Twinkle

I think I've slept about 6 hours in the last - however many days it has been since Wed or Thurs last week.

I hear things. Doors and cupboards closing. It's not in my house, and I can't tell with certainty if it is coming from the neighbour's place.

Leto has been trying to be helpful. I wish I could sleep easy like him.


I wish my brain would stop showing me the worst moments of my life, when I want and need to rest.

I am tired of constantly re-living the trauma. But I can't make it stop.
Everything is wrong.

The Parallels

I'm feeling lost.


Nothing seems truly real. How can I remember him, smell him, hear his voice... when he is dead in a box?


I go through his notebooks... he was brilliant. He had so many ideas. Designs. Plans.


I cannot figure out what I have.

How can he be gone, when he is still in my head?

Alison

This will be short for now. Thinking and focusing my eyes kind of hurts.


I have not been sleeping well. I've been able to get some 1 or 2 hour naps in, but I'm not sleeping at night anymore. I also have to keep more distractions around me before I can sleep now too.
Too many bad thoughts. Memories. Flashbacks.
I see the clock hit 1am, 3:14am, 5am, 7am onward.


I can't find a good spot to sleep in anymore. His pillows barely smell like him.

Cuddling Hoban or even a squirmy Leto helps some, but not the way I want or need.

There are moments of utter fright now. Terror for myself. It's been years since I last felt that.
Noises at night. Murder on the local news.


I've felt very numb. In the last few days. Except, when I try to sleep.
Not neutral, numb.

The numbness makes it easier to pass off as "normal" around other people though.
Wash used to hate that. Me going numb.  (sotto voce) but he's dead now...


My heart feels nothing, but my head hurts- aches.





I had an unsettling conversation in my head with GaiusWash about math.
I miss having someone to talk to.
I miss holding hands.

My head aches.

Oh. Always tough to wake up & think for a min he is still alive. Fear, worry, anxiety, then crushing depression. Widowhood is an empty bed.

Doves Cry

I am angry.

I don't know if this is a passing thing, a "phase" as it were, or if this is my new state of being.

I have a small cold. I'm not certain how my low grade fever is effecting me.



I am angry.
I am angry there is no space for me.
I am angry there is no safe place for me to talk, to someone.
I am angry that Hospice has to be considered part of the "safety net".

I am angry at my friends, the people I love. I am angry and love them at the same time. It's a painful contradictory feeling.
I am angry at life. I am angry at the inherent unfairness. Of it all.

I am angry that every week I see more friends have birthdays that place them at or right next to my age.
I am angry that every week now someone new is engaged, married, or pregnant. In about 6 months I suppose I'll be angry at all the births around his death date.

I am angry at myself and society. I am angry that I will never be pregnant again. That I will never carry life, that my husband will never live on. That I have no more family with his death. He was my family unit, and now it is singular, and I'm angry that I had so little time with him.
I am angry at the milestones I have and will miss.

I am so angry at society for telling me I am worthless if I do not reproduce.

I am angry at society for telling me I am worthless for being poor. I am angry when people say it is my own fault, my own choices. I am angry when someone implies Wash wanted or asked for terminal brain cancer. 

I am angry at myself because I cannot be fully happy for my friends.
I am angry at comments about couples trying to get pregnant for under 6 months, and how upset/sad/frustrated they are. I am angry when those same people then immediately get pregnant.

I am angry that I have no one to talk to.

I am angry at my best friend for dying, for leaving me. I am angry at myself for that very thought. For not being happy he is not in pain, like he wished.


I am angry when I stare at his TARDIS urn every day and night and wonder if anyone else remembers him?

I am angry that he died before so many wonderful things.
I am angry he will never see the Doctor Who 50th Anni. special. Or be part of it in some way, which he would have; if he had not had the cancer and was still alive.

I am angry at being told I have to change so many things.
I am angry that so many things will change and have regardless.

I am angry that I can remember the last hug I had from him, that I remember it was the last.

I am angry that I have to live a future without him. I am angry that I wake up every morning, and he does not, will not.

I am angry and it feels like a hot weighted stone upon my heart.

I am angry that I feel so utterly useless.
I am angry how disposable I feel. I am angry at the daily implication that my existence is worthless- or worse, costing of others.

I am angry, and so sad.

So I am either sick with a cold or sick from all the tree sex/pollen. Either way I look like Jim Brewer without the fun.

Entering Widowhood: The In-Betweens

This post originally written and posted at Persephonemagazine

It’s been a couple months since my last post here on my new status as a “widow.” The horrid “W” word that no one in love or marriage actually wants to think about.

In that time I’ve made a few personal steps forward, a few back, one even sideways I would say. I have had friends and mentors die in the last few weeks, friends get married, friends getting pregnant, friends having their children, and friends getting ready to graduate from college and “move on” to the next phase of their own lives.

Through it all, my constant is still defined by my husband’s death. I can see how easy it is when one is steps away from the actual death, is not closely bereaved. Life continues for most. They still have school, or a job. They have children who need them, and a living reason to get up in the morning, to eat, to take care of their own selves. That becomes harder for me.

I am a person of habit. I have lost them all. The schedule I had before my husband became sick is something I will never get back to. The schedule I had with him, is also something I am trying to accept that I will never have back.

I’ve had a good bereavement counselor from Hospice see me, and that, to a degree, has been helping my mental state. It is always nice to hear that the feeling I have, the thoughts, most of the emotions are all in the “normal” range for grief. What we’ve spoken about more of is the really arbitrary number system that American society has on “moving on.” It seems to be around six months if you are a younger widow(er) and/ r have no children and around 12 months for those who were married, say, more than five years and/or had children. While some mourners certainly can fit those numbers, I feel rather constrained to have a faceless nobody tell me to “get over it, already.” (“It” being the death of my husband.)

As a note, for me personally, and I have heard from other widow(ers) that hearing the phrase “moving on” can be disgusting and heart-wrenching for the bereaved. “Moving On” has a lot of implications, and though, for the most part, the people who say that come from a place of good or kind intentions, what is most often heard is “Well, we’ve been able to not think about/speak about [dead person] we have decided it is time for you to stop as well.”

Being a young widow, I often hear that phrase. I have tried nicely to have my family and friends stop using it, but after a few weeks of being nice, I just tell them that I can’t talk to them if they must use that phrase. Being a young widow what I’m hearing more of as time passes on is something akin to, “Well, you’re young. Well, you still have time. Well, there are still options. Well, being young, you still have your whole life ahead of you!”

These phrases are also terribly not helpful.

Being “young” is not a hard and fast rule. By pure age or cycles around the sun, yes, I am in my mid-twenties.

By life experience, I am willing to wager I am far more mature than most people in their early- to mid-twenties.

I have “time.” Time for what, exactly? My husband thought he had time, too. His brain cancer began to grow when he was 24. He was dead one month after his 28th birthday.

Time is not something I take as a given anymore. Time is not my friend, nor my enemy. Time is not to be taken for granted by myself though. Or, perhaps by “time” it is meant that I have “time” to find (another?) love? That is quite a presumptuous thought on my own feelings of love, intimacy, and personal wishes.

I have “options.” Please, dear friend, expound on that. What options specifically? As it is my life, I believe the choices are mine to make. Options for living? Options for moving? Options for a job, a career, another lover? Generic statements that do not really support anything.

“…still have your whole life ahead of you.”

That phrase, however, might be the worst of them all. That is the exact problem. I do have the rest of my life, every second I breathe or have my blood beating, to go. I am all too aware of this. I am aware with every bit of my body that can feel, and every bit of my soul that can feel, time is taking me away from the person I had wanted, expected, and pledged my life to.

I am all too aware of the days, months, years, decades even that lie ahead of me, without the person who swore the deepest oath to be there with me through it.

I have my whole life to live, missing the part of life I wanted to live for. Missing the half of me that wanted to share in living.
That kind of grief and mourning cannot be rushed.

I am thankful for the Hospice services. My local Hospice that served Wash during his illness is a non-profit and I can feel the people who work there really do care, and have a lot of experience in addressing the mourning issues. I can only imagine how much more depressed I would be without them.

For me right now I am trying to work on stopping the comparisons of my life to the friends and social circles around me, and I have to stop comparing how my life is now to what I had in mind it would be.

I had prepared as best as I could, as my husband’s death was inevitable. His was not a cancer that can be “cured.” What is almost harder is knowing I could not prepare for the actual feelings I have had since he has died. Grieving who he was, our love, who he and we were going to be. Grieving the two pregnancies that almost were, and were lost. Grieving the anniversaries that now come, but are not cause for celebration.

Towards February and March I had played around a little with taking my wedding band and engagement ring off. Sometimes just for an hour at home. Sometimes for a whole night while I slept. Once or twice I even went outside on a walk without them. Then came the first wedding I went to since my Wash had passed. It was lovely, and my happiness for the couple is genuine. However, this was a wedding that Wash knew was coming. These were his friends, his brothers. This was a uniting of love that he should have been alive for. He should have been there to make a toast, to wish them well.

I stopped taking off my rings after that. I’m not ready to stop wearing the reminder of his promise to me. I’m not ready to take off my engagement ring that was the other half to his matching engagement ring. I have decided to forego any wedding invitations for the next while. Perhaps through this year, perhaps through next spring. I don’t want to limit myself to a specific number.

It’s not just the odd isolation that comes with being a young widow. I am stuck in many “in-betweens.” I am not in school finishing any degree. I love school, and I do have a desire to return someday. The timing is not right now. I do not yet have a job that provides me income, let alone a career. I’m not yet homeless, but I have no real way of moving anywhere new, despite my desire to leave this home I once shared with my love at some point likely this year. I have days now where I rarely cry, where I am starting to have longer hours together functioning. I am thrust as well into the space behind that where I still have moments breaking down and sobbing for hours until my eyes swell shut.
I am trying to stay friendly and in contact with the many many many more female friends I have who are pregnant or had/have kids.

It is hard for me to see something I wanted, something I had (if only for a few weeks), something I lost, something I will never have again. It is hard to have and own my own emotions and history and still be happy for those I love and care about. To visit and meet the child of a close friend who was born right before my Wash passed; I’m still working on how to cope with my own pain and express joy for the happiness in the lives of the people around me I love and care for. To hold hope for the friends and family I love that they will never have to face the pain I am living.

I will direct you up a few paragraphs and please ask you don’t placate me by saying I’m still young enough to have children, or to get married again, or to adopt (as a single??) or that “things will happen in their own time.”

So, how is this 26 year old widow doing?

There is no simple answer.

There is no set time on grief, or progress, or regression.

I simply am, now in place of “we simply are.”

For now, I am in-between. I still wear my rings, but I said my “goodbye” and listed my status on Facebook as “Widowed” instead of married. I have begun to really sort through his belongings, but have not yet fully parted with everything. Though I physically feel split in twain without him, I’m able to now stand on my one leg, even if I cannot move in any direction yet.

My journey continues.

Grimace

I'm writing this more for me than anyone else.


I don't know how to cope with my feelings and grief on a few issues bothering me right now.
I've decided to avoid weddings for the time being, which helps in a small way.

It just hurts to see the people I am friends with, the ones in my social circles, the ones I've grown up with .... grow up.
Buying houses.
Graduating. Finding a career. Or even a paying job.

The worst right now though, is the fertility.

The babies. The bumps, or pregnant friends.
The ones now "trying". The ones who have been "trying" for 2-6 months and complain.
The mothers who reassure. The message and chat boards I am afraid to even look in; because they are all filled or for people who want children.
Who want to be pregnant- and have more than the 0% chance I have.

I don't know how to deal. I don't know how to be happy for person after person after person going for and getting what I wanted.
What I tried for. What I almost had. What we almost had. What could have been.

The names written down by Wash, that I still have. The ones he wanted circled.
The sketches for the nursery that never was, never will be.

I don't know how to mourn him, and mourn the loss of the family we wanted, we tried for, we almost had, we could have had.

I don't know how to grieve when others are so happy and celebrating all around me.


I don't know how to be a widow, 26, and childless- not childfree.

Timing is never ideal. It would not have been. It might never have been.
But I wanted it.

Every image of society tells me there is something deeply wrong for it. And I did want it. I wanted it with him. I wanted to look at what we could have created. Seen some part of my love, even if merely chromosomes, live on.

I love my friends who don't want kids. That's absolutely their choice. I'll support that.
I love my friends who do want/have kids. That is absolutely their choice. I'll support that.


But when it's wanted, and lost, and then lost forever... it's a pain worse than a hole in my heart. More than a septal valve defect, it is a physical pain, a pain of the mind, body, and heart.

I just don't know how to deal.

I feel like I lost my family-with my husband, my larger family, his family almost wholly, and the future family I should have had with Wash.

I don't know how to cope with this pain.



I only feel better that I can at least put this somewhere besides my own mind.

Cunning

A few days ago a report came up on The Mary Sue relating to certain sellers on Etsy.com having their accounts suspended or blocked because they sold the hand knit “Jayne Cobb” style cap from the (un-aired) Firefly episode. Other sellers were reporting getting Cease & Desist letters from FOX regarding their selling hand-made knit caps.  As a lot of things on the internet do, news spread around the “Browncoat” (Firefly/Serenity fans) forums and sites, and a lot of attention was turned back on a show cancelled by FOX more than a decade ago.
When my late husband and I began to first date, we had already established at our first 'meeting' of each other what big Browncoats we both were. Though we had intended to be watching the new season (3) of the BBC show Robin Hood we ended up mostly speaking for hours on episodes of Firefly or how wonderful it was the fans brought about getting support for Serenity to be made.

That was in 2008. I had been to a previous showing of Can't Stop the Serenity ; a wonderful benefit for Equality Now  that was enjoyable not merely for the film, but for the camaraderie of the fans who watched it with me.  By the time summer of 08 had come, my husband [nicknamed early on by me as "Wash"] and I were more than casually dating and he invited to take me to our local showing of CSTS that summer. That was the end of June. We both excitedly did what a majority of the FF/Browncoat fans did, and Cosplayed. That first year I went as River Tam and he as one of the "Two by Two/Hands of Blue" agents.
That was the year he also picked up a little brown wristband that simply said, "Can't Stop the Signal".

[Brown band is his Browncoat, the yellow came from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. This is also our kitten Leto. Bonus kitty pic.]

He also received one other small thing. As we had been dating/courting for a few months then and we knew ahead that we would be attending CSTS together, I had decided to complete my first ever knitting project and make a "Jayne Cobb" style hat. I had no set pattern for it, just a copy of the DVDs and a very understanding pause button. I worked on my evenings, weekends, and lunch breaks to finish the hat in time for the show, which was late June. [Even knowing he was going to CosPlay as a different character]
I will never forget how his face lit up when he saw it, and even more when he realized it was for him. That I had made him a "Cunning Cap".

[I think he was pretty happy. This photo from 2008]

We both took turns playing with it for a long time, and enjoying a small quasi-tangible link to what was our favourite show. Serenity was the movie we chose to watch on our first date, sitting in a packed living room he shared with 2-3 other roommates. He was my Wash, and I his Zoe.
We even bothered our poor cat to some degree by making her wear the cap.

[Yes, I am holding a lightsaber. I am comfortable enough in my own geekery to accept more than one Space Fiction love. This is also my most serious "fearless" face.]

The hat to us became much more than a love token, or a symbol of our beloved show.
In 2009 my husband was diagnosed after two emergency brain surgeries with a terminal brain cancer.
For him, the quote from the episode featuring the Jayne Cap become almost his daily mantra.
"When you can't run anymore you crawl. When you can't do that... find someone to carry you." [Firefly ep. The Message]

My husband ran. Then for a long time he crawled. When the cancer took more and more of him, it was our friends, and our Browncoat friends who helped to carry us both. To care, to help, to carry.

I understand there is a lot of questions and animosity going around right now bouncing between the FOX owned IP, the 'Helper Monkeys' at ThinkGeek , and the many single person owned shops at Etsy who have been making by hand for years and years Jayne Cobb Cunning Caps to sell to the Browncoats who adore, love, desire one- but for whatever reason were unable to do so themselves.
The way I see it, FOX owned IP is making money off this venture, absolutely. Especially with the surge of "Geek Culture" becoming more acceptable and mainstream public. I know ThinkGeek is making some money as well**, but as they are a business with more than one employee, they do also have to play by legal rules and acquire the "rights" to a knitted cap design to be made to quality specs by another company- Riddle Junction. Not knowing too much copyright law myself, the only real comment about Riddle Junction I can make is that they are a 3rd party given the license by FOX to manufacture the knit caps then sold by ThinkGeek. TG is now in a sad position of angering some of the very fans they felt they were trying to include. Etsy shops that have had to be shut down are suffering- and by no means were these large scale operations bringing in "big bucks"- mostly female owned self-businesses covering costs of materials and shipping for other Browncoats. One such shop run by a wonderful woman named K. (who wishes to remain anonymous in the hopes her shop can be reopened) makes many geek themed items (among them from Doctor Who, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and more) but did not herself make any of the knit caps or list any on her Etsy page. She only had other items such as bookmarks or buttons on top of her own artwork that she always listed as “inspired by *name of show*”. Yet, because she used keywords relating to the show, her Etsy shop has been suspended. She also disclosed to me that the money she makes off her Etsy store goes to buying groceries.

What I have witnessed over the last few days on the internet is a lot of anger, frustration, sadness, and some hate.

So, who is really "winning" with this? By a monetary standpoint, I'd say FOX is coming out ahead.
From a publicity standpoint, I think many larger issues are now being brought into light- how Intellectual Copyright law is applied, how certain sellers are suffering and if a knit cap with no set pattern (other than a tricolor shading, a pom on top, and ear flaps.... which sounds like any of these hats of the thousands of images in a quick google search) is limited merely in name.

What my hope for the other Browncoats out there is to have a discussion; how can a specific fandom deal with IP/Copyright laws, and what if any, is a responsibility to the fandom by the company that is kept (in part) in business due to the loyalty of fans?

All I personally know is that since my husband passed away last fall there is only one person in the world I would consider passing along my Wash's Jayne cap to- his most adored television show writer; Jane.
FOX may or may not consider that cap part of their IP (since I made it myself from no set or bought pattern, and did not sell it myself) but it means ever so much more to me.

************* EDIT 04-10-2012  11:21AM
As of 11:30am on April 10th, 2013 ThinkGeek announced through their online media they will be donating the profits/proceeds of the Jayne Caps from Riddle Junction to Can’t Stop The Serenity .  While I personally think this is a massive step in the right direction, the larger issue of using questionable legal tactics to put (even temporarily) artists and fans out of business is an issue FOX and all other studios should be considering and talking about. As it was the fans, the Browncoats that helped to push the cancelled show into a follow-up movie years later, the power of a fan-base is a strong one. With respect to the original artist’s work, the fans who love and admire the show and who wish for some tangible connection to it are the ones who now suffer. The individual artists who lovingly and with care hand-make these tangible items, most slightly different from another, and most an homage to an item they love, are now the ones who pay a high price.
ThinkGeek heard the fans and responded timely and in a charitable way that some Mudders must approve of, perhaps now we and other Browncoats can petition Etsy that doing the proper thing is human, important, and matters.

EDITED 14:30 FOR CLARITY

Hard Words

It's been a while since I've felt comfortable enough, or had the precise words to explain what is going on in my life past the physical details. [Foot not fully broken/fractured, still fraked up for a few weeks.]

Births, marriages, engagements, deaths- too many, pregnancies, jobs, new locations.
This is the excitement and progress of my friends and family.

I am happy for them. I have far more hope for any of them than I hold for myself.

Roger Ebert in one of the short notes he sent to me said that it was alright to write about the horrid parts of life. The nasty parts of cancer not shown in those films with a happy ending. It is ok to share the utter desperation, the desires, the lowering of one's self on the chance for mercy from a world that holds no "fairness".
"Truth is not always a happy ending." R.E.

How very true.


This post might hurt. It hurts to write, and I'm sure for some it will hurt to read. Cancer and dying hurts too. Living and knowing the one person you loved, who loved you back, is gone and will never ever come back- hurts.

"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." - W. Goldman [The Princess Bride]

When we got married slightly to this theme, that quote meant something so different to me. Wash inscribed my wedding band with "As You Wish" on it.
It's quite amazing how much foreshadowing our relationship has without either of us really picking up on it. I had him nicknamed "Wash" within weeks of us dating. We both knew what happened to Hoban in "Serenity".


I am not "stuck". I am however, mad lately. I'm mad that people around me who have not felt this pain feel it is appropriate to tell me how to deal with my pain. I'm mad that they think there is some magic number of weeks, months, or time that can pass before I should be where they want.
I'm mad that people want the Tashi "back" that does not exist anymore.
She's gone just as surely as her Wash. Never coming back.
I think that acceptance is slowly happening.

I'm mad at myself for hurting at someone else's happiness. I am utterly confused at how it is possible for me to feel so happy to see friends get married, or have a child, or get hired at their dream career, or become pregnant- and so mad at my own life for being deprived of that.
I had 4-6 weeks of marriage before the cancer began to grow in his brain.
Twice we almost stayed pregnant. Twice we both held onto Hope that in some way (biologically at the very least) Wash could continue on. Twice it ended in blood, pain, and tears.
Leto the cat is now the only living part of Wash I still have, or can hold.

I find less and less to talk about, socially. I have little I can relate to with my peers.
The Widow's support group is also made up of people in pain like me, but all so much older. All who had time or a chance at a life with the one they loved. They had children, reasons to wake in the morning and function. They had homes they built up together that they could get comfort from. Years, sometimes decades of memories to hold on to. To recall. To soothe.

I am mad at the people who suggest that because I was "only" married for a short time that I can/could/should "move on" now. That 6 months is enough time to "heal".
I am mad at those who imply I will have or find love again. I had it once. I found him once. I gave my heart and soul once. Who are they to know my intentions? Who besides my own self should say if I even desire to love again?

I am at the age where so many of my peers are married, engaged, pregnant, or having children. Over and over I see milestones I wanted to have myself, and cannot.
I will never have a new birthday card from my husband again. I'll never hear him sing to me that I'm his "Queen of Argyle".

I have pain. I have sorrow. I have tears. I have little Hope to share.
I have a large space to carry pain, to support others. Some days I wake as Atlas, carrying the weight of the world upon myself, and not questioning why I do this. Why I carry this burden.

I am hurt that Cancer keeps stealing people we love. I am tired of this. I am 26 and so tired.
I carry Hope, but it is not a weightless burden.

Hope is painful. Hope does not protect the heart. Or the brain. Hope is irrational, one of the confusing parts of being human I am still trying to comprehend.

When I began this written record I chose "Learning to Hope" in the sense of Hope for my Wash. For his future, for his fight, for us. Now, I think the Hope is for me. How to keep wanting to Hope, when I know so well how much it can hurt. How the nights are spent either awake, afraid of the silence and dark, or sleeping restlessly in a dream of chasing someone I can never catch.
Hope that someday life will become desirable, not just passive, waiting for the moment I breathe out but not in.
How do I continue on, when I still hear him in my head? When I can still read his stories and words? See the world from his eye in his photographs.

He is gone but save a digital footprint of his existence.

And, yet.
Yet...

He is the Gaius to my Six.
Whispering in my ears. Touching my hair. Standing in his kilt. Kissing my neck. He lives in me, in my brain, in the memories he shared and gave to me to hold. I cannot begin to imagine how one can "get over" that.


This is my pain. My grief. My anger. My sadness. My soulmate. My timeline.
My life and future to mourn.


Yes, I still hurt. I can smile, but I ache.
I feel a need to hide away from the happy world. From the lives others are living. I am not living. I exist right now.


Is this the trade-off? Is this the start of my re-payment? A karmic debt I owe?
Is this the price of love? Of the short, but fully complete happiness I once had?

I think I am still too young to say that for certainty. I think I am not omnipotent enough to say that for certainty.

If this pain is the start of the price I now pay, I owe.
I owe this pain, and I own it.

I gave my self and my heart up to him. I willingly gave it. I gave him everything I could.
From 2008-2012 I had his love in return. I had him. I had unconditional love for all of me. I had more than a friend. I had more than a lover. I truly knew Hope, in a painless sense, then.
I had his love.

If this pain is my price, it is mine.
I would do it all over again, in a hummingbird's heartbeat. Knowing the pain, the tears, the sadness, the blood, the loss. I would do it again.
He was worth it. 4 years, or 40 seconds. His love was worth it.
It does not ease the pain, does not put a balm on my wounds, but it is the truth.
I would put myself through every bit of this pain again, for him.


I can wish my story had a happy ending. I can wish it was a different type of cancer, a different disease, a life of health. I can write that we struggled, but overcame and lived happy forever until we both died on the same day, decades after our marriage. I can write we had children, and grandchildren. I can write we both had perfect dream lives.
But I write truth here, not fiction.

There is no "happy ending" in my life. My love story is a tragedy, not a happily ended romance.



Photo is from approx 2004-06 from Wash's Speech Black Book. [Speech and Debators will know this.]
This is his opening selection from "Will the Circle be Unbroken" by Studs Terkel that he used in an Oratory or Dramatic piece.

Afterwards

There is always love in the world.
Even if it does not know you by name.
Even if it does not come with your image.
Even if it travels from around the globe, or across the city.
Love comes from family. Friends. Partners. Soulmates.
Children can love with freedom and enthusiasm that sometimes fades as we age.
There is love for the newly born, and those departed.
There is love for the past, and for the future.

There is love in the smallest of kind acts, and love spread across millions or billions.
There is love from religion, and love from science, and atheism.

It can be hard to see the love around, sometimes. Often when we cannot hear it given directly to us.
But it exists. As surely as there is human capacity to think, reason; there is also the deepest capacity to love.

The largest appreciation

Last day the fundly donation site is open. 
I still have so many medical bills from Kevin, and so many more of my own from my broken bones last year and my own health issues. 
If you can donate anything, it helps. 
If you can share the link and our story, it helps. 
If you can give prayers or good thoughts, it helps.

I'll be filing for bankruptcy due to medical bills this year. Again, anything my caring friends, family, or those touched by the story of AZ driving a young widow into utter poverty can do; it all helps. 

Thank you all so much. 
I was Wash's (Kevin's) caregiver for more than 3 years.
Now the people who care and love me are helping to give care to me, so I can continue on with my life. 

My husband did not survive against brain cancer; but with the love, help, social, emotional, religious, and other support from my circle I can survive this next part of my life as a Widow.

Dermabond

Grief "progress":
Today I ended up shattering by accident my favourite coffee mug my husband got for me. I cleaned the pieces up, and am sad. But, I got down his coffee mug and just used that instead.
About two months ago (or so) when I broke one of the dishes we bought together all I could do for a whole day was cry.

Death is odd. Living even more so.

Chaz & Roger

Today my heart is with another cancer widow.

It is a horrid beast, to take the ones we love indiscriminately.



Roger, I will miss you for so many reasons.



It is my most sincere hope, if he believed in some afterlife, that he is there now, happy with Gene and access to every movie ever made.



You can read Jo's wonderful post on Roger from 2011 at the link.


Roger? Gene? Grab some popcorn, relax, and now enjoy the show.

Glass Bone Woman?

Left foot has torn ligaments by my ankle, and a sprained ankle. This alone is 6 weeks of bed/foot rest. Waiting on the X-ray results to see if it is broken as well; from the exam I could have upwards of two breaks in the long tarsals and 1-3 toes might be broken as well.

Let's see;
*Very high intelligence/ Genius
*Picked on /few friends growing up
*Knowledgeable on several subjects, including outbreak/virii paterns
*Had the love of my life, and soulmate die a young, horrid death
*Health issues/ radiation exposure

I just need a crap-ton of money and I'd be a villain right out of a graphic novel!

[or, that is the pain meds talking. who knows?]

Really? Really??!

Full disclosure, I am on pain meds writing this.

So, Fri after services, I was walking to the Pharm that is near the Synagogue and my house. With some awesome friends.
I'm walking down a curb, and my old-ass shoes that literally have the entire treads worn down/through slips. My left foot falls about 4" and I land on it and roll my ankle. I did not fall down though, like I had when I broke my right foot.

So, I was hobbling to the CVS less than a block away at that point, and by the time I got inside was feeling VERY hot.
Next thing I know, my friend is calling my name and I'm on the floor. The adrenaline wore off and the pain made me faint.
Managed to get home and spend the weekend on bedrest, icing my foot.

My doctor knows about it, and I am beyond thankful my nurse was helpful and sympathetic. I still cannot believe this happened again.

I have a full set x-ray of my foot, toes, and ankle area to be done tomorrow. Then, I go from there.

I also know what to look out for if it get worse and I have to go to an ER. I am hoping it will not get to that.

Either way, I already do not have funds to pay for rent, or electricity for this month (due on the 5th) and now I'm adding more medical bills I have no way to pay for on top.
I literally do not even have a credit card to my name to "float" myself for this.

I am worse than screwed in so many ways if I do end up needing surgery. As it stands, looking for work while (best case) I'm in (and WHEN) a walking-cast is going to be even worse than it already is with my 3 year *non-paid* employment gap.
Arizona being a "Right To Work" state and all. And hating sick people, or people who may or do need insurance. Or hating women, and even more so women who want to work.  (Maybe not all of AZ, but certainly the vast majority who is in charge)


I wish this was a great joke being played on me. It's not.


Little acts of kindness I am thankful for:
*My friends coming from another state to visit, even if it had to be cut short
*My friends who are willing to drive me as I don't have a car, or working feet
*My friends who bought me groceries so I could eat this week
*My friends who bought cat-food so the kitties can eat
*My friends who donated a CVS card to me so I could cover the cost of a few needed prescriptions
*My friends who love me unconditionally
*My friends who like spending time with me, and do it. 
*My friends who make me laugh. Who also make me feel safe, if just for a moment.

*Memories of how much my husband loved me and would care for me, attend to me, and love me when I was ill


Without the Hope of something, what is there to hold on to?