#24 I See the LIght

02/28/10

I see the light now, and even through the prism of my tears, it is brighter.  I long to sit by the sea, gazing at it dancing off the water, dazzling me with diamonds and silver.  Hypnotized by its brilliance, I come to see that it is within my grasp.  

But I must pose on the tips of my toes and reach and stretch.  There are footholds, slippery and treacherous in their ability to hurl me back down, but they are there nonetheless.  I must dig my toes into them and reach upward, cast about for hand holes, dig into them with my fingers, sweat and bleed and carefully climb.

Do I have the courage?  I am terrified, almost paralyzed with fear of being thrown back into the black place, but I need the light, lust for it in a way that is almost sexual.  I need it to live completely.  I need it to dry my wounds, my tears, illuminate my way down this sorrowful path.

I struggle, wrestle with the darkness, and it slowly falls away.   I dare not turn to see it fade.  My eyes on the light, I edge my way upward one tentative inch at a time.  Feeling the warmth as I pull myself over the rim of the hole, I lie panting and triumphant, weeping for joy, wishing I were naked to let the light pour completely over me, heating my very core, warming the icy place in my soul where my anguish lives on.

It Ain't Easy

02/24/10

I’m still down here in the black hole.  The rain has started - again.  I can’t see the sky but I can hear the rain coming down.  I like it.  If only I didn’t have to go to the doctor for my yearly physical, I could stay right here in my bed and read and write and knit.  I try to read all the blogs I follow before I start writing one of my own.  

I haven’t done my yoga practice in almost a week, so I must do that.  It is soothing and calming and makes me feel light and heavy at the same time.  I think I’ll do it now and get back to you later.....................

.....................Yoga is good.  Maybe I can see a little light at the mouth of the black hole.

Here are two picture of some things I have knitted.  I love knitting lace because it feeds my OCD.  One must count the stitches or it can really get fucked up.  It is soothing and it’s hard to think about anything else while you are doing it.  I know this from years of unknitting when I screwed up and didn’t count.  Oh, and you can’t knit and cry at the same time.

I’m thirsty so I am cheating by drinking a few sips of water every now and then.  My anti-crazy medications really make my mouth dry and sticky, like someone squeezed a blob of Elmer’s Glue in it.  It ain’t easy being crazy.

Holes in my Soul

02/22/10

It’s dark down here.  Yesterday, when I arrived home from Savannah, I walked in the door and stepped into the black hole.  Down I came like a child on a slide, arms held tight against my sides, teeth clenched and braced for the part where I get dumped off at the bottom. 

I was wobbly all weekend but tried not to let any of the kids see it.  I shuffled my feet and tilted off balance whenever I had to turn a corner or make a sudden move.  I was so distracted I forgot my knitting, a beautiful handspun cashmere shawl which is about 1/4 finished.  On the way home, when I stopped for gas, I had to will myself not to stagger when I went inside to pee.  

I feel a thousand years old, like an aged leper whose sores weep and drain right out there where anyone can see them.  I am transparent.  I don’t have the energy to care that others can see through me to this hellish place.  I don’t care what anybody feels except me.  I have wept myself dry several times today.  I've been through the psychological wood chipper.

The black hole makes me anxious, afraid, and helpless, and it comes out of nowhere.  I knew my state of mind was somehow tied in with Ralph’s death but I was not prepared for this.  Losing another part of Clint has reactivated my grief and I feel as though he died yestrday.  My heart is broken into a thousand pieces and I am furious.  My stomach churns and my spit has a funny taste.  I’m disappointed and angry to find myself practically back on square one.  I need to go to the Dollar Store and buy some things to break.

When I saw my therapist this afternoon, she said this would happen again, probably several more times, but that each time I will recover more quickly than the last.  She had such a look of sadness on her wonderful sweet face, I knew she was in pain for me.

Strangely, I want to stay here in this place for a while.  I have enough sense to know that's not healthy, but at least down here I know what to expect.  I know there will be pain and tears and that powerless feeling of trying to walk in chest deep water reaching for something, I don’t know what.  Maybe Clint is down here somewhere and we’ll run into one another.  Silly girl.  I know he’s dead, but I’m still searching for him, for his strength and support and understanding and the wonderful way he loved me.  I feel as though someone is punching holes in my soul with an ice pick.  

In Memory of Ralph and In Gratitude to Mike

02/19/10

Today, as I was driving out of my neighborhood to take my dogs to camp so I could spend the weekend in Savannah with my Duck family, my good friend Nancy called to tell me that Clint’s partner had died during the night.  We knew Ralph was dying, had known even before Clint died.  They practiced medicine (urology) together for 28 years and we found it cruelly ironic that he was dying of bladder cancer.

Never close, they made a medical good team.  Clint’s laid back personality was a nice balance for Ralph’s temper, and I am certain that Clint saved many jobs when Ralph wanted to fire someone in a fit of rage.

Clint was a lapsed Roman Catholic and an agnostic.  Ralph was a dyed in the wool Southern Baptist and spent no small amount of energy tryng to save Clint’s soul and bring him to Jesus.  He was particularly  adament after Clint got sick.  Ralph would bring over books by C. S. Lewis or some Big Bad Baptist Blabbermouth of an evangelist, asking Clint to read them and think about his faith.  Clint always trashed the books, but at least he waiting until Ralph’s departure.

One time, Ralph asked Clint to pray with him but Clint refused, saying there was more than one way to God.  That didn’t stop Ralph from trying.   We have to give him that.

When Nancy called me this morning, I felt as though I had been gut-punched and that all the scabs on my wounds were falling away and they were once again oozing pain and loss and fury.  Out of nowhere wham! I felt as though I had been flung to my knees.   I lost my focus, so I pulled into the carwash down the street and bawled like a baby.  Another piece of Clint has fallen away. 

Distracted, I missed my exit to the dog camp by 14 miles and had to backtrack.  When will this poison, this sickness leave me to live the writer’s life I want to live and that I now know I can?   How many times do I need to be cut off at the knees before I am allowed to more foreward?  I have been wobbly and off balance all day and into the evening.

I cried quiet tears most of the way to Savannah, positioned the Land Yacht - a 1976 Lincoln Town Car that had been Clint’s - in the slow lane and drove the speed limit.  The frenetic drivers who weave in and out of lanes were more than I could deal with.  Even when I am at my most even tempered mood, those people make me want to shoot their tires out from under them.

Saturday Morning

Life Goes On

There was a big supper at Cancun, the local Mexican restaurant, in honor of Ellery’s Odyssey of the Mind team. ( Google it).  Their regional competition is this morning at 10:15.  It’s the reason I came down here.  Mike Duck knows how to have a good time, and as usual he took over the room, singing with the Mariachi band, grabbing me out of my seat to do some dirty dancing, and in general entertaining every one in the room.  A couple of the parents were a little dumbstruck when we were dancing, but I didn’t give a shit.  Dirty Dancing should be a required course in high school.  The kids didn’t seem to notice.  They have all probably seen the movie more than once.  I love that little coming of age movie, and I’m grateful to Mike for taking me outside of myself and dragging me out to dance with him.

So far, I haven’t cried today.  I’m still wobbly and air-headed, but last night Mike gave me the opportunity to be happy and laugh when I most needed it.  And for that I am grateful.

#23 An Ocean for a Bed

02/16/10

I wake needing to tell you something, something important, but when I reach to touch your arm or shoulder to wake you, I am shocked as though struck by lightening.  You aren’t there.  I need to talk to you but you aren’t there.  Then I forget what I want to tell you and start crying.  I weep as I stagger to let out the dogs and wait for them to come back in out of the cold.

I pour coffee to wake me up but I know I can’t stay awake.  I need to hide inside The Red Sweater some more.  With mug in hand, I wobble back to our bed and when I lie down it lists to my side as though to remind me that you, the ballast that keeps the bed on an even keel, are gone.  A wide expanse of ocean spreads itself over your side, where you should be.  Am I on a sinking ship?  Where are the life preservers?  If I drown, will I find you?

I pull a sleep mask over my damp eyes and go back to sleep, forgetting to feed Mr. Palmer.  He’s a lot like me, swimming around in a pretty house all alone.  A couple of hours later, I wake and you’re still gone.  But the bed is level and I wonder what it was that I was so desperately wanted to say to you.  Does it even matter now, when every fiber of my being aches for you?  Does anything really matter anymore?

Coffee warmed in a microwave should be against the law.  I sip it and throw it out and make another pot.  I make a full pot knowing there will be coffee left over.  Maybe you want a cup?

On Light Switches and Wobbliness

02/14/10

Someone has moved the light switches in my house.  What other explanation can there be?  Not all of the switches have been moved, but I have trouble with the one in den, always reaching right and wondering who moved it to the left.  The same is true with my closets.  When I reach for the switches on the outside wall I realize they are on the inside.  But which

wall?

There’s more.  I don’t turn the lights when I need to.  I find myself making coffee in a dim room and wonder why I can’t perform this easy task, wondering if I’m going blind.  Only then do I realize that I am working  in the morning’s first light and I turn on he light.

I’m always dropping things, breaking some.  I spilled  coffee just this morning.  I was on my  bedside table and fortunately only quarter full but I had to stop writing and clean up my own fucking mess.

I’m wobbly in my body and soul, the same way I have been before.  I don’t like it.  It makes me feel crazy (which we already know), and I hate it.  If Clint were here, he would put me in bed and instruct me to stay down, to nap and and relax and refuel my soul.  I would cry all over him then fall asleep to wake with his body pushed close enough for me to feel feel is pulse.  He was my shield against depression, that is, until he got too sick to prop me up  and I got sicker and sicker until I landed in hospital.

I was there for 10 days and came out better medicated and beginning to get back my sea legs.  He came for visiting hours except once when he didn’t  feel well enough.

My dyslexia has reared its ugly head which has put me at war with my keyboard  I wish I had a dollar for all the times I have rearranged letters to make words clear, cut out words and phrases, deleted text, edited it.

I can’t type without great effort.   This post has been a fucking nightmare, and it’s not even a good one!

Running Scared

02/06/10

My Dead Husband loved music - jazz, rock, classical.  I have the a DVD we used to watch every now and then because we just needed to.  It’s called "Roy Orbison:  Black and White Night."  It’s Roy and some of his friends performing at Cocoanut Grove Nightclub, Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on November 11, 1988.  Here’s the list of friends:

Jackson Browne

T-Bone Burnett

Elvis Costello

k.d. lang

Bonnie Raitt

J. Steven Soles

J.D. Souther

Bruce Springsteen

Tom Waits

Jennifer Warnes

Alex Acuna

James Burton

Glen D. Hardin

Jerry Scheff

Cool?  Very cool.  They did 17 of Roy’s hits, and their enthusiasm and sheer joy at playing with him was so contagious, we caught it right through the TV set every time we watched and listened.  I even played air guitar with The Boss and James Burton.  Maybe I will again one day.  I tried to watch the DVD today but I couldn’t do it.  Not the right time, I guess. 

I did listen to a Roy CD, and it make me remember that Clint’s favorite of his songs was Running Scared.  He was jealous of me, afraid one of my old boyfriends would appear and I would leave him for said boyfriend.  This man, the object of my (endless) love and, yes, adoration, was afraid of losing me!  It was an age thing, I think, though our 14 year age difference was not really an issue in other ways.  As time went by, the jealousy fell away, but that song remained his favorite.  He would sing along with it, triumphantly belting out the last line, “You turned away and walked away with me.” 

#19 On Dust and Poems

02/04/10

I’ve been wearing the The Red Sweater since Monday night except to bathe and yesterday when I got hot when I was tugging off the sofa slipcovers so I could wash them.  I suppose today I will have to wash The Red Sweater.  As I walked out onto my deck to light my heater and smoke and drink coffee, the first drops of rain began to fall.  I should have known.  Yesterday was warm and lately when it’s warm there is rain the next day.

It’s too early to know how I feel.  I haven't brushed my teeth yet but I found that writing when I first wake gives me a sort of forecast of my day’s feelings.  I know I’m tired and sore from the house cleaning mania that overtook me yesterday.  I get this way sometimes, insanely focused on ridding my house of dirt and dust that will just come back in a few days anyway.  When I get a job, the first thing I'm going to buy is a Roomba so I can sic that little son of a bitch on my dusty floors every day.  My Dead Husband wouldn’t give a shit about the dust.  He would pat my side of the bed and say, “Climb back up here with me, Fat Girl.  We’ll let it rain while we take a nap.”  

When I have been out of town, I miss him more than usual and I have been to Savannah two weekends in a row.  I declined an invitation to drive down to Amelia Island tomorrow for a Super Bowl weekend party because I want to stay home in my little clean (for now) house with my dogs.

I want to hide in The Red Sweater for few more days because it’s my soft place to fall, comfort against the chill but more than that it is Clint, his arms around me, his love stored up in the softness like one one of those time-released patches that dispenses nicotine or pain medicine or estrogen.  I need his presence right now more than usual and as usual he won’t let me down.  Well, he did let me down when he died but that is old news.  I have to do the best I can.

After I brush my teeth and before I begin to stuff the sofa cushions back into their covers, I’m going to lie in bed and listen to Phyl's CDs and catch up on Hipstercrite and My Soul is a Butterfly, my two favorite blogs.  (I wish some Zona Rosans would start blogs so I could follow them). They get me outside of myself and take me to New York and Austin and make me feel connected to the creative energy those talented women splash on their pages.  And I’m going to read some poems.  I have been reading poems in the morning - at least two.  Yesterday I read James Dickey’s “The Shark’s Parlor” and “A Morning.”  

I’ve started a list of some of my favorite poems and for a while showed them on all my blogs but I couldn't figure out how to link the titles to the poems so the reader to go directly to them.  So, now the poems are only listed on my Poetry blog and anyone who wants to read them must Google the title.   I guess that's not too much to ask.

PS:  Yesterday I finished Noah's Compass.  Don't bother.

#18 Happy Birthday, my Darling

01/31/10 - 9:40 PM

Happy Birthday, my Darling,

I’m in Savannah with the Ducks.  Yesterday was Zona Rosa.  I am too tired to write more tonight.  Your birthday has wrung me dry in spite of the fact that I kept busy and cooked shrimp and grits for the Ducks and chauffeured Addie around.  I couldn’t stay busy enough to keep the tears away.  I miss you in a way that is eating my heart away - again.  

11:25 PM

Exhausted, but unable to sleep, I have been lying here in bed, thoughts racing around in my head like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, making me feel as though my brain might melt into butter.  Thoughts of Mama’s recipe for oyster stew came out of nowhere, then I thought I might make some for myself soon but dismissed the idea because I knew I wouldn’t eat it if I made it.  Maybe that came from the butter/brain image.  She used a ton of butter, which is of course why it was so good.

     I even tuned my iPod to Dan Gibson's  Natural Stress Relief  in an effort to soothe the churning in my head.  It's pleasant, but it just made me wish I were home in our bed where for years we went to sleep to it every night .  I started thinking that if I didn't write down these thoughts now I would lose the language and some of its power.  So, here I am.
     My facebook post (Happy Birthday, My Darling Clint. I will love you forever). keeps coming into my head, saying it is too much and not enough.  What is there for me to say?  Do I need to detail all the tears I have shed this day?  The times I have retreated to the patio to smoke and cry?  The stabbing pain that melts into an ache permeating every cell of my body and?
     Tomorrow I am going to post another poem on this blog, and I have my knickers all in a twist about it.  It's about a snake.  Yesterday, Rosemary suggested that I write it in first person, and I am been stewing over that.  I am NOT a snake.  I just wish I could be one sometimes.  I'm leaving it alone except for a little copy editing.  I like it the way it is.

  I have spent the weekend surrounded by two loving and supportive families:  my Zona Rosa family and my Duck family - Mike and Polly and Addie (my heart’s love and only biological grandchild) and Ellery and Isabel and Michael.  (My wonderful grandchildren who came as a bonus when Polly married Mike and they began making these amazing babies).  God only knows how I would have fared if I were alone.  I am thankful for my families, for the love they give so freely, the way they make me laugh and think and yes, forget for moments or even hours, that you are gone, that you should be here having a birthday party.

  When you first told me your mother never had a birthday party for you, I didn’t believe it.  Over the years, I learned it to be the unthinkable truth.  No wonder, when we first met, you said you didn’t know how to love because you weren’t sure you ever had been.  But I came along and loved you, loved you deeply, almost painfully so, and you learned to return that love a thousand times over.  Yes, I will always love you.  That’s enough, and it’s not too much.  It just is.  Now maybe I can go to sleep.

Good night, My Love,
Your Fat Girl

#17 Sad Isn't Pretty

01/29/10

Yesterday I woke needing to feel pretty, so I drank coffee from a beautiful china cup but it got cold too soon and reminded me of how my grandfather poured his coffee into his saucer to cool it off so he could drink it fast.

I switched to a mug, utilitarian and not so bad looking but not the same as the feel of real china on my lips, especially if it has a platinum rim like mine.  Pretty things make me feel pretty, so I dressed dressed pretty and painted my eyelashes with black mascara and dabbed blush on my cheeks.  I have been farming my eyelashes with Latisse, and they are long and dark and sexy.

It didn’t work.  I looked like a woman who needs to feel pretty and is trying to but is failing in a spectacular way.  I took about 15 photos of myself trying to get a new facebook picture that didn’t look so dorky, but none of the photos was pretty. In fact, they all showed a sad woman with flat eyes, no soul in them.

I am especially missing My Dead Husband now.  His birthday hangs hauntingly over my head.  If he were alive, he would be 76 on Sunday.  No wonder I look like a ghostly shadow of grief.  Once again, I’m faced with one of the god awful “firsts” that happen in the year following the death of a loved one.  He wasn't an average everyday loved one; he was my loved one and I his.  He was the part of my heart that is still missing and I expect always will be.  I don't want to cry today, but I've already begun.  I hate this shit.  

In The New Yorker that came yesterday, I read an article about grief.  It was spot-on, to avail myself of today’s vernacular.  The author took several thousand words to conclude that grief is work and that each of us has to do the work ourselves.  I just summed it up in 14 words.  I’m working here, I’m working.   

#16 Don't Fornicate with This

01/27/10

When I was at the FedEx store yesterday, a man came in with a cardboard box, and written on each side in big black letters were the words, “Don’t Fornicate with This.”  His words were emphatic, bold and underscored several times.  I want a tee shirt that says that.

After a good weekend followed on Monday, by a minor (or so I thought) breakdown in the car when Pet Clark’s “This is my Song” came on the car radio and I had to stop and cry until it was finished.  Need I say it was one of My Dead Husband’s favorites?  I made one more stop and lived to get back here to the safety and warmth of my little house.  I patted myself on the back for going with the flow, so to speak, and letting my tears fall, spill onto my sunglasses and my pants while I sat, head on the steering wheel listening to every word of that song, each cutting me like a knife.  Then I went to work cleaning and organizing my stuff and thought it was behind me.

Then they came in the door, Bert and Emily squabbling as they always do about the crisis du jour.   It doesn’t matter what they were yammering about, it never does.  I was more fragile than I realized, more wounded that I knew over the song incident in the car.  I got up and made a drink, Kristy got here, and while was ordering our usual Monday night pizza, there were heated words coming from my room.  It doesn’t matter what they were. They were heated and I, who had come back here to pee, left and went to the powder room.  I went back outside and lit a cigarette and sipped my drink.  The noise continued, and I lost my temper and marched into the house and told them I couldn’t bear all the histrionics.  I should have asked them if they would be acting that way if Poppy were alive, but I wasn’t that quick.  I began to weep and went back out into the cold.  I am furious with myself for giving them enough of my power to make me cry in my own home where we were supposed to be having family night.  They all came outside then to yell at me that they were not yelling at one another.  Kristy yelled that I had overreacted, which didn’t help my feelings at all.  See why I need that tee shirt?  Mercifully, as soon at the pizza box was empty, Bert took Emily home.

Emily is 13, and I am well aware that it is her job to  make her parents (and most adults) miserable.  What I don’t understand is why Bert can’t control her enough for us to have one evening a week, just visiting and eating pizza and acting happy.  Maybe we should move family night to Kristy’s house so I can leave if I want to.

So, yesterday I was tired and feeling fragile.  I organized my poems, which at least gave me a feeling of purpose and accomplishment, but then I started thinking about crawling down into the black hole for protection.  It frightened me, that thought.  I have never before seen the black hole as some kind of refuge, only a place of dark helplessness.  Am I going mad, truly mad?  I should call Sondralyn and report these thoughts, and maybe I will.  It’s like having an ace in the hole. The next time my sensibilities are assaulted by family or anyone else for that matter, maybe I’ll crawl down into the hole just far enough to drown out the toxic waste they spew so expertly.

I did a lot of weeping yesterday.  Nancy has a sixth sense about me, and after a short phone visit, said she would come see me in the afternoon.  I read her some of my poems and babbled on about the night before.  Even having her for a sounding board didn’t get me well.  After she left, I cried until the dogs did that thing when they are worried and scared at the same time.  I hugged them to me and told them I loved them a lot and I cried into each of their coats.  They didn’t know whether to climb into my lap or run for cover. My wonderful dogs.

I ended up editing some of my poems and sketching out some new ones that I will work on today.  By 6:30 I had taken a bath and was tucked into my bed with my knitting.  Hell, going to bed at 10 is my rule, so I’ll break it when I damned well please.

I have been wearing The Red Sweater since Monday night, taking it off only to bathe.

#15 Who Am I?

01/21/10

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, trying to figure out who I am.  I’m no longer a wife and don’t want to make a career of being a widow.  The exquisite pain I suffered for 8 months and survived has taken a more subtle tone.  I find myself staring into space and thinking about My Dead Husband, sometimes even without tears.

I’ve been thinking about sex and starting to miss it.  Have I mentioned what a skilled and tender lover Clint was?  I haven’t had a sexy thought for 5 years, and my therapist is ecstatic that my libido is coming back.   And, yes, I bought myself a toy.  She says that in major depression, the first human urge to leave is the sex drive, and that it is one of the last to return as the depression lifts.  (I think the drugs and a sick husband played a major role, too).  Ann Carol says I am coming out of a long cycle of sadness that began years ago and had nothing to do with Clint’s illness or death.  I’ve known all along that my, depression, though separate from my grief, has been holding me back.

Maybe now I can deal with my grief without all the anger - read that rage.  Last week I thought about going to the Dollar Store to buy some things to break, but I didn’t do it.  I get a point for that.

So, I’m emerging from a years long sadness because my brain chemicals are fucked up, and Clint isn’t here to know it and be happy for me.  I still want him back.

So, what now?  I have applied for and been accepted into a nursing re-entry program, but that won’t begin until March.

I need to work, but a job is just part of who I am.  I feel my inner hippie beginning to emerge after years of hibernation.  My creative side is more energized, but I’m not sure where that is going.  I feel myself evolving into my own woman, but I have no idea where that is going either.  It’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.  I’ve decided to let it take it’s course and follow where it goes.

Do I really want to spend the rest of my life in this great big one horse town in this buttoned up neighborhood where every female (except me) walks or runs in black pants and a white top?  It’s some sort of unspoken dress code, I guess.  I think they hum “Ruby Redress” when they pass my house.  Jesus,  If they only knew.  But, can I leave my haven, my sweet little friendly house? It’s too soon to make that call.

#14 - Out of the hole

 01/15/10

The clouds are back and it’s not cold, so I am basking in the gloom because I can write outside without any glare on my laptop screen.

I had not been out of the house for 5 days, and yesterday, a friend of many years blasted me out to go to the movie - “It’s Complicated” - an hilarious romp that I think one needs to be at least 50 to fully appreciate.  Definite not a flick for anyone with a bladder control problem.

I came home and floated seamlessly back into the ennui of the black hole  Usually when I’m depressed, I have no appetite, but before I went to bed, I had consumed 5 huge homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies (Kristy made them for me), a ton of Cheerios, some yogurt which I laced liberally with toasted almonds.  If there had been ice cream or chocolate in the house, I would no doubt have eaten it all.  I went to sleep feeling cheated because I couldn’t find anything else to eat except a salad kit, which seemed way too healthy for the binge I was enjoying.  Oh, and I drank a lot of vodka.

I woke this morning to find myself, well, feeling like myself.  No black hole so far.  Even the clouds are my friends. After I let them out to pee at 6:45, the dogs let me sleep until nearly 10 .  I’m thinking about calling a friend and making a dinner date.

Maybe my wounds are beginning to scab over, trying to heal from the edges inward.  I almost hesitate to say that, even though I’m not superstitious, it seems a little like bragging too soon.  I’ve been writing poems, and though they are difficult to write, I am finally feeling some comfort from creating them.  I’ve stopped crying ALL the time and have even seen a couple of no-crying days.

Is that really light I see?  How long will it last?  Have I broken some of the marionette strings that keep me flipping and flopping in midair,  jerked out of a few moments of peace and made to dance to a tune I never knew, breaking open my wounds?

...................It started to rain, so I came inside and put way my Christmas decorations. My friend reminded me yesterday that it was January 15 and maybe I should do something about them.   The fact that it took only 20 minutes speaks volumes about my so-called holiday spirit.  I’m so fucking glad it’s over and my stuff is out of sight - except for a small stack of kids Christmas books that I put out every year.  I’m thinking, I’m thinking.  Where should I put them?  Not in the attic.  I’ve already been up there twice, risking life and limb, and even (in the rain) to the playhouse in the back yard that we inherited with the house.  It has electricity, water and an A/C unit, so it’s a good store house.  I’ll do something with the books later.

I do lead an exciting life.

# 13 Suspended

01/10/10
I am suspended in the black hole, floating around in the dark and not scrambling toward the dim light I can see above me.  Instead, I dangle helplessly, without struggling or scratching the walls or searching for footholds to climb.

An evening with friends could not bring me up completely to the light, so I pretended, a skill of which I have become something of an expert.

I am afraid of this black hole but thankful for the invisible web that holds me up and at the same time prevents my descent.  What will come of this?  Am only half depressed, semi-crazy?  Will I find the fortitude, the balls to brush aside the sticky web and take my chances?

My fear of the hole overrides any hope I may hold of acsending to the light.  I do not feel strong enough to fight.  Even The Red Sweater offers little comfort.  What shall I do?  Wait to see what will happen?  I guess so.

My dream last night was about Clint and me trying to have sex with another woman.  I didn’t know the other woman.  She was brunette and very beautiful and had a long stunning body.  We were in some kind of water tank, which made a menage a trois impossible. It made intercourse ridiculously unworkable because none of us could brace ourselves and stop floating long enough for penetration.  I woke aroused and disappointed.

It doesn't take a psychoanalyst to figure that out. Even my dreams are in suspension.  What a fucking mess.  No pun intended.

#12 Unwanted Memories

01/05/09
These are some things I wrote down last year about this time.  I had been out of the psychiatric hospital for only two months.  I was shaky and typing was hard, so I didn't bother with capital letters or punctuation. Today, I caught myself beginning to clean it up, but my better judgement kicked in.  It is what it is.  So, here goes.  It's a lot, but in  my mind, it needs to be published as one piece.

01/19/09:  when i was  in junior high, it was spread over three different schools - 2 in statsboro ga and one in ft. lauderale. i wanted to be included.  the rich and socially prominent girls kept to themselves.  our little apartment in statesboro meant i couldn't have overnight oompany.  i shared a room with mama.  when I was i eight grade i read a book about a girl who started her own club and i wanted to do that.  i tried.  i wanted the club members to wear circle pins.  i never got it off the ground.  i don't know if i never really tried or if i tried and failed.  i could never afford a circle pin anyway.  in eighth grade i made friends with a girl two years older than i.  she was morbidly obese and i spent lots of nights at her house.  her name was ann.  ann beaver.  she was a kind and loyal friend.  she's dead now, died from complications of diabetes.  she was in a club called fifteen flirting females and she tried to get me in.  i didn't make the cut.  even if i got in we couldn't afford the dues and god knows i didn't have the wardrobe.  i never had  a chance, but i have always made life work for me, and i treasured my friendship with ann and her big sister jane practically adopted me.  she was the first person to recognize that i needed glasses.  they had big rooms in their antebellum house and i couldn't see tv from the sofa so i sat on the floor closer to the set.  the tv in our apartment sat in a table no more than three feet from the foot of mamas bed.  we all watched it there.  i sat at the foot of her bed.  this is all i want to write about this now.  off my meds (almost) and i am digging around in my memory for painful stuff.  i needed a father.  i really needed a father.  he died when i was six.  no wonder i eventually married a man 14 years my senior.

01/28/09:  why now?  why am i having these memories now?  when we lived in ft lauderdale, our house was arranged so that mama had to walk through my room to get to hers.  when she and way (my rich stepfather who she married and divorced twice) remarried, he came down fairly regularly.  when they had sex in the room next to me, i could hear it.  grunts and groans scared me.  i thought i knew what was going on and that made it even more gross and scary to me.  when we lived there we went to the school where mama taught.  it was an exclusive boarding school that had some local day students.  we were thrown in with one of the kellogg heiresses, the granddaughter of the man who invented alka seltzer, diana nyad who would be an olympic gold medalist in swimming, to mention a few.  i had 1 friend, joan tischbourne. she was driven to and from school by a chauffeur in a lincoln town car.   her mother owned dress boutiques in dania and in chautauqua new york where they spent summers.  i learned to eat delivery pizza at her house.  we had never had any kind of pizza except the kind that came in a boxed kit.  she had about 15 times more clothes than i, but she didn't seem to care that i was poor.  i spent the night with her sometimes.  i could never have sleep over company.  i didn't want to.  jesus.  i wonder why.

i had menstrual cramps with my very first period  my first flow was almost like chocolate.  much later i learned i had endometriosis and was lucky to ever have had a child.  that started while we were living on saint simons island georgia before we moved to the apt in statesboro.  we went there for mama to finish her b s and earn a masters.  the cramps were debilitating and i missed school one day at least every month.  in ninth grade mama took me to a gynecologist in ft lauderdale who put me on birth control pills for my cramps.  the dose she prescribed was 10 mg of enovid.  it worked but i almost immediately gained about 25 lbs, which made me feel all the more isolated.  i made good grades but i wasn't excited about school.  i dieted to get off the weight, sometimes eating only green beans from a can for a meal.  it took months to get rid of  the fat.  the dr decreased to dose to 5 mg.  i was still chubby when i went to statesboro on a greyhound bus by myself for spring break.  mama sewed me into my culottes because the zipper was broken.  they were cheap but they were the only thing i had to wear that made me feel like i fit in.  i don't like thinking about how desperate i was to feel like part of a group.  i had a small group in statesboro, but for the entire year we lived in ft lauderdale, i was a loner with one friend.  i started smoking that year and mama told me to smoke in front of her instead of sneaking around.  she wanted a friend instead of a daughter.

ann carol, my therapist, says that mama and way having sex when I could hear them was sexual abuse.  i wonder what she will think when I tell her about playing doctor with my cousins.  i don't want these memories.  i can't seem to stop them from coming to the surface.  they are part of who i am today.  they hurt me and make me feel young and helpless and afraid.  i can't write about this any more.  i don't want to do this.  not now.  not now.

02/23/09:  when i was newly divorced, in early 1972, i gave up the little cottage I rented because I needed to save money.  i liked that little cottage, but I moved in with mama and paid her a much smaller rent.  i was working 3 to 11 at the brunswick hospital with an occasional night shift.  one friend of mother's - at that time she was collecting strange friends - wanted me to pose topless for a "cartoon-like" photo he wanted to sell to a girlie magazine.  i don't even remember the man's name.  mama thought it was a good idea.   i agreed but couldn't do it.  i stood him up.  i was a young single mother, and poor as I was, the idea of posing topless for any reason went against everything i believed.  hell, I was teaching sunday school at the time.  it has always bothered me that mama didn't object, that she didn't tell her friend that she wouldn't pimp out her daughter.  and that's what it really was.  i think she would have wanted some of the money.  no wonder I moved to macon ga where I knew only one person,  a person i could trust.  terrible way to think of mother, i know.  why do i have to remember this stuff now?  i suppose i really am crazy.  i don't need this, nor do i want it.

03/26/09:   Once, way, my stepfather, made a pass at me - or tried to.   Mama had gone to Woodbine to see a friend and asked me to go along.  I said I wanted t go to the beach, and since I was a typical 16 year old, that's what I did.  I was home from the beach before her return, had showered and dressed and all that.  It was spring, and  cool evenings, we had a fire in the fireplace.  I was standing in front of it when Papa approached me and hugged me.  It was not a fatherly hug.  I pulled away and went to my room.  When Mama returned, I told her what happened.  Her response?  "I told you to go to Woodbine with me."  She put all of the blame on me. Jesus.  Who could make up this shit?

#11 New Year’s Day

01/01/10

Breaking my own sef-imposed rule, I’ve been in bed all day either knitting yet another pink ruffled scarf or writing.  I tried to watch LSU play football because My Dead Husband, Clint, played there on scholarship before he tore his knee and had to quit.  He really just wanted to be a doctor and though I wasn’t around at the time, I don’t think it broke his heart to leave the gridiron.  I had to stop watching because they were playing like losers, so I did the most amazing thing and started watching a Criminal Minds marathon.  What is the hell does that say about me?  I have music in my little house, lots of it, and it has been weeks since I even turned on my TV.  So, I pick today to take up the moronic pursuit of College Football and a program about serial killers.  I'm not myself today, or am I?

The dogs have insinuated themselves so close as to be nearly under my side, and the expanse where My Dead Husband should be lying has grown wider and wider, looking like an ocean leading to the edge of the earth.

I need to get out of these clothes.  On Wednesday night after dinner with my stepdaughter, Kristy, I came home and climbed into a pair of grey velour “warm-up” pants, the lower half of a set I bought last winter at Steinmart and I pulled The Red Sweater over my head and haven’t changed since - except for my panties.  Oh, please.  I may forget to brush my teeth some times, but I wear clean drawers.

I even went to the movies last night in this get-up, pulling on a big back cardigan and thick scarf and padding into the theater in my black Uggs, a gift from Clint last Christmas.  It cost me $17 to get a ticket for Up In The Air and a Diet Coke and some popcorn that was too salty to eat.  I wrote about the movie on my other blog, "Living Through It" so I won’t repeat it here.

What I really want to do is drink vodka from a crystal tumbler and keep on until I am tired of it or it puts me down.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll clean my little house and take a bath.  Happy New Year.

#10 - Closets

12/31/09
I don’t know what to do with the rest of this day. I retrieved (if only temporarily) my car from the mechanic, took a trunk full of things to Goodwill,
schlepped my recyclables to the dumpster at the fire station. I washed my hair, defuzzed my legs, exfoliated, polished my skin and smeared my lips with something this is supposed to make them soft and healthy.

I struggled with two poems I am working on for Zona Rosa, my writers workshop that meets once a month in Savannah. I sat beside my fountain listening to its soft gurgle, hoping for inspiration, but that just made me start thinking about My Dead Husband and how much I miss him on days like today - dark and rainy and sad. There’s a rock in the fountain that he picked up at the river one day when we were running around behind his first wife’s back 36 years ago. I am stuck on these poems, sick of them, but they have potential, so I will go at them again tomorrow.

Yesterday I attacked closets - My Dead Husband's and mine. My closet was easy. I got rid of 8 purses, 9 pairs of shoes and some clothes I haven’t worn in a year.  Behind my shoes, up on a high shelf, I found some old soft porn tapes we used to watch sometimes when we could still have sex.  I left them there.  Just looking at my closet gave me a smug pleasure. What a good girl I am to give away things I don’t use. That is, of course, bullshit. We should ALL get rid of what we don’t use because there are way too many people out there who don’t have anything, or they don’t have enough.

My Dead Husband’s closet was a different story. I have been gradually giving things away for some time, mostly to the children, things that make them feel close to their father, like his sweaters and golf shirts and pajama bottoms. Have I mentioned that he was so spoiled he slept in a cashmere sweater every night of the year? He was always cold after he got sick. Yesterday I finished the closet, and it was not as hard as I imagined it would be. It was hard, really hard, but I didn’t cry until I had everything organized and in baskets to go to Goodwill. I spread out my jackets and sweaters all across the bar in his closet so it wouldn’t look so empty.

That’s when I went to the corner of the closet where I put The Things I Cannot Live Without: his cocksucker suit (remember the line from Sophie’s Choice)? and his United States Closed Golf Association uniform (long story interesting only to the participants) with the crest on the breast pocket of the jacket, his Tabasco ties and a few others I bought and one really ugly one he bought one time when I wasn’t looking. There is the ridiculously Latin-looking white knit shirt he bought one day in New Orleans and his Old Navy long sleeved tee with the American flag on in and his Newport tee and his tux. I could not part with his belts with fish and boats on them, nor could I give up his alligator belts or his daddy’s cashmere overcoat. I tried but was unable to remove his trousers hanging on the silent butler that have been there since the Wednesday before he died. They will have to hang there a while longer. I unzipped the garment bag with his cocksucker suit in it and pulled out a sleeve and cried on it for a while. I did not wipe my nose on it.

Last night I ate the last of the mini Mounds Bars in his candy box, but I couldn’t make myself move the box.

#9

12/29/09
When I logged on to post my last entry, I discovered I have A Follower, a real writer with a blog of her own that I am following. I smiled for the first time today, and wanted to tell Clint.

#8

12/29/09
"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love."
Washington Irving

After surviving Christmas day, (a feat I would never have accomplished without Cuz), yesterday morning I strutted around, a peacock wearing makeup and feeling strong and enabled. A friend wanted to stop by. He came to pick up some cheese straws I made for him before Christmas. I had a call from the cleaners that I left a shirt there for two years and I should come and get it so they could do inventory. My friend offered to pick it up for me on the way here, and he walked through my back door with one of Clint’s shirts, the navy and white one with the tiny checks and the red polo player on the breast. That’s when I started to fall apart. But my friend never knew. What is wrong with me that I sat in my living room making small talk and acting as though the shirt were just another piece of laundry? What is wrong with me that I cooked supper for Kristy and Robert when all I wanted to do was cry?

I put on the shirt this morning, and the sleeves are nasty from me wiping my nose on them all day, but I won’t take it off. I repotted my orchids and went for a walk with one of Clint’s fleece vests over the shirt and I knitted on a lace shawl. I started to organize baskets of clothes for Goodwill and none of it did any good. I’m awash in tears and have been for hours, that hollow feeling back at my core, my nose gross and runny, my eyes puffy and stinging.

I’m trying to get a job and I called about it and no one called me back and that has happened before and I’m discouraged and beginning to have uncharacteristic self-doubt.

I’m finished spending energy trying to hold back tears. I even searched until I found the quote from Washington Irving so I could read it over and over for as many time as I need to. My tears are okay. They are mine, and I can let the flow any time I want. It hasn’t been 7 months since I lay with Clint as he died. Goddamnit, that is not enough time for me to be able to stop crying.

I just wish I had the guts to live up to my own words.

I'm going to sleep in the shirt and wear my pearls.

#7 December 27

12/27/09

Yesterday it was just Cuz and me and the dogs. We slept until 11. It was cold, but went to Lowe’s to buy a new light fixture for my deck and Cuz installed it for me, saving me many $. I wanted a new fiber-optic tree, since the one Taylor gave me a long time ago died, but at Lowe’s there no trace that Christmas ever happened. Eerie.

On the way home we ate fried shrimp for lunch at The Players Club , and when we got here, Cuz put up the fixture and we piddled around. We tried to listen to the entire Beatles collection, but we only made it through Rubber Soul. I still have The White Album, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, Let it Be and Magical Mystery Tour to go. Maybe I’ll listen to them today. Maybe I won’t.

We thought about making linguine with white clam sauce for supper and I started the olive oil and white wine reduction but we ended up sitting around, with the occasional trip to the garage for a cigarette. It was too cold on the deck. I worked on my blog and he did some stuff on his laptop. He’s the kind of friend with whom I can enjoy a comfortable silence. The soothing splash of my fountain took the place of the Beatles, and it was peaceful and right. Instinctively, we each in turn got up and stirred the sauce.

We smoked some more expensive tobacco and ended up eating a chocolate covered cherry before supper. Cuz breathed in a chunk of cherry and choked on it and I had to do the Heimlich maneuver on him. No shit. He was in real trouble and I’m not big enough to really get my arms around him but somehow I managed to dislodge it on about the fifth try. I was just before putting him on the floor and starting to breathe for him when it came out. Better aspiration pneumonia than death. I can’t make myself imagine what would have happened to me if another of the Men in My Life died, especially in my kitchen on the day after Christmas.

The sauce and clams went into the refrigerator. Having lost our appetites, we had another drink and made periodic trips to the garage for a cigarette. We stayed up way too late, and Honey, my Lhasa periodically scolded us for being up when she wanted to be in bed.

I slept like a baby.


And now it’s today, and I am alone again but I don’t feel lonely. I wish My Dead Husband were here, but the best I can do is kiss the top of his urn and tell him about my Christmas. He would be happy, I know.

# 6 Christmas

12/26/09
I could have gone to see my brother Paul or my sister-in-law and my nephews . They both invited me but I decided to stay home on my first Christmas without Clint. I stayed in the red sweater, in which I had slept, slipped into ridiculously “Holiday-ish” pajama bottoms and my old Uggs - bought back in the early ‘90s. I brushed my teeth and applied makeup and glued a smile to my face with lip stain.

For days I worried and wondered how it would be, how I would manage. Then they came, first Cuz. He had sent me a calendar from the printing company where he works, and his painting (September) is of a scene of the creek and our neighbor’s old dock from the back of our house at the beach. This year, I will have September every day because I’m going to hang it on his page.

Then Deidra and Taylor came, and we sat on the deck and talked and drank and smoked and told stories about My Dead Husband in the sunshine while it lasted. They made me happy and they made me laugh and want to cry for the sheer joy of the miracle that I was surrounded by them. I gave Cuz a bottle of vodka and Deidra a pink ruffle scarf of pale pink wool and silk knitted late into the night before with my very own fingers. She squealed and wrapped the scarf around her and admired herself in the mirror and hugged me and said she loved me. She liked the redecorating I have done, and I loved her for that.

Deegie and Taylor went to Seminole about 2:30 and he forgot to take his cheese straws so will probably give them to someone else or eat them myself. Cuz is staying until tomorrow so maybe I’ll send them with him for a snack in the car.

I prepared food for the family, who came about 4:30. Everything was good except I forgot the Madeira cream for the croutons was on high, and I sat too long on the deck and the bottom of the pot was scorched and I didn’t care. The cream was okay, just a little intense tasting which no one noticed and I think they may have even liked as much as the regular kind.

They all poured through the kitchen door in a sort of human flood. The twins at first were afraid of the dogs, so there was a screeching and whining until they got over being scared. Countng Cuz and me, there were 11, including th Debutante’s boyfriend. Everyone was tired and full and I wondered why they weren’t all at home. They were here because it was “the thing to do.” We say that in the South. We take family obligations to heart, or at least we pretend to.

Now, to contradict myself, they were also here because they wanted to be. It’s not their fault that I am the last stop. My Dead Husband was their father. Before they arrived I was terrified that I would feel the way I did on Thanksgiving when the room suddenly opened up and there was a hole where Clint should be. It didn’t happen. I think it’s because Cuz is here and because I got a Deegie fix. She brought me a box of Kiehl’s products, one of which is supposed to polish my body when I bathe in it. Others are to guarantee I have shiny moist lips and hands soft and holdable.

There was a fire in the fireplace, the first of the year. We shifted places for a couple of hours, some going out in the cold to smoke, others changing seats or wandering around the table to snack or see what the 18 month old twins were doing. The outside crowd would break off into to pieces, one wandering back into the house, maybe to escape the cold, maybe to escape the prattle of the Debutante when she broke the beads on her wrist by twisting them, then blamed her grandmother, from whom she had just received them. Even this family is not immune to inconsequential talk. So we walked around and ran from it and fed ourselves food we didn’t want. By 7:00 they had all departed for home or for better company.

Cuz and I went into the garage where it wasn’t so cold and sat in canvas chairs, the kind people take to ball games and we smoked some expensive tobacco and relaxed and talked on and on. The dogs were unhappy to be left in the house, so we put them in the car, where they curled themselves into balls and snoozed until it was midnight and we all went to bed.

#5 Christmas Day - so far

Christmas Morning 2009

The rain has stopped, at least for now. I sent animated Christmas e-cards to some of my friends. The house doesn’t feel empty - yet. That will happen when everyone arrives and the hole in the room where Poppy should be will get wider and deeper. My wonderful and understanding Deidra is coming to see me this morning. She is the only person who can make me laugh today, she with her animated personality and infectious laugh and her heart full of love. She loved Poppy intensely, and she loves me, too. Maybe she love me too much.

I have had visions of something happening to her, being hurt or killed. When Belle got out of the house yesterday, I immediately assumed the worst - that she was dognapped or dead under a car. Everything is a potential crisis for me. I don’t want these negative and depressing thoughts but they come into my head and I have to shake them away.

Cuz is coming to see me, too. He’s my artist friend from Valdosta whose watercolor masterpieces hang in nearly every room of my house. Clint loved Cuz. He told Cuz good-bye before he died, said he would miss him. Cuz nearly fainted with grief right there on the spot. He will hold my hand and help me through this Christmas thing.

#4

12/23/09
This whole Christmas thing has me worn out and sad. I don’t know how to act happy right now. Oh, I smiled at the wonderfully animated and gold-toothed Salvation Army bell ringer, and I said Merry Christmas and told her how cool she looked in her sparkly red earrings, hoops that must be 3-1/2 inches in diameter. She was tall, maybe six feet, and thin and she was wearing a Red Sweater with an even redder scarf around her long cappuccino colored neck. I want to be her, standing at the door to Wal Mart ringing her bell and saying hey and how are you and bless you and Merry Christmas to everyone who comes along and meaning it. I didnt put any money in her bucket and now I am sorry. I put money in other buckets. Why not hers?

My shell has cracked a few times today. I am a walking talking dichotomy, wanting to be sad and glad at the same time. It doesn’t work, so I plow along, living from minute to minute, looking over my shoulder to make sure the monster’s not there, ready to strike me down.

#3

12/21/09

I take pills for depression and a heart rhythm thing. Today, I forgot to take them, the ones for in the morning. (I did remember to brush my teeth). I did’t notice until I got ready to take the ones for night. I think my heart would beat okay if people would stop dying and breaking it. I smoke cigarettes and I have a heart thing, which makes me a clear example of a person being intelligent and stupid at the same time. Smoking is stupid no matter who does it but it is really stupid if you have a heart thing.

The sun came out today, and I sat on the deck in the cool afternoon and knitted a ruffled scarf for my friend and I smoked and drank coffee the whole while. Crazy people smoke and drink lots of coffee.

On Mondays, I have dinner with my Dead Husband’s children. The restaurant was filled with fat families with fat crying babies and there weren’t enough servers and the food wasn’t right and none of us wanted to be there anyway.

I came home and pulled on the red sweater and climbed into bed.

#2

I sit in the cold wind, chain smoking Virginia Slims and wishing I could molt, shed this fragile skin and grow a tougher hide, over and over again until I’m a statue, inpenitrable, impervious to this infirmity. I take an extra pill, light another cigarette and wait.

#1

12/20/09

Every night I sleep in my Dead Husband’s red sweater, cashmere worn and soft and filled with pockets of warm air. Sometimes I wear it for days, rattling around my little house alone save for my two dogs. They love me like He did, without conditions or demands. I don’t want anyone to love me that way again, just my dogs. It’s too much to lose, that kind of love. It leaves poison in its wake, toxins flowing in my blood and brain. Some days I shower and put the sweater back on, others I don’t bother to shower at all. Sometimes I forget to brush my teeth and others I just don’t do it on purpose. In fits and starts, I obsess about the dust that builds up, sometimes attacking it as though it were an enemy to be beaten back, other times just looking at it and going to back to bed. I cook, but not for me. I cook to stop thinking about my Dead Husband and the dust. The dogs don’t care what I do. My hair is filthy and they don’t care. Why should I? I drink gallons of coffee and don’t eat except for yogurt and almonds. I smoke, sometimes in a chain, and evenings I drink vodka, sometimes too much. I want to stay here in my little house, but sometimes I have to dress and leave and act as though everything is okay. I’m very good at it. No one knows how I’m rotting away inside, not even my shrinks. It’s Christmas, and I don’t give a shit. I have 4 decorations out and a wreath on my front door, but they are not for me. They are for the children who expect some evidence that I am really who they think I am.

Sometimes I obsess about my looks and wash my hair and get my nails done and visit a young woman who sandblasts my face to take away any little imperfection I can find. I wear red cowboy boots and tight jeans and makeup. But there is no satisfaction or comfort in it. It’s a show, a farce, bullshit that the others expect of me. They need to believe I am okay, not crazy and sad and inconceivably lonely.They need to think I want to hold babies and smile as they open their gifts I bought from the internet. They need more than I can give, so I pretend.