It's a wet day

As I prepare to go East with family,     it's only me      packing.  I've been wanting to note that this grieving isn't all pain, it's only a small part and in an odd way almost a pain/pleasure.   There is also an altered state kind of lightness and disorientation of time and place.  I'm learning to appreciate this sense of groundless freedom (I have so much time! and so little obligation!) though at times I do still feel slightly nauseous from it.  I am overwhelmed by the love folks are showing me, and I feel slightly drunk from it all.
I'm listening to the music we put together for Gil's visitation and weeping as I water plants and fix the chicken fencing.  After days of busyness, it feels sort of good to be immersed in the pain of missing, missing, wanting him.  I imagine getting to the point where the pain will be less intense and wonder if I'll miss it.  I suspect I will since it makes me feel him so deeply.  You know, I was with Gil more than a third of his life, and he was even more of mine.  And I am so different than when he found me. But I'm a glutton; I want more!  I love weeping to his music.  Perhaps next winter I'll find the time to go through and listen to ALL of it, as he had started to do in that last month.  Now THAT will be a wet day!
I hope to have the Gil Celebration full to bursting with all of his music, and if I can really channel the Miller I'll have burned copies for folks to take.  He'd want me to, but I'm not sure I can without him

What the dead have to teach

Death is real; he is not coming back.  He won't be here again even if I really need him.  His body is gone, gone, gone; his hand will not use that handkerchief, or fix that remote.  I don't really believe how final this is.  I'm holding on to little things (some gross like his blood stained handkerchiefs) because I can't quite grasp this death thing.  It makes me aware of how, though we think we know with the front part of our brains, things like birth (there's two people and then, there's three, where the hell did that person come from!?!) and death (the magical thinking that somehow he's just gone away for a while and then we'll get a chance at a do over and he'll still be able to play billiards and fix the TV remote when it gets moody with me),    my body is going to take a looong time to realize it.

I wonder a little more about is there still a specific Gil in the hereafter, though I feel even more strongly that it is irrelevant to us on this side of the divide. What ever it is,   it's not for our knowing.  There may be     all sorts of possibilities, but where I am is here, now, with my life to be responsible for living.  All I can hold on to is the way Gil changed me and the way I live in this body now.   I'm still swimming in denial but I can feel the shore of acceptance in the distance.
Here's a poem (slightly edited by me) which seemed to speak to this.

Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back by Bill Holm Let go of the dead now. Let them fall, sink, go away, become invisible as they tried so hard to do in their own dying. We needed to bother them with what we called help. We were the needy ones. The dying do their own work with tidiness, just the right speed, sometimes even a little satisfaction. So quiet down. Let them go. Practice your own song. Now.

Five weeks ago

He was alive.  The hardest thing for me right now is the odd, odd, odd way I slip between the pain of his absence and feeling like he died years ago and is just a memory.  When I get moving on tasks that need to get done, I can think about him and it feels so long ago that he was here and sharing this with me.  In an odd way that's harder for my heart than minutes later when I'm weeping from some bump of familiarity such as "his hands were the last that touched this gas can, grease gun etc".
I am such a newbie with this grief thing.  I had no idea what it would be like.  Thank God I like solitude and the pain of growing into undeveloped parts of myself, or this grief time would be even more devistaiting.  It's just not consistent; I never know how I'll feel.
But I seem to be growing into asking for help, and being open to whenever/however the help may come.  I took a truck load of dead hoses and broken plastic to the dump yesterday, and I have a plan for slowly, slowly making greater order out of the chaos or at least making it more my mess so I know where the hell things are!  I'm using "yes" as my mantra, when folks or circumstances offer me succour in whatever the form is at the moment, and then pull back before I am over full.  I'm trying to not offer loved ones more help than I can afford to give.  In short, I'm cleaning up my psyche's house and trying out new self care "habits".
I don't want to waste the fact I am so untethered, unmoored by this change; I want to use this loss to move forward into becoming more of who I can be.   And I also want to go to sleep and not wake up.  You know, he wanted both too.  And got them.   both.

It's so odd

I'm moving forward, mowing, taking tools in for sharpening. repair.  I'm making another attempt at refinancing our mortgage, and have applied for a credit card in just my name.  I feel like I'm moving into owning my own life, and it feels good and new and mostly dry.
Yet this morning I'm in a puddle because
every step I take forward into my new life
is a step away from Gil and my life with him at the center.
I know it has to be, and it is vast with possibilities, but I feel like a ground hog who has seen his shadow, I want to run back to burrow my head under the pillows and not wake up.  I don't want to lose the pain.  I don't want to look back on Gil as a memory from my past.   I'm not there yet, but it's coming.  
There's a ton of work around the farm and challenges like how to move the tractor and of course finally getting in the grove about his party.  The more I'm focusing on tasks the more I've got my feet on the ground.  I'm not ready yet to stop the free fall, but it's coming, and it makes me cry.  It's just too odd.

correction

The Celebration is June 23rd  (NOT June 27th as first printed)

A celebration of Gil

I'm going to rise to the occasion and have the party that Gil and I planned before he died.  It's not a memorial, it's a play date with him.  Spread the word, everyone is invited.

You are invited to a CELEBRATION

of what Gil Miller loved most,

People, Latin music, billiards, old friends, drumming, FOOD, games, new
friends, Jazz, dancing, and getting to know people.

On June 23rd  from 7 pm on.

Potluck

We will provide bonfires, music, a billiard parlor,  a grill and 
assorted foods and sodas (BYOB)

And a slide show of pictures from Gil’s life

Gil helped plan this party before he died

His request was that we invite

EVERYONE 

And that we play his favorite music

He wanted to come to it.

Please do, to celebrate him.

Come out 18/151 to Barneveld,  turn north on Co K  6 miles, left to 8470 Pinnacle rd.

Questions 608 795 4224

And then a crash

A tsunami of grief hit me late yesterday after a great, hopeful, empowering few days.
Go figure.
I started to question whether I could survive this.  My head knows I can, I will, but I'm afraid I won't be able to live without him.
Your mission, should you chose to accept:
Look at your partner.  See his/her pain in the butt characteristics, acknowledge the non thrilling tedium of day to day living together, accept the fact that actually it's very much tied in with how you relate to your own  pain in the butt qualities and the day to day tedium of yourself.
Then look at the marvel of this other being, body, pleasure/pain experiencer.  You have a fellow life traveler.  You have someone's needs and feelings to be tuned to and who is tuned to you.  You have a warm body to touch when you're feeling cold.  Feel full of gratitude for the package deal of who they are, and that they are with you; you are not alone.
Then tell them,  daily, not so much because they need to hear it, as that you need to hear it.  Love them in all their imperfection, because you can.

A glimpse

In the White Sky

by William Stafford

Many things in the world have
already happened. You can
go back and tell about them.
They are part of what we
own as we speed along
through the white sky.

But many things in the world
haven't yet happened. You help
them by thinking and writing and acting.
Where they begin, you greet them
or stop them. You come along
and sustain the new things.

Once, in the white sky there was
a beginning, and I happened to notice
and almost glimpsed what to do.
But now I have come far
to here, and it is away back there.
Some days, I think about it.

I've glimpsed  how it would be to be on my own, to own my life.  Today I helped two friends, men, take down and cut up three large hickory trees. I piled brush and logs.  I had intentions of overcoming my fear of chainsaws, of learning to use the little electric saw that Gil got for me last fall.  I didn't because,        I didn't need to, I have other ways to carry my weight.  It's not sexist to know that I won't be able to, don't need to, do everything.  Living my own life doesn't mean I have to do everything myself,   it means I need to decide what I want, what I can do, how to get help when I need it.  To decide what I want to give, because I want to, choose to, not because I have it to give and there is a need.  

I glimpsed something that I haven't seen since the days before my first marriage and children, me stepping into my own life.  I want to greet it, this beginning, and see where it leads me.