Three weeks

Since he died.  It feels like a year, except that I am still so intermittently, surprisingly wet.  I can't quite imagine in an actual year who and where I'll be in my life.  Warning, this blog is morphing from being a Gil updates to a Kathleen's confessional blog.  Consider discontinuing following it.
What I've learned so far:
*people are so kind and generous with me that I'm actually sort of uncomfortable
*I have a fear that being needy will make me vulnerable which gets in the way of my asking for help
*pride in my identity of being a self sufficient giver, may also get in my way
* I can learn how to handle new things like mechanical problems, if I ask for help.  
 So get over it Piper, join the real world of give and take, expectation and disappointment, "we all get by with a little help from our friends".  Because it is the real world, and the one I need to live in without Gil.

One of the oddest sensations is that I have few responsibilities tying me down.  I am free to go places, visit folks, spend the night, stand on my head (so to speak) I am not carrying the weight of his needs and limitations anymore, but, damn, I want it back.
Who would have thought I'd miss even the restrictions he put on my life, so much, so much?  I feel like the old Kathleen is dying and the new one has yet to be born.

I'm open to new poetry describing this birth, if you have a favorite.
Perhaps I'll need to write my own.

Taking care of business

Some of you have asked about contributing to Multiple Myeloma research.  I wish I'd posted it earlier, but there is a wonderful UW Hospitals fund called the Trillium Fund (Foundation?) that focuses exclusively on Myeloma research.  It was started by one of the founders of our support group.  Unfortunately, some of the others that say they do myeloma research, myeloma its self is somewhat of an add on.
I'll get more specific info by my next posting.

I'm making progress on closets, had my first head to head with "machines" when our riding lawnmower had 2 flat tires and a dead battery.  A neighbor helped, but I am coming face to face with
a) my discomfort around feeling, hell, being needy
b) Machine care, use, maintenance (I'm starting a learning log book to write down whatever advise I'm given in this category so I can read it later when I'm trying to remember the random number/nonsense syllables that I experience when folks talk about such stuff)  (better get over that!!!)
c) fear that I won't be able to afford to "hire out" those Gil tasks that  I have no natural affinity for.

SO
a) I think I may do as a friend suggested and develop an email list of those folks who have offered to help. When I decide I really need to use a "lifeline" I'll send out an email and see if anyone responds.  I won't have the discomfort of asking people directly and fearing that they are too polite to say "no", and hopefully being one of a crowd should make it easier for them to not offer.
b)  I've written down the numbers for buying the right oil filter and air filter for the lawn mower, and plan to change them this weekend, the start of my more nurturing relationship with machines!
c) I'm meeting with a financial person this afternoon to figure out how to manage my reduced income and see what I've got to spend to just pay people to do some of this stuff.

I'm starting to take care of business.
It still feels so odd.  Perhaps I've been keeping myself a little too occupied with activities and time with people I love.  I think I may need a little more time alone with the oddness of his absence,  to start to take baby steps into my life without him.

I had no idea it would be like this.

continuing

I will continue
writing, crying, cleaning, noticing, wondering
I am no saint; Gil is no saint.  Our relationship was not perfect.  But we were in relationship like two trees who are so close together that they start grafting into each other.  Perhaps greater distance, being a little more centered in my own life might have been "healthier", I might not feel so completely lost and disoriented now.  But I'm glad of the grafting.  I needed it, him, to become the more whole soul I hope to be.
His death is birthing me out into the world of credit card glitches and firewood and (heaven forbid!) machinery, alone, alone alone.  I need to step into being more than I've been before.  Without his death, would I ever have?  Not likely.   Do I want to?  NO WAY!  Birth is painful, not a choice, but it opens up a world of possibilities, another gift from him.

I remember when I finally decided to marry him.  We'd been together for 2 years, and I loved all the joy he was bringing into the lives of me and my boys. But I was terribly ambivalent.  I'd been married for 15 years before and when that ended, I'd felt like I was dying, feared for my guys, never ever wanted to put them or me through that again.  And Gil was soooo different than any man I'd known, not at all like the kind of man that Page/Piper women marry.  How could I ever risk committing my life to him?
I told him that I'd marry him "when I resolved my ambivalence".   But 2 years in, in the midst of a workshop we were doing, I realized,  I was never going to stop being ambivalent,  but commitment wasn't about knowing for sure the outcome, or the weather like quality of my emotions at the moment.  It was about possibilities, would marrying him open up vast possibilities for a life that I'd unlikely experience without him? yes   And it sure did.

Page/Piper women marry intellectuals, with spiritual and introspective leanings, men of authority who know the right way to do things and don't hesitate to instruct.  (obviously it's far more complicated than that but I'm sort of describing my step father)
Gil was a body man.  He played his body like a virtuoso musician.  Sports, music, dancing, he said that was the closest he could get to experiencing the spiritual connection I spoke of.  He felt his connection to the Divine in those moments.  His experience of his body was a psalm.   And he was gifted with the ability to enjoy.  Food, FUN, fooling around, games, people, people, people,  he was a joyful noise unto the Lord.  [listen to Cassandra Wilson singing Soloman Sang from New Moon Rising]

Neither body nor fun were my native language.      And they still aren't .  But he made me passingly bilingual  in them, a great moistening in my life!   And he was safe.  I never worried about him leaving me; I could count on one hand all the times in 27 years where he made belittling comments.  I'm afraid I was not so parsimonious.  But he would call me on it, and work through how he heard my unsolicited suggestions and what my intent was.  He didn't let me get away with too much shit, for which I'm eternally grateful.  He could have pulled me in more,  probably should have, but he didn't.  He freed me, to become so much more than I was when I met him.

So the pain I feel is a welcome side effect of how we grafted our lives together.  And I pray that I can keep the life force flowing through my Gil self so I can keep his wholeness in me, in my life.   Help me, I don't know if I can do it without him.

Disconcerting

Chris leaves today. I've bagged up most of his Goodwill clothes (actually from Goodwill as well as returning there. My guy was no clothes horse, and was sort of slipping towards "bag lady" fashion choices toward the end)

The "weeps" are more intermittent now, and unpredictable. I've actually felt the first wisps of anger (I've heard that's good) at the mess of empty CD cases and too jury rigged for me to use electronic spaghetti. I feel like I've been left holding the bag. But I'm mostly still stunned, and overwhelmed. I feel the need to get on top of...... fill in the blank with almost everything from our daily life, and also want to bury my head and not wake up. So much has been postponed or put on the back burner during this last stretch.

Slowly, gently, in time, in time, let the river carry you, there is love all around you, let it soak in, but I miss him! Slowly, gently, in time, in time. Life goes on.

One week

A week ago I woke up next to the guy in his hospital room and watched the sun rise with my yerba matte in hand. And now I am a lifetime away.

Someone asked about my "do over" comment. Here's what I was wishing.

If I'd known the Monday that he was first in the hospital, that it would be the last time to really have a conversation, oh the things that I would have wanted to talk with him about!! I started sleeping next to him Tues night, I wish I'd been next to him and snuggled him when he could have communicated more.

I wish I'd known we could have been more on top of the pain management. They were giving him morphine shots into his IV but that gave him ups and downs not the steady pain prevention of the continuous feed.

I wish, I wish, I wish I could have honored his desire to be back at the farm. If I'd known perhaps we could have gotten all set with Hospice before this last crisis and it wouldn't have been too painful for him to move.

I wish I could have realized how profoundly, deeply he was rooted in my body and soul, I would have wanted him to know how central he was to my life. He knew, I knew, but not like I do now.

I'm having more time where I'm dry. We had the baptism of his billiards parlor yesterday. All his pool buddies came and whooped and hollered,, God, he would have loved it!! We'll be putting out an invite for any and all who want to learn and be part of a monthly Billiards Bash.

And there'll be a firewood bee, and of course the Gil celebration in June.

Lot's

I wish he were here for

One step forward

Into my life without Gil. The emotional rainstorms abated for about 5 hours around the visitation, and have been only intermittent since then.

Is it time? or busyness that moves me one step forward from the loss?

I still speak everything as "we" but that's to be expected. Is it finally dawning on me that I will be continuing so "Pull up your socks, Ms. Page!!" as my Aunt Lou used to say??

The visitation, for those of you who couldn't come, was a perfect mix of music, food, pictures deep and funny and, of course, amazing people, from near and far, in miles and relationships.

I read all the cards that night, but am embarrassed to say that it wasn't til 2/3rds of the way through that I realized that the $ was getting separated from the cards. What an odd and wonderful tradition the gifts are, it's not so much a New England custom, but it feels so, so, that the community is helping to carry the cost of burying him, And I am grateful for that help. Just cremation was so much more than either of us expected. (but hey, what did we know?and never asked?)

The messages in the cards were dear and the food, great. Whomever made the marzipan bars and the nut macaroon bars, I want the recipes! and the chicken soup from my ex who never used to like to cook. It's a sign that people grow on. Perhaps I'll love to chainsaw.

Anything is possible, kind of like the Dr Seuss book "McElligets Pool" (If you don't know it, you should, with or without kids!)

Gil's bother Bob leaves today, Chris next week. It's the start of the next step.

A week ago he was still alive.

orbiting

Watching bluebirds nest, listening to "our music" one of our earliest and deepest bonds, I finally found a way to describe what I'm feeling. I've been orbiting Gil's mass, his needs and desires, areas to be careful of, passions, for so long , that it has become my gravitational center, what holds me in orbit. And I've lost it. I feel as though I'm shooting out into darkest space, without gravity to hold my feet to the ground except in fleeting moments.

I know that I need to find my own gravitational center in my own life, but it has been a long long time. I barely remember it.

And my fear, that this constant wet sadness will recede, and I'll be left high and dry with my body in the real world but I'll have lost the connection to him that this sadness gives me.

I don't want to lose this pain.