Memories....

Day 7
1. I remember him sitting in the leather chair. Wearing shorts in winter by the fire with his feet up in the ottoman and Hobbes stretched out in his lap like a furry Main Coon blanket and how obsessed I alway was with his strong legs and looking at his face when he wasn't paying attention because of how fixated he was with the football game on tv. Living together in the house we made a home in a brand new city and that fall where we didn't know anyone and it was only each other.

 
2. His skinny little body as I tried treatment that didn't work and how his black fur used to almost disappear in the long white wool of the Icelandic rug that he loved so much.

3. Her hand I held all day for those weeks and I looked at that hand so much and we had the same short pinkie fingers.

4. He called the day before he died and he was as lucid as he had been for awhile and he sounded like him and if you know how dementia breaks down language you will understand that and he said I love you and I always have and called me by my nickname and asked about the cats and said all the things he hadn't said in such a long time and he spoke to That Guy and said take care of her (he didn't) and when I hung up I told That Guy he will be gone in the next day or so because there was something other than him driving that call and that memory and that voice and I told my mom and Mike be available and be close cause the call is coming and they scoffed but listened and he was gone less than 24 hours later and I am so glad I got to hear his voice like that again like the voice of the dad I grew up with and not the tired and confused man that he somehow became and whatever it was that drove that phone call and that switch back I am forever grateful.

5. We didn't need the cage because we had an agreement that he would tell me when it was time and he did and we picked him up and he just laid his head on That Guy's shoulder and I drove and we walked right in and laid him down and I took his little face in my hands and he looked right at me and I swear he nodded and I covered him with my hair and whispered in his ear how much I loved him while the vet did what he had to do and it was so quiet but that wee nod and that look in his eyes that said I promised you mom and it's time. I will never forget that.

6. That hospice nurse and the look on her face when I was laying in bed with her at the end and she touched me on the back and I looked back and it was a scream hiss and said don't fucking touch me and she had the gall to look offended and I will never forget that pissy look on her face and after I wanted to say that touch requires consent and touch brings people out of the moment and what you see as kind I see as an invasion that startled me and interrupted me breathing into her last so fuck off with your offended wounded pissy face and lay out some parameters before hand.

7. Alzheimer's is torture for the living and I visited all the time and knew immediately the week she forgot me completely because i saw this kind look in her eyes that she used to give strangers because she was unfailingly polite to everybody and that visit I became one of those everybody's and it broke me because i was named for her and she was everything to me and then she saw my mom and she knew her for an instant and that made me happy that there was that instant for my mom and sad that it was gone for me.

8. A video came up on my FB memories the other day of Nigel playing with a toy and I didn't realize it was when she was visiting and suddenly her voice came out of my phone and there is a line in a Jann Arden song that says "I've got a good mother and her voice is what keeps me here" and to hear that voice again almost broke me because I miss that voice so much.

9. When I think of him I think of him like Don Draper. Sharp suit. Slicked back hair. White shirt. Skinny tie. or khakis and a pastel golf shirt with the breast pocket for his smokes. Kent. King size soft pack. Wristwatch and aviator sunglasses. Laugh lines around his blue blue eyes. The dad of my childhood before the moustache and the wretched perm.

10. White shoulders, old spice, Chanel no 5. the smell of my pyjamas after good night hugs.

These musing are in response to Being Here, Humans writing workshop A Grief Revealed and the (condensed) question was: “What do you remember?”

(day 25 of Effy’s blog along)

The Snowball Effect....

1. The limited capacity for any more pain means putting off things like dental care and doing so means that when you finally return it takes 4 times as long and costs 5 times as much.

2. The softness in my body in places that were firm. Again, capacity. Work out? Stretch? Move? What the fuck is that?

3. I feel like the month I was with her alternating between cleaning out her home and sitting by her bed for the entirety of the visiting hours put me in a financial sitch I am still crawling out of 5.5 years later.

4. The dullness. Of my once razor sharp instincts and wit and decision making. It's coming back...slowly.

5. Being on it. washing my hair, doing my taxes, cleaning my bathroom. There used to be so much ease in these basic day to day tasks. It has become so complicated and whelming that I have a tendency to just not. Thankfully that ease is coming back as well but it's been a struggle and like most things in the missing and the grief it's the stuff that makes me feel good that seems to be so hard to do.

6. Feeding myself is an impossible task. It's always been hard but lately it seems harder.

7. Trust. I trust very few people, long term or out of the gate. I am guarded in a way I have never been before.

8. Friendships. I have let so many go. Yes there have been new ones that are clean and honest and real. It was surprising to me how much I was the go to person for so many and its not the reciprocal thing that made me end them, it was the nope you are not the one that gets my vulnerable heart right now. And i found myself wondering if *I* am the one they go to with their vulnerable hearts and deepest secrets then why wouldn't I go to them in return? What was it? The ones I did turn to stayed and the clearing out made room for new loves.

9. My introverted personality became even more so.

10. I think these are all positive in their own ways but one very positive thing is I gave up completely on balance. It was something I kept striving for and I lean towards obsession and allowance for whatever catches my fancy and I set my own hours mostly so balance? Nah. I first started chasing it when I first started looking into self help to help myself and all of the "experts" talked about balance and how necessary it was for a full and fulfilled life. It's all bullshit.

These musings are a response to Being Here, Human’s grief writing workshop and the (shorthand) invitation was “I invite you to articulate all the ways that loss comes in and changes our lives, our bodies, our experience of being here, human.”

(day 24 of Effy’s blog along)

A grief revealed...

1. It feels like my skin will turn inside out and then burst into flames whenever I hear The Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime on the radio. "and you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife and you may ask yourself how did I get here?" He would grab me and dance with me and tell me that song made him think of me and how lucky he was. And now...same as it ever was.

2. It looks like the hernia to the right of my belly button that has grown so big I have named it Sigourney because it is a fucking alien. And it arrived as I reached for a box high up in the corner of the top shelf while I was packing up her room.

3. It sounds like no one saying they are proud of me.

4. It looks like the tiny stuffed lion with the crooked whisker that watches over me from the shelf by my desk and the story of how her high school bf bought it for her cause she was a Leo and he bought himself a bull because he was a Taurus and how she read her horoscope every day in the paper and would tell me over and over again "your father didn't believe in astrology but Jack did" and how that one guy, and that one gift from him so long ago made her feel so seen. I still read Leo every morning for her. And for my besties. 3 of my closest most trusted friends in this world are Leo's. Coincidence? hmmm

5. She would call the house and ask for me and say come over at once I feel like rearranging and I would run over there and we would do the whole house and now as I am slowly redecorating and bringing pieces in and moving pieces out and choosing paint and re-hanging the artwork and revignetting and fussing over the plants the missing is palpable and I wish i could call her and say Auntie I am rearranging, come over at once. As Sarah M. Broom said in her book "The love she poured into creating each space, she says, is something she inherited. “All of my family and the women who compose me are here. Everything you see—just the detail and the care—that’s my grandmother Lolo and my mother Ivory Mae in every single moment in this house. These were the women who taught me what it means to make a place and how to create warmth. They taught me to collect beauty.” I look around my home and the women who compose me are here. My Aunt taught me everything I know about vintage and decor and style and encouraged that part of me. She taught me to collect beauty.

6. I feel it like white hot lava burning up my bloodstream to my ear tips every time I read about a loved one dying alone in this pandemic and how I personally want to cobra to the throat every single fucking person who marched in the latest and largest anti mask rally last weekend. The day after we had our record number of cases ever and I know I will never get over the collective grief and burning anger of this past year alll in the name of the economy.

7. It's always in a weird heart palpitation when I read every story about how they reconnected on facebook after so long and fell in love all over again and how he took that away because we were too young to handle the intensity but could easily handle it now and i love hate all those stories and every time my heart does an actual little flip of pain and regret.

8. I am losing my jawline and now my hoops have to be bigger and my beads longer and never ever a crew neck because we are a jowly people and at 53 I look more like them now than I used to and it's weird to catch a side glimpse because I think for the briefest second they are here.

9. My fern is thriving after a lifetime of fern murder even though both of them had ones that filled their front windows and I wonder if they have a spirit hand in this fern's success or if I am at a place with him gone and just me and Lola Esmeralda Moon Floof that the conditions are perfect for a thriving fern. I wonder.

10. I catch my breath a little every time I turn my phone off to completely disconnect because for years i couldn't turn my phone off at all and still now so many moons later that voice says I need to be available. But I don't need to be. For anyone or anything unless *I* choose it and so I turn it off and breath in a little deeper because there are no middle of the night calls coming but that first catch, it never goes away.

The prompt - at its most basic - asked where does grief live and how does it feel?

This is day one of Being Here, Human’s grief writing workshop. Seriously one of the best things I do for my self care.

(Day 12 of Effy Wild’s blog along)