I woke up right before the alarm went off. I checked Scott’s towels and bathing suit hanging on the outdoor clothing line that I hand washed yesterday. The towels were almost dry, but his pants were still wet.
As I walked Elsa this morning, my leg was continually bothering me. Then in the Bikram class, I started doing a different kind of a stretch. While standing and bending over, I put all the weight on the outside of my left foot, forcing a realignment of my whole leg. I felt a stretch that relieved all existing discomfort. What a find! How many times have I hit this juncture when I think I’m at the end of the road? I have been told every doctor that someday I will not have a choice; I will need a hip replacement if I ever want to be pain-free. So far, every time I have hit the point that makes me think ‘this is it,’ I experience a significant breakthrough. Meantime, I have a rolling appointment for surgery, which is pushed forward every six months. After the class, I remembered to asked JJ how many people were in the express class: 16.
Driving home, the tumblers on my psyche lined up. I realized that I would never see Mike again. I didn’t like it. I loved being his life partner. He was a delight. I will never see his smiling face; I will never again see his delight on his face when he looked at me; I will never be able to look over as I sit quietly by myself reading or writing and see Mike in his chair reading or do the NY Times crossword puzzle on his tablet which he bought some time this year under the guidance of his grandson, August.
So far, I have mostly been suffering, remembering how Mike suffered for the past year, mainly since November, when he started dialysis. The worst was that drive to the dialysis center three times a week when I had to deliver him to that torture; some of it was unnecessary as they struggled with his defective fistula. We knew the fistula was a problem, but we had been told that it would get better over time. Mike was as cheerful as he could be. He didn’t swamp me with his suffering. I was okay with it because it was temporary, but the fistula proved faulty and had to be replaced with a port. And when the end result was death, it all seemed unnecessary torture. Before his pancreatitis attack, he slept a lot, but so did I. He had to cut back on his activities, but age makes that necessary anyway. He still was able to enjoy what he could do and appreciate me. Can I ask for anything more? He was my hero.
I find that I’m feeling his presence in my life is peeling off, the way dead skin flakes away. He isn’t here to renew the part of me that was conjoined with him, the part of him that was part of me. His presence was getting thinner every day. I experience it on the left side of my being. That’s supposed to be the feminine side. That makes sense because while he loved me as a person, he also loved me as a woman. My identity as a woman, as defined in relationship to him, is going. It’s not gone yet. Maybe it never will be gone. But it is getting thinner. I don’t know that I need that part of my identity to survive as a person as Mike’s mother did, but I miss it as I miss him. I don’t know which one I miss more, loving him or be loved by him. How lucky was I?
I tried to take a nap. I didn’t have that lovely deep rest, which I so often get. I read a little of the book the Yvette gave me “Happiness is an Inside Job.” It is a repeat of the ideas behind mindfulness meditation developed by Buddha. A refresher is always good; I need to be reminded. Each author has a different point of view, a new lens to look through the same subject.
Ace called and said that the burial he had to officiate ended early could he come over right away instead of at two. I had contacted him and asked him to load the CollectorZ scanning program onto my phone. John and Ace loaded it on their phones a month ago. They went through about half the shelves, scanning the books with bar codes and putting the ones they couldn’t on their spines when they put them back on the shelf. That way, I would know which books had been entered through scanning and which had to be entered manually. I have been doing the manual entries. I have added at least 500 books already just doing a little each night.
I told Ace that I was also having problems with the automatic online contribution to the church. He told me I would have to ask Susan or Brenda from the parish office for help with that. Minutes after he left, Sue called to say Ace called saying I needed help with the online giving. She told me the name of the woman who would help me with it. Within half an hour, the woman called me. I went through the procedure. I have no idea why I had a problem in the first place. And then I hit a block again. I will have to call again. I went back to working on the blog.
I got the Bikram stuff for Yvette, Scott, and me that had washed off the line and went to work on the blog. Three o’clock, I had a healing client, and then back to working on the blog.
I walked Elsa, had dinner, watched TV Silent Witness, and cataloged some books. The CollectionZ program is set up, so the books I enter are automatically downloaded to the cloud and the cumulative list.
I walked Elsa, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.
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