THANKFUL FRIDAY

Yesterday was Chris’s birthday and for some reason, my phone calendar has this listed multiple times as all day events. One of them is not even correct. It reads “Chris Maddera’s 43rd Birthday”. If Chris were alive today, we would be celebrating his fifty fourth birthday. I would probably be making everything jambalaya, a dish I have not made since the last birthday he was alive. There was a moment yesterday when I thought I’d get through the day unscathed, but that didn’t happen. After a vigorous and intense personal yoga practice (I’m up to 30 sun salutations and that may be my limit because of time), I settled myself down for a much earned savasana and immediately started sobbing. Grief gives zero shits about your savasana or time and space. This is the second time in the last six days where grief has rolled up to sucker punch me in the gut. The first time got me sobbing in my car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. That was less about Chris and more about my mom and her mental struggles.

Grief is an onion. Cut into any layer of it and it’s still going release syn-propanethial-S-oxide gas.

There is no antidote for syn-propanethial-S-oxide, but you can reduce your reaction to it in a number of ways. You can wear goggles and use a very sharp knife. You can also chill or freeze the onion. Bottom line is that you can make it so that you cry a little less, but not completely. This is grief plus time. As each year passes, I cry a little bit less. I feel the string between us getting longer and longer and I just want to wind it up tight around my finger to shorten the distance. I may cry less, but I don’t miss him less or think about him less. Now more than ever. I mean can you imagine what Chris would be writing and doing in the midst of this current administration?!? He’d be inciting our anger and disgust, handing out the pitchforks, all while making us laugh uncontrollably over the ridiculousness of it all.

Look, I stared at a blank page for a really long time trying dig up something for today’s gratitude posting and instead I told you about Chris’s birthday and my dumb calendar. How do you find gratitude in the face of such great loss? Better yet, how do you find gratitude in the face of such great loss without it sounding trite or contrived? The answer is that you don’t. I can list off a half dozen things of gratitude from this week for you right now and every single one is trite and contrived. I’m grateful for the sunshine. I’m grateful for that one day this week it was warm enough when I go home from work that I could take Josephine for a short walk. She was so excited about it that she pooped four times. I am grateful that mom is being cared for and that I don’t have to do it. I am grateful for the friends in my life who continuously have my back and provide me with support.

Trite or contrived gratitude, to me, is just an act of honing the practice. It’s not any different from saying grace before a meal and being thankful for the food on the table. Of course you are thankful for your food. Unless the meal before you is your least favorite food. When I was a child, my heart would sink every time I ran down the stairs for breakfast and discovered Mom had made French toast. I hated Mom’s French toast. It was always soggy and to this day I do not ever order it. That’s beside the point. I was still grateful to have food and a mom who made sure I had breakfast every morning. I found that even the simplest, most obvious things to be grateful for makes the hard, painful stuff like grief a little easier to handle.

It’s like putting on goggles before cutting up that onion.

WHEN ONE GOES OUT

The Nelson Atkins Museum currently has an installation from Felix Gonzales-Torres. It’s a very simple piece of two light bulbs hanging on the wall. If you knew nothing about art or Felix Gonzales-Torres, you might even walk by, overlooking it as art. Felix Gonzales-Torres is, was, the kind of visual artist that would make my brother groan because of lack of actual paint and canvas.

Cuban-born artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s sculptural installations are imbued with details of his life. On March 5, 1991, he lost his partner Ross Laycock to an AIDS-related death. In this work, Gonzales-Torres conjures a couple through a pair of gradually extinguishing lightbulbs, an artwork that quietly commemorates his partner’s passing and makes a larger reference to the AIDS epidemic. Gonzalez-Torres’s own premature death due to AIDS five years later adds an additional narrative dimension to the work: viewers bear witness to both artist and partners’ lives and losses through the two nestling bulbs hanging from entwined cords.

The last time I was there, both bulbs were blinding in their brightness. On December sixteenth, one of the lights went out and when I saw the posting, I sobbed at my desk. I remember looking at the two lit bulbs long enough to give myself vision twinkles and believing with my whole heart that the instillation would come down before any of the bulbs burned out. I wanted to believe this was all an artistic hoax and someone just replaces the bulbs before the museum opens for the day so we would never know. I wanted both bulbs to stay bright and shining forever.

It’s hard being the bulb that’s still on.

There was an episode recently of Somebody Somewhere where the character Tricia was upset because she had forgotten their sister’s birthday. Sam and Tricia play sisters and their other sister passed away from cancer. That’s the lead in to season one of the series. Sam was trying to calm her sister Tricia and said to her that is was okay and that there were some days she didn’t even think about about their lost sister. It was a well done scene on the various ways we handle loss and grief. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I just didn’t think about Chris. I don’t know what that would even feel like. I know Michael said in the very beginning that Chris never goes away, but I wonder how long he’s going to stick to that. When does he eventually say something like “yeah…I know I said that, but maybe it’s time you let go of Chris completely”?

My answer will always be never.

Michael has a coworker who announced that their wife has terminal cancer. It’s the long, slow, kill you kind of cancer. Michael has talked about this fairly young family often now since the announcement. In his most recent conversation about his coworker, Michael brought up the conversation we had all those years ago. He admitted that sometimes it feels like he’s living with a ghost and one he’ll never be able to live up to. Yet he still insists that Chris never goes away. I should just tell Michael even, though he won’t actually listen, that he shouldn’t try to live up to as much as he should try to live a life. Stop projecting your feelings and start truly hearing what is being said. But it is true; he will never live up to the ghost. Blessing. Curse. Catch 22. I will never be free of this book.

I went back to the Nelson to see the Gonzales-Torres piece. I was on a girl date with Melissa and I was telling her all about the piece as we approached it, but the bulb was no longer burned out. It had been replaced with a new bulb and I was outraged. I was furious. How dare they replace the bulb and wreck the message of this art! Rage filled my body and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I had to know why someone would do that. Why would someone just go in and wreck this completely emotional work of art? So we stopped at the information desk on our way out where we were told that the bulbs are replaced when both go out. So at some point, without posting, the second bulb went out. They were just resetting the piece. Which….maybe…that’s what I have done. That’s what we all do. When bulbs go out, we replace them with new bulbs. Wattage may be different from the last bulb, but it’s still a light source.

There’s a lot of weight attached to being the last light one, a lot of responsibility. It takes a lot of energy to be the only light left in the room, always compensating for the light that’s been lost. Sometimes a room needs more light than just one bulb can provide. I don’t like sitting in the dark unless it’s at the movies. The dark is for sleeping or gazing at the night sky until you are sleeping. I prefer the light. Even when it is so bright it makes your vision twinkle.

EVENTS

It started with a series of events. First, my dad’s sister passed away. Then my dad’s dog, Annie passed away and when that happened, Dad’s health took a fast and sloping decline. For years, Dad had been telling us the same old stories over and over. That was Dad. There was nothing that didn’t feel normal about this. But when Annie died, Dad lost his sense of direction. That was not normal and things progressed very quickly after that. Sudden. My dad’s death drug out over a year, but still felt sudden at the ending of it all. I knew it was coming and told myself I was prepared for it.

I’m a terrible liar.

I awoke to a text from my sister: “Button passed away in the night.” Button is my mother’s cat. Mom has always been a cat person. She’s the reason we always had at least one cat roaming around the house. I think about this now and realize my parents had their own familiars, Dad with his dog and Mom with her cat. Button has been around since before we moved Mom into the house she lives in now. When I called Mom with my condolences, my mother broke down into tears and said “She was my constant and only companion.” It was, and now is, my turn to be the comforter. While my mother has comforted me often, most of my tears were from scraped knees and broken bones. Mom being (hopefully) past those stages of scraped knees, I am left to comfort broken hearts.

Her job was easier.

Sometime last year, my mom started telling me “This or next year is probably my last.” She’d say these things whenever I called her to check in. I have never protested her declaration, but instead replying with a simple “Well…okay.” I have learned in the years since my dad passed to not object or try to correct my mother in the things she says. I’ve gotten good at redirecting her stories of ‘whoa is me’ to something from happier times. I’ve slipped up once and lost my patience with her and that was when she said no one would miss her when she’s gone. I realize now that it was a bait, one I fell for. I’ve been asked “Doesn’t it bother you or make you mad when she says she only has a couple of years left?” That doesn’t bother me. We should all get to chose our time, but the idea of not missing her….that was a terrible and hateful thing for her to say. I miss her while she is still living. I miss the mother she was in my toddler memories and in all the times it was just her and me. I miss the mother she was before J died. I miss the mother I took to Ireland and pointed at a large penis someone had drawn into the sand on the beach and asked if it was a picture of a cow.

And when I redirect her from her stories that come from someplace negative, that version of her is still there, but barely.

My mother’s brother passed away a couple of years ago and now her cat. I can’t help but think about Dad and the events leading to his decline. I’m worried that I will disappoint my mother and not spend enough time with her. I’m worried about the mistakes I will inevitably make. I’ve notice that I have a tendency to shut off emotions during a given time frame and proceed as if everything is okay. I wait until I’m completely alone to break down and let the masks fall. I am well aware that from the outside it will look like I’m not even sad for her to go. Even though I have been warned, I will still be surprised by the suddenness of her departure. I’ve heard people say that part of the joys of parenthood is watching your children age into grownups, but not much is said about grownups watching their parents age into decline.

Frankly, it is not a joy for me to witness but it is turning into lessons on patience and kindness, lessons on caring for my own body and how to prepare for my own age into decline.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In 1996, Chris and I drove to Kansas City, KS to see Sting in concert. It was the Mercury Falling tour and our first concert together. We had no idea who the opener was going to be and when Tracy Chapman stepped out onto the stage, Chris and I turned to each other and practically squealed with glee. Tracy Chapman was the icing on this cake of a concert. The two women sitting in front of us left the concert when Tracy Chapman left the stage. They paid Sting amount of moneys to see her and I don’t blame them. Seeing Tracy Chapman step out onto the stage to sing her song Fast Car with Luke Combs at Sunday’s Grammy’s made every one I know burst into tears for good reasons.

Chris’s birthday was on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, while getting ready for work, I asked Alexa to play songs by David Bowie. There is not an obvious link between Chris and David Bowie. We loved Bowie’s music and it was often featured in our daily playlists. We never got to see him concert, which is a bummer, but we never really talked about the possibility of going to a Bowie concert (mostly because we figured we could never afford it). My link with Chris and David Bowie is a bit more subtle. Many of you know that David Bowie died of liver cancer in 2016. Some of you may not realize that Bowie died two days after celebrating his 69th birthday. Chris also died of liver cancer within days of his birthday and it’s taken me a long time to say that this is how Chris died. For years, when asked, I’d tell people that Chris died from a large tumor on his liver that was wrapped around his bile duct. It felt (sometimes feels) that “liver cancer” is too simple of a description and the word ‘cancer’ implies that it can be removed and treated. None of these were options for us. There was no excision of a tumor or chemo treatments. We were handed a sheet of paper containing a list of phone numbers for hospice care.

Chris died four days after celebrating his 41st birthday.

Concerts were our church. Movie scripts were his scripture. Girls on Film by Duran Duran started playing in the car on my way home yesterday and I sang along with Chris’s lyrics “Dogs on stilts”. I don’t think I can sing it any other way. Chris lacked the ability to carry a tune, but was more than skilled in linking a tune to a scene. In December of 2011, Chris and I saw our final concert together, Florence and the Machine. He was very sick and in a lot of pain, but we didn’t know then about the tumor or the cancer. He spent most of the concert sitting on the floor and we did not stay for the entire show. The morning Chris died, I drove to work in hopes of getting an hour or two of tasks accomplished. Hospice had settled into our home by then and Chris was comfortable. His mother and brother were there, so I thought this would be a good time to step away for bit. As I made the drive, Dog Days are Over by Florence and Machine came on the radio. I was at my desk for ten minutes before they called me to tell me that Chris had passed.

I wanna hear one song without thinking of you… -Me and My Dog by Boygenius

I have carried a trunk full of guilt and anger over Chris’s last morning for years. I should have been there. He’s such a jerk for choosing the moment I leave the house to draw his last breath. What kind of idiot am I for thinking I could ‘step out for a bit’? If I’d been there would he still be breathing? That is a particularly horrific thought. A day and a half before Chris died, he stopped being the sharp witted person we all knew and loved. He was unconscious and incoherent. The Chris we all knew and loved had already left the building. Chris didn’t choose that moment to leave out of spite or meanness. It was just his time and it was easier for the both of us for me to not be present. My presence made it harder for him leave and he really needed to leave. Knowing this is why I don’t carry that trunk around with me all the time now. I might move it from one place to another from time to time. It is always in the room with me, but I am no longer carrying it every waking moment.

The day the doctor handed us the phone number for hospice care, I was forced to recognize that there was nothing I could do in this situation. Being put into this absolute position broke my brain. It didn’t happen all at once. It took phone calls to various cancer centers and the inability to get Chris’s pain managed for it to sink in. There was nothing I could do to fix this. With time, I’ve started seeing this as less of a failure on my part and more of a surrender. When I tell my students to surrender to their final relaxation it is my cue to them to give in and allow for relaxation. There is a floaty feeling that happens when your body completely sinks into your mat and you have surrendered. It is not dissimilar to the feeling I have when I set down that trunk of guilt and anger.

I am often asked if it ever gets any easier, this whole grief thing, and I still after all this time don’t know how to answer. There is not a day that passes where I don’t think of him or miss him terribly. But I have surrendered myself to the reality that Chris no longer has a physical presence on this planet. That particular reality has become part of that trunk I sometimes move around. The answer to the question of ease has a yes and no answer. That trunk is heavy and takes up space, but it is filled with things I can’t completely dump. On the days I’m carting that around, my answer is no. On the days when I’m not carrying it, but I can see the trunk in the room, my answer is yes.

There is gratitude to be found in the surrender.

OUCH

I sliced my thumb on a can of beans I had just opened to go into the pot of soup I was making for dinner. It’s not bad, not a stitches situation, but when it happened I quietly said “Ouch! Fuck!” and then my thumb started bleeding. Michael took one look at the first drop of blood and said “Oh no…” and then he ran off in search of a bandaid, which once found he applied to my thumb with shaky hands. I almost asked him if he needed to sit down for a minute. A few hours later, I removed the bandaid only to put on a new bandaid five minutes later when my thumb started bleeding again. Thumbs tend to be workhorses of the hands and this particular wound is in a place that gets bumped around a lot. I feel every bump and it smarts.

January.

Every time, I think it will be easier. If anything, the passing of time makes it worse and when I tell myself that I just have to make it through January, there’s a voice that whispers “February is going to be just as bad.” I want to blame it all on the weather, the bitter cold that makes it impossible to move around on this planet. It wasn’t this cold back then when we first moved here. It wasn’t even this cold the year he left us. Passed away, whatever. Some days it’s “he died”, some days “he departed” and some days when I’m feeling really cranky it’s “he left us”. The goddamn nerve of that man and the choices I have made since have set me up for a lifetime of knowing my life was better in the before times. Maybe that’s the why of making those choices.

Sometimes, I get so mad that I am still writing about this. I will write paragraphs around my unhappiness and then I will delete it all. I will fill the empty space with forced joy while asking myself when was the last time I was truly happy. This question always arises during the coldest, darkest months of the year when I’ve been the most stagnant, when the air is the most painful. Every year I make a plan, a strategy for navigation around this time and every year that plan fails not just miserably but epically. With flames and destruction. It is quite possible that my plans have failed more epically this year than any other year, even though on the outside it all looks normal and happy. She smiles. She make an attempt at laughing. She pretends.

I pretend.

After Thanksgiving, I calmly told Michael that I was no longer putting any work into this relationship. In some ways this made my life easier. I have dropped any expectations I had of him being a true definition of the word ‘partner’. That means doing tasks that I’d have to do any way if I lived alone. Shoveling the driveway, clearing the snow from my car, making a meal plan, holding myself accountable. I’ve stopped expecting an equally emotional and intellectual relationship. I had been working and striving so hard for this to be that kind of relationship, that the more effort I made, the more I was reminded that I didn’t have to do this in my previous relationship. I thought for the longest time that I was compromising, but what I’ve really been doing is conceding and with each concession, giving up pieces of myself until I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

Mostly, I didn’t care about the loss of myself but how is that different from the days that followed Chris’s death? So now, in the darkest coldest months of the year I have more time and space for the past. Again with these choices I have made. I am not sure I ever really figured out who I am without Chris other than a bit pathetic. I’m tired of everything but mostly I am tired of being pathetic. When will I ever learn to lean into the stillness and the benefits of rest that come with these months? The truth is that if I stop being pathetic and less conceding, I will see that I am still the person I was with Chris. I had my own identity then and there’s no reason to believe that I don’t have my own singular identity now.

Knowing that doesn’t make this month feel any less poky. January will always be a cut on my thumb that’s deeper than a paper cut but not so deep that it requires needle and thread.

THE VACATION

When someone at work would ask me where I was going for vacation, my answer never really sounded too enthusiastic. As the time got closer and closer to the trip, I found myself having to come to terms with why I was not as enthusiastic as I probably should be to be going to Seattle for a week. This would be my first real, non-work related vacation that I have gone on in well over a year. We would be staying with Amani for the first half of the trip, a person I love with as much heart as I have left in me. I love the Pacific Northwest. I should have been vibrating with excitement to be there. The Sunday before we were to leave, I sent a text to Amy because I knew she’d be the only one to understand this particular hesitation.

The last time I was in Seattle was with Chris and we were happy and life was great and we were still friends with the couple we were staying with in Seattle. What if I run into those people?

“Those people” refers to a couple we were friends with who turned out to not be good and honest friends. I am still furious with the two of them for how they treated Chris, who played a minor yet innocent part in their melodramatic marriage woes. Even though Seattle is a big place, I worried about the awkwardness of seeing these people. Amani lives in the same suburb as them and even though the chances are slim to none, I was still feeling anxious. I was also contending with memories of Chris and I gleefully exploring downtown Seattle together. We both considered this to be our first real vacation. Previous trips were either camping or bargain getaways to Vegas. We had starting thinking about traveling to the places where we might want to live one day and Seattle was at the top of that list. We spent hours talking about how we wanted to visit this place and now we were finally doing the thing. All of my memories of us are bright, technicolor images of us smiling at the camera, smiling at each other, smiling at everything. Ridiculous, painful, joy. Now I was going back to the city that started the quest for a new place to live, with a new family.

Synapses were about to be re-mapped.

There is an act in the play Almost Maine about a woman who has travelled to Maine to see the Aurora Borealis. She sets up her tent in an open field that belongs to a man named East. He comes out to ask her what she thinks she’s doing camping on private property. She’s surprised by him and his questions because she’d read somewhere that people in Maine let hikers camp on their property. She explains to East that she’s there to see the Northern Lights because it is believed that the lights are the spirits of the dead walking with torches to heaven. Her husband has just died. She’s there to see him off and say a final goodbye. During her exchange with East, they keep passing a paper bag back and forth and every time it leaves the woman’s hands, she gets distraught. The bag contains her broken heart. By the end of the scene, East dumps the bag and begins the process of fixing it.

This is the play that Michael has chosen for his students to perform in the Fall. When he chose it, he asked me to read lines with him, which swirled up a hornets nests of feelings of the countless hours reading lines with Chris. The day we left for Seattle, Amani sent us a text about the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis and I thought about that scene and what it would be like to see those lights. Though, after being up for almost twenty hours, neither of us were up for a midnight excursion to hunt down the Aurora. So our first day in Seattle was spent lounging and recovering at Amani’s. I sent Michael and the Cabbage out over the next two days to explore Seattle without me, while I stayed with Amani. She was hosting a grief camp, Grief Out Loud. While Michael and the Cabbage did a lot of the things that I did on my first visit, I sat with my grief and bonded.

One of the last activities Amani had us do was to write a letter to ourselves from a person we are grieving. It was the kind of activity that made me look at Amani and tell her “I hate this.” It was so easy for me to write pages and pages of a letter in my own voice about how disappointing I am without Chris. I could go on and on about how I’ve done everything wrong, how I am the absolute worst, a failure. Instead I sat there with my composition book (the kind that Chris seemed to always have an endless supply of) and tried to hear Chris’s voice. What would Chris have to say to me now? I thought about his generous personality and that there was a reason why everyone loved him. In my letter, I allowed Chris to speak kindly to me. He didn’t tell me I was doing everything right. I couldn’t be that kind to myself, but I did allow him to tell me that he understood the choices I have made. There was a condoning of my choices.

I am always with you.

Love, Chris

I ended that letter and put a lid on my grief. Michael, the Cabbage and I left Amani’s for a condo in downtown Seattle. We spent the next two days doing all the touristy things that Chris and I didn’t do, like travel up to the top of the Space Needle. We went to museums and on a boat tour of the harbor. Raw fish was consumed daily. We walked many many steps and talked about what it would be like to live there. This is a discussion I’ve had with Michael every time we’ve visited the Pacific Northwest, a discussion Chris and I had thousands of times.

Some things change but some things don’t.

CLEAR VISION AHEAD WITH A REAR VISION MIRROR

Anyone who really knows me also knows about my obsession with Wes Anderson’s movies. I have his films ranked by favorites and importance. If the story does do it for me, there’s always the creative visuals. When the day comes to remodel my kitchen, I’m doing it in Wes Anderson style with dark teal cabinets and light pink walls. My reward for sitting through a panel discussion on baseball statistics, was to see the new Wes Anderson film, Astroid City, in the theater. I posted something about having thoughts on the movie afterwards, which may have sounded like I had negative thoughts or I had been disappointed. That wasn’t my intention. My thoughts on the movie are not negative. In fact I loved it and have placed it number three in my list of Wes Anderson films. I probably loved it so much because I felt a little too close to the character of Augie, the grieving father in the story line traveling with his children and carrying along his wife’s ashes in a Tupperware bowl.

I’m a photographer. My pictures always come out. - Augie Steenbeck

A number of people have asked me what this movie is about and every time I’ve been unable to say anything other than “it’s weird, but really really good.” I don’t know how to verbally describe a movie about death and loss and the sidecar of crazy life that just continues to travel around with you in spite of your emotional state. Of course, in true Wes Anderson fashion, the events happening around Augie are over the top crazy and surreal. Yet no matter how bizarre the thing, Augie’s reactions are always the same bland, expressionless reaction. This is the shock and numbness that comes with loss. Things happen all around you, small thing and big things, but all you can muster up is a shrug and a ‘huh.’

The movie is a play within a play and at one point, the actor portraying Augie in the play breaks character and walks off stage. He says he needs a break and steps out on to a fire escape. The woman who was supposed to play his dead wife in a dream sequence is standing on the fire escape of the building right across from him. The dream sequence ends up getting cut in the play and the two have a brief discussion of it. Then the actor playing Augie says “I’m not sure I get it. The play.” The woman goes on to explain that it’s okay if you don’t ‘get it’. You just do your best with the parts you do get. Everyone interprets the script in their own way, just as we each deal with grief in our way.

We don’t have to ‘get it’.

One of the advertisement signs on the gas station garage reads Clear Vision Ahead with a Rear Vision Mirror. There’s another one across from this one that reads Death Rides on Unsafe Tires. Those signs are probably silly and meaningless to most, just something to draw attention with out much thought. For me though, those signs are my then and now. The first sign is something I am constantly doing, remembering and reflecting on the road traveled. Looking back every now and then to see the road behind you, reminds you to pay attention to the road ahead. That second sign was left for me by Chris, a safety warning from a man who worried about me doing things that he thought I couldn’t handle on my own. It is a testament to my strength (and stubbornness) all of the things that I have found that I can handle on my own. But I will concede that life is easier when you don’t have to handle things alone. That’s something that Augie also realizes. He doesn’t have to do this alone.

We don’t have to do this alone.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I am thankful for every time you made me laugh.

I am grateful for the rare times I made you laugh.

I am thankful that I only need one hand to count the number of times we ever really fought.

I am thankful for the ways you challenged me to be better and to work smarter.

I am thankful for the balance, both mentally and emotionally, of our relationship.

I am grateful for all the ways you supported my dreams and ideas.

I am grateful to the value you gave to the words that I spoke.

I am thankful for the moments when we struggled.

I am thankful for the moments when we succeeded together.

I am thankful for all the ‘firsts’ I had with you.

I am grateful for being a witness to your brilliance and wit.

I am grateful for all the photos I have where you are looking at me instead of the camera.

I am thankful for the photos I have of you looking directly at the camera.

I am thankful that I was the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

I am grateful you showed me how a relationship should be.

I am grateful for every moment.

I am thankful that time has not depreciated or diluted my feelings for you and all of the above.

THESE DAYS

I took a series of nude photos of myself over the weekend. I had been thinking about it for a while, how I had done this many years ago, but never revisited those photos or thought about retaking them. It was a birthday thing. I did it during a time of creative struggle and insecurity. I would have thought that I would have revisited the nude photography after losing weight, but I just never really wanted to take the time to do it. I wrote a whole blog post about the pros and cons of nude photos. Then I deleted the whole thing. I think really, I didn’t want to write a whole entry about honesty in photography and then not post the picture. Because I was not about to publicly post a nude photo of myself.

I am a professional.

The story itself is one you’ve all heard before. It was the kind of post that reeks of the navel gazing that comes with turning a year older. It’s a story I didn’t really feel like telling again, but the one that I came up with because right now, I’m feeling a little bit like a dumpster fire. Michael tested positive for COVID on Friday and has been quarantined in the basement for the last five days. He’s fine; it was like having a bad cold. The weather turned gross and coated everything with a layer of ice and snow. This kept me from wanting to leave the house to even go grocery shopping. Work is real weird and politically dramatic right now. I’m doing my best to keep my head down and focused on the work, which isn’t hard because there’s a lot of microscopy related science happening right now. My yoga practice has gotten sketchy because anytime I am forced to be still with my thoughts, I start crying.

Every day, when I start to berate myself for not walking enough or skipping a workout or eating a cookie, I pause. Then I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” In those moments when I am alone with my own memories and tears start to leak out, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” On those days when I fail to be inspired to take any pictures or write any words, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.” On the days where I feel like I am only putting in about 50% of effort, I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.”

Tomorrow, I turn a year older. I gently close my eyes and whisper “Be kind to yourself.”

METABOLICALLY READY

I skipped lunch on Sunday because I was driving home from a weekend at Mom’s and once I’m in the car, I am reluctant to stop until I get home (Dad trait). Also, the food options for me on the road between Tulsa and Kansas City are not great options. When I got home, Michael said he wanted bbq. He made us a dinner reservation for Jack Stack (one of KC’s most popular bbq joints) after checking the menu for Jack Stack, who has a surprisingly decent amount of fish options. We shared an appetizer of fried mushrooms. Then, when my order of bbq trout with loaded (no bacon) baked potato and garden salad arrived at our table, I ate all of it. I left half the garden salad because Jack Stack’s ‘dinner’ salad is truly dinner sized, but still. Michael only ate half of his sandwich and sides, while I just continued eating on a giant plate of food until I felt ill.

That night, I’m not really sure what was happening in my dream, but someone who felt like my brother gave me a hot dog from Katz’s Deli. When I unwrapped the hotdog from the wax paper, I discovered a perfect New York hot dog, but a vegetarian hot dog, not a meat one. I was overjoyed and hugged this brother like person with all my might. I woke up wanting all of this to be real. It is not. The only thing I can eat at Katz’s Deli is the egg salad sandwich. It is the most superb egg salad sandwich I have ever eaten and now I want one with a gallon container of their pickles. Then I want to consume tomatoes and mozzarella cheese until my stomach bursts and ohmygod I do not know what is happening to me. It’s like I am a hibernating breed of animal that just looked at the calendar and realized that winter is not all that far away and is now saying to itself “Oh no! I’m not metabolically ready for winter!”

For some reason, I found myself watching the first episode of the Fantasy Island reboot on FOX. One of the guests was a news anchorwoman who had been depriving herself of food for fear of getting too fat for TV, but it was a habit she formed in her early teens. The result of this was that she always felt hungry, always felt empty inside. On the island she was able to eat anything and all that she wanted without gaining an ounce. She immediately sat down to elaborate meals, full of all of the things that she never allowed herself to eat, but with each meal came a memory and an interruption from her step-dad, the man who planted and watered the seed of her idea of food and her body. Each time, she pushed the memory away and the more empty she felt inside. It wasn’t until she finally confronted the memory that she felt full and content. She left the island with an intent to find more joy in her daily life and that sometimes that joy comes in the form of a cupcake.

I wonder what memory it is I am suddenly trying to push away. What is nudging me that I need to confront? Where did this sudden space come from that I feel needs to be filled up with something such as more cheese?

The August session of Camp Wildling starts this week. I am not going, but I still recieve all of the updates and newsletters regarding camp and it makes me wish I was going to camp. Yesterday, Kelly posted a list of last minute suggestions for the campers. Number seven on the list was in regards to an impromptu grief ceremony at the ancient Indian mounds that are in the camp. She was floating it out there for other campers because sometimes sharing what is in our grieving hearts can help us heal. It was a ceremony that I participated in when I was at camp and seeing this posted on the list made me tear up immediately. I had not expected to have any part in this ceremony. Then Kelly approached me and said that she and another camper where going to the mounds for a grief ceremony and invited me to go. It was very last minute. I had nothing prepared to share. I didn’t know what this grief ceremony was going to look like and was not prepared for any of it. Kelly started by sharing her story and then she “Cindy, will you tell us about Chris?” Maybe two words came out of my mouth before the rest of anything I had to say was taken over by a rush of sobs. My body made sounds of grief I had not heard since Chris’s death. I lost complete control of myself and I didn’t even know I had that kind of sobbing left in me after all this time. It was like a black sticky tar ball lodged between my kidneys had for some reason chosen this moment to wiggle itself free.

Am I trying to fill that space back up with food? Unintentionally maybe.

It is the habit that once you clean out a space, to fill it up with new stuff. It is as if one cannot handle empty spaces. Except if we take some time, if we just let ourselves feel unsettled with the empty space for a few minutes, I think we will eventually get used to the emptiness. I’m good with this concept of thinking outside of my own body. In fact, empty spaces are my Xanax, but internally is a different story. For one thing, I come from a family of non communicators. We internalize all thoughts and feelings. This is why I am better at writing about it then talking about it. My grief for Chris is just the easiest box or boxes to reach in this attic of internalized crap, but getting rid of some of those boxes, makes room for sorting through others. So, I’ve curbed my appetite.

I’m leaving space for more mental sorting.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Talaura sent me a message saying “I think Chris would have pivoted from writing to podcasts.” and I instantly heard Chris’s voice in my head. This is significant because the sound of his voice has eluded me for years. I see Chris all the time, but he never speaks. The result is that I can’t remember the sound of his voice. I don’t have any recordings or outgoing messages to play over and over to remind me. That’s probably a good thing because how many times can you stab your own self, but still his voice is something I have missed. After all, it was his stage presence and voice that first attracted me. The moment he stepped out onto the stage in Much Ado About Nothing, I sat up in my chair and took notice. I thought “this guy is more than meets the eye and someone to pay attention too.” In that moment, I decided to put myself into is orbit. I did everything to make myself noticeable to him. I even changed desks in a class we had together so that I was sitting closer to him.

Chris was a man of few words, but those words were always significant. While he was the one making us all laugh with those few words, it was not as easy to make him bust out in laughter. You might get a chuckle. On those occasions where I made him laugh, really really laugh, it was like winning a goddamn prize. When I realized that I could no longer recall the sound of his laughter or his voice, it was like realizing I had lost my own hearing. I had grown resigned to the idea that this was something that would be gone forever, just another symptom of death. That simple one sentence of text flipped a switch inside my brain and suddenly there was Chris talking about Star Wars and laughing with his guest podcaster. It is a given that Chris’s podcasts would be SciFy related, but part of me also thinks he would do one on things that don’t really go together. Like nuts and gum or hotdog straws. I am sure he would have a lot to say about the xenophobia and racism plaguing this country, particularly because he would be a target for some of that xenophobia and racism.

You would think that all of this would make me feel sad, but quite the opposite has happened. I am filled with joy. It is like finding that favorite earring you lost ages ago but it was under the dresser the whole time. I am grateful that Talaura was able to help me move that dresser to find that earring.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Here are the reasons why a daily and weekly gratitude project is so important: I have not slept more than four or five hours a night in over a week. My brother tested positive for COVID on Saturday. He’s doing okay, but I’m worried that my sister-in-law will get it and I don’t think she’ll be able to handle it so well. My chin is going through a second puberty and is broke out worse than I ever had breakouts as a teen. Chris’s AARP card showed up in the mail recently and it was a kick in the gut because Chris would be turning fifty tomorrow if he was still with us. It makes me furious that he’s not here so that we can laugh about him turning fifty and taking advantage of all the discounts. I watched a number of stories on this week’s CBS Sunday morning that left me ugly crying on the couch and one of the surprising one’s was the interview with Stanley Tucci. His wife has been gone for eleven years. He has remarried, but he said that grieving his first wife never gets easier. It is the same now as it was eleven years ago.

It is the same now as it was nine years ago.

On the outside, I look like I’m holding my shit together. I nod and smile at people. I try to speak with a light tone of voice. I tell when I am asked that I am fine and good and I hope that I’ve put on the appropriate disguise to make that look believable. On the inside, I am a dark hole of nothingness. I feel like I am two people, the one I present to the world and the sad old lady I’m trying to hide from the world. Pandemic fatigue has settled in deep, creating an even heavier blanket over the grief that comes with February. This grief has me questioning every aspect of my current life. It always does and then I feel the failure of not living my life in honor of Chris. I am stuck looking through the album of the things we never got to do together instead of turning the pages to the pictures of all the things we did get to do. I keep telling myself that I am doing my best, but I really don’t think that I am.

This week, Harry Styles the Caterpillar attached himself to the lid of his new habitat and built himself a cocoon out of his own hair. We learned that Harry has already been living for sixteen years and when he emerges as a moth, he will only live for about two weeks. His timing for turning into a moth could not be worse. Temperatures here are going to plummet and stay cold for the next few weeks. When he emerges, our choices are to let him free inside the house to lay eggs somewhere or release him out into the freezing elements. The moth is Chris. We did all that we could to make the last two weeks of Chris’s life comfortable with as much joy as we could muster. This is what I will do for Harry Styles. I’m going to make his last two weeks with us as comfortable as I can because I cannot control the weather and that is the lesson here.

Learning to accept the things you cannot control.

That is a real hard lesson for some of us. Am I grateful to have learned it? I guess… not really or maybe the assignment for this particular life lesson didn’t need to be so harsh. But I’ve learned it and I’ve learned it well. I’ve learned what I can control and that is the memories I choose to conjure up in my mind. Those memories trump the last two weeks and even the last two months of Chris’s life. Those memories include every goofy face he made, every kooky hilarious idea he came up with, and how he made me laugh every single day. Those memories are what I am grateful for today.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Do you know how long it has been since I have spent my morning like this?

Saturday morning, I sat at a cafe table outside with a mug of coffee and my Fortune Cookie journal. It is the first time I have cracked open that journal in months and months. It is the first time I have sat with myself, enjoying the solitude of one at a cafe table, in months and months. I will not say this is a return to normal. There is no normal, only habit. My habitual routines of before the pandemic got placed into a cocktail shaker where it was shaken and then strained over ice. I thought maybe the Saturday morning routine had gotten lost in the straining part. It still might be; this felt like a test run. I went to a new place with ample outdoor seating, but cringed and shrunk up into a ball every time someone walked by my table. Which was often because it was one of those areas where people are out walking or running in the mornings.

The prompt was something about integrity and bravery being displayed on a billboard and I wrote about the pandemic and masks. I might be a bit rusty.

I am for sure a bit of crank pot.

Public interactions turn me into an unstable nuclear core, vibrating from the strain of keeping myself from violently shaking some people while yelling “WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?!?!” But that would require getting close enough to touch them. I honestly thought that my current rageyness was, in part, due to a lack of sleep. I am not sleeping well. There’s tossing and turning, throwing blankets off and pulling them back up. I wake up with some sort of numb digit, sometimes it is one whole leg that has disappeared or disconnected itself from my body. I would wake up in pain. So I finally broke down and bought myself a new mattress. I used some of my rage for fuel to haul my old mattress off of my bed and drag the new one onto my bed frame. Maneuvering bulky items in a small space without wrecking that space takes just as much finesse as it does brute force and I did it. All by myself. Because Michael only has one good arm. The new mattress is nice and I am no longer waking up with missing limbs or pain, but I am still tossing and turning and throwing blankets off only to pull them back on the bed. The anger inside my body is persistent.

The angry eyes I have been looking out at the world with are my eyes. My responsibility. -Sarah Blondin

My anger is formed from loss and grief. It is fueled by a sense of helplessness to effect good changes. It festers in the knowing that we could do so much better than this and it blazes with the idea that at least one person on that lost and grief list would help me find a way to channel all of it into something useful. And that makes me even more angry. These angry eyes are my eyes, my responsibility. I can meet my anger head on with understanding, patience and kindness. I can tell those who attempt to egg-on that anger that they are unwelcome here. I can not control the behavior of others, but I can control my reaction to their behavior. I can flip the tone from positive to negative. I can rotate my view from disparaging to hopeful.

I’m healthy and strong.

I have a job.

My family is healthy.

We all have safe sound roofs over our heads.

We are fortunate.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Roar

I went to bed and laid there waiting for sleep. I could hear a heated basketball game happening at a house somewhere behind our’s. The thumping bass of a car stereo vibrated my heart as the car rolled up the street. Josephine softly growled at the dog we could hear barking somewhere in the distance. I finally drifted off to sleep with the sounds of the neighborhood as my lullaby. Then I was standing in a bar with Michael, who had been carrying a crate of junk. He set it down and said he was getting a drink. I was annoyed. He was supposed to be taking me home. I looked at him and said “I guess I’ll call an Uber then.” He got bent out of shape because I didn’t want to sit at the bar and drink with him. Josephine was with us and I set her down to call for an Uber. When I hung up, Josephine was gone and I spent the rest of my time desperately calling her name and looking for her. I woke, disoriented and patting around on the bed, searching for my puppy. I sighed with relief when my fingers touched her warm soft body. Then I looked at the clock.

I had only been asleep for an hour.

The rest of the night continued in this pattern of nightmares and waking every other hour. The losing Josephine dream is the only one that I really remember. Probably because all of it is plausible. I remember all too well when Josephine went through her escape artist phase and getting a call from animal control while I was on a plane to NYC. Josephine has caused my heart to seize up in fear more than once or twice. The problem is that I might just love her too much. Dr. Mary and I discussed this when I saw her this week. Dreams and dogs. She told me about a movie she saw where the recent widow had to then bury her dog. I told her about how I had to do the same thing. We were both crying by the end of it all. Then I told her about the dream I had about sitting next to Stephanie as she lay in a hospital bed. It was a terrible dream that had me texting her the next day. Checking in. Touching stone. We are living in an environment where we are all too aware of what we have to lose. Some of us are living in an environment of loss and are clinging desperately to things we know we could lose.

My friend Sarah’s new mantra: Pandemics are hard.

I have been thinking about what exactly makes a pandemic life so difficult. This has been a battle week, a week of fighting brain fog and sleep demons. I burned my kitcheri in the Instapot because I forgot to add water. Yesterday, Michael refilled the water bin for the chickens and without thinking, closed the door to the pen on his way out. The chickens couldn’t put themselves to bed and when I went out there to check on them, they were freaking out. Two were fighting for space in a window well. One, Foghorn our flyer, was on top of the pen. Margaret was huddled under a chair and made a beeline for the pen as soon as the door was open. The remaining three had to be herded into the pen and they talked about it the whole time. They were tired and they just wanted to go to their bed and they had complaints. The chickens are creatures of habit, just like us.

Pandemics are hard. First there was the loss of a habit, your daily routine. Then there was a moment of mourning that loss, which might sound silly or trivial. But loss is loss. You go through all the same emotions as any other kind of grief. Sadness, despair, denial, anger. Sometimes tucked in between all of those is a moment of joy and eventually we get used to the loss of our routines and daily habits. This week I have felt that shift where I am not necessarily grieving for the loss of my routine as much as I am preparing myself to grieve for the loss of something more important than a daily routine. I am very aware of what I have lost. Who I have lost. It is only natural for me to be fearful and anxious about what else I could lose. I am all too aware and so I spend my nights dreaming of holding onto the things I could lose with the tightest of grips. I need to loosen that grip.

Today I am thankful for the reminder to relax my grip and to stop holding so tightly to what I could lose.

HOLDING IT TOGETHER

Natural habitat

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I dreamt that I walked into a room that was littered with peeled oranges and macaroons. They were strewn all around the floor like rose petals. As I walked across the room, I looked down and noticed a ring poking out of the merengue of one of the macaroons and I bent down to pick it up. Then there was a man kneeling beside me, asking me to marry him. I stared at the ring and said “Of course. Of course I’ll marry you.” When I looked down into the man’s face, I saw Chris looking up at me with that sappy look he could get some times. Smiling. Big puppy dog eyes filling with tears of happiness.

I woke up feeling guilty.

A few weeks later, I had the dream that I always have about J. There was a mistake and we had been sent a body to burry because the Powers at Be had thought it was J. Except it wasn’t him. J had been wandering the desert and now he was finally back, trying to re-enter our lives as it is now. I was elated to see him, but worried about how he was going to take to all the changes that had occurred in his absence. Again, I woke up feeling guilty. Since that dream, I have been waiting for Dad. The power of three. I am Ebenezer Scrooge. You will be visited by three ghosts. I am still waiting for the third, wondering when Dad will show up.

I had an appointment with my chiropractor yesterday. Since the day was so nice, I rode the scooter, flying down the nearly empty streets. My soul lifted with the breeze. I arrived at my destination and my chiropractor was so happy to see me. The joy was mutual. It seems ridiculous how the sight of a familiar face you haven’t seen in weeks can illicit such joy. I practically skipped back my session on the roller table. I sprayed the table with disinfectant and wiped it down. Then I laid back and closed my eyes while the roller moved up and down my back. I was surprised to feel tears well up in my eyes and leak down the sides of my face. It came to me then, just how hard I have been working to hold it all together and holding it all together not just for my own benefit. On the outside, I look like I am handling all of this with ease. My insides tell a different story.

Even though I have set up a routine for myself, there are moments in my day where things just go on pause and I don’t know what to do with myself. I step away from my desk and walk around from the bedroom to the living room to the dining room. Back and forth. I listen to each squeak, tick and groan of the hardwood floor as I carefully place each step. I sit back down at my computer and fight my way through some exercises in Python coding. I do not have a coding brain and every review question is an exercise in futility. By the time I closed my computer yesterday, my brain felt mushy and I still had to re-take this week’s quiz. You must make a 70% or higher to move forward. Michael had to give me a lesson of true or false statements. It was more than slightly humiliating.

I die at least once a week while on the Oregon Trail or from an Exploding Kitten.

And I am unmotivated to write here.

It seems unauthentic to come here and write because I try to make the content somewhat uplifting. All I have brought you today is list of sad and whoa that I am tempted to delete. I am not deleting it though. Because I know that who ever is reading this is sitting there nodding their head and saying to themselves “I feel so much like this. I am not alone.” And we’re not alone. So do what I just did. Put on your favorite music. That music that makes you move your body. That music that has those moments in it that make you close your eyes and place a hand on your heart and raise the other to sky because it has reached the spiritual part of your heart.

Do it right now.

I ATE THE BACON

Any thing goes at Santa Cali Gon days. Just kidding.

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The first time I went to Heirloom, I ordered a biscuit sandwich without realizing it came with bacon on it unless you modify it. When my sandwich was set in front of me, I grimaced. I pulled the bacon slices off my sandwich and just set them to the side. Then I stared at the bacon as I took a bite of egg, cheese and biscuit. Then I thought “I’ll just take one bite. It does seem like really good bacon.” I took a bite and set the piece down. I continued to eat my biscuit, egg and cheese sandwich while eyeing the bacon just sitting there on my plate. I took another bite of bacon. Then another and another until I had finished that piece of bacon. I finished my biscuit sandwich and then ate that second piece of bacon.

After we had Chris’s Celebration of Life service, I left Misti’s house in Oklahoma City to drive back to KCMO. I stopped at a Kolache place near her house and ordered a donut and two kolachies. When I took a bite of the first kolache, I realized it was filled with meat. I shrugged and then shoved both kolachies into my mouth like a starving person. I remember reading stories submitted by readers to Vegetarian Times a long time ago. The topic was dealing with meat cravings. One woman wrote in and said that once a year she drives herself to KFC and orders a bucket of chicken. She goes through the drive-thru and then parks her car in the parking lot of the shopping center next door. Then she eats all of the chicken in the bucket, all alone in a deserted parking lot. I read her confession and felt sad for this woman. I could imagine her glancing around furtively like a wild animal while she gnawed on a chicken bone and worrying about someone she knows seeing her in this act of carnivorism. I pictured her doing this in the dark and if you shined a flashlight into her car, she would cover face and yell “DON’T LOOK AT ME!” That’s what eating the meat-filled kolachie felt like. DON’T LOOK AT ME! I’VE JUST HAD THE WORST TWO MONTHS OF MY WHOLE LIFE! It was part shame and partly a defensive reaction to my actions. I felt guilt for eating this poor animal. I felt stupid for not paying attention to what I was ordering. I was a poser, a hypocrite. And at the same time, I didn’t really give a fuck about any of it. So what if I just ate two (what was basically) hotdogs and cheese stuffed into a pastry dough. Chris is dead. There are worse things than a vegetarian/pescatarian eating meat.

As I stepped up to the counter at Heirloom on Saturday to place my usual breakfast order, I noticed the special menu out of the corner of my eye. I paused and saw that they were offering avocado toast on a slice of their fancy sourdough, topped with an artisanal goat cheese and fried egg. I thought “oh! I love avocado toast!” and then I placed my order and settled in at the counter with my Fortune Cookie journal. A few minutes later the owner came out with my plate and set it in front of me saying “enjoy! It’s good to see your face in here today.” I smiled and said “thanks!” and then looked down at my plate to see two slices of bacon sitting next to my avocado toast. I made a face and thought “Oh no…I’m going to eat that bacon.” And I did. I didn’t cram it all into my mouth as quickly as I could as if trying to hide evidence. I savored that bacon, taking deliberate bites and mindfully chewing. Bacon meditation. Which could totally be a thing. It was good bacon from a good ethical farm and it would have been a horrible waste and dishonor to the pig who sacrificed his life so that we could eat him to not eat the bacon.

I even licked the grease from my fingers and as I did this I gave a subtle little nod of acknowledgment to Chris’s presence lurking over my left shoulder.

DC

Kilroy was here and so is Chris. I have a story about this one, but you'll have to wait for it.

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The emotion in me started to build up the closer I got to the National Mall and by the time I crossed Constitution Avenue I had melted into a puddle of goo. I’m not really sure what happened. I was just suddenly overwhelmed by the grandeur and the history and patriotism. I had the Capitol Building to my left and way off to my right was the Washington Monument. It was still very early in the morning and a bit cold, making my breath visible as I walked towards the Washington Monument. I also carried a ziplock baggy of Chris’s ashes in my pocket and my plan was to leave them somewhere on the National Mall.

It has been over a year since I’ve left Chris somewhere. I think the last place I left him was in New Mexico. I just didn’t go any where this year that Chris hadn’t already been. When I decided to go to this conference in DC, I realized that I needed to do some research to determine an appropriate spot for Chris. I thought about leaving him near the Washington Monument because he thought it was funny we had this giant phallic symbol as a monument. Then again, no one I know could do a more accurate Forrest Gump impression than Chris. Whenever I hear the name ‘Jenny’, I hear it in Chris’s Forrest Gump voice. There’s that scene where Forrest and Jenny meet in middle of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, so I also toyed with the idea of leaving him there. There were too many options really: The Air and Space Museum, the International Spy Museum, the Blind Whino Psychedelic Church. That’s the short list.

In the end I decided to leave Chris as close as I could to the Kilroy graffiti hidden on the back side of the World War II Memorial. “Kilroy was here” cartoons started showing up during the second World War where ever US troops appeared. The comedy in tragedy theme was a humor that Chris embraced. His favorite book was Catch 22. He signed on as medic because he thought he’d be spending his time wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, lounging in a hammock with a martini in his hand just like the doctors in M.A.S.H. Then there’s the bonus of being hidden in plain site. Remember that time Chris put that ‘Return to the fiery pits of Mount Doom’ sticker on the Barnes and Noble display copy of that Anne Coulter book? This spot just seemed to be the right one and being there at such a deserted time of morning made it easier for me accomplish this. I still managed dump about half of Chris’s ashes down the front of my black coat. I looked like a beignet from Cafe du Monde.

I ended up having a couple of really good discussions on death after leaving Chris’s ashes. When I met up with Christy, a college friend who I had not seen in twenty years, she talked about how even though we’d lost touch with each other and only had minimal connections through social media, Chris had left a void. She feels the void left by his passing. And that’s true. He left a big ole gapping hole that we have all had to figure out how to navigate around. Our last night in DC, I ended up talking to my boss about navigating the gapping holes of death. He is in the middle of dealing with a terminally ill loved one and we talked about loss and moving forward. I told him about J and I told him about how his death shaped mine and Chris’s views on death and living. I talked about how the very best way I can honor Chris is by living, truly living, my life. It is not always easy, but it is harder for me to think of myself as a disappointment to him.

So I do my best to truly live this life.

HUSTLE

Tradition!

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We started a new tradition last year when we traveled to California for Thanksgiving, or what we all like to call Crabsgiving because we ate crabs for two days in a cabin in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It just made sense that we would repeat some aspect of that this year. Indian food replaced the crabs and Colorado replaced California. Most of last year’s group couldn’t make it, but Michael, Heather and I all had a wonderfully relaxing, snow filled time. Heather moved to Denver in the Spring of this year and it has been a good move for her. Michael and I had a great time and we made plans for next year. We’re calling next year Crawdadsgiving or Oystersgiving 2020 and you can guess our destination.

Michael and I got home late Saturday and I spent Sunday gathering food for the week and washing clothes. We are getting thick in the hustle that comes with December. I leave Friday for a conference in D.C. and come back to office Christmas parties and other Holiday festivities. Before I know it we will be packing the car for our Christmas visit with my family in Oklahoma. Though, I do not feel rushed or panicked. I have a couple of things left on the list to get for gifts, Christmas cards are ordered, and most everything else is done. I’ve been planning ahead. The one thing I was unsure about was wether or not I’d have the energy and time to deal with putting up the Christmas tree. I thought about skipping it mostly because I didn’t think I’d have time. By the time I would get around to it all, it would be time to take it all down. Why bother? Then I thought about the new ornament we bought for this year and I moved the pile of animals I was laying under and got up from the couch.

The tree is standing with lights and ornaments. There’s a pretty wreath on the door and the Hanukah lamp is setting on the bookcase. I have yet to hang up stockings, but only because I am out of the sticky things needed for the hanging. I did the bare minimum of decorating. The tree is just lights and ornaments. No ribbon or tinsel. I was a little bit worried that the tree would look sparse without ribbon, but it seems that I have finally amassed a decent number of ornaments so that it doesn’t matter if there’s ribbon or garland. Michael and I have acquired a number of look-a-like pairs of ornaments. As I placed the third bearded man figure next to the third girl in a stocking cap figure, I realized that this tree reflects a much different life and I felt a pang of guilt. Chris is barely on the tree any more.

I soothe myself with the reminder that we had still been in the process of replacing our Christmas ornaments. Truth be told, we had been in the process of rebuilding a lot things, like a home. We sat on an air mattress on the living room floor for a month before we inherited a couch from Traci. Replacing his Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments was not a cheap or easy undertaking. I hang every ornament that was his: the Ecto-1, the Wall-E, a storm trooper, a couple of other Star Wars related ornaments. At one time, there was an even dispersal of elephants and Sci-Fi on the tree. There are still plenty of elephants on the tree, of course. The dispersal of elephants and Sci-Fi has turned into a smattering of ornaments made by the Cabbage, bearded gnomes and figures of girls in stocking caps. There are red-capped mushrooms poking out here and there and vintage glass balls.

Actually, it really has become quite a beautiful tree, all things considered. It represents many blessings. I remember when we barely had any ornaments to go on it and now it’s full. My life is full. So full, that sometimes it hurts.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * Jul 3, 2019 at 8:37pm UTC

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I was dreaming. I’ve been doing that a lot these days. Crazy wigged out dreams. I’m reading Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, more than half way through book two, and so there’s been some element from these books showing up in dreamland. I woke up with a jolt at four AM the other morning pretty certain that some escapee from Painball was pounding on our front door. Though, not all of the dreams are what I would assume an LSD trip would be like. They are what one might call ‘normal’ or even ‘mundane’ dreams. These are the ones that I wake up from and have a vague idea of something I saw or heard, but mostly it is all too vague to really remember. This particular dream I was having sort of fit into that vague, unmemorable dream category. I remember that I was reading a blog entry written by a woman who had recently lost her husband. This woman was no one I know or currently read. I don’t remember anything much about her really other than she was writing about grief. I remember nodding my head in agreement as I read her entry. She had made an analogy about grief being like a rope and how each thread was some aspect of grief.

I remember thinking as I read her writing that it was very well written. I thought her analogy made sense. Except now that I think harder about it, her analogy was much more complex than the one I just shared. I have a sudden image of gold rings threaded through rope for some reason. The most important thing I remember from this dream though, is reading her post and thinking “I don’t want to write about this stuff any more.” This was my very last thought before I woke up and it stayed with me. I don’t want to write about grief any more. I don’t want to be known as Cindy Maddera, the Grief Blogger. Even though I know all about that rope and each and every little strand that makes up that rope, I don’t want to dig into the details of explaining it to you. But not writing about grief poses some difficulties. For one thing, grief never goes away. I mean, just the other day as I was looking over the yoga class I had planned to teach that evening, my mind drifted to that time I couldn’t even look at my yoga mat without hearing my mother’s voice as she attempted to tell me that something had happened to J. It’s been almost fourteen years since that day and yet the horror of it all still bubbles up at the most random times. Another difficulty in not writing about my grief is that for a while now, I have let this part of my writing define who I am as a person. I’ve unofficially given my self the title of Grief Blogger. “Write what you know".” Isn’t that the advice some famous writer gave to potential writers once? Well…I know grief. But I’m not the authority on the subject. We all know something about grief. You don’t need me to teach you or explain it or add to it. Grief is a part of who I am. A part. I am made up of many many parts. I am more than my grief.

I am more than this.

I know now that I was the woman doing the writing in that dream. I was reading my own blog and thinking “enough.” Move forward. Show the world you are more than this. That is what I want to do. I recognize the healing power of writing down all of those thoughts surrounding my sadness. But you don’t leave a band-aid on forever.

THE IRRITATION OF IT ALL

Storm damage

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It’s sometime after lunch and I decide that I need a cup of tea. I think I might as well do a loop outside on my way to get said tea. Get up, move my body around after a few hours of staring at a computer screen exporting data. There is a small parking area on the side of the building and I as reach the area, a man steps out of his Lexus and approaches me. He’s maybe late forties, early fifties, business suit type. He’s holding a sticky note with a name of a building and an address written on it. He asks me if this is the B building. I kindly shake my head and reply “No…this is the S Institute. I think you’re looking for a building across the street.” The man then holds the sticky note out and points. He says “But, the address says it is on Rockhill Road.” It was on the tip of my tongue to say something about how there’s two sides to a road when one of our security guards walks up and takes over.

I step back and continue on my way, but the more I think about it the more irritated I become. I mean, I can see the building the man was looking for right across the street. It has the name of the building written across it in big letters, for gosh sakes. I couldn’t help but believe his doubt in my ability to give him the correct directions had something to do with my gender. He didn’t question our male security guard when he also told the man the building he was looking for was right across the street. Part of me wants to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just needed a second opinion. But another part of me is pissed off and sweary over the whole thing. I’ve put this man into the pile of older white privileged males that I’ve been mentally collecting to be pushed over a cliff with a bulldozer. That pile grows larger by the day. It includes all of those old white dudes who vote and make decisions regarding women’s healthcare or think they can grab a woman and do whatever he wants with her.

I’m going to need a bigger bulldozer.

There is another side of this white male privilege that I have been struggling with lately. It is not necessarily a story I can write here, at least not the details of it. It has to do with someone using their privilege to gain access to resources for cancer treatments for a family member that not everyone would have access too. I like this person. I respect this person, but every time he starts talking about next steps and details of it all, I have to get up and leave the room. My emotions range from anger to guilt to shame and doubt. I wonder if I had known to ask for this resource if it would have been available to me. Then I feel stupid that I didn’t even think to ask in the first place. A little bit of rage and jealously settles in because I know that his access to this resource is only possible through his privilege and that if I had asked for it for myself, I would have been told the same thing every doctor told us.

There’s nothing we can do.

Inevitably, after the times I have to leave the room, I end up standing in my favorite bathroom stall, gasping in air between sobs. I stand there, clutching the top of the door, trying to regain control. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. This man is just prolonging the outcome. That’s all I would have been doing. Prolonging Chris’s illness. When I think of it this way, it sounds cruel in my ears. There’s no way I would have prolonged Chris’s suffering. This man is just using his privilege to give his family some hope and I can’t fault him for that. Hope is nice. Also, this man is clueless and naive about his white male privilege. It doesn’t even dawn on him how fortunate he is to have access to this kind of hope. In his world, any one could do what he’s doing. I soothe myself a little bit by letting myself feel sorry for him and his naivety.

But I don’t for a moment forgive him for it.

I pull myself together and tell myself that I am not one of those people. I’m not one of those people who think that if I don’t have something, you can’t have it. I let myself be the naive one for a change and believe that after his experience, maybe he will find a way to share this resource with others. He will find a way for more people to benefit from this. Maybe it’s my job to remind him of this, teach him to use his privilege to help others.

I bet I could do it in such a way that he’d even think it was his own idea.