Best case, I have complete bedrest this weekend.

Worst case; I broke my right foot again last night/a few hours ago.

I'm not certain if my doc has someone to run the X-Ray machine on the weekend. So, I might have to hold out til Mon. Or, get someone to take me to St. Joes downtown to their ER, rather than spending two days in the waiting room of Tempe St Lukes.

Yeah. I know.


I'll have to talk to my doctor regardless about my bone density.

Everyday there is a new terrible hit to my horrid financial situation.
And I should be easing my stress, not increasing it.
So, shit.

Good not-broken bone thoughts please?

A good night

Drinking wine?
That's a Sedar.
Sharing the Story of the Exodus and the Chosen People's freedom from bondage?
That's a Sedar.
Eating way too much wonderful food?
That's a Sedar.
Getting home at midnight, after inviting Elijah in?
Oh, you better believe that's a Sedar.




With my usual Jewish family members travelling or working right now, I went over to Chabad this week for Passover. 
I am glad I did. 

It feels good to come home - if not happy, then at the very least, with more Hope than I have had in the past few days. 
The company around me tonight certainly helped as well. I am ever thankful for my friends. For (even a little) local support. 

Veni domum

I was gone this weekend out to Gold Canyon for the wedding of two of Wash's fraternity brothers.

It was beautiful and moving beyond words I have right now. I'll process some and write more.




It was also my first wedding I've been to alone/without a partner/ since Wash passed.
So, a lot of emotions.


I had a really good session for about 3 hours on Fri morning with Hospice grief services. It was helpful in many ways, and I have some reading resources to explore, and I'll have a standing appointment either weekly or bi-weekly. Which, again, is better than anything AHCCCS provides.

So, I thankfully have a few new tools to help me process some of my emotions from this weekend.

Thank you all. I'll catch you up in a bit.

Sponsors

I have not been able to work.

I'm trying to get some proper help, trying to find any odds-and-ends type of jobs I can do (like a bit of dog-walking) and competing against a world where I don't know what to say about my 3 year (paid) employment gap.

I'm making some good progress in my own self to be ready to move/let go of the only "home" I ever had with my husband, and all the memories I have here, ideally around fall or before winter.

But right now I need help.

I need help to pay my rent. ($700)
I need help to pay for my (NOT Smartphone- I have a flip phone and it can't surf the web) mobile. ($68)
I need help to keep my internet on, so I can have access to resources to keep my mental health from getting worse, to look for jobs I can do, to stay connected now to really anyone.
With my extrovert husband being dead and all, (maybe another reason?) I don't really have people/friends/family coming by to visit, or socialize with me.
I need help to keep my electricity and air conditioning on. It's getting to the 90s locally now, and will get hotter very fast, and right now I can barely afford to pay for 2 hours of running the A/C per day.
I need help to pay for my medications, and co-pays. Even my lowest Co-Pay of $4 adds up fast when
there are 5-10 scripts I fill each month. (Depending on my asthma, my mental health, if I have broken any bones say...)

I know it's hard times for everyone right now.
Most tax returns have already been spent.
I'm still waiting on the official total, but for me personally, with the debt from my own medical issues; and of course, with Wash's, all my Fed "return" (which is less than $100) goes right back.
Without me working, and with getting just a bit over $7K total from SSD for Wash, I somehow STILL owe the State of Arizona money too.

I owe everyone.
But, I would really like to NOT be evicted. I'd like to be able to part from this house/home on my own terms, since so little else has been under my control.

I need help.

If you can, please donate. The Fundly site is running to the end of this month, and the PayPal account set up by Wash's Fraternity is still open.
If you don't have anything to spare but a good wish or prayer for me, I appreciate even that.

Share my story.
Ask WHY it is ok for the State of Arizona to leave me stuck, with no services.


I am doing my hardest to try, but I lost so much more than just Wash when he died.

Concern

Hospice is sending someone over to talk to me on Friday.

So. Just have to make it to then.



I've gone back a bit. Minute-by-minute now, trying to exist.

I never knew how exhausting it was to feel so empty, alone, grieving.




Life continues, for all others.
I haven't figured out how to stop thinking about the person I had expected to spend MY life with. How to stop all those thoughts that come up when you love someone, and marry, and think about what the future could bring.

How to stop or quiet down the Gaius-in-my-head.

I'm tired of hurting and feeling nothing at the same time.


I don't have trust in Life anymore.

Mourning Calls

Not been very functional lately.

Over the last week there have been deaths around me; close friends losing loved ones I knew, or who were at different points in time, my mentors.


It's been hard to move, think, talk, or do anything.
Too much time crying.

My medication is helping to keep me from going down an even deeper hole, but I just can't anything.


I called Hospice, hopefully they can give me some help.



I can't focus on anything else, I can't sleep- and when I do; it's just nightmares and screaming. Screaming myself awake.

I can't turn off these thoughts in my head. Flashbacks, visions, whatever.
It's all just become too overwhelming. Too hard- no not hard, no goal. No motivation, nothing to search or strive for.


I wish I was stronger. I wish I could handle this.

I wish I knew how to live when it feels like my heart won't beat and I'm missing half of myself.
I wish I knew how to live when it feels like there is the voice and thoughts of a dead man I loved in my head.

I need help.
I don't feel 26 years old this week. I am young and scared, and far too old.

John Johnson

I am lonely/
It's really hard/
This poem...
sucks.

Nice PTSD wake up today: covered in sweat and screaming. Still shaking. My heart beat is way too fast. Good day to cuddle Hoban the Bear.

Happy Pi minute my love.

Happiest Pi day of my life

DST

6 months.

like healing from a heart transplant that did not happen.


I can walk again, catch my breath most days.

But it feels like being post-surgical. I'm still walking around with a giant hole inside of me.
Like a much much MUCH poorer (and probably sadder and lonelier) Tony Stark.

 Everything is different but it feels like so much has remained the same.



I miss my husband. I miss his company, his jokes, his kisses, his hugs, his laugh, and I miss my best friend.
He was.


I don't have that with anyone anymore.

I do not bore of the company of myself, but I do not wish to remain alone for 360 days a year on say, the Isle of Skye or Mann. That is not a life for me either.

It is quiet here. Disconcerting to me.

If Walls could talk

I bought myself an Anniversary card. One that I thought Wash might have chosen for me.

I think this is going to be the hardest week/anniversary to deal with before this coming Sept.
There is a big part of me that just wants to curl in a ball under my covers with my kitties and cry.
There is also a part that knows time will pass on.

6 months since he died tomorrow. Half of a year. Autumn and 'Winter' [well, AZ winter].
I have extra Xanax for this week, I talked to my doctor about it back in Feb.

I'm so sad, and so angry at the same time.
We never even got one year of marriage without cancer. We never got to have even one anniversary "normal". Without cancer, or the threat of death hanging over us.
I'm mad and sad.



Wash used to create. He would make me things; goggles, watch-chains, a Cryptex (my engagement present) leather pieces. Mini models. Stories. Sketches.
There will never be any new things like that from him ever again.

The card is from me. To me. In his name and memory only.


I wanted more. I was not ready. I am not ready.
It is too late now.
14 March 2009 was the top. That was the happiest Pi day. The day where anything and everything in our life together was possible.

We should have been two joined families. It's too late now.


6 months tomorrow. Should have been our 4th anniversary in 4 days.

Shabbat Shalom!

I have some melancholia in my bones today.

Are anniversaries still something to bring up, to celebrate, if there is no one to celebrate for/with?

My wedding anniversary is next week.
Pi day, of course.


I'm a widow. Am I allowed an anniversary, still? What, if anything is there to celebrate? My husband's death? I'm not that morbid.
The 6 or so weeks of marriage we had before the tumor grew so big it began to change him?
The few months we took to secretly plan an elopement?

Celebrating dreams and ideas that will never happen? The home never built. The children never to be born.



The cats and I have decided staying in bed and crying is the best move.

It doesn't seem real today. That he is gone.


Tomorrow is Sunday. That was his Gaming Day.
Too many memories today of loss.
Too many.

It is hailing again in tempe. Large.

ECCC episode IV: A New Hope

There is too much for one, or even two posts from the last week. I will have to do a poor job of just summing it in brief.

I was happy. I was happy this past week, in a way I had not been since 4 years ago when Wash and I took our little trip to Vegas and got married.
Those few days of, and the two days of 'Honeymoon' we had after were my happy moments. The happiness in his face, our joy, and our utter faith and confidence that we (might have some bad and good moments) would be together from that point on, for decades, until we both died in our advanced ages- hopefully together.

That is really the only thing I could ever be mad at him for; he broke that promise. He promised, he swore to me he would let me die first.
I cannot be mad though, as he did not ask for it. He did not ask for cancer, and he did not ask for an early death. He did not ask to die before he ever saw 30 years go by.


So, it was a difference. 4 years without really having a smile, sustained joy. Excitement.

Meeting new friends was more wonderful than I think I'd felt it at any other time in my life. It is like an emotional puzzle with other people as pieces, all coming together to create a feeling of 'completion'.

Seeing some "old" friends was a true joy as well. I had a chance to bond and become much closer to someone Wash was quite fond of, and cared for. Well, he did that with all his friends, true, but I recall him saying many times over how much we all had in common- he expected us to be the type of people to remain close and good friends for our adult lives.
Having had a longer chance to meet and talk with her, his lovely Brother, I have to agree.
It was a feeling so lovely, so happy, so light!, to be able to talk to someone else who knew my Wash BEFORE the cancer. Who knew him as the person/man I had fallen in love with. It was easier to remember the happy times we had BC and to share them, and mostly to laugh.

It was good for me to see his friends and the other people he adored/loved who carry on his passions. Who love certain parts of architecture as he did.

Perhaps that is one reason why ECCC was so comfortable for me; instead of utterly terrifying.
It was a giant center filled with people very much like myself, and even more like my Wash. There was familiarity there. A sense of remembrance; not having ever been to Emerald City ComicCon, the exact layout was not familiar; but the people, the CosPlay, the games, the booths... all images that I recognized.

I went down at one point to the lowest low convention room/basement/lower basement.
Also known as the "Gaming Rooms".
..........
[Insert Table/Card/Dice/LAN gamers growling at yet again, being stereotyped even within the 'geek' Subculture, and thrown in the 'basement']

One person I spoke to suggested, perhaps only partially joking, that the elevator button just have a sticker with "Dungeon" put over the Lower Level/Basement button.

However, I wanted to see if I could find anyone who way playing Warhammer [40K or Fantasy] or a table-top game, since I play a bit myself. Mentally, it felt like Wash would also kick my ass or haunt me if I was at Con and did not check things out.
I am glad I did.
I met a exhibitor there who introduced me to a new Table-top game [Fanticide] which my friends ended up buying for me.

It is a pretty cool game to begin with; but more so, it is compatible with other TT sets. You can buy specific models for the game, of course, but you can also use anything else you already have/own.
For me, this is really the best I can ask for.

I can have a (new) game to play with some of *my* W40K sets and minis that I kept, and the local Games Depot took Wash's old stuff to be donated to their game room, for all others to play with. [Outside of what he Willed for his friends to keep]. I can go down, play on the terrain that Wash and I made, but not the *same* game that we played. It will not have those same memories, which are mostly keeping me from doing any W40K playing myself. It is too hard, when all I can think of is him as a missing partner.
With a new game however, I am excited to learn the new things, to build on the knowledge that Wash gave me by teaching me these kinds of games [slightly different than the D&D stuff I did a LONG time ago].
I'm excited about playing this new game.

I know that Wash would have been pleased beyond words at that.
I'm pleased with myself for feeling I'm doing this more for myself than just for his memory.

Highlights I will address in future posts; meeting specific people/celebrities, panels, Con commentary.


*****************************************************************

I am back home now.
My cats have calmed down, some. Aelphie does not wish to let me out of her sight (like she did as a wee kitten) and if she has the chance, will crawl into my lap.
She is not a lap-cat, either.

Leto has been chirping a lot more, and running around- pretty much acting like a kitten. At 3 years old for a male Maine Coon, technically, he still is a kitten. I am pretty certain he just missed having someone around- all.the.time.
That has been his only life really; as a companion. To Wash, every day for more than the first two years of that cat's life, he was with Wash. Then, me.
I think if Aelphie would tolerate it, he would play with her. She does not, alas.



This has been a very changing week for me. Though I have had a lot of fears, I have learned that I can get through them. Not all the time, or even with 100% consistency, but I can. More so, I tried. I put myself out, I lived as Tashi; and I let myself experience life as Wash would have (wanted).


The past week opened me up to trying again. To See.

There are times still to just be Going Through The Motions, and now I also feel ready to try living again.
That spark in me of love, and life is gone. I know that. He is never coming back. I will never feel that same lifebeat with anyone else.
But I still remain.

My heart still beats.
I still breathe, even when it is hard or I've forgotten how.
My blood still flows, my mind and body; still connected to each other and the world.


Brain Cancer- Glioblastoma Multiforme took my husband, my love, my life, my Wash, our future.
It took from me too, so much I perhaps cannot even list it all.

But I still remain.

I cognate.
I see.

I remain. 

I know I am back at MY home. Both Kitties slept in my bed last night cuddling and purring. Good to wake up to. Today: Con Laundry!

Magical weekend at Emerald City Comic Con! So many memories, happy hugs, & good tears. My Wash would have been proud. I cannot wait to return. Next year!

Memorable moment for today #ECCC Getting to hug Paul McGillion and thank him for how happy he made Wash, as an actor. We were both crying.