Tag: 2019

Home. 10 November, 2019.

…a braver man I never met.

Gary is finally home.

It doesn’t hold all of his cremains that I have left.
It doesn’t have to. It holds enough.
I’ll scatter the rest in places he liked.

I think I can finally go, now.

clockwise from top left: day 1, raw. step 2, bone dry. step 3, bisque fired. step 4, applying wax resist. step 5, glazing before the salt fire.

cannabis diaries – 845p, 6 november, 2019

what this drug allows me to do (you numbskulled, pretty-faced idiot) as you postulated isn’t done by taking away my pain. not at all. what it is doing, however, is turning down the volume a little bit. to a more manageable level of chaos. to separate the noise from the signal. it is allowing me to filter out all of the extraneous thoughts (oh and they are Legion), just flick them away like they were smoke rings. leaving no trace. no impact. just distapeared into the air. it allows my nervous system to not be quite so nervous. to actually be calm. be calmed. to remember kellen’s voice as if it lives in my head now. to comfort me when i need. am needful. am unwell.

my nervousness is so much not a thing any more that i am shocked by its absence. shocked, but quietly so. it seems to take a lot more to get my anger up now, and that i am much slower to even want to. that i more want to turn the feeling over and over, inspecting it, finding its flaws. taking them apart. fixing them, or discarding what i don’t need. moving forward.

(and this is the very last time that i will think of you in relation to my wellness. since i know that you don’t read my work it won’t make a whit of difference to you but it makes all the world of difference to me.)

8p, 6 november, 2019. conversation derailment.

i feel everything
all of the time.
everything. Everything.
EVERYTHING.
Some days, minutes
some times the sound is turned down? From here, to here
(10 to a five)
so I can get through the day with a modicum of effort,
none enough to stop me much less slow me down.
other days? others try to kill me
slowly, quickly, whatever it doesn’t matter
but I’m learning
l e a r n i n g
what works, what my diagnosis is currently what i need
what I need to make me sane
sane enough to breathe.
i keep saying don’t i?
i keep saying i am able to steer this ship now,
i am able to keep her off the reefs and out of the deeps.
sometimes the trip to safe harbor takes longer than budgeted for
i am learning
to let go, to give up and let the medicine do its work
that i am the medicine
the sum of my experiences is what will save me
i am the hero of my own story.

11:34p, 19 October, 2019.

I just had a date with someone I met at a party last week.
A sex party.
That one of my lovers brought me to as his hotwife. To share.
I had sex with him there.
Twice.
In front of my lover.
With my lover.

He looks like my dead husband, I discovered
as I saw him in natural light for the first time.
I stopped still, eyes wide as I took in the similarities
the differences.
Enough differences that my shock couldn’t have been very apparent.
The chemistry though, oh! So familiar
So smooth.
And young, so much younger
a tenderness, surprising and genuine.
I took him into me, feeling his sameness
not wanting to and desperately needing to
knowing this was a last chance
that I would have to be honest and confess.
So I did. And I did. And it was so pure, so true.
Cleansing.

I feel,
lighter.

I have some interesting feelings about this.
Complex, simple.
Untangled.

Love is. 10:40a, 13 September, 2019.

Today I know how much I am loved. I have no doubt. I will never ever not know. I know what it feels like to be loved, and seen, and heard. I know what it feels like to be understood.

My evolution is ongoing. The path I started down two years ago is ever-twisting, ever changing. Forward, ever forward.

I’d brought this little bit of printing I’d done to hang up in Gary’s hospital room. To remind him that he is loved. I brought it home, taped it to the shelf on his side of the bedroom. To remind me.

The last day. 13 September.

This is how I began my morning two years ago today. Texting with Gary, who was waiting for the Klonopin to kick in. I never heard his voice that last day, never saw those beautiful blue eyes of his.

I have tried to imagine what was going through his head as he composed that last post. As he wrote one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. My husband was a writer, but normally it was infused with snark and sharpness and cleverness. Not that day. That day it was pure, and true.

I don’t know if he had already had the stroke; I’m imagining he must have done, otherwise why would he be going for a CAT scan? What I do know is that if in fact he had already had a stroke as much as I would have liked to see him wink at me, as much as I would have liked to see his face, as much as I would have loved to hear his voice telling me one last time that he loved me more, I am happier for the fact that I can remember those things in my head untarnished, not tempered by the damage that the stroke would have caused. I am truly grateful for my supervisualizer memory, that these things are as clear to me as if they happened a second ago. 

The last bit of my text to him, the unfinished bit, it was me being so incredibly frustrated that I couldn’t find a place to park. The hospital was under construction, there was an enormous event going on and it took me 40 minutes to park. During those 40 minutes he had been taken in for neurosurgery and I never saw him conscious again.

Two years on, I’ve gotten nothing done, nothing that I was supposed to have been doing. I’m losing the house. I have just about nothing left, no strength, no energy. But I have my memories of him.

I love you more.

9:24a, 10 september, 2019

i don’t know why i thought i would be able to do this
why i thought that the anniversary of the week he died would be a good idea
to try and sort through everything in this house
our house
the weather is cooler
my brain, not so much on fire
and now that there is a bit of calm
to try to take stock, sort through
instead i look at everything from where i sit
overwhelmed
over and overwhelmed
wanting nothing more than to crawl back into bed
i have done nothing. no thing. not one.

“…oh what a world, i don’t wanna leave
there’s all kinds of magic, it’s hard to believe
thank god it’s not too good to be true
oh, what a world, and then there is you
plants that grow and open your mind
these are real things thank god it’s not too good to be true
oh, what a world, and then there is you…”

kacey musgraves

i don’t wanna leave, i don’t.
i know he didn’t want to leave either and that is 
so fucking maddening and painful and
heart breaking. HEARTBREAKING.
it wasn’t even his heart that killed him ffs.
we didn’t have enough time.
we didn’t have nearly enough time.
we spent so much time getting through all our pain together
misunderstanding each other
getting to the point we reached three years ago.
a year before he died.
i wish (do i?) that i knew the exact day things turned
that we turned towards the sun, towards the light
like the sunflowers i used to fear
(they always turn their faces to the sun, they are good, they are pure)
i wish i knew the exact day as clearly as i remember the conversation.
the moment things turned truly good. 

i know that i have to leave this place, this house
our house.
was a very very very fine house.
with one cat in the yard.
life used to be so hard.
now it is so very hard.
nothing is easy. it never has been.

here i am, nearly two years on
i still don’t have any idea how to do this.
i am running out of time.

cherish the day. the moment.
the second.
the briefest speck of time.

it disappears
is snatched away
and you never get it back.

1:16a. 8 september, 2019

things feel slowed down 
are
     slowed down.
time there’s time
it seems a surfeit
                            of time.
time to reflect
to think about
think about how slowing down the
footage helps me to walk through
possible timelines. outcomes.
collateral damage.
consequences.

it still feels alien, but less so.
i’m still surprised by it, but less so.
i encourage it, welcome it.
more so.

all of this slowing down has
made ending things easier
and falling headlong into others
easier still
surprising me with the ease of which
i have fallen in love with you.

It begins again. 7 September, 2019

The difference two years makes.

The girl on the right has no idea that a few hours later, she’s going to watch her husband get his life saved by his defibrillator/pacemaker right in their living room. She has no idea that the trip to the emergency room that night will be the last time she takes her husband there.

That it is the last week on this planet for her husband.

The girl in the middle, a year out from that night, operating on sheer mania and lack of sleep. Fucking up everything, it seems, though people are quick to tell her, “no, no.”

The girl on the left, today. I honestly have no idea how I’m even breathing but for the unending care and tenderness of some truly spectacular humans. Still fucking everything up that isn’t life-or-death and refusing to give a single shit about it any more. Loving deeply and intensely with no regard for those who fly too close to my flame and get burned. Indulging in ink and sex and cannabis and embracing everything good. Dismissing anything less-than.

I no longer settle. I no longer feel less-than.

I miss you more, Gary. I miss you so goddamn much.

I have so much to tell you.