choices

Two days ago, I realized something remarkable. I am facing choices now, and they are not between "worse" and "worser." They all have an emotional price, but none are about death.


One is moving. After Rich's death, I thought I would be out, like a shot, of this charmless house. It was temporary, chosen for location, ease of care, and what we talked about only briefly because it needed no further explanation -- I could sell it easily. Sixteen months later I'm still here, in part because I want to do more than simply escape, and in part because of wonderful neighbors who I've come to love, and who in many ways have saved my life.


But now I have committed myself to developing a new community where, along with about 45 others,  I will be living as soon as it is complete. Remaining here is now bearable because I know it is temporary.


Temporary: my mantra from the choiceless days. Everything was bearable because it was temporary. The surgeries, the loss of Rich's body, the last days.


Some things, of course, are permanent. Rich is staying dead. My only choice is to make this, too, bearable.


Candace

champagne and chocolate

On Sunday I went to the spa, my indulgence for the year. I'm a regular; the staff knows me.


"Can I get you anything else?" she asks, handing me my slippers.


"Ummm...champagne would be nice."


"Got it."


I laugh.


I exercise. I shower. I put on the robe for a respite in the Tranquility Room.


"Chocolate would be nice, too," I tell the staff person.


"Just put more out," she says.


And she points.


The champagne is in an ice bucket. The chocolate selection -- artisanal, four varieties bred in tropical locales -- is laid out in hand-thrown pottery bowls.


I stare.


"I was joking," I say.


"I thought you read the e-mail. Valentine's Day special."


Oh, right.


I sip. Good. I eat. Very, very good. I don't have to remember. Enjoying is enough.


Candace

bumped

If you have been suffering from metaphor deprivation, you have come to the right place.


A few weeks ago, backing out of my driveway, I forgot a small thing. To look. Which, normally, would not be a problem on this low-traffic street. But at that moment a big brown UPS truck was making a delivery at a neighbor's house, and we met. It could have been worse. The truck's left front panel was crunched while the rear-mounted spare tire absorbed most of my impact. 


Not to worry, said the UPS supervisor who was summoned to the scene. It was only fiberglass, he said; we have a mechanic who can pop it out. Are you okay, he asked. I was grateful for their kindness; no doubt, this was my fault.


Because the damage did not affect any function, and I'm considering trading in the car come spring, the skewed tire mount remains, largely unnoticed unless until examined closely. 


Then, today. I emerged from my morning coffee spot to find a note on the windshield. It was the name and phone number of a witness who recorded the license plate number of someone who smashed into my front right bumper.


I called him, we met, I thanked him. I filed a report with the police, and within an hour I had photos, the hit-and-run driver had been issued a ticket, and now it's up to me to contact my insurance agent and, perhaps, have this repair made. But this, too, is only cosmetic, though the damage is obvious. Still, it could have been worse.


So, these are the days. I feel banged up from all sides, though most wouldn't notice, most of the time. I'm still functioning, even if I can't see where I'm going, and I get hit just standing still.


And I will try to get this blog back on track.


Candace

growing up

A Happy New Year to all. Somewhere, in the waning days of a year wandering in fog, I lost the thread of this blog. I was trying to move forward without knowing my starting point, without having sure footing. Nothing unusual in this, I know; if we waited for firm ground and fixed direction, we never would have left the womb.


What I realized I needed most was this: To Grow Up. And I'm not speaking of my battles with the IRS and hospital bills and other mundane matters. It is in a way I am reluctant to admit, but some lessons of the past two months have finally hit home.


Living with Rich, I assumed everyone was good, honest, trustworthy. Well, maybe not. I wasn't that stupid. Let me re-phrase. Everyone was not good, but that didn't matter. Rich was the antidote to whatever evil was in the world. And if something bad happened -- it happened. That wasn't the way of my world. That wasn't the norm. No sleep lost, no lessons learned.


Now I am suspicious. Of new relationships, of repair men, of any offer that seems too good to be true. So far, no serious wounds, only my loss of innocence. I don't like this way of existing. It doesn't come naturally to me, and in my heart -- the place where Rich permanently dwells -- this doesn't feel right. I fear I am losing my core belief, my knowing that this world is perfect. All we need to do peel away some of the nasty pieces, but can I do this without becoming entangled in them?


The adventure continues.


Candace

joy unbound

Because it is so fragile, I am reluctant to put this into any container, even something as sturdy as words.


It is joy.  A release that has come, and I fear explaining will destroy it.  


But I will try, a little.


The Year of Mourning is officially over.  Not grieving, no; but my view must now change, moving from death to life, from the past to the future.  To accomplish this, I am making lists, and soon I hope to act upon them.  About my relationships (a question mark, of course); about moving from my house (within a year, and this is already in motion); about my writing (stuck, but I have those lists...)


I wish I could say more. But for now, I will simply cradle what is, as I once cradled grief.


Candace

birthday boy

Yesterday I bought a 2011 calendar.  A big decision, every year.  Into what container will I be counting down my life?


This year's was a plain, just-the-facts day-by-day in a faux medieval binding.  In truth, I didn't buy it until May and paid 50% off the normal price, surprised that the rest of the world was already five months into another year.  Looking back, a lot of white space remains.  


For 2011, I wanted something that, in itself, would be sufficient; a Sabbath calendar, existing outside of time.  So I rejected the dailys filled with flowers or famous paintings; ditto for those designed for writers, for runners, for procrastinators (I'll think about this one).


In the end I chose one new to me:  Chris Hardman's Ecological Calendar: A New Way to Experience Time. While small print follows the Gregorian Calendar, front-and-center is a reminder that our days are more than "a march of numbers, a business machine telling us when to be where."


This calendar reminds us where we already are, infinitesimally small creatures on a tiny plant circling a star that is one of 200 billion in our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way is one of at least 200 billion galaxies in a universe about 13.7 billion years old.


This is not to say we are insignificant, or that how we use our time is trivial. Even if the day is "blank," we are part of something ancient, magnificent, and beyond our ultimate comprehension.


So I think these thoughts as I weep on Rich's birthday. Not because his life was so small, because I now understand how one life, deeply lived with another, can contain it all.  And I don't think it's a coincidence that this day which we call Tuesday, 9 November, is in the calendar marked as "ForestMulch" in the season "Fall of the Leaf."  


And a sweet-fragranced rose is in front of me, picked this morning, the last of the season.


Candace

serendipity

A few days ago, a friend said she was having a great day.  Everything was serendipity; it appeared that no matter what needed doing, it would happen in a most excellent way.  And as each event confirmed this belief, her confidence grew.  When she accidently knocked over a portable heater, I murmured well, maybe not everything...

"No," she insisted. "See?  It didn't catch on fire!  It didn't break!"

I laughed, and agreed.

"But why can't this be all the time?" she said.

I was in a poetic/pontifical mood.  It can, I said.  Become a lover with serendipity.  Then, even when you're not living together, you will yearn for the other, have the qualities of the other, you will want to hang out together more and more.

"Hey, you're good," she said.

But, as is usual these days, I was also talking to myself, and when finished not quite sure what I was talking about.  Days past, with a flesh-and-blood lover?  Or now, except that my lover is:  Grief, First Name; Loneliness, Surname.  And Rich is this lover's middle name, wrapped in the midst of first and last.

I don't want to leave this lover.  I do want to learn how to live with what is tearing off piece after piece of me, breaking and catching fire.  

Candace

  

voting

The election day worker stops me as soon as I get inside the door.


"Your district?"


I'm blank.  Did I know this two years ago?


He points to a map spread over the table.


"Where do you live?" he asks.


I point, vaguely, and give my address.  


"That's north of here," I say, meaning the polling place.


"No, that's south," he says, directing me to the proper table.


I give the next election worker my name and address.  She opens the book.  I don't notice my name, but the one adjacent, the one with the unmistakable precise signature.


Richard S. Galik


It has been a hard morning anyway, and now I try not to drip on government documents.


In elections past, his fresh signature would have been there ahead of mine; he always voted early, before work.  Today it will remain blank.


"Sign here," she says.


I do.


She frowns.


"This isn't your signature," she says.


Huh?


She points at my official marking; it's legible, must be from years ago, with no resemblance to my new scrawl.


"Do you have ID?" she asks.


She scrutinizes the driver's license, still not fully convinced, I can tell.  I've changed since that photo was taken, too.


"Do you want to make this your new signature?" she says, at last.  "So you won't be asked next time."


"By then it will change again," I say.


She tears off the ballot and hands it over, satisfied she has done her duty and is now rid of this odd duck.


I fill in the circles.  I obediently then proceed to the scanning machine that will eat my opinion and confirm it was digested.


But a woman is ahead of me, in prolonged conversation with another election day worker.  They're discussing the woman's watch, how pretty it is, where did you get it, oh, I've had it forever...


"Get a move on!" a man's voice bellows, behind me.  "You're holding up the line!"


The election worker jumps.


"I hope you know her," she says to him.


"For 47 years I've lived with her.  I can say anything I want," he says.


I feed the form to the machine, and say nothing.


Two years ago we voted for change and hope.  Change?  Rich and I got it.  Hope?  I'm on my own. 


Candace

who do I want to be

A new barista is now making my lattes.  His says that his cappaccinos best show off his skills, but his goal is to make great lattes, too.


Yesterday he was pre-occupied with Halloween, a pagan event that, from what I understand of it, is consecrated to propping up the American economy with yet more disposable junk.


Anyway.


"I just don't who I want to be," he said.


"I have that feeling every morning when I get out of bed," I said.


He laughed.


"I meant for Halloween, but yeah, that too," he said.


I am living, as Sartre said, the "curse of freedom."  Freedom not as the opposite of slavery, but of attachment, commitment, love.


My goals in the first year were not about choosing a costume, but shedding what I had (and drinking as many lattes as possible).  This is happening.  This may have been the easy part.


The costumes beckon and seduce.  Who do I want to be?


Candace

worm again

The worm returned last night, shiny and wet, snoozing next to my bed.


"Here again?" I said.


As always, he said nothing.


I scooped him up and returned him to the lawn, still wet from the evening's rain.


I am tired of explaining to him that the moist outdoors is his home, not the inside dry carpet.


In the past month, this is the sixth appearance of Mr. Worm.  Never, ever, had a worm appeared in my/our home.  In makes no sense.  Why come in out of the wet?  But he keeps returning to one of two places, and I'm no longer surprised.


What could this mean?  Rich would not return to me as a worm.   Mr. Worm could easily be Mrs./Ms./Miss; they're hemaphrodites. And not scholars.  If their brain is removed, their behavior remains virtually unchanged.  Their primary response is to light, and not much else.


Maybe this is the message.  Go to the light, the light...


I need to think about this.


Candace

year one/one year

I was unpacking the grocery bags.  While removing the lemon juice, I looked at the clock.  5:24 p.m.  Rich died at 5:25, one year ago.  What does one year mean?  


My body knew.  I howled as the razors ripped through, now deeper than before.  The entire scene re-played, of his last breath, his sweet smell, of his body on the undertaker's gurney, the last time I would see his face.  And my mind, never one to be shy, whispered yet again you didn't do what you should have, you screwed up, what were you thinking...not much, not in the Chordoma years.  Because thinking meant considering the impossible.


How much alike, I now realize, is love and pain.  The first year I knew Rich, I believed I loved him.  But that was only the beginning, a laughably thin layer; if the full power of love exploded in us, all at once, I don't think we could survive.  Only as we learned to let love infuse all of our days, together and apart, did I grasp its power.


The same for pain.  To absorb it all at once is impossible.  Last year was a warm-up.  Not that this year and the next will be "harder," but I expect it will go deeper, slicing into places I can't yet go as I gradually release its power upon me and allow it to fade away -- into love, I hope.


Each night at dinner, Rich and I would light candles, hold hands, and say, another day, love, another day.


So -- another year, love, another year.


Candace

an open heart

Tonight, a dinner invitation I rejected.  Not when the anniversary of Rich's death is three days away; I cannot pretend to participate in conversation that doesn't matter with those who didn't know him.


Instead I will scream the only prayer remaining:  Open my heart.  To break open a pain that can be tolerated in small doses, lest the supplicant go mad.  To allow admittance to a future of glistening shards, unlabeled, waiting for me.


I will light a candle, seeing in it the container that once held it all, and always will.


Tomorrow, I will drink wine with friends to remind myself that this is the stuff of now and the future, and I had better get used to it.


I will look back on my list of a year ago and laugh.


I will never forget -- my final prayer.


Candace

answers

Grief makes for dull reading.  How could it be otherwise, when the author's brain and senses are numb, the ending unknown, the energy-giver gone?


We read about grief (I include myself here, thousands of words read on the topic) because, I expect, we want "an answer."  Not "the" answer, that's not possible, but yearning for a possibility of light inside the cave.


Surprise:  No answer.


And the only ones who offer one haven't been where I am.  Those who have only say:  It's hard.  Sometimes, they add: You're brave.


It is hard.  I am not brave.  Neither pain nor courage are options.  


Candace

waiting for the plumber

Almost a year.  All that I have planned for the day is a visit from a repairman for the pellet stove.  Why not?  It's hard to get on his calendar, and at least it's practical.  

I am post-ritual.  I've opened every door that I know, and behind all of them is a sheer cliff.  

Then look at photos, a friend suggests.  Bathe in the memories.  

Torture. I don't look.

Ditto for Rich's clothes.  For talking about him.  For not talking about him.

There is no escape, no comfort.  

There is only pain, bathing in it, breathing it in, waiting for the cleaning, waiting for the exhale.

Waiting. That's the job of grief.

Practical, too, in this life alone.  I spend a lot of my time waiting for the plumber, waiting for a repair of this or a cleaning of that.  

This may be the only ritual that matters now.  Waiting -- to be cleaned, to be repaired.

Candace

sunset

At a recent neighborhood picnic, several neighbors expressed ecstasy about the sunsets that could be seen from our homes.


Sunsets?


I notice, sometimes.  As I occasionally acknowledge trees, birds, but never sunrises, not if I can help it.  Which makes me wonder where my mind is most of the time, and where I want it to be, and when will sunsets matter again.


Rich and I used to take our sleeping bags outside and watch meteors.  And our after-dinner tea, most warm days, to watch sunsets.  And he, alone, to see the sunrise, and give me a report later in the day on what I missed.


Now I'm missing just about everything.  Because I don't yet know what I should be seeing in this world, alone.  And because I'm pissed at the sun and the moon that they don't know what's missing in this world, and damn them for pretending everything is normal.


Candace

carved in stone

Today I contacted the stone carver to mark Rich's grave.  It is a rectangular-ish flat stone, one I pulled out from the muddy hole, six weeks shy of a year ago.  Not much room on it beyond the basic information -- his name, his days among us.  If room permitted, I asked "Beloved" to be carved, too.


Sweet Rich is gone.  I can say this a thousand times, and still my heart is strangled. Pain eases, then drops to another level in a bottomless hole.  Setting the stone in place will be my last "official" act of grieving. Everything else is done.  But not finished.


Candace

rushing

A few months ago, I noticed I was rushing.  Rushing, that is, with no reason.  Through brushing teeth, showering, walking from one room to another -- galloping through my days for no purpose.  A remnant of days past, I realized.  Because for years wherever I was, it wasn't the only place I needed to be.  Always I pressured myself that Rich needed me to be there, do that; sometimes this was true, but mostly I was running against death.  If I didn't keep moving, Rich would be taken.


Slowing down still takes mindful effort.  Part of me remains manic, forgetting that he's gone.  Someday I will catch up.  Meanwhile, I try to live deeply into this beautiful life that will vanish, too quickly.


Candace

how to grieve

These letters have been lacking in matters practical.  For one thing, plenty of information on widowhood -- psychological, sociological, spiritual -- is available in books and on websites.  I've read a small library's worth, but to quote Thomas Merton: "How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books."  Grief obscures reason and feeling; clarity during these days is more often than not recognized by chance.

I offer a few ways of being that have been healing for me, with emphasis on what I have not found in books. 

1. Solitude:  Severed from life shared with another forces one to undertake a retreat that would challenge -- and perhaps baffle -- the most advanced Zen master (no life! no death! no desire!)  Everything in these days is about life lost and death won and desire unfulfilled.  Going out of my mind is not an option.  It is not playing at a religious game.  Solitude gives the razors freedom to cut as deep as necessary.  Solitude allows the bleeding to happen.
2. Relationships: Not an opposite of Solitude, but a compliment.  Friends have saved my life.  By feeding, listening, and occasional use of cattle prod.
3. Dreams: The stuff of the sleeping night, yes, and also the awake days.  In the first, horror and release; in the second, a possible future.  Dreams won't bring back the "real" Rich and cannot predict a "real" life, but in both is a sweet taste of what was and what might be.

Candace

digested

Someday I hope to write these words:  Grief eaten.  Digested.  This meal is over.

Never will that happen, unless I have a lobotomy.  Nor do I want it to.

But in the past week, I have come closer to gut health as a series of events and people moved into my life, equipped with forks and knives to carve up the indigestible and serve up only the good parts. 

One will be mentioned here because the event made no sense.

I was relaxing in the Tranquility Room at my local day spa (an indulgence this year) when a woman walked in.  She was not the usual spa type, who tend towards the healthy and fit.  She emerged from behind the massage rooms' curtain on swollen, wobbly legs, and her well-creased face was testimony to many years.

We caught eyes.  

"I just had a massage," she said.

That was all she said.  But her glow said more, as if she were revealing a secret, as if no one ever heard of a massage before.  I moistened.  I melted.  

She slowly walked to two other women lounging in the room, who I guessed were her daughters, and kissed them.  When the massage therapist brought her a mug of lemon water, she glowed even brighter in amazement, staring at the miracle of the cup, the water, the fruit.

With all of her self -- and more -- she gave me a massage, too, easing out the tightness that didn't expect to be touched.

And revealing possibilities of a life yet to come.

Candace

bugs live

I didn't call an exterminator.  The bugs yet live.  Their numbers, however, do seem significantly reduced.  I've learned that most problems heal more quickly and completely with minimal intervention.  Or maybe I don't really give a damn.


Today was a trip to the landfill.  Most of it was four months worth of ordinary rubbish. I don't have a weekly garbage collection; we never did, having never generated that much trash.  But a few items broke the heart.  Two pairs of Rich's old boots, and worn-out socks.  Plus two used-up mops, both of which he bought.  From now on, anything leaving the house or garage will be harder.  The easy stuff is gone.


That's what this grieving game feels like, too.  For five years, life was focused on death and dying.  Now it's back to life, and this is the hard part.  I'm not sure how this problem will heal, not anymore.  And each day I have to remind myself that I still give a damn.  


Candace