I didn’t get the post quite right in this image. I think the mid-tones are a little off. Yet I like the image because it captures some of the character of my Girl.

The terrier in her wants to be lead — the alpha. I accuse her of “following from the front,” just like I used to my children. She doesn’t really know where we’re going, although she knows many of our regular paths. She runs out ahead searching for “wabbits” I suspect, sniffing, peeing, and sometimes pooping to tell other passers-by “Ki was here.”

To keep her honest, I often call her back in with a “Heel!” If that doesn’t do it, then she gets a touch from the collar. That usually brings her back with a snort. I’ll tell her “Don’t you snort at me!” She often responds with what I call a “blow” — a strong exhale. That’s as if to say “Yeah, right.”

She is a terrier. I call her my “terrible terrier” many times. But she’s really not terrible.

If I wasn’t the leader, then she would be. That’s nature of alpha dogs, be they male or female. She doesn’t really challenge my authority, but she tells me what she wants. I sometimes accuse her of “telling me what I want.” Then again, I used to accuse Wife of same.

Speaking of Wife, I think about her a lot right now. A year ago we were really in the thick of it. With lymphoma cells in her central nervous system, she was scheduled for a marathon MRI study on Friday. I could tell it was bad, although I couldn’t tell her that. I think she knew anyway, although she generally kept her thoughts to herself. It became more difficult for her to interact — speech was difficult. It became more difficult for her to see as well. She complained of double vision.

I knew all this most likely meant she had lymphoma in her brain. The fever, nausea, and physical effects were apparent to me, whether the doctors would confirm or not. I knew Wife was dying.

It would be confirmed for me in a few days when the report of a brain lesion came back from the MRI study. The finality of her disease would be revealed in a couple more weeks. Although I couldn’t be certain, I knew what was happening. My sense of impending loss was heavy. I recall it so clearly now and I feel that heaviness. I suppose this is common, but it’s a first time for me. I am still in my “year of firsts.”

So, on this Christmas Eve I recall the events of last year. I don’t think my intent is to make myself feel bad. Hell, I already do that enough without any help. I think I want to hang on to those memories for they are a part of what defines Wife’s character and my character. They are watershed events that lead up to my change of status from husband to widower.

In a few more weeks I will complete my “year of firsts.” I wrote, I think poorly, about moving forward but not moving on. I am leaving behind my former life as husband and the husbanding of Wife. That is a fact. But I don’t want to move on — that has a sense of deliberation that I don’t have. That is, a sense of deliberate change as if I had left her. I did not. I would not. That is not in my nature.

No, I see this as a time to move forward. I was released from my responsibility as husband when Wife died. Almost all the things that needed to be done after her death are complete. The amount of things to deal with is reducing weekly. Eventually I will achieve my goal of dropping things that are no longer wanted or nor longer useful. I see that as the sign it’s time to move forward to new things.

That means it’s time to figure out what those new things should be. I have part of a plan assembled. It isn’t complete, at least not yet. But it’s a beginning. That will have to be good enough.

Ki needs me. I think I need her more than she needs me. But it’s a good partnership and we have a great interspecies friendship. For now, it is Ki and me.

The other evening Young Son and I ate the last of our leftover pizza. While we were eating, we watched an episode of my latest addiction, Dexter. When the pizza was gone, Young Son retrieved a couple of cookies from his fiance’s care package and offered me one. I accepted, of course. I’m not stupid.

The Girl sat at my feet, looking at me with those asking/demanding eyes she can do. I usually share a bit of my food with her, not on demand, but like a good alpha when I feel it’s appropriate. So she got a bit of my peanut butter cookie.

The cookies consumed, we continued watching Dexter. I noticed the Girl sitting before Young Son. He got down on the floor with her. She was in her please sit. He got a paw and it was clear she was asking for something.

Finally, he said to me “What does she want? She gave me a paw. She’s asking for something.” I thought for a few minutes.

“Do you want a cookie?” I asked her. I got eyes. So I got up and got a couple of Girl-cookies from her stash and sat back down (Dexter was paused). She sat at my feet, nuzzling the hand with the biscuits. I held them, watching her. She worked and worked at my hand, trying to lick a biscuit from my grasp or hook it with a canine tooth. I talked to her and laughed while she worked, then finally relented and let her take one from my hand.

The other was still hidden in my paw. She finished the first and asked for the second, which I presented when she laid down on command.

Satisfied that she had her own cookies, she hopped onto the sofa on her mat next to me. Young Son came over and sat on the sofa next to her. She settled right down and we finished our episode of Dexter together.

She wanted her own cookies. She asked nicely. It took us less-sensitive humans a bit to figure it out, but we did.

When I began cleaning out things after Wife died, one of the big jobs was to sort through all of the holiday decorations accumulated over the decades. There were many things in those boxes. A number of them carried many poignant memories.

So, as I looked through those material manifestations of four decades of family life, I sorted them into four piles. One was to keep (quite small), a second was to be sent to Daughter, a third was to Older Son, and the final was to donate. The largest pile was the donation pile. Those were things that didn’t carry many family memories. The second largest was to go to Daughter. She will use some of them and curate the others for Older Son and Young Son as they establish their own traditions and want to include some of the things from their youth. I sent a box to Older Son with things I thought he’d find meaningful. The final bit was for me.

That part all fit into a single 30-gallon tub. I have one that is red and green — it’s perfect for me.

All the old artificial trees went to local charities. There wasn’t anything in the lot I wanted. So I gave them away.

A couple of days ago I decided to get out the Christmas decorations. I wanted to see what I have and decide what to put up. Without a tree, I looked at what Home Depot had to offer in artificial trees. I don’t want a live tree; the Girl might decide to eat it or drink the water. I found something relatively small but big enough to establish a holiday place. I brought it home this morning. Young Son and I set it up, then added some decorations to fill it out.

Decorating the tree and putting out a few other things was quite emotional. I knew it would be and wanted to give that energy a chance to vent. Trying to put it aside is not a good idea and is not optional. So, I remembered how Wife loved this time of year… how she loved playing the Santa role. I think it was the high point of her year.

Last year was difficult. She wanted to do it all, just as she always had. But she was just starting radiotherapy for her lymphoma and was very ill. She didn’t know it yet, but she was dieing from the disease. She already was showing signs of CNS involvement. But we had a path to travel and so we did all the way through to the bitter end. But, I digress.

She did a bit of shopping last year when she felt up to it. That wasn’t much. I finished it up for her when we had a short break from the daily trip to Truckee for her treatment. Mostly she dealt with her illness, her treatment, and rested. That was the right thing for her to be doing. The rest of us handled the other things.

So, it is with substantial emotion that I put up the tree this year. It won’t be the same without Wife. It can’t be. Life isn’t the same without Wife. But, life goes on and so must I. I will celebrate Wife and her love for the holiday. I raise my glass to her when I have a bit of whiskey or a cup of coffee. I salute her life and her fight.

Old Girl, we put up the tree for you… and for us. It’s our way of remembering your legacy as well as the reason for celebrating the season. We miss you and it will be different. But we’ll do this for each other and for you.

I love you forever…

Thanksgiving Day was a week late this year. Every few years, it falls in the last week of November and not the third week. It’s always a bit strange when that happens because then it seems that Christmas comes so quickly.

Young Son and I celebrated Thanksgiving this year as a family. Older Son and Daughter are far away and not here. Wife is gone. We roasted a turkey breast, baked some bread, made some mashed potatoes and added a salad. I couldn’t get the fixings for a pumpkin pie, so I bought a frozen pie to bake. I started late morning Thursday, baked the pie, and set it aside to cool. I prepared a baste for the turkey and put the breast in to roast just after noon.

The baste was a half cup of butter (real butter), a couple of tablespoons of Mrs. Dash, a bit of paprika, and a bit of salt. I melted the mass about an hour into the turkey’s cook cycle, applied the baste, and roasted it another half-hour, then reapplied the baste. By the end of the third hour, the turkey was ready and the remaining parts of our dinner were prepared.

We celebrated in memory of the folks who created the feast a couple-three hundred years ago. We celebrated in memory of Wife and the holidays she so loved. It was good and I’m glad we did it.

I spent much of my long weekend working about the house. I decided to donate some more books and am clearing some shelves so I have room to store my lenses and cameras. I also had a bit of photochemicals to put away to tidy up my house. My workroom is nearly clear now and I should be able to get the last few things off the floor, stowed, and I can then dust and vacuum my workroom. This is a good thing.

I also spent some time researching film scanners. I have a lot of slides and negatives I want to scan and the little scanner I purchased last year does not handle the film well. So, I think I will buy a Plustek OpticFilm 120 either later this month or the first part of 2014. It will handle 35mm and medium format films, has a good reputation, and the films are held in carriers so that transport works.

I suspect there will be an Epson 750 in my future as well. It will handle prints and films up to 5×7. There is a 4×5 field camera in my future. I don’t know if that will be in 2014 or not, but I’m going to move to large format photography sometime. That’s where the real magic is. There is no way any digital camera can capture the amount of detail and tones that a large format negative (or positive) can.

This morning I put up a few Christmas lights. Wife loved Christmas… it was her favorite holiday and favorite season. I have pictures of her playing Santa for the kids and grandkids and she was always so happy doing that. It was a joy to watch her and I’m blessed for having had that experience.

So, last month I bought a few strings of lights and decided to put them up in celebration of Wife as much as the season. I celebrate Christmas in my own way — by remembering the Gift and the reason for our celebration. I tried to convey that spirit to my children. Only time will tell if that lesson took.

Nonetheless, the lights are up. I called Young Son out a few minutes ago and plugged them in. We stood there for a few minutes thinking about Wife and reflecting on how she would be pleased.

Then my Girl reminded it (not too subtly I might add) that it was her suppertime. “Kibbles?” I asked.

She blinked with her ears forward in admonition as if to say “Well, duh!”

So I fed her and played with her. Now she’s snoozing on her mat under my worktable.

Many years ago, Anna Hutto wrote a song entitled It’s Better to Light a Candle (than to curse the dark). I picked up a copy of her CD when she visited Lubbock Bible Church all those years ago. The song was good (as are many of her songs) then and it’s good now, ten- or fifteen-years later. I have this candle that Wife used in Daughter’s wedding. Somehow we ended up with it. It’s been in a box for a long time. I pulled it out during my garage purge, then set it aside. I like candles.

A few weeks ago I was working through a book about grieving for men, The Widower’s Toolbox. One of the suggestions was to burn a candle. So, I found this one, put it on a glass candle plate, and placed it in the center of our dining table. This is the table we spent so much time around the last couple-three years, solving the world’s problems as well as our own. I light the candle, sometimes a couple of times a day and use it as a remembrance of Wife and our joint lives. Somehow the capture seemed obvious to me. It was dark and snowy this morning, as dark and cold as my soul. It was the perfect moment to capture a live flame. I shot the damned thing with my mobile phone. Then I set it aside for processing, but it didn’t really need very much adjustment.

A year ago today was Thanksgiving. I’m remembering that time through my journals as well as my wetware memory. I’ve been in funk this week. It was a year ago Tuesday that Wife’s mid-course PET/CT revealed residual disease. That she might die became real for her this week a year ago. She wasn’t feeling well and the sadness of her imminent death, or the increased likelihood thereof, weighed on her. She slept most of Thanksgiving Day last year. A friend brought us a meal and we shared it, but there wasn’t a lot of joy that day. There was thankfulness, yes, for the years and for each other, but there was also a heaviness over us as we processed the recent news, each in our own way.

My poor Wife was not feeling very well those days. She had good moments and made a real effort to participate in life. But the stress of all the chemotherapy pressed on her. The hard news of her residual disease, the unknown that presented, and the attempts to find a place for her to get radiotherapy to reduce the remaining disease were hard. There’s no telling what the residual disease was doing to her at that time. I suspect her CNS involvement began about this time, but didn’t manifest symptoms until early in December. When those symptoms presented, it was obvious to me though the doctors were dismissive.

I wrote quite a bit in my journal that Thanksgiving day. I processed what I learned from the UCSF medical staff and spent a lot of time reading medical literature. I didn’t like what I read, not because I don’t like facts, but as I worked through the studies of her kind of lymphoma, the impact of recurrent/refractory disease, and the prognosis for those whose disease returned I was dismayed at the probability of a cure. Her attending physician at UCSF told us that with active residual disease, about ten percent get a cure. With the lymphoma knocked down, the probability improved to 60 percent. The probabilities I extracted from the medical literature varied from these, but that is the nature of statistics. Regardless, I didn’t like what I was learning and was dismayed.

I kept it all to myself, leaving Wife to focus only on the tasks before her. It really didn’t matter what the statistics revealed. Every person is an individual and statistics apply only to groups. Furthermore, there was a path before us to walk. I was determined to walk it all the way to the end with Wife, however things turned out. With the retrospect of nearly a year, I would change nothing but the outcome. We did what we were supposed to do. We didn’t give up.

In my journal, I told myself that if Wife died, I’d give this job and this place through 2013 and then think things through again. Now, as I approach the end of 2013, I wonder. I have almost nothing to do at work. It’s making me crazy, drawing pay without work to do. I don’t have enough leave or I’d just head out… somewhere. I have no idea where, just go. I’d take unpaid leave, but we don’t do that at my company.

There are four projects on the horizon for 2014. That means there are probably four more small projects that will happen as well. It’s probably enough to keep me employed here, if I want that. I ask myself, “Do I want that?” but have no answer. I do not know what I want, except to be productive somehow, somewhere.

I think I can hold on until the first of the year. My boss is unwilling to release me. I hope there is work then. If there is, then I’ll give it another six months. Then I’ll review again. After that, I don’t know. But who knows anything about a day out, much less a year?

It’s better to light a candle than to curse the dark. So I’ve heard. I keep a candle lit a good part of the time. I reflect. I remember. I grieve. I’d like to curse the dark, even with a candle lit before me. I’d like to shake my first toward Heaven, but there’s nothing there to be gained either. I’d like to curse God and die, but that would dishonor Wife’s life and her struggle.

What will I do? I have no idea. But I’d sure like someone — or Someone — to tell me.

After lunch today I was scrounging for a bit of something sweet. I wasn’t looking for too much, but a bite that would clear my palate and provide the sweet satisfaction of dessert without a bunch of additional energy — I mean calories.

A friend brought over a plate of cookies a week or so ago. It was a nice gesture based on the Girl’s hospitalization and was a welcome, warm gift. Young Son and I enjoyed the cookies immensely. As part of the layout, a few Hershey’s kisses were distributed among the cookies. It was sweet, literally and figuratively.

The kisses disappeared along with the cookies, of course. Such is the nature of things, particularly with a couple of men in the house.

So, in my scrounge, I remembered Wife’s cut-glass Hershey’s Kiss container. There were a few of the silvery treats remaining in the container. So, I snagged them.

The poignancy of the moment wasn’t wasted on me. These were the last of Wife’s kisses. Yes, the grief rose up a bit to show itself once again. It’s still there, of course. I shared the last of the kisses with Young Son, who immediately made the connection when I told him the source.

We each reflected on the last kisses in our own way. This is a year of many firsts and lasts. It is my year to grieve my loss, process my grief, own my grief, and I hope and pray to be healed of my grief. It is what it is.

Well, sometimes it sucks to be me (as an old friend used to say). The Girl didn’t eat her breakfast Tuesday morning. I was away all day and so she did her usual thing, which is sleep. She didn’t eat her supper Tuesday evening, but our walk was OK. Later she asked to cuddle on the couch, so I sat with her awhile. She didn’t move when I went to bed, but sometime later hopped into bed with me.

I noticed she felt hot, more than usual. Sometime early in the morning, she voided her bladder… in bed. She’s never done that before. She’s particular about her house and her bed. Worse, she peed on my leg. (More on that in a bit.)

She wasn’t interested in her breakfast Wednesday morning, went out, urinated, ate a bit of grass (expected), and then vomited it up. She got back on her mat on the couch and curled up.

I called the vet and made an appointment. When we got there in the afternoon, the did the usual thing with vitals. The vet came in and took her history. Then she examined her. There wasn’t anything obvious, so they took a blood sample and ran it. Her kidney function was impaired and her counts were off. They elected to keep her, hydrate her, and start her on antibiotics while they waited for the next set of samples to be tested. The candidates were leptospirosis, one of the tick-borne diseases, or cancer.

I hated leaving my Girl behind. I knew it would be a lonely night. It was.

The vet called this morning. The Girl ate her breakfast, but threw it up. So they started an antiemetic.

The vet called again later. It is leptospirosis. It’s dangerous and causes kidney and liver damage if untreated. Unfortunately, it’s also zoonotic. So I have to go to the doctor tomorrow because I was exposed to her urine. I don’t know whether they will pull a blood sample to check me or just prescribe prophylactic antibiotics. I guess I’ll find out.

In the meantime, the Girl remains at the vet hospital. I can’t see her until her urine is clear of bacteria. It’s also not clear whether there was significant kidney or liver damage from the bacteria. I hope I caught her flu-like symptoms early enough that she’s OK. I pray about it as well. She still has several days in the hospital.

I’ve had all I want of doctors and hospitals for the rest of my life. The last couple-three years were full of them. Now my Girl is sick. Sometimes it sucks to be me.