Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Streaking
I feel like I am turning into a character from a Stephen King novel.
It is cold and wet outside; the sky covered in clouds.
I am burying myself in blankets and socks. Also, a warm cat or two to snuggle with.
So much writing. I need a new ribbon for my typewriter. [Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe portable]
Actually, my online writing is done on the computer, the typewriter is just my old, old friend; I think I got mine back in 1990? Thereabouts.
However, the overall mood, the same themes as are in the books I've read until they became cannon, it feels a bit odd to suddenly be living it.
I don't really want to see anyone right now, no company. No distractions.
My downstairs is finally closer to being cleaned and organized in a way my Asperger brain enjoys and can function in. Part of my brain is already doing the same to my upstairs level, but the actual work there is harder; the bedroom is still the last room where there are things left that he moved and touched and put into place.
It is harder to be 'ready' to change that. Ready, ha. As if such a thing could happen in a human life. Rationality can only go so far, even I could only prepare for some of what was to come.
Cleaning the bedroom changes it. Changes it TO a bedroom. It started that way, when we first moved here in 2008. Once he got sick though, it changed. We slept there, yes, but being bed-bound changes so much. The mood of the room was not the same. The items in it. The sounds. The colours. The photos and objects on the walls, even.
It was a place of sickness, even by accident. By proxy.
Now to me, it still holds the strongest memories, and the majority of my reluctance to change it.
Words and thoughts, even lucid dreams rob me of any real 'rest'. My thoughts have become a perpetual motion machine, spinning ever forward and back. Flipping between some social order of "normal" to be outside of my house and in social situations, to hysterical uncontrolled laughter at something that I find funny or he did. I hear his voice less in my head, but a stronger compulsion to 'talk' to his TARDIS urn.
I miss his body, but in strange ways. I just miss how he felt pressed against me. I miss having my head and my ear line up with his heart when we were physically close. I miss kissing the part of his neck where it met his hairline. I miss how his ears were always cold, even in the Arizona summer.
Mostly it comes at night, when I am alone in the bedroom-that-is-not-a-bedroom, sleeping in a bed that feels half empty.
It is different because there was no choice involved. He did not choose cancer. He did not choose to die young. He did not choose to have a tumor remove his memories and change his being.
He only chose how to live.
Busy days help me. Busy days though, cannot keep out the thoughts. The questions.
The world is so open to me, but the person I want to share everything of myself with is gone.
Is it still a desire if there is complete certainty it will never happen?
It is cold and wet outside; the sky covered in clouds.
I am burying myself in blankets and socks. Also, a warm cat or two to snuggle with.
So much writing. I need a new ribbon for my typewriter. [Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe portable]
Actually, my online writing is done on the computer, the typewriter is just my old, old friend; I think I got mine back in 1990? Thereabouts.
However, the overall mood, the same themes as are in the books I've read until they became cannon, it feels a bit odd to suddenly be living it.
I don't really want to see anyone right now, no company. No distractions.
My downstairs is finally closer to being cleaned and organized in a way my Asperger brain enjoys and can function in. Part of my brain is already doing the same to my upstairs level, but the actual work there is harder; the bedroom is still the last room where there are things left that he moved and touched and put into place.
It is harder to be 'ready' to change that. Ready, ha. As if such a thing could happen in a human life. Rationality can only go so far, even I could only prepare for some of what was to come.
Cleaning the bedroom changes it. Changes it TO a bedroom. It started that way, when we first moved here in 2008. Once he got sick though, it changed. We slept there, yes, but being bed-bound changes so much. The mood of the room was not the same. The items in it. The sounds. The colours. The photos and objects on the walls, even.
It was a place of sickness, even by accident. By proxy.
Now to me, it still holds the strongest memories, and the majority of my reluctance to change it.
Words and thoughts, even lucid dreams rob me of any real 'rest'. My thoughts have become a perpetual motion machine, spinning ever forward and back. Flipping between some social order of "normal" to be outside of my house and in social situations, to hysterical uncontrolled laughter at something that I find funny or he did. I hear his voice less in my head, but a stronger compulsion to 'talk' to his TARDIS urn.
I miss his body, but in strange ways. I just miss how he felt pressed against me. I miss having my head and my ear line up with his heart when we were physically close. I miss kissing the part of his neck where it met his hairline. I miss how his ears were always cold, even in the Arizona summer.
Mostly it comes at night, when I am alone in the bedroom-that-is-not-a-bedroom, sleeping in a bed that feels half empty.
It is different because there was no choice involved. He did not choose cancer. He did not choose to die young. He did not choose to have a tumor remove his memories and change his being.
He only chose how to live.
Busy days help me. Busy days though, cannot keep out the thoughts. The questions.
The world is so open to me, but the person I want to share everything of myself with is gone.
Is it still a desire if there is complete certainty it will never happen?
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Busy
I plan to do some more writing tomorrow, catch up from this week. I've been pretty 'busy' which for me has been good lately.
Spent about 6 hours tonight over at my local Chabad helping to lead some Challah baking for the Shabbos.
I love baking, and I love baking bread, so I find it comforting.
The time passed pretty nicely.
The pay off is quite tasty too.
Spent about 6 hours tonight over at my local Chabad helping to lead some Challah baking for the Shabbos.
I love baking, and I love baking bread, so I find it comforting.
The time passed pretty nicely.
The pay off is quite tasty too.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
01.20.09
I've been awake for about an hour.
It just hit me.
The last time I saw this, the last Presidential Swearing-in, Wash was still alive. We were watching history being made together, and how excited and happy we would be to tell our children about getting to witness that day.
We were about 6 weeks away from getting married.
Wash was in school, and had a "brings in money" job, and a better one lined up after we got married and came back to AZ.
I was still working full-time. I saw myself being able to go back to school to finish my own degree in a year or two from that point.
Neither one of us thought in any way, at all, that he or me would not be there just 4 years later.
We thought that it was the start of a new wave of Hope and Change, but it turned.
4 years ago this day, we thought anything was possible.
Now, it's just me.
One "term".
I'll most likely be crying a lot today.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Crossposting
Feel free to go and read my latest article over at P-Mag if you would like.
For those who are coming to my blog for the first time; a nice history and summation is to the side in the links, or you can start from my starting place back in 2009.
For those who are here who have been widowed themselves, or lost someone they loved to brain cancer; I truly am sorry for your loss.
I strive to live up to (it was ours first, Wash and I) the title of this blog;
Every day I have to learn how to Hope.
For those who are coming to my blog for the first time; a nice history and summation is to the side in the links, or you can start from my starting place back in 2009.
For those who are here who have been widowed themselves, or lost someone they loved to brain cancer; I truly am sorry for your loss.
I strive to live up to (it was ours first, Wash and I) the title of this blog;
Every day I have to learn how to Hope.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
A Fable
A Fable of Love and Time
A long, long time ago; well, perhaps not so very long ago there was a young girl.
She was around 7 or so, in to her schooling years.
This young girl did not have many friends though. The other girls who would play near her would always whisper when she was by, or laugh and point. The boys ran away most times she tried to approach them.
So, the young girl spent a lot of time alone. Well, perhaps not so very alone.
This young girl learned to read very early on. She devoured the words in books, learned the names of all the characters, began to explore authors and scholars. She used larger and larger dictionaries as her choice in books grew and the complexity of the words and phrases she read. She would read at the dinner table if she could get away with it. In the car, and in the bathroom. She would read while walking, which sometimes became a problem with trees, or telephone poles, or light-posts.
Soon, it became hard for her to go anywhere without bringing along at least one book.
Books became the constant she did not have. Characters became friends. Familiar stories became comforts when real life was filled with taunting or occasional bouts of physical pain children who are not always well liked feel.
As she grew books were still her constant, though more scholarly than recreational as she aged.
Often she would spend as much time as she could in her room with a book, under a shade tree with a novel, or at the local library- her own personal castle filled with treasures. Priceless and worth all of the knowledge and history of Humanity.
One day, when she was feeling particularly sad and in need of the companionship of her favourite books, she left to go spend some time at the library. After reading a bit, she went and did her last walk through of the stacks, checking to see what was new, or what would call out to her, "Read me next!"
But it was not a book that called her name; but a woman.
An older woman, not as aged as her mother, but much older than her brother who was high school aged.
She looked so familiar to the young girl, but she was certain they had never met before.
The woman came closer slowly and then said a few sentences the young girl never forgot, and never told another living person.
It was a most amazing secret, and yet so profoundly sad there were days from then on the young girl was unable to smile and unable to say why.
The young girl after a while decided it had all been a dream. Fantastical dreams that had to be fiction. A distant memory of not her past/dream that slowly faded, but never truly left her.
The most realistic dream she ever had. But it had to have been a dream, the girl thought. Nothing like that could ever happen in Real Life.
The young girl grew even more. Older and older. Books were still her constant, though no longer her only companions or friends. She always had more books than friends, and did her entire life.
She fell in love, and out.
One day, only perhaps a long time ago, the girl had grown to become a woman.
She had fallen in love again, but this time, with the person who held a soul to match her own.
The person who shared the same beat in his heart as the one in hers.
Things seemed so happy, so close to perfect, and so full of hope.
Alas, Real Life stories have sad moments too.
Her Love became ill. He was to die, and that fact could not be changed; not by doctors, nor even the endless wishing The Woman did.
They had almost 3 years together. Living as best they could, always knowing each day could be the last they see each other. Knowing each night might be the last time they said, "I love you."
But, as this story is not over; there is more.
When her Love first became ill, he was very, very sick.
His brain had been changed; a tumor, pressure, surgeries, and many medical drugs.
His brain changed, but not his personality, heart, or soul.
The Woman spent many nights holding him in the hospital bed, arms wrapped around her Love, telling him it would all turn out ok, it had to. Wishing with all her heart that it would be, knowing it would not. The hardest lie; Death is coming, but do not fear.
One dark night in the hospital, during a quiet interlude without nurses coming in, her Love suddenly woke.
He said he had had a dream most realistic. In it there was a young girl in a large library like none he had seen before; to him the Stacks went on forever. The little girl was approached by a woman. The woman spoke to this girl. As the woman was walking away, she looked right at him.
When her Love woke to tell her this, he said it was an odd dream, but realistic as the woman in his dream was his Love; the very woman who was holding him in that hospital bed.
In that moment, neither the Woman nor her Love knew what was real and what was a dream. They only knew they were together, touching, holding each other. Sharing a heart-beat of worry for the unknown future.
The woman had never told her Love about that moment of her history. To her, it had faded into a dream.
The first she had thought of it in years was when he recounted his same vision to her.
Is it possible to send a message back in time? Is it possible to send a person to another time?
Could one meet their future selves?
If you had one chance, one minute to go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be? Would you even try?
Do you believe it possible for people who love each other, who perhaps share what some would deem a "soul" can share more; memories, visions, dreams, pain?
Or, perhaps this was not a long, long time ago; but rather, a long, long time in the future.
Do you believe Love is bound to a specific time, or can it stretch indefinitely; a Möbius band connecting all humans who Love?
A long, long time ago; well, perhaps not so very long ago there was a young girl.
She was around 7 or so, in to her schooling years.
This young girl did not have many friends though. The other girls who would play near her would always whisper when she was by, or laugh and point. The boys ran away most times she tried to approach them.
So, the young girl spent a lot of time alone. Well, perhaps not so very alone.
This young girl learned to read very early on. She devoured the words in books, learned the names of all the characters, began to explore authors and scholars. She used larger and larger dictionaries as her choice in books grew and the complexity of the words and phrases she read. She would read at the dinner table if she could get away with it. In the car, and in the bathroom. She would read while walking, which sometimes became a problem with trees, or telephone poles, or light-posts.
Soon, it became hard for her to go anywhere without bringing along at least one book.
Books became the constant she did not have. Characters became friends. Familiar stories became comforts when real life was filled with taunting or occasional bouts of physical pain children who are not always well liked feel.
As she grew books were still her constant, though more scholarly than recreational as she aged.
Often she would spend as much time as she could in her room with a book, under a shade tree with a novel, or at the local library- her own personal castle filled with treasures. Priceless and worth all of the knowledge and history of Humanity.
One day, when she was feeling particularly sad and in need of the companionship of her favourite books, she left to go spend some time at the library. After reading a bit, she went and did her last walk through of the stacks, checking to see what was new, or what would call out to her, "Read me next!"
But it was not a book that called her name; but a woman.
An older woman, not as aged as her mother, but much older than her brother who was high school aged.
She looked so familiar to the young girl, but she was certain they had never met before.
The woman came closer slowly and then said a few sentences the young girl never forgot, and never told another living person.
It was a most amazing secret, and yet so profoundly sad there were days from then on the young girl was unable to smile and unable to say why.
The young girl after a while decided it had all been a dream. Fantastical dreams that had to be fiction. A distant memory of not her past/dream that slowly faded, but never truly left her.
The most realistic dream she ever had. But it had to have been a dream, the girl thought. Nothing like that could ever happen in Real Life.
The young girl grew even more. Older and older. Books were still her constant, though no longer her only companions or friends. She always had more books than friends, and did her entire life.
She fell in love, and out.
One day, only perhaps a long time ago, the girl had grown to become a woman.
She had fallen in love again, but this time, with the person who held a soul to match her own.
The person who shared the same beat in his heart as the one in hers.
Things seemed so happy, so close to perfect, and so full of hope.
Alas, Real Life stories have sad moments too.
Her Love became ill. He was to die, and that fact could not be changed; not by doctors, nor even the endless wishing The Woman did.
They had almost 3 years together. Living as best they could, always knowing each day could be the last they see each other. Knowing each night might be the last time they said, "I love you."
But, as this story is not over; there is more.
When her Love first became ill, he was very, very sick.
His brain had been changed; a tumor, pressure, surgeries, and many medical drugs.
His brain changed, but not his personality, heart, or soul.
The Woman spent many nights holding him in the hospital bed, arms wrapped around her Love, telling him it would all turn out ok, it had to. Wishing with all her heart that it would be, knowing it would not. The hardest lie; Death is coming, but do not fear.
One dark night in the hospital, during a quiet interlude without nurses coming in, her Love suddenly woke.
He said he had had a dream most realistic. In it there was a young girl in a large library like none he had seen before; to him the Stacks went on forever. The little girl was approached by a woman. The woman spoke to this girl. As the woman was walking away, she looked right at him.
When her Love woke to tell her this, he said it was an odd dream, but realistic as the woman in his dream was his Love; the very woman who was holding him in that hospital bed.
In that moment, neither the Woman nor her Love knew what was real and what was a dream. They only knew they were together, touching, holding each other. Sharing a heart-beat of worry for the unknown future.
The woman had never told her Love about that moment of her history. To her, it had faded into a dream.
The first she had thought of it in years was when he recounted his same vision to her.
Is it possible to send a message back in time? Is it possible to send a person to another time?
Could one meet their future selves?
If you had one chance, one minute to go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be? Would you even try?
Do you believe it possible for people who love each other, who perhaps share what some would deem a "soul" can share more; memories, visions, dreams, pain?
Or, perhaps this was not a long, long time ago; but rather, a long, long time in the future.
Do you believe Love is bound to a specific time, or can it stretch indefinitely; a Möbius band connecting all humans who Love?
Monday, January 14, 2013
Android Sheep
Another bad night for me.
Adjusting to Widowhood is not easy. For every reason.
I am sad and missing my husband, my late husband, very much.
I will not be shamed about my choice to be more open and public with my grief.
It is far too stigmatized and misunderstood as is, despite almost all the human population feeling it at some point in their life, or several.
Did I laugh today? Yes.
Am I still sad to be going to bed alone tonight, without the person who should be there? Yes.
Grief is complicated, and unique to every person.
This is mine.
I went grocery shopping today.
I cleaned. Did dishes. Took care of laundry and my cats.
I also spent a half hour sobbing on my kitchen floor. Later on, more tears with a pillow.
There have been more functional days, and days where I've started to have more intense emotions, often overwhelming.
It is a mix every time I wake if I think I'm still dreaming, or if I recall right away that he is gone.
He is my husband. He was my late husband.
Such difference in emotion in those phrases, what information it conveys.
I see time like I never have before.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Follow-up
Well, I have a number to call and check, but DES social rep. (after a few more hours of calls this am) says that after 5am tomorrow I am back on my Health Insurance and will have SNAP re-instated!
So, one more day to "wait and see", but I'm quite hopeful at this stage.
Longer story/saga to come. Might get the press involved again this year.
Cause, there is something terribly wrong with the system when they lie, just to kick people off and HOPE they are too sick to reapply.
So, one more day to "wait and see", but I'm quite hopeful at this stage.
Longer story/saga to come. Might get the press involved again this year.
Cause, there is something terribly wrong with the system when they lie, just to kick people off and HOPE they are too sick to reapply.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
An Unexpected Journey
Yesterday was a pretty awful day.
Last night was filled with dreams and emotions; re-living the terrifying moments of last year.
This morning I wake up to be reminded of how much I am loved and cared for; because my beloved friends are sending me to EMERALD CITY 'CON 2013!
Seattle! 3 days of Geeks & Nerds; Artists & Authors. Friends!
I am in happy, happy shock.
I will have to post the video; my gift was inside another gift; an interactive story book.
MB, KB, LL, NM <3 are="are" p="p" wonderful.="wonderful." you="you">
So many people I admire will be there. So many creations I have grown up with, adore, aspire to.
I am still not certain how to take Wash, because he does have to come with me somehow, but he will be there too. It's just not a 'Con without Wash there.
Seattle: 2 months and I will be in you!
I am in shock.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Body-Hit
Not a great day. Woke up and everything feels off; another day where I forgot for a minute he was dead.
Not quite like pudding-brain, but close. Walking through oatmeal; invisible resistance.
No comments really needed.
This is Widowhood at 26 years old.
I wish I had more to say.
Not quite like pudding-brain, but close. Walking through oatmeal; invisible resistance.
No comments really needed.
This is Widowhood at 26 years old.
I wish I had more to say.
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