson

Spring's coming.
Bring on the perching songbirds.

Labels: change, grief, spring