I had a nightmare that Mike left me for another woman. This was combined with another nightmare where I’m frantically looking for a bathroom. I’ve had both nightmares before. In the past, when I had the nightmare of Mike leaving me because he decided he didn’t like me anymore. When I told him about it, he would laugh and look at me with his loving eyes. He knew my mother told me that no one liked me regularly, and anyone who told me they did or said anything nice about me only did so because they didn’t really love me.
Just in case I start thinking my mother was entirely off the wall, I have two fairly close relatives who don’t like me. One told me that she thought, “My self-awareness was narcissist, my awareness of others was predatory, and I was dangerous for children.” And, oh yes, I was other-directed, and she thought we should confine our contact with each other to family events, like weddings and funerals. This is a relative I liked and loved. How’s that for a kick in the pants. Guess Mom had a point. Life can be so much fun. Fortunately, the man I had been living with for over thirty years didn’t see me that way. Because I was concerned that I was doing things that were harmful to children, I checked with my teacher colleagues to see if there were any harmful results of my work. They all consoled me.
However, some good came out of it. It led me to set my boundaries more firmly, for my benefit as well as the benefit of others. If this person is out there seeing me this way, there must be others. What I got out of it was she is uncomfortable with me. Now, I run like all get out when I see any signs or symptoms of that response to my personality. I think we’re all better off for my restraint. It took me years of grieving to make an adjustment to my new reality with this family member. I remain sad but see no way to resolve the situation that can be mutually satisfying. You can see why I might have occasional nightmares that someone I love and rely on really doesn’t like me.
The bathroom nightmare is another one. I was frantically looking for one, so I could join Mike at some sort of gathering or conference we were both attending. You cannot believe the variety of dysfunctional toilets my mind has invented both in their basic structure and their functioning. I look forward to the day I find one in my dream that I feel comfortable using. I guess it will be time for rubber sheets.
I got up, walked Elsa, washed the dishes, did my oil rinse, and went to Bikram. I had an awkward conversation with one student who was trying to reach out to me but was so filled with assumptions about my situation, it didn’t go well. I’ve initiated conversations like that myself. I think I would enjoy this woman’s company under normal circumstances. I went inside the room and asked Shelly, another Bikram student, for a hug. Not because of my awkward conversation but because of my dream that morning. I have a supportive community at the yoga studio.
I went to the bank to cash the checks that were made out to me. I was concerned that they had shut down the joint account in Mike’s and my name. The clerk was a little disturbed by the number of checks. Really, she’s never seen anything like that before?. I explained that my husband had died, and these were checks people had sent to me. No worries. She cashed them.
I immediately drove to the church to drop off all the money people had sent me in my name or in cash. I donated everything I got in condolence cards to St. Michael’s debt reduction. The office was closed. It only opened at 10 am. I stuffed the over $800 back in my purse and drove home.
When I got home, I showered and sat down to play FreeCell and wrote Raymond James about something. It was probably more back and forth and back and forth about the Affidavit for Collection versus the Executor Short Certificate. Then I sent Dorothy a picture of mom and dad dancing. I had shown her the picture when she was in Honolulu, visiting Mike in the hospital. She asked me if I could send it to here. When Damon, Cylin, and August came out for the funeral, I had August, our family one-man Genius Bar, move the picture to my desktop so I could attach it to an email.
The picture was taken before they had kids. I don’t know if it is from Germany or during the three years after mom arrived in the US before they had me. Just love it! They look like they’re in love with each other. I think they were. I know my father continued to love my mother for the rest of his life. After my father died, my uncle, his brother, told me the following story. He had actually asked my father how he could stand to live with her. She was in a constant state of hysteria; it would be called PTSD now. She came by it honorably. My father’s response was an almost helpless, “I love her.”
I ironed a few pillowcases. Yes, I always iron the sheets and pillowcases. I’m not so fussy about my clothes. Mike liked to say wrinkled was my personal look.
I did some more work on the blog. Then I looked at my phone and noticed I had 6 voicemail messages I hadn’t listened to yet. Most were from parts of the world where I know no one. But, I discovered that there were some old ones from Mike that I hadn’t erased. I listened to one. He had called me from Oahu. He explained that he hadn’t been able to call me the night before because he left his charger in the diaconate office, which was locked overnight, and he ran out of juice. He told me to call him back and that he loved me. Boy, did I need to hear that after this morning’s dream! It wasn’t weird hearing his voice, which is weird.
I drove back to the church for hula practice. I am planning to join the hula ministry. Before I joined the group, I dropped off the money I picked up from the bank that morning for donations to the church to Susan. She had sent me a condolence card with a very sweet message. I thanked her. I read each and every one of the cards. Some were special, referring to some experience they had with Mike. I saved one and all. They are sitting in a basket that the church provided the day of the funeral. I will be keeping them for a while.
While I was at the parish office, Susan said they still had Mike’s framed Catholic University diploma in Theology. I asked if Fr. Lio would be interested in having it. What was I going to do with it? Take it out of its frame, roll it up and stuff it into a tube where it would stay until I died. Then someone would find it and throw it out.
I left the office and went around to the south lanai of the church and participated in the hula practice, just following the other dancers. They worked on two lovely gentle dances. I hung on in there pretty well. These two dances seem easier, less complicated than the one I learned for the funeral. Although it may be the case that I now had nothing to lose. I wasn’t rehearsing for an upcoming performance. There was one dancer whose hands I just loved. Hawaiian dancing is a little like Indian dancing with its emphasis on arm and hand movements.
Judy had called while I was videoing one of the hula dances so I could practice it. I cut her off immediately and spoke to her on the speakerphone as I drove home from the church. We can talk forever. She is doing somewhat better today or at least had been earlier in the day. She was having terrible problems getting food down. Everything was tasteless at best and chemical tasting at worst. Also, she was tired. She asked me to do some work on her. (I’m a healer.) I volunteered to come to her house. She said no, she wanted to come to mine.
I told her about my dream/nightmare. She laughed and assured me that Mike adored me, which I know with my mind – or he was one of the best actors on the planet. I also asked her if the blogs were coming through. She said she’s been reading and enjoying them. She says I have a gift for writing about the mundane in interesting ways. I guess I find the mundane interesting. Everything is fascinating to me. This mindset keeps me endlessly amused. I say my mind is my favorite toy.
As I was leaving the church to go home, I got a call from Elijah asking me to help him with a math problem. I told him I would call him back. First, I walked Elsa and then I called him. It came out he wanted help with quadratic equations. I’m lucky I remember the term. I haven’t done one of those since my freshman year of college. I would need a refresher course myself. I wouldn’t mind doing that. While I didn’t do that well on the math section of the SATs, I enjoyed it.
I still had some checks from other sources than condolence cards. When I sorted through them, I discovered there was one from one of the deacons that I meant to give the church. I was going to have to go back to the bank and drop it off at the church the next day..
I had picked up the mail on my way back from my walk with Elsa. There was a letter from the New Jersey State Pension Plan telling me that I was entitled to retirement benefits. When Mike applied for his benefits, he designated me as his beneficiary. That meant that he got less money monthly as he would have gotten if he hadn’t. I then learned that after he claimed benefits for ten years, I would no longer be able to receive them. I thought, wow, that was dumb. Mike started receiving his benefits early and easily outlived that 10 year period. When it was my turn to claim retirement benefits from NJ, I didn’t list a beneficiary so I could claim the whole amount. There was little question in my mind that I would live another ten years. Both of us lived beyond those 10 years, so I wasn’t expecting to get money through Mike’s retirement fund. Guess what! I was wrong. I got a letter today telling me that I will be receiving money. Yeah!
I did more work on the blog and finished breakfast, my Juice Plus smoothie. I sometimes wind up sipping on it all day till dinner. I am looking forward to the moment when I’ve caught up with myself on the blog, so I can enjoy writing it even more than I do now. I am discovering more people who read it regularly. Really? While I’m delighted, I’m also surprised. The suspense is gone, “Will he or won’t he live?” That question has been answered. There is no more follow up to Mike’s life, and most of the information on mine is on my daily activities. I suppose there is a question here too, “Will she or won’t she have a satisfying life after her husband’s death?”
At church yesterday, the gospel reading was on “He who is without sin can cast the first stone.” For those of you who are not familiar with it, it is the story of a woman who was accused of committing adultery. The elders of the temple were going to stone her to death. (The priest saying the mass pointed out that she must have had a partner in her crime. Where was he?) Christ intervened. He stopped the elders from stoning her to death with the quote from above. The men walked away, one by one. The priest also pointed out another interesting point: the men gathered for the stoning as a mob, but left one by one as individuals following their own consciences. There are many interesting points. However, the priest said that Christ turned to the woman finally and said, “Go forth and sin no more.” I think the priest was saying that by experiencing the loving forgiveness of Christ, making the moral choice would follow as day the night.
I don’t see it. Love and forgiveness relieve us from shame. Shame serves a positive function when it is a matching force for our worst impulses, putting the brakes on to stop us from following them. Shame serves a negative function when it prevents us from looking at ourselves calmly so we can heal. Christ’s relieving shame is step one, as far as I’m concerned. Step two is the actual healing, which is now possible.
I have considerable experience with the Buddhist meditation practice, Vipassana, also known as Mindfulness Mediation. That discipline says there are two important aspects to healing: equanimity and awareness. These two forces have to be balanced. Awareness is our awareness of ourselves. In the case of this mediation, it believes that all that is good and bad about us shows up on the body in the form of sensation. I recognize the truth of that. I know shame, anger, fear show up on my body before they show up in my mind. My mind recognizes these feelings and labels them accordingly, often making the sensations more intense. The mediation practice proposes that if you can observe these sensations calmly, without labeling, they will subside. So relief from shame, which Christ offers, is only one part of the healing process. Then there are the underlying feelings that generated shame, anger, and fear that promote those negative impulses in the first place. A negative impulse is often the distortion of a positive one. I don’t believe all our automatic impulses are negative. I know there is another belief in Christianity that one can pray to God to heal the soul. This Is a passive activity that can wind up looking a lot like the Buddhist mediation practice. You view yourself though Christ’s loving, compassionate eyes. Deep healing can occur this way. I like combining the two procedures. I think Christianity believes that God comes down to earth and heals us. Buddhism believes that it is man’s job to heal himself through calm observance to he can reach God.
Coincidentally, I’m reading CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which I came across when I was going through Mike’s library, entering books into the CollectorZ program. I just read the chapter on Christianity and Psychoanalysis. He says that Christianity focuses on moral choices. We always work to become better people, more ethical. (Of course, that means very different things to different people.) Psychoanalysis does not require that someone focus on making moral choices. I don’t see how one can be a happy person without focusing on moral choices. If all you focus on is your own happiness, without regard for the happiness and wellbeing of others, . . . . actually, I can’t imagine how barren a life like that must be. Mike has said that some people don’t have a “moral imagination.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are immoral or amoral. They just follow the basic legal rules of society and don’t think much beyond that. And then, some have too much moral imagination and feel guilty about everything.
I heard somewhere, in one of the books I read or lectures I heard, that even serial killers think of themselves as basically good people that did something bad. The need to see ourselves and the groups we identify with, as basically good, is very strong. Can everyone be a good person? I sure hope so. Some refuse to look at the evidence of their own behavior and the results of their behavior, as in, “By their fruits you will know them.” Have people benefitted from contact with us or are they unchanged or even worse off? Can we measure ourselves by our worst failures or our best successes? I think it is better to look at the whole picture, the data, the statistics. The need to see ourselves as good people sometimes blinds us.
The relative I mentioned earlier punched a hole in my self-image. While there were many who were actually shocked by her image of me and totally disagreed, there has to be some reality out there at least for her, that’s worth considering. Unfortunately, people like her are unwilling to discuss their needs and negotiate. She thinks I should know what she needs. Nothing much I can do with that. I don’t know. I give up. But neither am I subjecting myself to such an unclear situation where I am always wrong but am expected to do it correctly without feedback as if her idea of the ‘ correct way to interact’ is some universal truth. I know we all wish that our truth was the universal one and everyone conformed appropriately, but it’s not. I had enough of that Kafkaesque situation with my mother, where I was always wrong but never told what the correct way was. I was supposed to just know. Really???
I don’t think life can go very well for folks who always get their way and never consider others. I am reminded of what Freddie Mercury said to his Queen bandmates after he returned to the group after striking out on a solo career. He said the musicians he hired for his solo act did everything exactly as he asked them to, and it wasn’t terrific. We improve when our ideas are challenged. We broaden our scope. Mike looked for and found a ‘worthy opponent’ in me. We created a life together. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. Well, that’s how I prefer it.
I didn’t write notes for the end of the day for this entry. While I don’t know if I watched TV, I can be reasonably sure I walked Elsa, washed my face, brushed my teeth, went to bed, and then said, “Goodnight, Elsa. Goodnight, Mike.”
