Week In Review

Ah, ye olde week in review:

• Brian’s student loan was officially discharged.
• My student loan was officially paid in full on Wednesday.
• The new title to Brian’s car came in the mail this week.  Which also means that I was able to cancel his insurance ($12 refund coming my way!) and change my insurance from the Saturn to the Ford.  My insurance went down $20 a month!  Combine that with the $12 refund and my investment planning is REALLY going to start taking off!
• Got incomplete paperwork from Fisher, the financial planners, so I have a two page list of questions to ask before signing them.  Not sure why they would give me such incomplete paperwork.  And the papers for the 529 account for a college savings plan were all kinds of screwed up.  I think the guy thought that I just wanted to sign them really quickly, so he just gave me what he had ready.  So now we have to talk about all my, still unanswered questions.
• Did another “yard day” on Friday.  Julie, Jason, Jessie, Evan H., and Angel came over.  We finished gravelling the driveway.  Evan and Angel dug out the dirt around the gate in the fence by the driveway and laid pavers down so now the back gate opens fully!  Yeah!  The past couple of years you could only open the gate about a foot!  Jason took down what was once a bush but had grown in to the size of a small tree.  Trimming of other things in the back, shaping of some bushes.  Lawn mowed by Jessie (who should no longer under-estimate her lawn mowing abilities) and lots of edging.  A good 90 minutes of work.  It feels so good to have the yard shaping up again.  And getting back to a place where I feel I can manage some things on my own again, before everything  just got so out of control.
• Also on Friday I had a guy come out to look at my crumbling front steps.  I figured this was getting bad enough that I need to invest some money into it before selling.  So I called a contact over at the physical plant at Elon and got a name.  He came out on Friday and gave me an estimate.  While we were chatting, I told him that my “Curb Appeal Plan” (as it is officially known) is to fix the crumbling steps, power wash the front of the house (front of the house only :)), and sand and repaint the porch and steps.  He gave me a very fair quote for the steps and then told me he had a guy who could power wash the house and porch and repaint for a pretty good price too.  So we’re going to keep talking this week and see if we can get these projects scheduled and then finished!
• There are four baby birds in Mama’s nest and they are growing HUGE.  Big bones must run in the family.  Last week, you couldn’t see them unless they popped their heads out for feeding.  Now they are so big they look like sardines in a can.  I also noticed another nest on the other side of the porch but it looked like an abandoned project, not a very neat nest.  But today, what do you know, another mama sitting there.  I thought, when did my house become the love shack?
• On Saturday Julie and I went to the annual Herb Festival.  I got some tomatoes, some basil, and some spinach.  Afterwards we went to the first week farmers market put on by the co-op.  It was a pretty good turn out, for this time of year.  Still just a lot of greens available.  Not the wide variety of veggies that we’ll start to have in another month or so.  Picked up some mixed greens and then went to the co-op for a couple of tomatoes to top it off with.  Julie had never been to the co-op so it was fun to go through with her.  I told her next time we hang out we’ll have to do an activity more conducive to conversation.  We were so absorbed in looking at everything!
• Tried to pay bills this weekend.  My payday is the last business day of every month, which should be tomorrow, Monday.  But for some reason my check hit on Friday.  So I thought I’d sit down and pay them.  I could not believe how emotionally difficult this was.  Completely unexpected.  Our bills are a reflection of what we value, because it’s where we’ve chosen to put our money, if that makes sense.  So to do that without him, without his contribution, to go through the line items under his bills, writing “cancelled” or “discharged” was just unexpectedly tough.  It really made me miss him.  And made me stop and go lay down for a while.  When I came back to it I put in all the expenses for the month.  And it wasn’t a pretty picture.  I thought I had paid for 99% of the Florida Keys trip last month, but apparently the rent car place didn’t submit their stuff until much later, so I’m paying for that this month.  Not a big deal, again, I am covered, but my expenses for the month are about $1200 more than I brought in.  This is only alarming in that I thought last month would be the difficult month.  But this month is worse.  So I’m hoping by paying everything off now, this resets me at zero for June.  If June isn’t any better, then putting the house on the market and selling aggressively becomes priority number one.  I’m not willing to fritter away the savings just trying to stay above water.  When I do the math, it always seems to come out with plenty to spare, but the reality has not been working out that way the past two months.  We’ll see what June bills bring!  I’m ok.  I don’t write this to alarm anyone.  Just letting folks know what’s going on.
• Oh, and so, while I figured out what the expenses were, I did not pay a single bill.  Too much again.  This will end up being a three-day process.  Now that I know how much I need to cover everything, the act of making the payments should go pretty quick tomorrow.
• Talked to my bosses about how I’m doing at work.  Since I’ve started back I’ve got the insomnia again and the eating has regressed a little.  Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s just confusing.  I wish I could describe it better.  I guess it’s that I don’t have the time or space to reflect when I’m there.  And that’s not a judgment just the way it is.  So when I can’t take time to figure out how I’m feeling, I end up confused.  So I’ve talked to them about doing some half days and taking some days off during the week.  Each week during May there is a day or two that I don’t have any student appointments, so I am going to try to utilize that time to just take things a little slower.  I’m not sure how I’ll need to utilize that down time.  If what I need to do is stay in bed and think and sleep, or if I need to use that time to continue running errands and making calls so that I feel accomplished, don’t know if I need to start thinking about the house…. we’ll see.  Not even sure if this is the solution to this new place/space I’m in.
• After my India post I got some really great feedback in the comments and through emails about my plans.  Made me feel good to have the support.  Also gave me some ideas about what I might do and how I might do it.  So thank you to all of you who get it and all of you that maybe don’t get it but get me and love me anyway!
• Today I did two hours of more yard work.  I worked in the garden to clean it up a little.  I pulled weeds and weed wacked.  Took down the chicken wire and the posts (since I’m not planing anything this year and after two years it was starting to look a little sloppy.  Turned the “active compost and covered it with leaves and potted soil from last years contain herbs and veggies and put in some compost starter.  Took the “not active” bin and spread it out in the two raised garden bins and put it in the bottom of my containers for this year (at the herb festival I picked up basil and a couple of tomato plants.  Wanted to get chamomile to see if I could make my own tea this year, but they didn’t get an chamomile in).  Then transplanted my herbs to their containers.  In the raised beds I sprinkled some wildflower seeds that a friend gave me a long time ago.  I figured, if the wildflowers grew, it would look better than just empty beds for the summer.  When I was done, the garden looked better, but not good.  The compost that had been maturing, was nice good compost but had lots of leaves in it and so the garden doesn’t look “clean” like new gardens look when  you lay down new soil and plant things.  But I’m alright with that.  There is time to make it better before being put on the market.
• Good counseling session last week.  Next one tomorrow.  Pretty soon, I’m going to be eligible to start grief group with hospice.  They don’t let you join until it’s been at least three months since your loved one died.  They say that at first, you are in too much pain to hear anyone else, so it’s not helpful.  But in another month or so, I’ll be able.  I’m not sold on the benefit of group, but I am willing to give everything a try.  I recognize how great my need is to reflect and process.  It’s immense.  My counselor, friends, and co-workers combined cannot meet this great need.  I get a lot of it out through the blog, but still, even that is not enough.  So if grief group gives me another outlet, I’m willing to try.
• Perhaps the biggest news, which typically come in small packages, is that I started watching Lost again.  You may remember this was the TV show Brian and I were in the middle of watching when he died.  We had made it to the end of season 3 when he got too sick to keep watching.  I have been working up to starting them up again for maybe a whole month, and yesterday I finally put in season four.  The good news is that I was ready.  It wasn’t hard.  It didn’t make me cry or make me feel bad.  I had been avoiding it like the plague, but I had also been slowly talking myself into it for a while, so I was ready.  The bad news is that it is STILL confusing and tense as ever.  I’m glad there are only 6 seasons.  A person has to get some answers eventually.
• I also made contact with a couple of meditation centers in Chapel Hill so I’m going to be giving their classes and lessons a try.  Probably a good idea to learn about meditation now, BEFORE I show up in India.  The place I’m most drawn too is the Soto Zen Buddhism Center.  They seem pretty organized.  Keep you posted on when I take my first class.
• Going to try to sign up for sewing class this summer.  The deadline to register is 5/2, hopefully they’ll have enough people to form the class this time.

Well, now I am looking to the weeks ahead instead of the week in review.  So I’ll stop here.  Thanks everyone for emailing and checking in with me.  I got a really lovely email from someone I don’t know that well this week, and it was a really nice reminder to me of how much the blog changed my life and Brian’s life and how it has affected others.  If you’ve emailed and I haven’t gotten back to you yet, please know you are on my list.  My slowness and disorganization these days is another new thing I am learning to live with and which I am learning is a very common by-product of new grief.

Take care and good Monday to you all.

Fragility

“There came a time in the summer when I began feeling fragile, unstable.  A sandal would catch on a sidewalk and I would need to run a few steps to avoid the fall.  What if I didn’t?  What if I fell?  What would break, who would see the blood streaming down my leg, who would get the taxi, who would be with me in the emergency room?  Who would be with me once I came home?”

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005

I feel this more and more.  Who will take care of me if something happens?  Certainly not my loving friends with their already too full lives.  Just keeping up with people on the phone can feel like squeezing me in.  What I am learning is that, with grieving, I must rely less on others.  What if others are not available?  Then how to I cope?  I must learn to rely on myself and increase my own coping skills.  I am loved, but people cannot handle the full force rush of my grieving, let alone become my full-time caretakers if I were in an accident.

I feel fragile when I have occasion to be around another couple.  I feel their security in the “idea of the other” oozing from them.  Someone to tell where you are going.  Someone to tell when you are coming back.  Some to call if you are stranded.  Who will help me now to remember where we were when that thing happened?  What was it she said that had us laughing so hard?  How did George Jefferson get his name?  This whole body ache makes it painful to bear witness to others love and others plans and others laughter.

“Only the survivors of death are truly left alone.  The connections that made up their life – both the deep connections and the apparently (until they are broken) insignificant connections – have all vanished…. I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him.  This impulse did not end with his death.  What ended was the possibility of response.”

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005

Who do I change my beneficiaries to?  My back up emergency contact with dozen upon dozens of doctors offices and organizations, and you name it is Brian.  Who is my back up emergency contact now?  Who is going to be available like that?  Do I change my will?  My brother-in-law is my executor if I die.  Is that fair to him?  Why didn’t I think about that what that meant, if Brian died first? That this meant, in essence, that Adam would need to set up all finances for my mother.  I can’t leave any money to her; she would lose her social security.  At the time it seemed like a good idea because he seemed (seems) competent and of course Brian would be around so it would never come to that anyway.

Before Brian’s death, I had no real understanding of my own death.

If something happens to me, if I die, who takes charge?  Who puts in all the work that I am putting in to deal with the logistics of Brian’s death?  Who loves me that much?  Who is capable?  Who feels that much responsibility for me?  What happens to the cat?  What happens to my mother?  No one knows where the usernames and passwords are to all the accounts.  Does anyone know I have a safe deposit box?  Who will carry out my burial wishes?  What are they now that Brian is gone?  Who will step up to the plate and do these things?  I can’t envision anyone.  It feels as if, in death, my life becomes a ward of the state.  Fragile.

How did I ever live alone?  What is independence of personality worth when you are dead?  Fragile

I have no first call.  No last call.  I have only the default call of whichever friend is free.  For nine years I said good-night to Brian every night. Now I have no one to say good-night to. This is a fragility that is currently weakening my spirit.  I do not know what the solution is to find this strength again.  What I am missing cannot be picked up at the grocery on the way home.

Hindsight

Did a stupid thing tonight.  Started thinking, “I’m really getting a grasp on this financial stuff, it’s coming together, I’m moving along with wrapping things up and crossing them off the list.  Let’s get a peek at what the next thing will be that I need to focus on. Let’s look up the realtor that Mr. Fisher recommended.  Maybe it’s time to call to start those conversations and get that appraisal.  Explain my situation, my needs, and my goals.

She had a great website. Her focus seems to be on working with sellers, not buyers.  She had good resources posted – the one I read?  Eight things to consider before selling your house.  Among them:

1. Minor repairs (overwhelming – how do I patch up the dings in the wall when I don’t have the paint to cover the plaster?  Repaint the whole room?)
2. Declutter and staging for good first impression (no no no no no.  Not ready to touch anything).
3. When should you sell?  May, June, July best months for home buying (all of a sudden, too soon.  Way too soon).
4. Receiving offers and negotiating.  (OMG.  How can I make those decisions on my own?  I can’t make decisions about how to structure my day, let alone broker a several hundred thousand dollar investment deal)
5. Setting a closing date.   Preparing to pack and turn over keys.

Hold the friggin’ phone.  End of selling house idea.  End of India dream.  Never leaving. Never changing a thing.

It hits me.  In my mind I stay in this house until I leave the country.  This is our house.  I can’t leave it for someplace else.  What if I put it on the market and it sells within two months?  I’m not ready to leave.  What will I do?  Or regardless, where will I go when it sells before I am ready to leave the country and what will I do when it sells before I am emotionally ready to leave (which will be, let’s be honest, never).  Where will I go?  Rent an apartment in Burlington?  Chapel Hill?  Carrboro?  Saxapahaw?  Graham?  What?  What?  Move?  Pack?  Allow my house to become someone else’s house?  No.  Panic.  Anxiety.  Extra Klonapin.

I am moving myself too fast.

Am I moving myself too fast?

What is this invisible timeline pressuring me to leave at the end of the year?  Is that intuition?  Is that the fear of chickening out on my dreams that wants me to take action before I really do change my mind? This somehow ties back to my conversation with Jessie on Sunday about messiness and not trying to plan and control the crap out of everything.  But how can I stop myself?  I can no more easily do that than change my skin color to a pretty shade of blue.

In hindsight, a mistake to start to contemplating those vague ideas and needs as logistics.  I didn’t know that would happen.  Now I know I need to do some more mental preparation and wait a little bit longer.

A Meditation

Written 4/25:

This afternoon I met with one of my favorite students who happened to be in a very bad place today.  He was beating himself up, feeling sorry for himself, blaming others for his problems.  He is depressed and struggling to find a way through.  I closed up my gap as soon as I realized the severity of his current depression and negativity.  But it was not before I was affected myself.  Frustrated with him for not being honest and finding no compassion for him.

After the meeting I decided to do a 10 minute sitting meditation to try to clear my gap of the negativity and to rest and restore.  I’d had a wonderful meeting with another student this morning whose own spiritual practice is growing.  His dedication and attitude inspired me.  So I shut the door and sat down on a footstool in the office, setting the timer on my phone for 10 minutes.  I did my usual, which is just to focus on breath – in and out, repeating.  When the other thoughts started to too frequently over power “in, out” I switched to “relax” on the in breath and “deeper and deeper” on the exhale.  This is a self-hypnosis technique I have used before.  When I use it I imagine myself descending down a long flight of dark stairs and arriving at a red door.  Beyond the door is what you could call my “happy place,” though I don’t think of it that way.

It’s a field full of calf high lush green grass and wildflowers.  Around the edges of the oval field are old tall tall trees.  Older and taller than normal trees.  They are oaks and maples I guess. There is a beautiful blue table in the field with a bench for when I need to go to this space to read or write or look at something.  It’s like a country kitchen table, I guess.  Mostly when I am here I am lying in the grass squeezing the grass with my toes and fingers.  I am listening to the wind in the trees and looking up at the sky.  It is always sunny and warm.

As I was doing this visualizing this afternoon I started to cry suddenly.  A calmness and peace was settling onto my self in the field and I could feel it in my physical self manifesting as the tears and a sensation in my stomach.  Then I realized where the peace and calm was coming from.

Brian was there.  He was standing about 20 feet from where I was laying.  I could only see him from above so I couldn’t see his face well, but I was so happy to see him.  So grateful that he had come to visit me.  I asked him to come closer and I don’t think he wanted to.  I think he allowed me to visualize him as closer.  While he really stayed where he was.  In my mind’s eye he sat next to me, then he lay down and I put my head on his stomach so we made a T in the grass.  We held hands.  It was so incredibly special.

Then my physical self started to worry about the alarm going off.  Wishing I hadn’t set it so I could stay in this place forever (usually I set it to make myself do a full 10 minutes). As my thoughts and worries started to encroach on my meditation I saw again that Brian was about 20 feet away again.  In the same spot, watching me.  It was then that I knew he hadn’t actually moved but only allowed me to feel that he had.  I sat up and watched him.  I couldn’t see his face in focus.  I knew it was time for him to leave and he did.  I sat in the field.  Breathing in and out for just a little while longer until the alarm went off.

I don’t know what your beliefs are on meditation, prayer, life after death, visitations, but this was real.  I felt him so strong.  He was with me in a tangible way.  There was no message delivered, other than to provide me with the peace and calm I’d been seeking when I began the meditation.  The joy at feeling him again was merely a by-product.  I don’t know why he chose not to come closer or why I couldn’t focus on him clearly.  These things are not important.  I hope he will visit again.  I think I understand now that all I needed to do was make the space for him – and that required practice and some repetition on my part.

Flashes

4/21 – An idea of how food is new in my life.  I am getting hungry again.  I am eating less.  Not afraid of being hungry anymore.  Enjoy the feeling of real hunger.  Enjoy being in control of my food intake again.  No more uncontrolled snacking and grazing.  Eliminating extra and unnecessary calories.  Enjoyment starting to come back to eating now that I am preparing more food again.  Lost 25 pounds since December.  Still within healthy weight.  Will I lose more? I think so.  Not much but I can tell I haven’t stabled out yet, my eating is not back exactly where it was.   I don’t feel out of control when I eat.  I feel more like the vegan I wanted to be. Meal choices are good and I feel stronger and healthier when I eat now.  Feel I’m moving in a good direction.  Large desserts are a once a week treat instead of a twice nightly event.  Enjoying the place of food in my life again, slowly but surely.

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4/22 – Talk with Jessie this afternoon about the messiness of life and just living.  Not wanting long-term goals to get in the way of allowing events in your life to unfold as they will.  As your intention naturally creates.  As the universe guides you.  Tried to think about that in relation to my need to “make progress.”  To keep moving.  Felt there was something deeper there for me regarding embracing messiness (current state of mind as example) and really owning it.  Embracing it and maybe even making it work for you. But the thought won’t fully form.  Let the universe guide me, let auto pilot take over.  I’m right where I need to be. As impossible as the loneliness makes that seem at times, I know it’s true.  I’m right where I need to be.  No need to work so hard at being there or getting there or then getting beyond there.  But couldn’t catch the fully formed thought.

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4/23 – So interesting to me how long it takes me to accomplish things these days.  A small project that would have taken me two days to put together now takes over a week.  A to-do list made at the beginning of the week is only half complete by the end of the week.  Not sure what else I’m doing?  I don’t feel like I’m moving slower, I don’t feel like I read as much, or write as much, not doing things around the house…  Not even tuning out that much.  I think maybe I’m tuning out on the lists themselves.  Like I just stare at them with numbness running through me.  Trying to think of the things I’ve forgotten to add.  Trying not to forget to do the things I have to do.  Worrying about forgetting that I agreed to meet a friend at a certain place and time or missing an event.  I feel so forgetful and absent-minded about myself and my life right now.

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4/24 – When I came back from Florida four weeks ago I discovered a big mama robin had made a nest on top of one of the pillars on the porch while I was gone.  We get a bird’s nest there every other year or so.  She was a big mama and I assumed she hadn’t laid her eggs yet.  I’ve watched her over the weeks and talked to her.  Her name is Mama.  She gets a little stressed if I am on the porch too long (like if I stop to look through the mail before coming inside) but mostly she’s chill.  On weekend mornings I sit on the sofa with my toast and tea and watch her for a bit.  It doesn’t last long.  A bird sitting on a nest is not all that interesting.  But she lives at my house and so I have an interest in her well-being as well as her future family.  I say hello and good-by as I come and go.

Yesterday she wasn’t there (as she sometimes is not) and there was this weird thing in the next.  After staring I realized it was a baby’s head with its beak stretched so wide I thought he would hurt himself.  I also thought it was hilarious.  Mama was no where around but he was sitting there with his mouth wide, like totally stressed out! Like Brian wanting me to walk home with the whistle in my mouth.  Little dude wanted to be ready to eat the nanosecond his mama came back with food. Not a relaxed little dude.  This morning I think I saw two heads.  It’s hard to tell since the nest is so high and I don’t dare go over there.  So she has her family now.  And she is still huge.  She’s the biggest robin I’ve ever seen!  I hope they all make it ok.

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4/25 – Sometimes I’ll think about calling Brian.  Like sometimes I would call him on my walk to the gym for my lunch hour.  I usually go between 11 and noon and I’d call to see if he was up and how he was doing.

Today I picked up my gym bag to head out the door and I thought, “I’ll call Brian to see if he’s doing ok.”

I can’t believe how easy it is to forget sometimes.  I can’t believe how my stomach drops like it has lead in it when this happens.  Sometimes I forget and think I’ll call him on the way home to see if he wants me to pick something up.  The realization is the saddest feeling. And then I feel so lonely.  I will never call him again.  His number is just data in my cell phone.  There is no person on the other end.

I hate when it happens.  It just makes the constant low-grade ache that much worse.

Slippers

written Sunday, 4/22:

Made Brian’s car my own today.  It was a simple going through of his things that I felt I could manage.  I felt that a sacrifice had been made.  My car is now gone.  This makes it ok for Brian’s car to fully become mine.  Gluttonous to fully own two cars, really.  I owned mine.  I drove his.

So I cleaned out the glove compartment. Throwing the crap away.  Bring the important papers in to organize.  Cleaned out the middle console, brought the Jimmy Buffett and Steve Goodman CD’s in.  Cleaned out more crap from the console, left a few things in there as reminders and mementos of whose car it used to be.  Put up my CD holder over the visor, taken from my car yesterday when I sold it.  Put my stuff in the console.  Put in my jumper cables and my ice scraper (now there are two sets of these in the car).

The hard part:  Brian’s slippers.

Its three and a half days before he will die.  Late Saturday afternoon.  Phil Joseph has just left after a shorter than hoped for visit.  Brian is in extreme pain and the purple is spreading down his feet.  At this point we don’t understand a lot about that.  Delirium getting worse as evening sets in.  I’m getting scared.  Feeling alone.  Brian can’t help with decision-making.  Call Mark the Nurse.  He says go to the ER.  So I tell Brian (who is not happy about this.  I tell him I can’t do it on my own).  Call EMS because he can’t make it to the car and to the hospital lobby.  He can’t wait in the lobby to be seen.  They ask questions and tell me because it’s not an emergency they will be there within the hour.

So I pack.  I have skills at hospital packing and especially last-minute hospital packing.  Change of clothes for Brian, just in case.  Books, journal, computer for me, none of which I will ever touch but make me feel better to bring.  Phone call to Jeff to ask him to come be with us so I am not alone.  When EMS arrive they get the gurney in the room and Brian has only to step from bed to gurney.  I realize he is without socks or shoes and I know how funny he is about this.  Even at his sickest it was rare for him not to get fully dressed to go see Dr. C.  Very rarely would he wear sweats and slippers.  But knowing he is beyond shoes at this point I grab slippers at the last-minute and throw them in the back of his car.  Just in case.  When we return home eight hours later I leave the slippers.  Only so many hands.  Trying to get to the door to let EMS and gurney in.

Flash forward 48 hours.  Trip to hospice home.  EMS again.  Bigger suitcase because I believe we will be there 2-3 days.  This time I take my car.  Slippers forgotten.

Until Thursday morning loading up the car with Niki and Adam to head to Ohio.  There are the slippers.  Unused.  Un-needed.  Forgotten.  Left behind.  What a sad thing.  Everything happened so fast.  I didn’t have time to get the slippers out of the car.  He didn’t have time to need to use them.

So there they have stayed.  I have been unable to bring them in the past seven weeks.  Why?

“Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed…. They live by symbols.  They read meaning into the barrage of spam on the unused computer, the delete key that stops working, imagined abandonment in the decision to replace it.  The voice on my answering machine is still John’s.  The fact that it was his in the first place arbitrary, having to do with who was around on the day they answering machine last needed programming, but if I needed to retape it now I would do so with a sense of betrayal.  One day when I was talking on the telephone in his office I mindlessly turned the pages of the dictionary that he has always left open on the table by the desk.  When I realized what I had done I was stricken:  what word has he last looked up, what had he been thinking?  By turning the pages had I lost the message?”

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005

That’s how it was when Brian died.  If I leave things as they were then I can easily recall when he was alive.  If I leave the slippers in the car, then I don’t have to think about how bringing them in is an acknowledgement that he is gone.  An acknowledgement of finality.  If they stay in the car it is because I have put them there to take to him if he wants to use them.

But today I did it.  And it was Joan Didion’s passage above that helped me.  It was her magical thinking – a term that I interpret to mean (in this context) that he might come back, time might reverse itself and so I need to be ready.  By not disturbing the Kleenex, by not changing a thing.  By leaving the slippers where they are.  Her magical thinking seemed so much worse than mine.  I don’t know if that’s true or I want it to be true because I don’t want to be in that much pain (sudden death of heart attack at the dinner table, 40 years of marriage – that is a lot of pain).  But I told myself the slippers must come in.  It is not a betrayal as a part of me feels it is.  It is not an ending to the memory or the pain.  It is not giving up on finding the message or the meaning.  These are his slippers.  The ones I helped him pick out at Kmart.  I am just bringing his slippers inside.  I cannot live in this  snapshot of where everything was and what everything looked like the last time he left the house.  I cannot keep expecting something to change.  Now, I am in no way ready to do this on any larger scale, but I did bring the slippers in.

And I survived.

Open Your Eyes

Open your eyes and see the future
Open your eyes and let go
You are holding on so tightly and trying so hard to make it work

Brian held on so long.  Fought so hard
He was so afraid
I wanted him to tell me he accepted it
That he was ready
That it was ok
I wanted him to tell me good-bye
That he loved me.
That it was all good
Now he is gone and that energy has transferred to me.
I am afraid
I can’t let go
I can’t say good-bye

My future self is beside me
She sees what will come to pass
She knows
She knows whether it’s a moment
Or a process
Or a realization
I can’t get to her right now
Can’t join her
Because I am holding on so tightly
There is a wide gulf between us
Between me and my future
She wants me to open my eyes
And let go
Open my eyes
And say good-bye
She knows it hurts
She knows I am confused
She can’t do anything about that
That is something I must go through
All she can do is stay beside me
Holding my hand
Trusting when I cannot
Just like I did for Brian
I knew he was scared
I knew he was in pain
I knew he was doing the best he could
I couldn’t take any of that away
Couldn’t make anything better
Couldn’t do the work for him
All I could do was sit beside him
And hold his hand
Trusting in what was ahead when he could not
I knew he would make it
Knew that love and peace and understand were waiting
Now I am in the same boat
I am confused, forgetful
I can’t make decisions
Can’t figure it out
Can’t express my pain and fear
My future self knows there is no rush
What is to come has already happened
I don’t have a timeline to keep

Don’t worry about the house
Or the money
Just rest
Be still
You are so tired
From holding on so tightly

My future self loves me
She is holding my hand
She wants me to know that it all works out
She feels my pain
And knows I will get through it
It was her pain
She feels some of it still
I will be able to open my eyes
Let go
Say good-bye
She knows I am not ready just yet.
She has patience with me even though I do not
But she will stay beside me
She will be there
And when I have opened my eyes
My heart
Let go
Said good-bye
I will bridge the gap
And step into my future

 

 

 

India

I’ve been nervous to say what my plans for “the next thing” are because I don’t really have it fully formed in my mind and I don’t really know what I’m doing.  Which, when you tell people, and you can’t describe it, just makes you sound a little crazy. BUT. I’ve told enough people now that I can’t really pretend it’s something I’m keeping to myself until I have it more hashed out. It’s time to stop hiding behind “people won’t understand why or accept that you want to do this,” and just start talking about it.

My hope is to sell the house, selling 90% (or more, if I can) of the things we own and putting a few things in storage.  It’s also become obvious to me that my mother will never not live in a nursing home, so it’s also time to sort through a few more of her things again to donate or sell.  Back in August I was unsure about this, thinking that it was conceivable that she would live on her own again or live in an assisted living situation where she might need some things.  After being in a nursing home for 9 months, it’s clear this is not the case and it’s time once again to sit in judgement of the things that have amassed to represent a piece of my mothers life.  Might as well do it all at the same time – hers, his, mine, and ours.  Rip the one body-sized band-aid off at once and be done with it.

In an ideal world where things run exactly on the timeline I create in my head, I would like to be able to sell the house within a year.  My neighbors have told me that this house has never sat on the market for more than 4 or 5 months so I’m hoping that plays out again.  I’m also hoping that I can get out of it without too much skin in the game.  I’m still hoping to break even – another thing that doesn’t always play out in the “ideal world.”

After that, my hope, my plan, my desire, my dream is to travel to India and meditate until I don’t need to anymore.

That is it.  That is the sum total of the plan at this point.  I know nothing about India.  I know very little about Buddhism, Hinduism, or meditation.  I don’t know how to pick an ashram or how ashrams work.  I don’t know how to really differentiate between the philosophies of the different ashram spiritual leaders.  I don’t know how much it will cost.  I don’t know what I’ll need.  I know nothing.  What I’ve learned so far is that there are ashrams in India set up for Westerners to take their money and give them a spa experience for a few weeks and then there are ashrams in India to which you must be a student for several years before you are allowed to live there.  I can’t seem to find much about the in between!

What I really don’t know is if I’ll have the guts.  It will take no small amount of bravery to leave behind everything I know, sell everything I own, shed a well-worn and much cared for identity and go in search of a new one.  People I talk to seem to have faith in me, but then again, it’s not them doing it so it’s easy to say, “Sure, you got this!”

I plan and hope to be gone a while.  Six months to a year, maybe longer. I want to go in search of a spiritual self that has long been neglected.  I want to go in search of my own meaning and my own sense of understanding myself and the world.  I have an opportunity, a gift, that is a by-product of this tragedy.  There is more for me to know and to do in this life.  I can feel that calling.  And the area code the call is coming from appears to be India.

This probably sounds crazy to many of you, and it just might be.  I might not last three days in India.  I might not ever make it to the airport.  I might end up inColorado at vegan cooking school instead. BUT.  What is equally crazy is selling my home, moving to an apartment in Chapel Hill, continuing my job at UNC, and carrying on this exact same life with this one slight change:  Brian is gone.  That just doesn’t make sense to me and doesn’t feel good.  I loved our life.  It was not without its problems and it was not without its need for growth and change and radical crazy hippie ideas being constantly infused in it over time.  But it was a life I made with Brian.  And continuing on in this same way as if Brian’s death is on par with a job change or a move to a new house – as if it’s just a sad stumbling block on a life path that I’m not able to change, is the true insanity for me.

Brian was my partner and my best friend.  We spent nine years first fusing two lives together and then in the last 5 years building a whole new one together.  It was a good life.  It’s one major fault was that we did not let more people into it more frequently with more love.  That was such an unfortunate mistake on our part.  But we’re introverts and we were enough for each other, so we were basically happy.  We didn’t know.  We didn’t know that more people meant more contentment and more joy.  It’s a lesson I have learned and will never take for granted again.  But my topic sentence for this paragraph was that, together, this was our life.  It does not make sense to me to try to make it work without him.  I don’t think I could make it work.  In the long run.

I don’t believe I am meant to experience this tragedy and not seek greater meaning.  Part of me feels like that is an asshole thing to say because this is not just my tragedy.  It belongs to many.  And I don’t mean to suggest that those not packing for India right now aren’t in search of their own meaning and understanding and own source of light to get through the darkness.  But my life’s compass broke.  Rather than try to fix it, I go in search of a new one.  I hope I can begin that search in India.

No, I haven’t told my mother yet.  The cat, however, I think is on to me.

Last Weeks Accomplishments, Next Weeks To-Do

It’s list time!

• I was able to sell my car yesterday to Car Max.  I had gotten the title on Thursday and just decided I would drive to Greensboro to see what kind of offer they would give me.  I wasn’t super pleased with the offer but they did cite a couple of reasons why it was low.  The first is that it’s a Saturn, which they don’t make anymore.  The second was that it is a manual transmission.  Their statistic was that only 15% of the population can drive a stick AND they’re going to stop making them soon anyway.  There was also a “ding” on my Car Fax, which shouldn’t have been a ding at all, but back in 2006 a guy rear ended me at a stop light and so we called the police just to report it and be official. There was no damage to either car.  Not even paint chips (I mean my car is PLASTIC).  But it was a ding.  At first I decided to decline their offer and see if I could get anymore for it on my own. As soon as I got home I started regretting that decision.  I couldn’t get an appointment for detailing and shampooing for 3 to 4 weeks (what!  people and their cars man) and then just the thought of rushing to get it up on Craigslist, dealing with the phone calls, dealing with the notary and the DMV, all that.  So I decided to go back.  And Jeff, who was already in Greensboro once yesterday, drove back to pick me up.  So I did get a good deal, they didn’t low ball me I don’t think, but I didn’t get as much as I’d fantasized – but then, our cars and houses never seem to be worth what we hope these days.
• Now I am just a one car owner.  Strange.  I don’t miss my car, but I hate the reasons that I had to sell it.  Since I have Thursday mornings off I’m taking my plate back to the DMV that morning and will make all the auto insurance calls so that I am also only paying one car insurance next month. Also a really great thing.
• I met with the second financial planner on Tuesday morning and that went really well.  I liked the firm and am happy with the conversation we had and the advice he gave.  Right now, Brian has five separate retirement accounts and I so do I.  I have given them all the rollover paperwork and they are in the process of “getting things together.”  I’m going to rollover all five of Brian’s and 4 of mine into one account that will be managed by Fisher (that’s the name of the firm I’m working with).  The only one that won’t roll over is my active account with UNC, which can’t be rolled over. At some point, toward the end of the year, if I leave my job, I will then roll that one over as well.  When all the paperwork is ready I’ll go in for a big signing party and will sign 100’s of sheets of paper to make the transfers official and get set up with his new investing plan.
• The other piece of advice that Mr. Fisher gave me was not to invest any of my cash right now.  As you might imagine, I have inherited a bit of cash from life insurance and survivor benefits, now selling my car, etc.  I have a burning hole… I wouldn’t even call it a hole.  I have a deep-seated desire that rings in every atom of my body to invest this money.  My “innate hyper responsibility” is kicking in.  I got this money because Brian died and I want to be a good steward of the money.  Investing wisely.  Making sure that it grows into my future security.  I know Brian wanted to be able to provide for me in that way and  just sitting there in my savings account is not the best place for it.  BUT, I still have some big-ticket items to deal with.  I am going to pay off my student loan.  Today actually.  It’s going to be quite the moment here for me because I have never paid that much cash for anything AND I’ve been carrying this loan around with me since I was 21.  It’s an old friend at this point.  In Brian’s will he also specified that he wanted me to set up a college saving fund for Lily (which Fisher is helping me to do), and then there is the question of the house.  Will I have to put in any of my own cash to get out of it?  Possibly.  So between those three things alone, it is good not to invest the money right away.  I need to figure out what I need the cash for in the coming months and when the dust settles, then see what’s left (hopefully a really good chunk of it) and invest that.
• In other financial news I have really almost finished up a lot of that business.  I have closed all of Brian’s credit card accounts and bank accounts.  Now I must adjust the two cards that we shared jointly and have his name removed.  I must update all my beneficiary information that had Brian listed so that my assets don’t have to go through probate, should something untimely happen to me.  I’m working to complete some paperwork to have some savings bonds in my mothers name shifted so that I am co-owner.  This way, if something happens I can have access to that reserve.  I have an appointment in a couple of weeks to meet with Social Security to get the $255 death benefit that survivors are entitled to, still waiting on the title to Brian’s car, but it’s on its way.  I think those might be the last things.
• As far as the house goes, my next step is to pick a realtor (I have three referrals) and have a market value appraisal to get a rough estimate of what I might have to put in, in order to get out.  Mr. Fisher told me that if it’s too much, I’ll need to decide what I want to do, lose all my cash to get out of the house, or foreclose myself – ruining my credit, etc.  He wasn’t advising this and we talked about how hard this would be.  Our main focus was talking about just needing to get some more information in order to start thinking about that decision.  At what point does it become “not worth it.”  I’d love it to just be able to break even.  We’ll see.  After the appraisal, then I suppose it’s time to start work on getting it ready to put on the market.  I must have a yard sale.  Before or after putting it on the market?  And I have to get in the mind space of preparing to go through our things.  As Kathy pointed out to me, I have to be prepared for people to go into Brian’s room when they tour the house.  Which was a big enough realization, but seems still abstract because it feels far in the future.  The real blow was the knowledge that the realtor will have to go in and that will be soon, as I hope to connect with someone within the month.  Deep sigh.  To change or not change?  To move forward or stay still?  I wish one option was actually an easier option than the other.  But no short cuts here.
• In family news I Skyped with Adam, Rachel, and Lily last night which was funny because none of us know much about skype so we kept having technical difficulties, but it was fun regardless.  I got to meet their new kitten!  On Thursday night Aunt Kathy and Uncle Eric were driving through on their way to spend the week in Myrtle Beach with Heather, their daughter, so we went out to Ruby Tuesdays and had a really nice evening.  It’s always good to see them – they’re fun.  I also spent a couple of evenings in a row chatting with my friend Jackie (also family) and it was good to catch up with her.  I spent Monday night at Niki and Bryan’s, and have gone over a couple of times this week just for some moral support and just to be around people when I needed it.
• I’ve been waking up well before my alarms each morning.  Not sure what that’s about.  Maybe my internal clock is adjusting a little and this is just the new amount of sleep that is “enough” for me now.
• Work was good.  Much better than expected.  Mostly it just created a lot of confused feelings, which I am just sitting with because I don’t know what to do with “confused.”  I feel simultaneously fine and like a train wreck.  Since I can’t reconcile those two things, I think I just have to feel a little insane and a little out of control until a new emotional state blows in.  Hopefully it won’t be long before it does. It’s very disconcerting to feel both good and devastated at the same time.  Classes end on Wednesday of this upcoming week and then a week of finals, then a week of nothing, and then graduation on Mother’s Day.  So just a couple more weeks and things should be so much calmer and more relaxed.  Of course, then we move right into the summer orientation schedule which is a major commitment of the whole division.  The incoming class is roughly 5,000 students each year.  So in two months time (June and July) we have to get 5,000 students and their families orientated.  No small amount of work.  For the time being I’m remaining in the counseling center full-time which as been WONDERFUL.  As the interns wrap up their own semester, I’ll be able to move into one of their emptied offices and have my own space for the summer instead of jumping around offices and sharing our directors office.  My hope is that we’ll be able to work out a plan so that I stay at CWS full-time through the summer as well.  Fingers still crossed on that one.
• On today’s list specifically:  getting to the bank to deposit my car check, some thank you cards, meeting up with my friend Jessie for a walk (if the weather holds out) and/or some nice late spring porch sitting, groceries, laundry, working on cleaning up Brian’s electronics to get them ready for resell.  I’d like to run today, and that was the plan, but yesterday I did a Jillian Michaels DVD in the morning and I am so sore today that I don’t see running happening!  Plus it’s a rainy Sunday morning right now, and bed seems cozy.  I’m reading a book called The Year of Magical Thinking.  It was a book Brian always talked about reading but then when he got sicker, he felt the subject matter would be too close to home.  It’s also been recommended to me by a number of people and was recently gifted to me as well.  I’m not sure that now was the best time for me to start, because it is tough.  It’s a memoir of this woman author whose husband had a heart attack at the dinner table and died instantly.  The story is the story of the year of her life following his death.  In many things I see similarities in her thinking to mine and it is comforting to see this.  In others ways I cannot relate to her story and this is, unfortunately, discomfiting – as opposed to benign.   There is also an element of sadness for me.  As much as I have been told by EVERYONE that there is no manual, everyone’s path is unique, nothing is good or bad, I’m not sure that is 100% true.  I think it’s probably 90% true.  But there is this 10% slice of the pie that seems to be potentially universal to people in grief.  It’s that 10% that is making this a harder book to read.  It’s this awareness that this is going to be something that happens to all of us, that will happen to me again in some new way (like with my mother as a more obvious example), and that is frustrating.  I don’t want to do this again, and the realization that, true realization (as opposed to the cognitive awareness) that this is life and this is how this part of life plays out, is difficult to synthesize right now.  It is a good book and she is a good writer and she has made me feel better lots of times too.

It’s drizzling out right now, the upstairs of the house is nice and toasty at 74 (I LOVE IT), and kittie is curled up on the other side of the bed snoring a little.  I think next on the agenda is some toast and tea in bed, reading the news on the internets and maybe taking a morning nap!

Take care everyone!

What an Awful Day

I don’t know where this post begins.  And this will not be an easy one.

Maybe it begins yesterday at lunch when I asked Allen how I was supposed to give to people who were energy suckers.  How do I give to people who are just putting out negative energy?  Which, when you work with people who are sick, happens a lot.  How do I keep the gap open and not let the negative in?  I couldn’t figure out how to do both.  It was easy to give to co-workers, who I have a relationship with, who care, who are receptive, who I care about.  But the angry student?  The mentally ill student?  Their bad energy was sucking me dry.  I came home two nights this week and basically just went to bed.  Too tired and depressed to do anything else.  No storing up of any of that healing energy I was promised.

Or maybe this post begins this morning when Allen gave me a small mirror with a string tied to it.  To wear, to reflect the negative.  A protection.  An amulet. With a reminder that the gap can be like a heart valve.  That I can have the gap open when it is safe and good and close it when I need to protect myself.  I had told him that I felt like I went around giving, storing up all this healing energy in the gap, making deeper connections with people in the process, and then one angry student would come along and BAM!  All healing energy sucked out.  All my good work gone.  Back to zero.  Allen asked me if I ever played an instrument and I told him I played the flute.  He asked if I ever didn’t practice.  I said, “Sure, in the summer, no practicing.”  He then asked if, when I picked up the flute again if I had forgotten everything I learned. Of course not.  Energy is like that too, he said.  I may feel sucked dry, but what I’ve gained doesn’t leave me.  The goodness I generate and put out there doesn’t disappear.

Then, maybe this post starts this afternoon.  When I had four back to back student sessions that went really well.  Where I felt I was connecting with everyone.  Where I felt that giving was coming so easily.  Where I felt so good about how far each of them had come this semester, how proud I was of their progress.  Then after the meetings I shut the office door and cranked out 90 minutes of administrivia – something I was so behind on.  It felt so good to get somewhat caught up (not completely), but I felt so productive.  Then two good phone conversations with friends on the way home, when one even commented, “You sound GOOD!”  As I got closer to home and closer to the weekend I found my energy increasing.  My mood elevating.  I decided to get take out from the new Indian place, get a movie that just came out on DVD from Blockbuster, get a chocolate cupcake from the co-op.  I was looking forward to the evening.  Looking forward to the weekend and the plans that I have.  Not too much, not too little.  Thinking about the plans I have for next weekend. I was practically bouncing I was feeling so good today.

Then I remembered the mirror.  Really?  Allen said I would be surprised.  Allen said as unbelievable as it sounded, it worked.  Is is possible that I just deflected all negative junk all day, freeing me up to give and give, which subsequently filled me up with that much more goodness?  Really?  Seems laughable – but also plausible.

But I guess this post really begins when I went into the downstairs bathroom tonight.  Dinner eaten, cupcake devoured, DVD on pause for a bathroom break (TMI, but why else am I in the bathroom?)  I suddenly noticed that the door to the bedroom (which never latches because the house is 90 years old and that’s just the way it goes) was cracked open.  Cracked open just enough for a cat.  At some point in the past few days (I don’t go into the bathroom often) Kittie had let herself into Brian’s room and had most likely taken a nap.  Maybe she was doing that most days.  I thought, “How nice that Kittie does that.”  Then I thought, “Kittie is going in there.  No.  Doesn’t she know we’re not doing that right now?”  I felt… strange… is the only word.  I had just discovered that Kittie was disturbing this sacred place.  It was going on and I didn’t know about it.  And I survived.

Then I looked in the mirror, saw the mirror around my neck that was tucked under my shirt, and something inside burst.

Now, I need to pause to try to describe something.  Keening.  There is crying.  There is sobbing.  There is grieving.  And then there is keening.  Crying and sobbing.  You guys got those?  Grieving:  combines crying and sobbing with a lot of yelling and a lot of verbal dialogue.  Yelling at God.  Yelling at Brian.  Lots of questions, lots of “whys?”  Lots of re-reviewing what could have been different, better, nicer.  When we should have pushed more, when I should have held on to his hand a little longer, when I should have said I’m sorry faster.  Grieving is what I have described as those three waves.  The evening of the night Brian died, the evening last week after dinner with friends, and honestly not remembering the second time…. those were one and three.  But that was it.  Like a wave.  Like a crash.

Keening is a wail. It is wailing. It is a dramatic expression of sorrow (googled it).  It has no words.  No thoughts behind it, driving it.  It is animalistic.  It is loud.  It has no source of origin.  Meaning, you’re not keening because of something (like when I was grieving after dinner because of all the things the dinner reminded me I was without).  Keening is loud.  There is rocking.  Keening requires a towel, tissues don’t come close.  There is grasping for something solid to keep you grounded and to keep your sorrow from obliterating you.  There is not much thinking.  Only feeling.

When I looked into the mirror something inside burst and I instantly began to keen.  I sat in the chair that we had moved into the bathroom so that Brian could sit while he brushed his teeth or shaved or washed his face because he was too weak to stand to do those things.  I sat there keening.  Holding on to the chair and when that wasn’t strong enough, holding on to the sink.  After a while I needed even more grounding so I sank to the floor with my back against the vanity.  As I began to feel that the sorrow might be passing I looked over and eye level with me was the box of lidocaine patches that I often put on Brian’s back or thighs for extra pain support.

Then the grieving started.

I grieved like I have never allowed myself to grieve before for all of the pain that Brian endured the last 15 months of his life.  The patches, the pills, the pump, none of it helpful, none of it bringing him peace.  I screamed for all the treatments that he endured that only made him sicker and sicker.  How we spent two of the most unbearable weeks in the ICU in Charlotte – Brian in unimaginable pain and discomfort.  Me pushing him to do one more dose, just one more, pushing him to dig deeper just in case it was the one more dose that saved his life.  I screamed for how totally and completely and apologetically unfair it all was.  Why is this life?  Why does someone have to suffer like that?  Why are we here living life if that is something that can happen?  Why would we agree to that?  How unfair that our last days were so filled with pain that Brian was out of his mind in order to try to cope with it.

I ached with how sorry I was.  Even though it wasn’t my fault, that he should have had to go through that.  My mind flashed over all those mornings when I left for work, leaving him alone with his pain all day.  All the pills, each evening we changed a patch, each time we added a patch, how the pain pump did NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING for him.  I ached with the memory that his suffering was so bad that I begged for it to be over.  I begged him to let go.  I begged that it would end because I did not know how much more I could take.  I did not know how much more he could take.  Can you imagine how much pain your partner would need to be in in order for you to beg for the end?

I thought about the day we found out it was over.  What an awful day.  I thought about how she told us, what an awful day that was.  I thought about how she had to tell us twice.  She told us the first time, he got better, then he got worse, and she had to tell us again.  I wondered, really tried to imagine and recall what that was like for HIM.  In the moment I was having my own reaction to it, thinking about myself and what it meant to me while simultaneously trying to attend to him.  But there on the bathroom floor I just tried to imagine what he heard. What happened to him inside when she told him he was going to die and it was going to be soon and it was going to be over.  What an awful day.  What an awful awful day.  Why have I lived through two of those days.  How have I lived through them?  I finally allowed myself to feel our friends disbelief about how we were coping with things, how were were dealing with it all, how we were waking up each morning.  YES.  It was unimaginable.  YES.  It was so painful.  YES.  It was so unfair I could hurt someone.  YES YES YES.  I don’t know how we did it either.  It WAS too much.

Then I went into Brian’s room and sat in the chair.  The arm-chair that Jeff and I dragged down in those final weeks so I could sit with him while he napped.  I talked to him.  Told him I was sorry.  Started beating myself up.  If I could do it over…  I’m sorry I couldn’t make it better.  I don’t know why you loved me, I was awful.  I am awful.  I’m judgmental.  I’m selfish. I worry too much about what other people think.  Then finally this moment of levity.  What am I doing?  Am I really beating myself up because I can’t articulate my grief?  Why do I keep doing that?  What is this?  I’ve got a movie on pause here, I don’t need to be doing this to myself.  How ridiculous.  I can feel this pain without trying to hurt myself more. But it was good to grieve for the past 15 months.  Something I couldn’t really do at the time because all effort and energy was going in to living through it all and surviving.

It’s so odd what comes out.  And when it chooses to come out.  You have no heads up.  You have maybe three minutes notice that something is coming.  Something is about to happen. And then, the undertow. The waterworks.  The keening.

It was hard to be in his room.  I asked him how in the world I was supposed to disassemble this room?  I couldn’t even bring myself to use a tissue from the box by the bed.  How in the world would I be able to disassociate myself from these things, take the room down, and walk away?  I could stay in the house.  I can afford to pay the mortgage and all my bills on my salary.  I can stay at my job, stay in the house, and not disassemble anything.  Not walk away.

But it’s not walking away, is it?  I asked him.  It’s walking toward something else.  Something new.  Something good.  A phoenix process.  Take the memory of those awful days and make my life, and life in general, more beautiful.