Good news: Status quo
Bad news: a little sadness
I got up at 7:30am because I wasn’t doing Bikram today. Today, I was going to church, doing what Mike always hoped I would do. I took Elsa on her walk. I followed her lead. She took me on a long walk around one of the big blocks in our neighborhood instead of just up and down the street. These hills are great for strengthening my legs. For those of you that don’t know it, if you’re facing the ocean or have your back to it, you are always walking either up or down a fairly steep hill. As I pointed out before, we don’t have mountain peaks on the Big Island; all we have is hills. Our hills are 10,000 to 14,000 feet, but they are still just hills, continuously moving either up or down with no jagged drops. This is because the Big Island is still the baby of the islands, the last to be made and, therefore, with the least erosion.
The Hawaiian Islands aren’t formed by earthquakes pushing two continental plates together as they are on the mainland or in Europe. No, our islands are created by the earth spewing lava up, and then up again, and then up again, building a hill, and then a mountain from scratch. The lava comes out of a spot and then runs downhill like melted ice cream. You may not know it, but the tallest mountain in the world is here on the Big Island. It’s a mere 14,000 feet from sea level, but that’s not the base of the mountain. The base is at the bottom of the ocean. “Measured from the base of the ocean floor, it rises 33,000 feet, significantly greater than the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.” (Wiki) We had a visitor from Princeton who asked if they had to clear the lava before they built the airport. Mike and I laughed and explained that the lava was forever. All the beaches and the surrounding ocean floors were lava from the base of the mountains. It’s a foreign concept when you’re used to thinking of mountains rising from a continental plate.
When I got home, it was back to daily chores: taking out food waste for composite and writing. Judy and Paulette were going to pick me up at 9:30 for the 10:00 mass at the Holy Rosary Church. I was so busy writing that the time slipped away. Fortunately, Judy called me, woke me from my concentrated state. I jumped in the shower and got dressed in 10 minutes flat. Who has to dry first?
Being in church makes me feel sad, both because I’m more aware that Mike isn’t there and because I don’t completely buy into the belief system. I came to Catholicism on my own, not because of Mike. My conversion started when I was 12. Long before I met Mike.
My family took a trip to Quebec. While we were there, we took a side trip up to Saint Anne de Beaupre, a healing church filled with crutches. My father wanted me to see how silly the whole thing was. He was a committed agnostic if not an atheist. However, when we got home, I experienced a physical change that was a surprise. I suffered badly from warts on my fingers. They suddenly disappeared. My father said, startled, “I lit a candle for you.” I could see that he was a secret believer even though he didn’t want to be.
I felt more attachment to the church earlier in my life than I do now. Now, I actually believe this was a setup. I was being used to facilitate Mike’s conversion and religious life. If that is the case, I accept it. Being a Catholic and a deacon in the church brought him endless joy. I loved it when he was truly happy. But once he had what he wanted and needed and didn’t need my support anymore, my interest fell away. I want to go to church to give him what he wants and for the community. I will have to find my own way to be a Catholic.
On Facebook, I discovered that 30 people had donated in Mike’s name. Although I can’t find any information on who they are and what they donated to, I suspect they all donated to the national Habitat for Humanity. Unfortunately, that means that little or none of that money will be seen by the local organization Mike was involved with. My sister said she donated to the local one. She found the site and made a contribution that way. When I asked for the information from Mike’s Habitat colleagues, they only gave me the hard mail address. Who uses checks anymore? It makes me sad that Mike’s favored organizations will not receive these benefits. It would be his gift to the people he worked with in the church and at Habitat.
More housekeeping: Set some soiled clothes out for the sun to bleach out the stains. It may take a few days, but the system works better than any other I know of.
I started a new procedure in the blog writing process: I jot down notes about what happened in the day. That way, I don’t have to reconstruct the day from memory. I can still pick and choose what to write about.
Around 4 pm, Judy and Paulette came over to start cooking dinner for St Patrick’s Day. My idea of guests: they bring their own food, cook it, serve it, and even do some clean up as they go along. Today, they brought paper plates because Judy feels guilty about leaving me to clean the dishes. I can’t seem to convince her it’s fine with me. I like washing dishes. Also, I don’t do them if I don’t feel like it. I don’t ever have two weeks of dishes stacked in the sink. I mean, I do some when I want to. I almost always want to wash some dishes.
Where Friday was just a nonspecific feast, today was a St. Patrick’s Day Feast: corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread, all homemade. Fantastic! Besides, Judy, her sister, Paulette, there was Judy’s husband, Howard, her son, Adam, Adam’s wife, Jasmine, their sons, Leon and Luke, and their tenants Brian and Amanda. When Adam and Jazzy and the kids arrived, their dog Bones and their cat Shifu were right behind them. Bones actually pushed his way into the house. He is a lovely dog that arrived at their door one day when they lived in the boonies, starved with an abscessed tooth. Bones runs loose. They tried to confine him to the house, but he just broke the door. They’re too busy to build the fenced-in area they are planning on. Bones seems to be doing quite well wandering the neighborhood. I think we’re all used to him by now. When I walk Elsa, he always comes up and greets us. Once he’s through sniffing Elsa, he comes to me to be scratched behind his ears.
Judy used Mike’s hot pot. He never got a chance to use it himself. She has one at home, but ours was a little different from hers. She used it to prepare the corned beef. When it was done, she released the steam. It spewed steam for 2 to 3 minutes. It was a little scary, but the meat came out wonderfully.
It was quite a crowd around the table. I was placed at the head of the table, where I never sit. I have to remember not to allow that to happen again; it made me feel like I didn’t belong. Not a nice feeling when it’s in your own home. If Mike had been here, he would have been involved in the cooking and hosting. While I was delighted they were all here, I felt the bonds of their relationships with each other. I was aware there was no one there for whom I was the primary person or even one of their primary persons. I will have to get used to this change of status. This does not mean I’m invisible to these people, or some sort of third wheel; it’s just that they don’t think about me the way Mike did, and I feel the loss.
While the food was being prepared, I took care of all sorts of chores. I walked Elsa and found our marriage certificate, which I will need for Social Security. My accountant told me that all my expenses on Oahu will be tax-deductible because I had to be there. Really? I thought the only one who had to be there was Mike, but I’ll take it. Figured out how to get my Airbnb receipts, the hotel receipt for one night when I had to wander the city to find a place to stay, and I tried to get the Turo receipts. No luck on that yet. I have the written directions, but I don’t know how to apply them to the Turo Website. I will try again.
When Judy and her family left, Elsa kept rushing out the door to go with them. I thought she was saying, “Take me with you! This woman is horrible, and my nice daddy is not coming home.” But when I took her for her evening walk, she had the longest pee I had ever seen. The poor girl had to go to the bathroom. Yikes!
The truth is she is slowly adapting to the reality that it is just the two of us. She’s not sitting in the same spot on the rug where she can watch the front door and wait for Mike as much; she’s coming to the side door when I come home to greet me; she’s sitting near me when I work; and she sleeps on me when I take a nap the way she used to with Mike. Slowly, the two of us are adjusting to this new reality.
I watch some TV, brushed my teeth, did the facial treatment recommended by Colleen, and went to bed.
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