When my in-laws still lived out on the family farm, one of my favorite things to do while visiting was to wander around FiL’s barn, looking for light, texture, and the combination of the two. It was a chance to get out of the house and into a quiet space. The quiet space is something vital to me — always has been; always will be.
I don’t have any notes about the details of the image. I’ll let it be what it is.
After a couple of intense weeks of working on this forensic project, I finally got the text and figures completed, the report printed, signed, sealed, and shipped to the client. The package went out about 1530 yesterday afternoon. I was really glad to see it done and I was done too. So, I packed my things and drove home.
The Girl and I walked late and it was nearly dark, overcast, and the bit of wind made it feel cold, even if it wasn’t all that cold. I get a lot from the Sun — both external and internal heat. The heat from our star’s energy on my body feels good, particularly on cool morning walks in the public lands not far from the house. I often wear a dark cover on these winter days and soak up that energy.
But the warm light also warms my soul. There is something about sunshine, particularly during the winter months, that makes me feel better. It’s not just the heat energy; there is something spiritual about walking in the sun. Perhaps it’s that the lower sky angle of the sun and the passing of its energy through more of the atmosphere decreases the color temperature of that light. Sting’s Lithium Sunset comes to mind and that song sometimes plays in my head as I take in the physical/spiritual energy.
When the clouds come my mood fades. It’s the same thing that happens to me in the evening when the sun sets. With the darkening evening my spirits fall in concert. I am grateful that we do not have many gray days here in the high desert.
There’s a dangerous time for me when the sun sets. The black dog takes a few steps toward me, grinning with expectation. I have an opportunity to reject that approach and push him back to his place over in the corner of the room. I’m successful more often than not these days. But sometimes he comes and sits by my side, bringing his dark power to flow over me. Those are not good nights when the demon voices come to whisper their dark secrets.
Fortunately, the coming of a new day and the Sun’s warm energy dissipates the darkness. I’m thankful that God gives me many sunny days here. Cold I can stand, even if I don’t like it. The dark, though, is my challenge.
On the third Saturday in January 2013, one year ago, Wife died. The lymphoma finally took what remained of her, after taking all the best parts weeks before. Although the date says one year tomorrow, for me her passing will occur on the third Saturday of January.
Yesterday was the last day of my year of firsts. In many respects, I’m glad it’s over.
I haven’t been writing much, here, although I worked my journal pretty hard. Early last week, as I prepared to travel to southern Nevada for fieldwork, I contracted bronchitis. So I delayed my departure that Thursday morning and drove to the Walmart walk-in clinic to see a medical provider. I know my body. When I get bronchitis (usually a viral infection) I am susceptible to a secondary bacterial infection that will keep me sick for a month if I don’t receive treatment. I learned to seek treatment early and take a round of antibiotics. Then I avoid the secondary respiratory infection that nearly always happens.
We made the trip and accomplished the tasks set before us. It’s another story; maybe I’ll tell it yet.
The last week was spent trying to recover from my bronchitis, trying to catch up after missing part of the weekend (to do chores), and working on a project with a hard deadline. I finally figured out what happened for my project (it’s a forensic project) yesterday afternoon. This is a good thing. Now I’ll finalize my report and supporting documentation and get it done.
In my off-time, I reflected on my life with Wife and read through my journal from a year ago. From my current perspective, I know how it all turned out. I didn’t at the time I wrote my journal. However, then, even a few weeks before she died, I knew things were not going well. I could see her energy ebbing as the days passed, despite the medical team’s effort to get the lymphoma under control. It was like watching a slow-motion train wreck.
Over the last year, I wrote several times how I hate that the lymphoma took her voice and ability to interact with me. Our joint life revolved around time together and talk. I loved to interact with Wife and that’s the thing I miss the most. We spent many hours over breakfast solving all the problems of our lives and the World’s.
I wept a few times the last week as I recalled how it was all winding down a year ago. I knew this watershed approached and wondered how it might feel — whether it would be like the passing of a birthday (“Do I feel older, nope…”) or if something more substantial would occur.
Well, yesterday was the last day of my year of firsts. I wept a few times as I recalled Wife’s last day. We knew she was dying soon — the hospice nurse told us three to five days. (Wife lasted another twelve hours.) When she took her last few breaths and tried to interact with us, it was very hard. Those last moments will haunt me forever. Then she was simply gone. Well, what was left of her… a trap that kept her spirit here but locked away from her loved ones, that died and her spirit was finally released.
Wife’s death was the hard part. Then all of the busy-ness that follows a death happened and was dealt with. In many respects, that activity is something good because it provides a focal point for doers to keep busy. I’m a doer… I needed that activity.
As I reflect on my activities, I believe I did things mostly right. At the very least, I did the best I could. I gave Wife everything within my power to give. We did our best to get a cure for her lymphoma. When that failed, we gave her time, attention, and our love. We saw her through to the end. It was a mix of joy in having known her and of sadness for our loss of her wonderful presence and spirit.
Make no mistake, Wife was no saint. She had her flaws, as do we all. But there was an inherent goodness in her that I believe derived from her faith. She shared that goodness freely with almost everyone who came into contact with her. Her faith was shared in what she did, not in what she said. As a result, that circle of people around her lost something big when she died. Those of us closest to her lost the most. But everyone in her circles lost something.
I gave myself a year to heal and to figure out what will be next. That year is finished. I’m not healed, but I’m better. I’m not happy and have not yet figured out what will make me happy. So, I think I was ambitious to believe I could figure out what’s next during my year of firsts. I decided, during my end-of-year time of reflection, that I need another year to figure out what’s next. That is, provided God gives me another year.
Regardless of whether he gives me another year or not, my plan is to use 2014 as a year for rebuilding. Last year was a year to mourn and process all the material things left behind after Wife’s death. Most of that is done. Most of the financial impact of her death is dealt with. As my friend Jim suggested, “It still sucks, but it doesn’t suck quite as badly.”
My intent is to work this year, plan ahead financially (for retirement, full or partial), and see Young Son through another year of college. By the end of this year, he’ll be looking to go to university somewhere. That means he’ll be moving out of my house and out of my daily provision. He’ll be taking on responsibility for his support and relieving me of that. I will be released from the last of my family responsibilities.
I’m giving myself this year to figure out what is next for me. I might elect to continue working my current engagement. I might elect to make a career change. I’ll make a mid-course check in June to determine whether I’m moving toward a new life that will provide some happiness. But this year will be a time for me to figure out what I want and where I want it.
I think I’m OK with that. I suppose I have to be OK with that.
I miss you Old Girl. I think I’ll miss you forever. Those of us who knew you, we each have a poorer life for your loss.
Edit: I think I miswrote. Today is the last day of my year of firsts. I suppose I just want it to be done.
Excuse me while I refill my whiskey glass… I’m going to write this and then go pack my camera gear. I head out in the morning for southern Nevada to do a site visit for one of my projects. The Girl and I will drive down there tomorrow and do a little light field work in the afternoon. We’ll probably stop for a couple of geocaches on the way, then drive into Pahrump to spend the night. Friday we’ll be in the field with the client. Then we’ll spend Friday night again in Pahrump to drive home Saturday. I plan to drive through Death Valley on the way home, do a little geocaching, and make a few images. I am looking forward to the trip.
I think one of my mistakes is not taking a weekend a month and driving somewhere. The road time is good for my head. The sights of new places is good for my eyes. The Girl is good for me. I have no idea what she gets from our relationship, but she obviously gets something from it. She seeks out my time and attention (except when she’s pissed at me for whatever doggish reason — hmmm… sounds kinda like girlish reason, doesn’t it?). She wants to go when I go and stay when I stay. I don’t exactly understand, but it doesn’t matter. The relationship works.
A few days ago we walked up to the community mailbox to retrieve the mail. While I was there, I noticed this fallen rubber band, either lost or discarded. I don’t know which. But the shape of it reminded me of the traditional heart-shape we use in our culture. The light was fairly interesting. The only camera I had with me was my Moto X. So, I made the shot with a phone-camera. The camera you have with you is the best camera.
I posted this on my social accounts. DiL commented she would have noticed the heart-shape too. She’s an artist; I’m not. But I loved the comment anyway.
I titled this “Found, Lost Love” or “Lost Love, Found.” Both work, I think. The only post-processing was addition of the vignette to draw the eye to the geometry of the rubber band.
But the reference goes much deeper. A year ago we were in the thick of it. Wife had been sent home by her medical team to die. They did what the could. The cancer did not respond to radiation treatment. There was nothing left to do. The stress on Wife to make the 82-mile journey everyday was telling. She was losing strength daily. She had lost her ability to speak and most of her mobility. It was not a good place to be.
She didn’t want to give up. I know her. I know how she thinks. Surrender was not an option. But, although she didn’t want to give up, she knew she wasn’t improving. In the end, when asked, she said “I want to go home and rest.”
I think those were the most difficult seven words I ever heard. It broke my heart to realize that this was it. All the work, the travel, the hope, and the fear peaked in those few words.
The staff came by to say goodbye. They knew. They have seen it all before. Everyone leaves their care at some time. Some go home healed, completely or partially. Some go home to die. It’s part of the gig. But they were sincere and compassionate and it was an honor to see them salute Wife’s effort to get relief from her disease. We brought her home that afternoon, all of us quiet, reflecting on what we learned and what was coming. And so the vigil began.
A lot of my emotions rose when I saw the heart-shaped rubber band the other afternoon. I instantly made the connection of a lost-love, found. My love is lost, gone from this life forever. I want no other and as my year-of-firsts approaches its end, nothing is really changed. Wife is gone and will not be returning.
I still wonder what to do with that. My expectation was that I would retire, fully or partially, and we would do the things we talked about for so many years. With her demise, that’s changed. In this new life, I am moving to a second career as a photographer and writer. But no longer will I be husband and lifemate.
What does this mean? What does any of it mean? Is there anything of significance in this?
I’m not sure I have any answers. All I know is that I carry on. I’ll work a few more years in my current engagement, so long as enough work exists to keep me employed. Then I’ll move to a new phase of my life, providing my health holds, and take on a few engineering assignments that interest me. They will pay well. I intend to spend the rest of my time traveling to see my family and to make images of interesting places and things as well as write about my experiences.
I know what I believe. I am not a religious man. But I have faith. What I believe cannot be proven. That changes nothing about how I intend to conduct myself. Regardless of whether my faith proves true or false, I intend to live what I believe. My hope is that Wife and I will have “time” to talk again. I would love that. But I cannot know because it can’t be proven.
I captured this image Saturday morning on our hike and just love this image. It was just a little late in the morning and the light is a bit flat, yet the texture of the granite outcrop is there and the muggle sign is plainly evident.
Why someone was moved to spray paint the rock is beyond my understanding. It’s a form of environmental vandalism and I don’t like it. The rocks have a natural beauty and tell the story of the landscape without paint.
But, the Girl and I had a good time exploring these rocks. I looked for a geocache; she looked for wabbits. When I called her in, she was grinning and panty. What a funny girl.
We heard voices coming from down the hill. Another couple of groups formed up for the hike. It was getting late anyway and I had a few more things to do. So we headed back for the 4Runner and for the house. On the way down the hill, I kept the Girl close. A couple of hikers approached from the opposite direction, so I asked her to sit while they passed.
“That’s a well-trained dog,” an older man said.
“We work hard at it.”
“Well, it shows…”
He’s right, of course. She wanted to run over and sniff them. She thinks everyone wants to be greeted. I generally make her wait until she’s invited, because so many people are either afraid of dogs or are uncertain about pit-looking dogs. We don’t need to encourage bad (human) behavior. But, she waited patiently (off leash) until they passed and then we continued back down the hill to the 4Runner. She ran over where they passed and sniffed around, peed (of course), and then we were on our way. She stayed close all the way back to the truck.
She’s a good girl… funny and quirky, just like her dad. But she’s a good girl and my best friend.
Later that day we drove to Sparks to meet Jimmy and have coffee. While we were hanging out at the Camera Clinic, another photographer we met last summer entered the store. Jimmy knows him well. The photographer was telling a story about how he waited for two hours for an eagle to fly off its perch so he could capture the launch. As he described how “Of course, it flew that way!” he stepped forward, sort-of toward me, and quickly stretched out his arm to indicate the eagle’s direction.
I heard a very low “grrrrr…” emanate from the Girl. She dropped her head and took a step forward. I called her back and asked “What was that?”
But, I quickly figured out that she took the photographer’s step forward and outstretched arm as a threat. He was warned. He quickly called her over, held out his hand, then sat on the sofa to pet and reassure her it was all good. She was fine. She just didn’t care for the sudden motion in my general direction and the intensity of his projection.
Did I say she’s my best friend?
Now it’s Monday morning, early. I have a few things to accomplish today. Later this week I head for a field trip to walk one of my project sites in southern Nevada. The time out will be good for me. I’m hoping for some time to capture some images while I’m out and about. I might even have time to find a geocache or two.
I put away my Keurig this morning. I’m still going to use it, but for everyday use it’s pretty expensive. The prefilled K-cups cost about a buck apiece. I was using three or four of them per day. That’s a lot of bucks. Mr. Coffee will make a pot for about a quarter. I preheat my Stanley thermos bottle with hot water and it keeps my coffee warm all morning.
The Keurig is a great machine and one I’ll continue to use when I just want one cup of coffee. But, when I want my morning coffee, I’ll make a pot and save myself some bucks.
The end of the calendar year is always a time to remember, to reflect, and to look forward to what a new year brings. The actual date is irrelevant; in my country and culture the year ends on 31 December. Other countries and cultures might use a different day, but the effect is the same — a year is ending and a new year is beginning.
The Semisonic Song has a famous line Every new beginning comes from some other new beginning’s end. I used that line any number of times in my writings over the years and probably will again. It fits so many things so well. So it goes with the ending of a year and the beginning of a new year.
The celebrations tend to excess. I won’t be celebrating like that. I will retrieve Young Son from his journey to SoCal and we’ll return home. I expect we will spend a little time reflecting on the year together and remembering Wife/Mom. It seems appropriate.
As I think on 2013, it was a year of changes — some of them life-changing. I saw Wife through the end of her cancer and her life. That was a watershed event, culminating almost two years of diagnosis, treatment, rediagnosis, re-treatment, and uncertainty. She died on 19 January 2013 after the last-ditch efforts of her medical team failed. It was one of the hardest things to say goodbye.
It took me months to get my feet back under me. My struggle with the life change of losing my life-mate continues. It is not as intense as it was early in 2013, but so many things remind me of my previous life. It was not a life I wanted to give up; like Wife, it was taken from me when she died. I do not yet know what I am to be or to do, but I keep working on it.
Work all but dried up in 2013. I offered my resignation twice; both times it was rejected. I am expensive and I worry my expense drags the company down. But I’m also not quite ready to move on. Perhaps my principal engineer is right and we are about to turn the corner on work. I am willing to give it another six months, reevaluate at that time, and assess the current project climate. I am confident I can find enough contract work to keep myself fed if it comes to that. Or I could take on a teaching job, work on that nine months of the year, and spend my other time traveling, photographing, writing, and doing some contract work.
My Girl contracted leptospirosis on our way home from a Texas marketing trip. She was a sick girl and I thought I might lose her. I was unprepared for that. She pulled through the infection and is herself again. The thought of losing her so soon after losing Wife was unbearable.
I began shooting film again in 2013. I experimented with film a bit in 2012, but never posted any results. I bought my first medium-format camera in 2013 and expect to shoot medium format quite a bit in 2014. I’ll shoot 35mm when I need the portability of the smaller camera.
Late in 2013 I bought a medium-format film scanner. I’m still learning to use it and I think it has a problem with its sensor. If so, it will be exchanged. I will be spending time in 2014 learning to use the scanner so I can scan new images and old. I have many, many old negatives and slides that should be scanned to be preserved.
I made a few prints in 2013 from some of my favorite frames. This is now an important part of my life, the making of photographs. I don’t yet know what 2014 will bring in this regard, but I am considering posting a few of my best prints locally to determine if there is any interest in them as fine art.
I added quite a few new recordings to my collection. In particular, I picked up the back catalog of Mason Proffit. Over the years, I really enjoyed much of the Talbot brothers’ work. They were the core of Mason Proffit. I can see how MP became an influence on much of the music that followed them.
I found myself looking for Andrew York’s recordings. Andecy is one of my favorite solo guitar songs. He has a few recordings made over the last 20 years and I picked them up. They are wonderful recordings and the material is interesting.
I am going to take a few online photography classes in 2014. I am working my way through a Photoshop tutorial at the end of 2013/beginning of 2014 now. The objective of the tutorial is to learn alternative methods to simple desaturation to obtain quality black and white images. In January there will be an online class. The instructor will review four captures and post-processing of them and share results in a webinar. This is an easy way for me to get some training.
Learning is important, particularly as we age. I think learning new skills and expanding one’s knowledge keeps the brain active and healthy. It’s also good physically, particularly if you use skills (like photography) to get out and move around.
In January I’ll drive down to Ash Meadows Wildlife Sanctuary for a project I’m working on down there. The Girl will go with me. We’re going to drive back through Death Valley, then through Owens Valley. I’ll use the trip to do a little geocaching and make some images. The Girl will do her usual things — looking for rabbits, peeing, pooping, and sniffing… and keeping track of me.
In January I’ll end my Year of Firsts. I think I will celebrate on 19 January 2014. It will not be a celebration of Wife’s death, but a celebration of her life, her passage into whatever is next for us, and my survival of my first year without her. I will have experienced each of those special days that were important to us as a couple, felt the loss, felt the absence of my friend and soul mate, and survived.
My friend Jim wrote to me “It’ll suck less, but it’ll still suck…” He’s right and that simple statement is something I held on to all year and will continue to hold on to in 2014.
I expect there will be several Texas trips in 2014. I need to show my face to potential partners and clients.
I expect to make at least one trip to Denver to see Older Son and DiL, one to Rolla, Missouri (to see Wife’s family and some of mine), and a trip to the east coast to see Daughter and her family. I’m hoping to make those road trips because road trips are healing to me. I want to take the Girl as well. She’s an excellent traveler. I will also take my cameras along with me.
I expect a Sony A7r will be in my future sometime in 2014. I think my Sony NEX-5N is an excellent camera; surprisingly so. The largish APS-C sensor is as big as most dSLRs in a very tidy package. It has some quirks, but as a box to hold a sensor it’s very good. The metering and exposure systems work very well and it makes accurate exposures. I really like the electronic viewfinder with focus peaking. Because the camera uses manual focus lenses in stop-down mode, the EVF increases the gain so the viewfinder is bright and easy to use. Focus peaking makes getting critical focus much easier than an optical viewfinder (at least for me). Depth of field is relatively easy to gauge. Although Sony’s line of lenses is restrictive and their zooms plainly suck, use of vintage glass through adapters make these little cameras something very special.
I am expecting the Sony A7r to improve on my NEX-5N. It has a full-frame sensor and more pixels than I need. It will mean that cropping will be much easier for those captures where I just couldn’t get close enough. It will be an interesting pairing with the Pentax medium-format film camera, as well as the Nikon film cameras.
I will be developing my black and white film using caffenol, a coffee-based developer. I expect that work to “develop” in a couple more weeks. I have the chemistry in the house and only need a couple more tools to make it all work. Those should be delivered in a few more days.
I plan to take a weapons training class sometime in 2014. These classes are very good for me physically and mentally. Knowledge of use of firearm and blade for personal defense is critically important in a culture that celebrates violence. Although it’s unlikely I’ll ever experience an assault, the probability is not zero. It would be irresponsible for me to be unprepared. My personal view is that such unpreparedness is akin to eschewing insurance.
I worked out that I am on-track to fully retire in ten years. I could partially retire in six more years. I examined both worst-case and expected scenarios for my retirement portfolio and I should be OK financially. Of course, the end of the world could happen and break those plans. But that uncertainty is part of life. If it happens, I’ll figure out how to deal with it.
I am sure there will be other new things for me in 2014. One thing about life that’s interesting is that no matter how well it’s planned, shit happens. Sometimes it’s good shit and sometimes not. But, shit happens.
Enough ruminating for today and for the year. Happy New Year! Be safe, enjoy, and be blessed!
I intended to write something this weekend, but chores got the better of me and I didn’t get it done. I’ve been thinking quite a lot as Christmas approaches. You see, Christmas was Wife’s holiday. I think she lived for the season. She loved to give gifts at Christmas.
As I reflect on the year past, it’s clear I’ve been dealing with the fallout from losing a spouse. There was more than just the business affairs to handle. There was an accumulation of 40 years of stuff, much of which I no longer want or need. So, in parallel to dealing with my emotions, my grief, I spent a lot of time dealing with things. Many of them were donated to charity. In fact, most of them were.
I’m approaching the end of this phase. I’m also approaching the anniversary of her death. It’s not an anniversary to celebrate, not in the normal sense of celebration. I will, however, celebrate her life and remember her. As my friend Jim says, “It sucks less, but it still sucks.”
I sense the need to move forward. I’m not really moving on, because that implies something I am not doing. These changes didn’t come by any choice, but by circumstance. I’m not leaving Wife behind because she’s no longer here. I am, however, prepared to move forward to whatever is next for me.
I’m still working out what that should be. For one thing, my expenses are reduced and I’ll be saving more of my pay. It’s time to get serious about padding my retirement account so I’ll have funds to draw from when the time comes I cannot (or don’t want to) work so much.
For another thing I intend to pursue more art. I am working on my photographic skills. As the chores around the house are reduced, I’ll feel free to do more weekend trips. I want to drive out to the coast and spend some weekends out there with a camera. I want to drive up into Oregon and Idaho, and maybe Washington to explore and make images. There will also be some geocaching to do as I wander about. I have a lot of Nevada left to explore.
I might face a change of engagement some time along the way. Work has been slow this year. There are some projects in the pipeline that should provide me with chargeable time. I’m hoping that 2014 will provide enough work to justify my continued employment. If it doesn’t, it will be time to think of a change. I’m not OK with drawing pay and not having enough to do.
In any event, I’m ready to move forward. I want to do some things besides working here at the house and staying home most of the weekends. It’s time.
While working through my Christmas music collection, I heard a couple of songs by Tennessee Ernie Ford, an old-school country singer (and a crossover artist as well). I was reminded of his work in radio, recording, and television.
I loved his big voice and his style. In reading the Wikipedia article about him, I felt a major sense of nostalgia roll over me. I’m not so sure why I feel this way, but it often happens to me when I think about how things were when I was young. It seems things were simpler, less aggressive, less narcissistic. Entertainment was more wholesome and nothing like what we have today.
There was plenty of evil. But I don’t recall the celebration of violence and baseness that seems to prevail in entertainment today.
Perhaps I’m just filtering. But that’s how I feel.
During the last few weeks I followed the last travels of a Jeff Parker. Jeff was a BMW rider and was part of the internet BMW riding community. He’s well known to many of the long-time denizens of that eclectic and curmudgeonly group.
A few weeks ago, Parker announced he was diagnosed with Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is bad. Stage 3 means it’s time to bend over and kiss it goodbye. There is nothing to do but be comfortable and meet one’s end.
Parker elected to give things one last go. He decided to do a four-corners ride. That’s long-distance rider slang for the four corners of the lower 48 states of the U.S. It’s not a ride to be taken lightly. It’s certainly not a ride to be taken lightly when one is dying from pancreatic cancer.
But ride it he did. He posted to the list a couple-three times with updates on progress. A few days ago, somewhere in Arizona, he could not go on. The pain was sufficient that he was no longer fit to ride. He called a few folks from the BMW Anonymous Book (a publication with contact information of BMW riders but no names), met them for supper, and asked if any of them could/would help him finish the ride.
One of them could. So, Parker rode second seat the remainder of the way to the last corner of his ride. He then put his benefactor on an airplane, went home, and went under hospice care. He was comfortable and calm when he posted his last message to the IBMWR mailing list.
I don’t think anyone minded that there was not much of the obligatory BMW content. Parker wrote to say he finished his ride, literally and figuratively. It was his last post.
His daughter posted to the group yesterday late that Jeff Parker died from his cancer.
So what, one might think… people die everyday. It is true that everything dies, at least everything living. We all come to an end sometime.
The cancer is rather close to home. I lost Wife to cancer last January. But I am impressed by Parker’s approach. He saw his end coming and did something deliberate. He decided to go for a motorcycle ride. It wasn’t just any motorcycle ride, but a four-corners ride to all four corners of the continental U.S. It’s about a 10,000-mile ride.
It’s not something to be undertaken lightly. It’s physically and mentally challenging. Parker decided to do it while dying from pancreatic cancer. That’s both deliberate and ballsy.
He finished the ride before the cancer finished him. He had help at the end, but it still counts. He had the courage to take on a thing he wanted to do, but had not done. That courage speaks volumes to me and I hope to others.
Godspeed, Jeff Parker.
The trip to Lubbock was hard both physically and emotionally. The physical part is easy to deal with. It’s a mental game. So long as I don’t get so tired to be dangerous (to myself and others), it’s just something to overcome. The emotional part, though, is not so easy.
Some might say just deal with it. If they did, I would be tempted to tell them to “stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
I’m not sure what I expected of this process of grieving. I’ve never experienced this kind of loss. Yes, I lost my mom and dad years ago. That was plenty hard, but neither unexpected nor handled alone. Wife was there with me through that process. I was secure. This time, though, I lost the person I’d spent nearly 45 years with. The depth of that relationship was substantial. Although I tried to prepare myself for this time, my preparations were horribly insufficient.
Wife so loved road trips. Neither of us enjoyed the preparations, wherein Wife’s tendency to obsessive-compulsive behavior was brought out. (Everything that could have been done since the last trip but wasn’t now has to be done before we leave for this trip.) But once that was all dealt with and we actually left, we enjoyed seeing things, stopping to putter a bit, and trying new places to eat. But mostly we enjoyed talking and listening to music.
Those last two things defined our relationship. We loved words and music.
I don’t know why, but for some reason this trip was particularly hard. I brought my iPod along this time, instead of just listening to satellite radio. I recently discovered The Civil Wars from their track on Phil Madiera’s Mercyland. The refrain from that song haunts me:
Oh won’t you take me from this valley
To that mountain high above
Oh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face
I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I love.
I was singing along, trying to learn the lyric, and hit the phrase till I see your smiling face… and I lost it. The wave of grief rose up and buried me, leaving me sobbing as I drove.
While Wife was in her Summer 2012 chemotherapy testing to determine whether her lymphoma remained chemo-sensitive, I captured a couple of informal portraits of her. They were good enough to print and frame. They are on the wall of my house, now, where I can look at her smiling face. When I get a beer, or a whiskey, or even just a coffee, I raise my cup to her portrait in salute and remember her, remember us, remember the good times and the hard.
I want to be over my grief and I also don’t want to be over it. To be done with it seems to signify that I’m over her death. I don’t want to be over her death. I want her life to have so much significance that I’m never over it. Indeed, her life was that significant, at least to this old man.
I suppose that means I want to complete my grieving so that I can move on to whatever God has for me next. I don’t want to be over her loss, but I need to know what’s next for me. Where am I to put myself to work where I can create meaning for myself and others. That’s where I want to be. That’s what I want to figure out. I do not think it is where I currently am.
I gave myself a year to deal with this process. Everything I read tells me that it takes a year or two to recover (not get over) the loss of a spouse. I’m not very patient, though, sometimes. I long to get through this so that I can get on with whatever is to be next.
Perhaps that’s the clue to the entire thing. Part of the process should be figuring out what’s next. I am accomplishing the things I set out to do after Wife died. My finances are recovering. My initial purge of my house is nearly complete. There needs to be a second purge, but that one will not be nearly as difficult as the first pass. Much of the paperwork that languished is also complete.
That means I’m running out of projects to work on that were set out a year or more ago. It’s time to work up some new things to work on. I think it’s time that some of those things be the things I want to work on. It’s time to think about playing music again, about upping my photography game to the next level, about working on the what’s-next-for-me game and where that is going to be.
I think that’s part of what this roadtrip was about. It was an opportunity to openly grieve (no one was there to watch — men in our culture prefer to grieve privately), to process that grief, and to think about what is complete, what is yet to complete, and what is next for me. I worked on the first two quite a lot. It’s time to give the last element some thought.
I’ll leave you with the lyric to From This Valley. It’s a wonderful song.
Oh the desert dreams of a river
That will run down to the sea
Like my heart longs for an ocean
To wash down over meOh won’t you take me from this valley
To that mountain high above
Oh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face
I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I loveOh the outcast dreams of acceptance
Just to find pure love’s embrace
Like an orphan longs for its mother
May you hold me in your graceOh won’t you take me from this valley
To that mountain high above
Oh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face
I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I loveOoh, whoa oh, whoa oh oh
Ooh, whoa oh, whoa oh ohOh the caged bird dreams of a strong wind
That will flow beneath her wings
Like a voice longs for a melody
Oh Jesus, carry meOh won’t you take me from this valley
To that mountain high above
Oh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face
I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I loveOh I will pray, pray, pray till I see your smiling face
I will pray, pray, pray to the one that I love