Making All the Lists I Can

Overcoming grief is like the tide coming in: a wave surges up and washes the dry beach. Dormant creatures in the sand welcome the water, ready to get on with their lives, but the wave subsides to the sea and the creatures pull back.

Then another wave comes in, reaching a bit higher on the beach, and the same thing happens. Over and over, so slowly as to be imperceptible, the waves advance until the ocean covers the dry sand, which becomes familiar ocean floor, and life returns.

Some days are high tide, when life seems expansive, returning to my spiritual beach, and some are like low tide, when I pull in and commune with the sadness of not having Steve here. Then something immediate washes over me, and I'm back to focusing on the external, the now.

So getting back to real life is like an uphill sine wave; I rise and improve, then slump low, only to rise and improve again. With each cycle, I get a little higher than before, a little stronger, and each time I hit a slump, I haven't fallen as low as I did the last time. In short, this is a long, drawn out process, and personal changes can begin and end almost without my awareness.

The closer my trip gets, the more excited I am. Of course, there's a parallel feeling of anxiety, also slowly mounting, on taking such a trip without a companion. Last time I did that was my trip to Paris in 2002. But where I had a studio apartment catty cornered from the Louvre on that trip, I'm going to be visiting family this time around, some whom I haven't seen for nearly ten years.

One of my concerns is all my tickets (air and rail) are one-way, and I don't plan to take any checked baggage, so I'll probably be singled out for inspection, especially since the first leg of my trip is to Montreal, which takes me outside the U.S.

So I've got my to-do list going. At first, Steve chuckled politely at my list-making, until we took our trip to Europe. Once we were on the ground in London, he appreciated that we hadn't forgotten a thing.

Marcel in cleaner days: he's a ball of dirty dreadlocks now.

This time around, the to-do list is long and diverse, since I also have Social Security stuff to do, as well as tax season, smogging and registering the car, and planning for the cats while I'm gone. There are some tasks that I find harder to approach than others, and I'm not sure why that is, but they've all got to be done (including paying all the March bills) before I go.

As for the cats: Marcel has turned into a stubborn, deaf, arthritic, annoying, yowling lump of shedding fur that spends most of his time sleeping (and shedding) in the comfy chair up in the studio. He also gave up washing himself a few months ago, and he won't let me brush out the dreadlocks that have developed like kitty bed sores on his hindquarters. His demeanor is slow and surly, but if anything displeases him, he's quick to lash out with tooth and claw; a very hands-off cat. He's been losing weight over the last month or so, and I get the sense he's on his last legs; in a few months he may be no more. Patty, on the other hand, is young and sweet and personable. Since Steve's absence first began last September, she has glommed onto me as her primary love object, so I'm worried my absence will hit her hardest.

Patty down for the count, six toes to a paw.

The one big occurrence this week was going down and getting my eyes examined and ordering new glasses. It's been about five years since my last pairs (one for general use and one for at the computer), and without insurance this time around, I did my homework. Ends up there's a small and excellent optometrist's shop in the local Sears which gets consistent rave reviews online. I got an unhurried, thorough exam, top-end bifocal lenses and two frames (one of them Ray-Ban) for $450 (last time out, I spent $650 with my insurance plan). The glasses should be ready by month's end, and I'm looking forward to getting a new view of the world: Another wave washing the shore, another change.

While there, I noticed Sears also had a watch repair/key-making concern right next door to the optometrist, so I stopped in and got several key sets made for Jessie and Aria. Aria is the daughter of a woman I used to work with at the Hollywood Reporter, and they live here in Pasadena.

I have bought many Girl Scout cookies from Aria over the years (brokered by her mom, of course), so I was delighted to know that she was happy to come over and perform maintenance on the cats (food, water, litter box) every couple days while I am gone. The offer of $100 may have had something to do with it, too.

Jessie is also joining in. Since she's someone Patty knows (Patty is very phobic of strangers), Jessie agreed to come over a couple times a week, water the plants, watch some TV and make "at-home" noises for the cats' sake. Between Aria and Jessie, I'm hoping the cats will take my extended absence well and not equate it to Steve's disappearance. Also, I'm hoping Patty will ease up on the xenophobia and get friendly with Aria and Jessie.

Only recently have I allowed myself to think about the actual trip ahead; the people I'll visit, the places they'll show me, the things we'll catch up on, and always in the back of my head, one reason for the trip itself: where do I go from here? Hopefully, when I return home, I will be closer to an answer.

The Ides of Presidents Day Month

I was going to give an account of last weekend on last Monday, but Monday I was really depressed. This whole week, in fact, has been one big agoraphobifest for me. A couple days I didn't even get out of my robe. Then, by the end of the week, it became clear: Not only was Friday Valentine's Day, but Thursday was four months to the day since Steve's death: kind of a one-two punch to the spiritual solar plexus.

David and Kittie stare at Jessie and Mark

So that's by way of explaining why it's taken me nearly a week to catch up everyone on the weekend. It's all kind of a blur anyway. Kittie and David showed up around 11:30 Friday evening. We spent a while visiting before everybody hit the sack.

Saturday Jessie came by around 11 and we all went to Andy's for brunch. Afterwards, Kittie helped me gather all the paperwork for my 2014 taxes, and we spent some time clearing out stuff from the bedroom and consolidating items for donation (an activity that always drains me emotionally).

Jessie and Mark stare at each other

I also have a secret to share: David goes a little nuts when he gets ahold of a cable TV remote. They still rely on broadcast TV at home simply because David swears he would never stop watching if he had all those channels to surf. When he happened on a marathon of "The Walking Dead," it played off and on most of the afternoon, although nobody was really paying much attention (well, not me).

That evening we shared a box of Valentine's chocolates I had purchased on Thursday. I was planning on keeping them until Valentine's Day (chocolate in memoriam), but it seemed wiser to break them out when there were two other people here to help consume them. So we watched a movie (something classic that Kittie had not seen) and enjoyed our early Valentine's Day candy.

My most favorite online Valentine

On Sunday Kittie put the final touches on my tax papers (God bless her for that, and my accountant here will be most thankful) and David tightened up all the bolts on the upstairs toilet, even heading out to OSH to pick up some replacement washers for the seat. As usual, they headed out around 5 p.m. I always wish they could stay just a little bit longer, but Sunday is a School Night.

In order to combat the depression (or at least appear to be surmounting my lack of inertia and motivation), I'm starting to put together a to-do list each week, taking the errands and chores that need being done and prioritizing them day by day. When the depression hits, I stay up until 5 a.m., sleep until noon, screw off on the computer until 3:30 or so, then decide it's too late to accomplish anything, reorganize the list and watch Netflix or "31 Days of Oscar" films on TCM (having been recorded on the DVR).

At present, I'm cleaning out the linen closet, and most of the stuff must have been Steve's mother's, because it's frilly or it's crocheted or it's lacy or it's gingham; I'd say the styles go from the 1930s through the early 1960s. Most of it is getting donated, but there are a couple nice table cloths I'm keeping. Stuff goes from the linen closet to the only open space (the bedroom), so things are piling up in there again. Time for another box. If the volume of junk wasn't decreasing steadily, I'd swear I was a hoarder, picking through all these strange objects.

My second most favorite online Valentine

In recapping, I made it through the monthly reminder of the 13th day, and I made it through Valentine's Day. On the news Friday evening, one woman who had lost her husband this last year commented on Valentine's Day, saying, "I told my husband, 'What will I do without you?' And he said, 'Take all the love you have for me and spread it around.'"

I totally lost it.

When everything has fallen apart (even though it doesn't look that way from without), it's important to put the pieces back together the way it makes sense to me. Perhaps that's why I made jigsaw puzzles out of Steve's photos (see entry "It Is a Puzzlement," Oct. 13, 2013).

So my veil of sadness is beginning to lift. I got out today and went on my errands and braved all the last-minute Romeos buying what dregs of candies, flowers and teddy bears holding hearts that were left at Ralph's. I got a New York steak, asparagus and a yam casserole for dinner, but didn't have the motivation to cook it. I settled on some leftover pasta.

Now, more than ever, I realize that this trip I'm taking in March is an emotional DMZ, separating the grief of a spouse's death and the loss of a future I devoutly wanted to share with him from the dreaded and much anticipated "what comes next" phase, which will commence upon my return.

For Valentine's Day, everyone online was saying, "Happy VD!" I must be showing my age, because in my youth "VD" meant venereal disease (what today we call STDs); not the sort of thing you wish your beloved. "Merry pubic lice!"

So happy belated Valentine's Day to one and all. It's a downer that Steve's not here to share it, but it also reminds me that there are lots of people out there who love me and whom I love. So I'm letting the puzzle pieces bounce and tumble however they wish; at some point I will look at their seemingly chaotic arrangement and a new perception will arise, making simple sense of them all.

Surprise Weekend

My friend Jessie and I have switched from getting together for Thursday night dinners to Saturday late morning brunch, since she's taking a ballet class here in Pasadena on Saturday mornings. She drops by around 11 and then we hit Andy's Coffee Shop on Colorado, which was a regular Saturday morning haunt for me and Steve. 

The woman who runs the place was really happy to see me again when Jessie and I stopped in last week. I had been there a couple of times with Kittie and Dave when they visited, so guess how she'll feel when I come in today with all three in tow.

Yes, I got a call around 6:30 Friday evening from Kittie. She said the party they had planned to go to on Sunday was canceled, and Kittie didn't have to work overtime on the weekend, so they were going to "hop into the car" and come down to visit. Yay! Vacuum, mop, empty the dishwasher, take out the trash.

They got here just before 11 p.m., we hung out for a while and futzed with the iPhones I gave them (an iPhone 2 and an iPhone 4, both having belonged to Steve), and hooked them up for WiFi here at my house.

They're sleeping downstairs and I'm preparing to hit the sack, as well. I'll post something at the end of the weekend, with pictures if I remember to take them. This is the kind of surprise I can enjoy.