On Sunday June 14th
Kirt will have been gone twenty-three months. Making peace with his loss little
by little. I try to push start the process every chance I get, but it doesn’t
work like that.
After a year and a half of
steady crying, oppressive sadness came as a welcome relief; until that time at
twenty months when I got sick and tired of hating life without Kirt, of
wondering if I would be anyone without my husband.
Occasionally in this
procession my heart strings would zing for some silly old thing, mostly for the
dogs in play or full moon over the lake, a rainbow.
Long talks with my creator
have replaced time listening to the flotsam of life, aka the news. I’m getting
to peace with my loss, but this detent comes with temper tantrums the likes of which
I’ve never, no seldom experienced. There’s a dark facet of me that wants to
hold on to the anger, the hate this loss has opened me to. The first year I was
absolutely pissed that God would take him from me. One of my life lessons is to
learn how to let go; imagine that.
I’m learning to do some
little something for myself and the dogs. We play ball as the sun goes down.
Even my older hunters, who are no longer thrilled by the ball, mill around and
chase each other. It’s our family time.
Going to the gym makes a big
difference; after years of sitting around, pushing my muscles, getting them to
hurt feels alive. I’m still a fatty, but not as much. I don’t care; the
important thing is I can carry a fifty pound sack of dog food. The vote on that
item’s importance in this house was unanimous.
Until today I’ve worn mostly
black, not so much as a symbol of mourning, which it was, but the one color
I’ve avoided most of my life became my color, as dark as my mood.
Today, when I met my friend
for sushi lunch, my shorts were red, green, white, and blue plaid with a white
tee shirt. I haven’t been able to stand wearing white, since Kirt died.
I wore white shorts on my
birthday, which morning from hell describes the start of the day. Once calmed,
the day blossomed into a nice lunch at the San Juan Harbor before dropping my
friend on the big ferry.
It’s weird how the color of
my clothes reflects my interior color. All my oranges, pinks, aquas have
languished on the rack. They never looked or felt right. I wish to be ready to
reclaim them and the hues of feeling they represent.
Pushing only gives me a
rebound backslide, so I’m learning to be gentle with my expectations for
myself. This sounds so f’ing bullshit, but I swear it’s not.
I’m seriously committed to
having a happy, pleased with myself, contented life again. Who I am didn’t
disappear; the context of my life has changed. Alone is the new game. Now, that
it’s no longer strange, I can do this.
The emotional backslide I
had on my birthday took me by surprise. I rushed through my morning chores,
missed my leisurely coffee, didn’t play with the dogs, just fed them and threw
them back in the house to hurry to my friend’s house, so we could make it to
San Juan between twelve thirty and one to have lunch with another friend.
When I arrived at my
friend’s house, my adrenaline flowed; I could not calm down. I rushed around
her house huffing because she was so unhurried, while I felt all giddy-yap. I
had to give myself a timeout in private to settle. I could see I bugged her and
we were basically on time we were not
going to be late unless something else happened, so I was too tightly wound up
and I knew it; it was ugly.
My usual reaction to stress
is I can do nothing; I’m useless. I hate that I can’t maintain focus; that was
always a strength. Now, I just go brain dead, duh. Before Kirt died I was
taking some classes on Coursera, which kept my mind healthy when his amputation
challenges came along. I stayed up late in the night with my Coursera classes
and now I just can’t get into them as much as I want to. It’s stuff like this
that was never part of my life. The discipline I always brought fails me.
What keeps hitting me is
that I need to be gentle with myself, patient, and God, don’t forbid kind. I am
enjoying life again.
