The price of that relief...

(...that I mentioned at the end of my previous post.)

There is one new, unwelcome realization that I have to now swallow down:

...I'm now in my fifth year of widowhood.

Fifth??

Gulp....

Yesterday, in review

July 12, four years ago...around 11:30 am...only 8 hours before Charley died:


Anna crawling--officially, honest-to-god crawling--for the first time. Charley never even got to see it. I assume that he knew--that I'd told him in our last conversation at 5:30 pm, or else that he'd read the jubilant email I'd sent to our family earlier that afternoon (I had to have copied him on the email, right?)--but he never got to see it for himself.

July 12, four years and two hours later:

Lest you think it was all doom and gloom, tears, and morose, rest assured that the day was really more like this:










The highlights of the day?



Seeing the giraffe get fed, up close and personal, and watching Anna (and her still, statue-like carefulness) as she fed the birds at Lorakeet Landing for the first time ever.

And food. Lots of good food. A heavenly vanilla latte and brunch at a little restaurant in Sellwood--alas, Anna does not like lingonberries...no Swedish pancakes for her again, I guess (although she did manage to steal my bacon and gobble down her replacement apricot danish). And yummy Thai food for dinner, at a restaurant we frequented regularly after Thursday-night velodrome races the summer before we got married. Best of all? Charley's friend and his girlfriend texted me to invite us to dinner, and I didn't have to drum up the effort to instigate dinner companions myself. We didn't talk about Charley at all, or about The Dreaded #4 Day, but we all knew what day it was, and why we were at this particular restaurant.

To say that yesterday's death anniversary was a nice or good day would be a bit of a misnomer. I mean, on the one hand, it was a great, fun day. Great food, nice (and brief) visit to the cemetery, great friends, the zoo....

But.

There's no changing what yesterday was, either: the day my husband, Anna's doting daddy, died, four years ago.

And while yesterday didn't suck--and indeed, I didn't really think about Charley all that much yesterday, that I can consciously remember today--it's with a BIG disclaimer that Tuesday (and Wednesday, as the recovery day) was the awful day of this anniversary week. Yesterday was a lot like Mother's Day: it would have been a great day if it weren't for one. small. detail.

...of what happened four years ago yesterday.

And today? I feel an overwhelming sense of relief, of near giddiness, that this damned date is behind me again, for one more year. Relief that yesterday wasn't awful, and that the week leading up to it wasn't awful after Tuesday/Wednesday. Relief--and gratitude...on-my-knees, blessed gratitude--for the wonderful people I have in my life who help to make yesterday and this past week a lot less horrible.

So to everyone...thanks. Truly.

Mercifully/Yet It's Here: the 4th anniversary

I knew this would happen, even as I laid down with Anna at 10:00 pm to snuggle at her bedtime; I knew I'd fall asleep with her for a blissful period of time, and then I'd wake up and be stuck awake for some time in the middle of the night. I knew it'd happen, but I guess I decided the immediate payoff was worth it.

So that's what I did: I snuggled with her (as always as bedtime), I fell asleep with her, and I stumbled to my bed at some point and fell right back asleep...and then I woke up at 2:00 am. Oops. And now I'm still awake, an hour later. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the two Benedryls I took (for the allergies that started bothering me shortly after I woke up) start kicking in soon....(So too, forgive me if I start getting loopy. ;o))

But hooray for me. [Insert high doses of sarcasm.] Now that it's the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, July 12, it's officially here:

The fourth anniversary of Charley's death.

It's a fact that irritates me more than anything else...at the moment anyway.

Mercifully, the week has been largely mundane and unnoteworthy since Tuesday's surprise onslaught of the Grief/Death-Anniversary Monster. Wednesday was spent recovering--more or less--for part of the day; I got smart and checked in with work on Wednesday, and once I realized (or make that, reminded myself) that nothing this week was truly time-critical to get done, I reshuffled my work load to give myself part of a day off on Wednesday...to give myself that brief reprieve I needed to get my feet back under me after Round One of the death anniversary gave me a bit of a sucker punch.

I've gotten much, much better over the past few years at learning intuitively what I need to handle/make it through/deal with/recover from my grief attacks anymore. The first year of widowhood was so new and raw that I had little to no idea what I needed or when. But slowly, as the grief got worse but the newness wore off after the first year, I started to figure it out. I had to, because it ultimately was a do-or-die, fight-for-my-life (or at least my sanity and emotional health) decision.

Except "decision" isn't precisely the right word. It's not like I was consciously or strategically deciding or steering anything, or that I really had any choice in the matter at all; it was simply a fact. I couldn't continue to live the way I was because the grief was becoming too overwhelming; I had to do something. And it's not like it was easy or clear what I really needed, when I needed it, or how I learned what I needed in the first place. I suppose it was a three-year long learning session, in many ways--one that hasn't finished, really...but I've learned enough that the amount that I don't really know yet or with which I'm not totally familiar yet isn't so noteworthy.

So on Wednesday, I did what I've learned--through hard trial and error--to do: I laid low and took a few hours to recharge my batteries and recover, doing whatever it was that I needed at the time. It just took me a while--until late in the afternoon, actually--to consciously realize what I was automatically doing, though...to realize anew that, yes, it was the right thing for me, and to give myself permission to do it.

Hindsight is always 20-20, of course. ;o)

The rest of the week has passed uneventfully enough. In other words, it's been a mostly normal week.

Mostly.

If the stupid death anniversary weren't still looming in front of me, it would have been a generally normal week. But given Tuesday's surprise, I was constantly wary (and cynical) that it could get worse at any given moment. Which largely hasn't happened, but at the same time, my subconscious knew that it wasn't a totally normal week. After Tuesday, it hasn't been a bad week...but it has been different. Not visibly or perceptively different, but like my blogging widow friend, Alicia, wrote last week about the encroaching five-year anniversary (in August) of her husband's sudden and unexpected death almost immediately after getting diagnosed with a brain tumor, I *KNEW* what was coming up this Sunday:

It's like my entire being KNOWS that August is just around the corner. I hate this knowledge. I hate this feeling.

So no matter how I might have been whistling along through my week after Tuesday, relieved to be back on a more-even keel and pretending to myself that all was hunky-dory and right with the world again, my entire being knew differently. It knew that the "real" hurdle wasn't 100 percent behind me yet.

But now it's Sunday, the 12th. Yet again. So technically it's here. But it's the damndest thing about dates in widowhood: it's hard to know when the stopwatch really starts. For me, is it on Tuesday the week of his death--the night of the week that he crashed into the pole and was dead before he even hit the ground? Is it on July 12? Is it at 7:30 pm on July 12, when he crashed into the pole? Or is it 7:30 pm on "that" Tuesday, regardless of whether it falls on July 12? Or is it at 7:50-something pm, the time of death listed on his death certificate, once the ambulance arrived on site, officially stopped trying to resuscitate him, and declared him dead...even though, by all accounts, he'd been dead for around 20 minutes already? Is it at 9:45 that night, when the police came and told me what happened?

When do I really count it?

(In truth, it's really all those moments in time. There is no single "one.")

Most years it doesn't really matter. With the exception of the first death anniversary, when every single moment of that horrific week ticked down and cycled through my memory in real time, I haven't really paid much attention to the internal details of the "death anniversary" week in years past. And I didn't really this week either, other than Tuesday evening. But unlike the first-year mark, they weren't ostensibly emotional, gut-wrenching reminders; they were simply factual memories, a conscious checking-off-the-minute-by-minute-milestones checklist of events as they'd unrolled that Tuesday night four years ago. In hindsight, crossing off the symbolic checkboxes pissed me off more than any other emotion, but I was aware of each "milestone" at the time, as I hit 5:30 pm--the time I talked to him for the very last time, an hour before the race started; as I hit 7:30 pm; 7:50(ish) pm; 9:45 pm. I noted those moments as I passed them on Tuesday night, but there was little I could do but note that I noted the time, shake my head at the enormity and minutia of it all, and move on.

I hope today--the "real" anniversary--doesn't find me doing the same things. But we'll see. I eschewed making formal plans for the day, instead opting to play it by ear. But my current "plan" is to go to brunch with Anna in the morning, assuming we make it. She wants to take Daddy flowers at the cemetery--when I asked her yesterday (Saturday) afternoon when she wanted to go, whether Saturday evening or on the "real" day on Sunday, she picked Sunday--so we'll do that, likely after brunch (or maybe before...who knows?).

On an unexpected note, I was surprised to realize this afternoon (on Saturday) that I was longing for some hydrangeas to take to Charley...an accidental anniversary flower that we'd taken him at both the first and second anniversaries of his death.


"Accidental" because hydrangeas were simply the only flower I had in any abundance at both anniversaries (and at both houses--our "old" house in Milwaukie, where we still lived at the one-year mark, and at the house in Sandy, where we lived at the two-year mark). They weren't a conscious choice at the time, for any larger ties or meaning...yet I was surprised this afternoon to realize that, out of tradition, it's what I wanted to take him, same as we have the other times Anna and I (or just I) have gone to the cemetery or PIR on the death anniversary.

But I have zero flowers in my decrepit, naked yard right now...but as I walked Anna to a new neighborhood playmate's house this afternoon (Saturday) for a playdate, I had a crazy compulsion to go up to one of my neighbor's houses--none of whom know that I'm widowed--knock on the door, and ask for two or three blooms from their bush...and tell them why I wanted them. I didn't...but we'll see what I do during the day today on Sunday. Maybe I'll go and ask, or maybe we'll just stick to getting whatever single flowers they have on hand at the Thriftway down the block from the cemetery, as we have on other visits.

It's always so bizarre to me, what matters to me at any one given moment or year. After four years of experience at this, you'd think (or maybe it's just that I'd like to think) it'd be a bit more obviously consistent. But as I've learned and as I'm constantly reminded--both by events as I experience them and by other widowed friends--grief is rarely predictable or consistent.

And otherwise, after brunch and/or the visit to the cemetery, we'll play it by ear from there. I plan to give Anna the choice of what we do, within some limits (I don't really feel like going swimming, for instance). Rollerskating, the zoo, a movie, bowling...I don't know what, but something fun and not part of our usual schedule (no grocery shopping, for instance, and nothing as mundane as simply going to a park...I need a bigger distraction that that). I may call on a friend for impromptu dinner plans, but we'll see. We may head to some of the stuff for the dance team's summer dance camp classes or performance in the evening, but we'll see.

"We'll see" has been the mantra and ethos for this week overall, I think. Somehow, this year, the death anniversary and the week of it don't seem quite as awful and maddening as our fifth wedding anniversary was last December, or Anna's birthdays each year, or even Mother's Day.

I suppose it's one "blessing" of my death anniversary: there's no reason that it should be a happier, better-than-average day, like those other three loaded "holidays." There's no preconceived societal calendar telling me that it's a special day, one to be marked with family, and smiles, and happiness, and gratefulness.

"Fortunately" [insert tongue-in-cheek wryness]...a death anniversary is what it is: just another day on the yearly calendar to make it through...one--for me, anyway--that doesn't have quite the confliction as other "big" grief trigger milestones, ones that used to mark happy occasions. I expect the death anniversary to potentially suck (and suck badly) every year, so I have lower expectations. So when it ends up being an okay day--or a moderately crummy, but not completely awful, day--I count it as a success.

And in reality, anything that's not as bad as it felt at the one-year anniversary--or on the dates when this shit all really happened four year ago--is a good death-anniversary day, in my book.

But...we'll see....

Death anniversaries past, in pictures

Despite the Benedryl, I'm still awake three hours after I first woke up. (And despite the time stamp on this post, I intentionally altered it so it'll appear in the blog posts below my "real" post for today, about the fourth anniversary of Charley's death. As I'm writing right now, it's really just after 5:00 am.)

And who knows--perhaps I subconsciously/intentionally chose to fall asleep with Anna, knowing the very real likelihood that I'd wake up...and want to stay awake, to take advantage of my time alone, without a child clamoring around me, to sift through and write down my thoughts in advance of this stupid death anniversary. Maybe I was hoping I'd be so exhausted from staying up all night that I could just sleep through much of the "real" death anniversary day, whether through naps or passing out with Anna at her bedtime.

As I pulled out my laptop to start writing my previous post, I was curious what I'd written about the first anniversary of Charley's death. And with half a mind to post an excerpt or an entry or two from it here on my blog, I pulled out my journal from that time three years ago. Reading my words wasn't totally necessary to instantly bring that week back to my mind in crystalline detail--I could have remembered much of it on my own, between my memories and the pictures on the hard drive of my computer--but it was...something...to quickly scan my self-examinations. I may still post them, either later today or another time (or another death anniversary in years to come), but the sheer length and frequency with which I wrote that week of the one-year anniversary is enough to make me wait til sometime later.

But as I wrote the last blog post, I also looked at the pictures from that week...and other death anniversaries since. And the pictures belie so much of what I actually felt at the time....

Despite that we're standing a mere three feet from the pole that ended Charley's and my blissful, happy life together, that killed Dana and Judy's oldest child, you'd never know it from our faces:

We weren't happy as we were there, certainly. Not by a long shot. We were there out of helplessness, more than anything; we simply didn't really know what else to do to observe and mark the time and spot where he died, 52 weeks earlier. And in truth, I didn't really want to go to the track where he died. His mom really wanted to, though, and for any number of reasons--curiosity, morbidity, helplessness, support, a compelling need--I went along too.

I haven't been back since.

Not on a death anniversary anyway. I know Judy has on all the anniversaries she's been able, to put flowers in the fence either for the Tuesday race or during the week when she's been in Portland, but I haven't. I'll go to the cemetery if I go anywhere, but not back to the smoking gun.

Though I do wonder from time to time if the scratches on the pole are still there. The words our closest family and friends wrote on the pole one week after he died, before the dedication "ceremony"/salute thing that the bicycle association held at the beginning of the weekly race the next race after he died, had long since faded even at only a year out.



I guess permanent marker doesn't count for much compared to a metal pole exposed to the elements all year.

The gray, cool gloom on the one-year anniversary was oddly comforting, in direct contrast to the bright blue skies and searing heat that started the day of his funeral and that lasted for days after.

It was, ironically, another gorgeous day on the two-year anniversary of Charley's death, though. While it made a poignant, beautiful contrast in this picture I spontaneously took of Anna on that day, is it any wonder why, deep down, I hate summer?

There's no photographic evidence of the third anniversary of Charley's death. We'd just gotten back the night before from camping and the debacle with the dog. If I hadn't written in my journal that day (and if I hadn't reread it recently) I'd have no idea how we actually spent it: talking to my mother-in-law on the phone for a little while in the morning, spending the afternoon at my sister's house while the kids played in their cheapo pool; I have no idea what we did in the evening. I know we didn't go to the cemetery, opting to stay in Sandy instead.

But that first anniversary....I had a barbecue with family--both mine and Charley's--on the night before the "real" anniversary, on the Tuesday-night anniversary of his death. I remember it being a rather surreal, out-of-body experience. I was there--I mean, I'm in the pictures or else I took them, and I know I was physically present--but I remember less of it than I do the funeral or the open house after it, one year prior. I couldn't quite comprehend the pain of it being a year, nor did I really know how to cope with it...so I, in effect, checked out, I think. I couldn't tell you (without going back and reading my journal entries word for word) if the evening was infinitely painful or not. Maybe I was impervious to "more" pain at that point; it all hurt.




But at the end of the BBQ, despite the smile in this picture, all I remember was being tired.

Bone-deep, worn out, I-didn't-want-to-face-anything-more tired. Exhausted. Yet since it was technically "only" the night before the anniversary, I still had to survive the actual date of the anniversary the next day, plus the festivities I'd planned later in the week--a kids' ride at the Kiddie Kilo Thursday night, a BBQ with just my friends on the weekend--to further commemorate (and supposedly help me make it through the week)...and knowing I was listing our house for sale on the following Monday. (In hindsight, I was absolutely, without-a-doubt, certifiably insane. But hey--I didn't know any better.)

There are no pictures from the actual first anniversary date, nor from the BBQ with my friends a few days later.

But there are from the Kiddie Kilo we did the day after the actual first anniversary. Charley participated in the weekly track races at the Alpenrose Velodrome every Thursday night (or close enough to it) for three summers. Although I'd never made it to the track early enough to see it while Charley was alive (because of my work schedule; but I always arrived in time to watch him race), I knew that they had the "Kiddie Kilo" at the start of each weekly race, where any kids there could ride their bikes around on the apron of the track (the flat sidewalk-like area at the bottom of the track's inclined walls). In my insane phase leading up to the first anniversary where I brainstormed and planned to the nth degree all the ways we could commemorate the day/week/horrible event, I thought that the kids--primarily my nieces and nephews, who were all really young (6 years old or younger, except for one older niece) when Charley died, or possibly friends' kids--might like something they could participate in during the "festivities" that week.

Mostly, though, I just wanted to be able to say--to Charley, to myself, to God--that I'd done it, that I'd taken Anna to the track that her dad loved so much, and that I pushed her around it on her tricycle to honor a father she couldn't even remember.



I've never really seen some of these pictures before, but this particular one really struck me right now: just how little Anna still was.





The other kids got numbers of their own to place on their bikes for the "race," but I had Anna wear something different: her dad's racing number, pinned to her back. I didn't even remember I'd done this, until seeing this picture anew right now.


I can't believe it was three years ago already that we marked for the first time the life that was lost. A lifetime and a heartbeat, all at the same time....And we haven't had the same sort of "celebration" since...which is a bit of a relief--they're damned exhausting, and in the end, for me, the artificiality of trying to do something "big" and meaningful seems to dilute its usefulness...just makes me more tired, more stymied at how to make it through, when nothing can replace Charley himself...not all the pomp or pageantry (which he would have hated anyway) in the world.

Instead, I've turned toward private moments, toward small things that are meaningful. But in comparison, sometimes the private--while easier to bear and, for me, often more authentic--just doesn't quite measure up to the public displays from all the people who cared. Perhaps next year, at the five-year mark, might be a good time to do something more public, larger, again....

Somebody remind me of that next year in late June, okay? Although how could it even be five years in one more short year? An instant, and a lifetime....

Four years of Tuesdays ago...

I got a nasty, unwelcome surprise this morning, as I woke up and got ready to go into work:

It's Tuesday, I realized with dread.

And I'm alone, have no emergency contingency plans, and all I can think about is one single thing: that life as I knew it ended four years of Tuesdays ago, as of today.

The four-year anniversary of Charley's death is technically this upcoming Sunday, on July 12. But apparently this year, it's the actual day of the week of his death--Tuesday--that's setting me off instead.

It's not a welcome companion.

For one thing, I didn't expect it. Not this early. Not five friggin' days before the "real" death anniversary. Not when this particular Tuesday in July hasn't bothered me (or at least not noticeably) for three years.

I shouldn't be surprised, though. Anna and I got home from Papa's funeral and the extended "holiday" weekend in southern Oregon yesterday evening around dinnertime, and as we edged closer to our home, a sinking weight started pressing on the corners of my mouth.

It was the same downturned sadness that I'd felt the week before, upon returning home after Papa died. Instead of a slight upturned lilt on my lips, they were drooping down, pressing closer to the heavy weight in my chest. I could tell, could see the difference when I looked in a mirror, and I could feel the difference even without looking at my reflection. And it was the same heart-deadening dread I had in the last days and week before the first anniversary of Charley's death, three years ago.

I knew, in some deep recess of my mind, that this would happen: that with Papa's rapid decline and death, with the trip to southern Oregon for the 4th of July and his funeral last Thursday, that the fourth anniversary of Charley's death just might sneak up and surprise me. But I'd assumed that perhaps this coming weekend would be hard...not today.

But like a ninny, I'd arranged to have Anna at my parents from last night until Thursday morning, so I could go into the office today and tomorrow to work. It never even occurred to me to be wary of trying to work on Tuesday the week of Charley's death.

So this morning was rough. Not teary or visibly emotional, but the old companions of Dread, Anticipation, and Emotional Exhaustion were weighing heavily on me this morning. I just wanted to crawl back into bed and hide. Maybe get a massage, see a movie, or get together with one of my widowed friends--the same as I have on other death anniversaries or other "big" trigger days (like my wedding anniversary); I didn't care what, but I did NOT want to have to go into work.

I was running through my options--trying to form a plan of steely-eyed attack given the surprise visit from the neglected Grief Monster--as I got ready this morning, as I drove to the work. Go to PIR and watch the bike race there after work tonight? I briefly considered. Then I mentally snorted at the thought. Watching a mirror of how our life used to be, dreading and worrying that someone might recognize me or if the race announcers might say something about the anniversary, yet fearing that nobody would? Feeling a nauseous pull to go see the damned pole where he crashed and died, but wanting to dynamite the damned thing too? Yeah, NO THANKS! I weighed taking Anna to the velodrome race track two nights from now, on Thursday night, where Charley raced every week for three summers so she can see what track racing was like. (My verdict? Perhaps. We'll see how we're doing on Thursday.) Trying to schedule a massage or facial after work? Finding a friend to have dinner with?

I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just knew that I didn't want to do what I had to do.

So I went to work. And I had a really hard time focusing, concentrating, or doing anything besides listening to music on my headphones. We just moved to a new office the end of last week--a cavernous, mostly empty, bare (but nice) space--and most people were either on vacation or working from home, so the office seemed extra barren, extra depressing. I went to lunch with two coworkers and managed to get lost in my work for an hour or two late in the afternoon, but otherwise it was a crummy, sucky day. Not obviously bad, but just...off somehow.

I called a friend from support group, and thankfully she was available to meet for dinner. And without really knowing I was going to or intending to do it, I stopped by the cemetery on my way home from work. The road I picked to go home passes along the north side of the cemetery--subconsciously convenient, perhaps? [Snort....]--and it just seemed...rude, or stupid, or something to not even stop by and say hi to Charley on the anniversary of the Tuesday night he died.

I assume Anna and I will swing by the cemetery again on Sunday, on the "real" anniversary of his death. She seems to enjoy going to see Daddy at the cemetery--or at least she seems to get something out of the trip--and she's been obsessed with wanting to drive by "the house we lived in while Daddy was alive" (which is about 4 minutes away from our house now). I'd told her that the anniversary of Daddy's death was coming up this next weekend, and if I suggest it I'm sure she'll want to take him flowers at the cemetery, like we've done before. But otherwise, I have no preconceived plans how we'll barrel through the date. The high school dance team I help out with is at a summer dance camp at a local college this coming weekend, so I assume we'll swing by it to check out some of the performances--a venture to actively avoid "official" nods to his death, to be sure. I've thought about going to the zoo, or a movie, or something else fun with Anna that has nothing to do directly with death...but we'll see.

Sunday, I would have expected a crappy day. Or I would have expected it on Saturday, or maybe on Monday (given that whole could-be-bad-the-day-before-or-after-or-neither unpredictability of grief dates). But I wasn't prepared for it today.

I suppose I should have, knowing we were getting home from Papa's funeral weekend and that everything has just been building up--grief- and stress-wise--for the last few weeks or months. Anna and I stopped and had dinner with a widowed friend of mine last night, who was having to wade through the fourth anniversary of her husband's death yesterday. I met her online about five or six weeks after Charley died, on the YWBB (Young Widows Bulletin Board). Mercifully, we had very similar experiences of sudden widowhood--both in our mid-twenties, married a similarly short time, widowed in an accident, informed after a delay by the police, she three months pregnant with their first child and me with a ten-month-old baby--and we both worked at the same company. Her husband died in a car accident six days before Charley. And while we've had our own individual, separate roller coasters and paths through this shit called widowhood, she's been my twin of sorts, my mirror reflection of what I had to live through and what I couldn't remember. We don't get to see each other as often anymore now that we live three hours apart, so it was a treat to get to see her unexpectedly last night. But if I was acknowledging and remembering that yesterday was her awful day, then there was one fact I couldn't ignore: that mine was here too.

It was just a bad conflux of timing and accidental circumstances: being in a bit of a time warp and completely divorced from a calendar and dates for the last month or more with my huge deadline at work, so I had no real conception what was coming up. Papa's death. The two trips to southern Oregon. Sending Anna to my parents' house. Doing the math of dates after seeing my friend last night. The stress of the last two (or six?) months. All of it. None of it.

But the end result was still the same: today was a sucky, crummy day. I don't know if going to the cemetery really helped or not. It did, in the sense that it gave me something concrete to do, gave me a place to cry, to talk to Charley. But I didn't feel purged or cathartic after it, really, because there wasn't anything that can be done or changed about what happened this time 208 weeks ago--four years of Tuesdays ago.

When I came home for a few brief moments, I just wanted to crawl in bed and sleep; I didn't want to drive to my friend's house, even though I knew it would be the best thing for me. I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up sometime...later. Sometime next week, with the dreaded anniversary behind me...sometime five years or more from now, when life is--I hope--easier, happier, more balanced, and freer from the stress of the last six months of work, moving, and trying to juggle this "new" life of parenting and working while not being a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I'm just ready for a friggin' break for a while. A long tropical vacation would be heavenly. (Guess I'll have to settle for a kidless weekend in San Diego instead. =))

But I forced myself to get up off my couch, grab my purse and go to my friend's house. And as I drove, I listened to a new song (on endless repeat, since I'm a dork that way when the mood strikes) in my car. I discovered the joys of Pandora Radio about a month or two ago during a nasty bout of work for a big deadline in May, and subsequently found some great new gems of songs that I'd never heard of before. I don't know what really compelled me to do it, but last week I ordered a few of the CDs from Amazon.com; they arrived while I had my mail on hold during the trip to southern Oregon, so I had new treats waiting for me when I got home. I was surprisingly on the ball and transferred them to my iPod right away last night, and ironically, they were eerily well-timed for my funk today. I'd bookmarked this song on Pandora in May when I first heard it (and it's the main CD of the bunch that I wanted to buy) but I'd never heard the song more than twice. And as I first started listening to it this morning on my drive into work, I realized my subconscious is way smarter than I am at finding just the right song to fuel my bouts of grief-ridden ennui:

I can see you standing
In the pouring rain
Waiting for changes
To carry you away

I can see the light
Fall from your eyes
As we get lost in
The tears of this goodbye

But you can't go farther
Than my heart can go

'Cause I'll still be loving you
Through the sadness
And the madness here
And I'll always be with you
In the distance
That has taken you
From me

I can hear you laugh
When I close my eyes
I can picture your face
And the strength inside your smile

I can see the words
Dance across your lips
I'll remember forever
Is something more than this

So you can't go farther
Than my heart will go

And I'll always be with you
In the distance that has taken you
From me

"Taken," by Plumb

The purchase from Amazon lent another unexpected gem: a song that a friend of Charley's and mine had selected to be played at Charley's funeral, but due to technical difficulties (it was on a burned CD and wouldn't play, I guess), it didn't actually get played at his service. I still have the copy of the song on the burned CD somewhere--probably in the memory box in my closet, with the rest of the funeral mementoes--but I've never actually listened to it. I'd picked the song I wanted played--Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Begin"--but I didn't care what our friend picked; we have similar music tastes and appreciation for finding the right (translation: non-cheesy, non-gag-worthy) soundtrack to echo our life events, so I trusted her. Plus I was a bit of a zombie--I just didn't care, period, beyond the bare minimums of what I wanted for my husband's funeral.

I'd always intended to hear what she felt was meaningful to her, for Charley, for her friendship with him, but it took almost four years to hear it. And as I wrote tonight, I finally heard it: Eva Cassidy's cover of Sting's "Fields of Gold."

So in the end, Tuesday was the surprise whammie day for me this time around for the death anniversary. (Although I suppose I shouldn't get too grandiose or insistent just yet...the whole week might suck, or Sunday--or any other day this week or weekend--could always be just as bad or worse. Hooray.) I feel okay now...but writing--about Papa, about today--helped (but despite that I first started writing about today's unexpected onslaught first, I found I couldn't face it just yet, so I had to write about Papa first, as the somewhat safer topic on an already crummy day). The two-hour visit with my friend tonight, eating cheese pizza and getting to just be however I needed, was exactly what I needed.

But it doesn't change that I'm tired. That I just want to hide and have a day off tomorrow, a day to recover from the reminders of Charley's death, of how our lives changed in an instant at 7:30 pm 208 weeks ago; from the two quick trips to southern Oregon; from the heavy nature of the last two weeks; from Papa's Death...from all of it. Working at a "real" job while trying to maneuver through the minefield of big grief dates is, um, interesting (for lack of a better word..."a bit uncomfortable" or else simply "new" would work too).

But...life is what it is. And I'm supposed to get up and go to work in the morning. I hope tomorrow is a better day than today...completely mundane, normal, and productive....

And I hope that today was the worst of it for the week...because the "real" death anniversary is still ahead of me. Sigh....