Happy New Year!

I'm having a totally quiet, totally unexciting New Year's Eve--I'm alone and kidless at home--but the last month has been so hectic and busy that quiet and uneventful are totally A-OK with me. I've got wine, I have my iPod playing, and I can sleep in as long as I want tomorrow. Happy New Year to ME!

There's plenty I could write…but since I took this past week off from everything I could, I'm still on vacation. ;o)

But in the meantime, here's a New Year's Eve greeting from Anna and me! Here's hoping that 2012 is a fantastic year with lots of new, exciting possibilities!

The night before

Eight years ago, today looked a lot more like this:






(Sorry for the totally sucky photo above. I was feeling too angsty and lazy to actually scan it, so I took a photo of the print with my cell phone. L.A.M.E…but easier.)



Eight years ago. Our rehearsal for our wedding, followed by the rehearsal dinner at our home.

Eight years now since I got married. Seven years now since I got to celebrate that anniversary while actually being married.

I wish I had an answer for how I am.

Mostly, I'm just tired.

Things have been busy busy busy lately--but not in a bad way, necessarily. Between work, taking care of Anna, running my photography business on the side (which means in the evenings after Anna's in bed), helping out with dance team practices once a week, and occasionally trying to do something fun and social, I've barely had a chance to sit and relax in a long, long time. Overall it's an improvement--a huge improvement--over the gray clouds, gloom, and stress that hung over my spring and summer…but at the same time, it's not like life is swimmingly peachy either.

It's going. It's busy. It's…I don't know what.

The upside is that I haven't had much time to stop and think (in that utterly loaded widow way) about what tomorrow is: what should have been my eighth wedding anniversary.

The catch to not having any time to stop? I don't know what to expect out of tomorrow.

As soon as we passed Thanksgiving, all the usual cues started reminding me what was just around the corner. Our anniversary. Charley's birthday. Christmas. Another year of…this. Then, I was glad for the busyness and distractions.

But over the last day or two, the awareness started to sink back in, like finding oneself wearing an old, too-large, inherited jacket. It doesn't fit, it's awkward, and it gets in the way…but there's something oddly comforting about it at the same time. This was us. This was our life together, I can breathe in from its folds.

After working nonstop yesterday from 8am til about midnight and then today up until about 6pm, I finally had to stop. I knew I wasn't going to get anything more done--I'm too fried, too tired, too worn thin--and I knew I needed to pull this stored garment out of the closet, wrap it around me again. Why, yes--hello, Grief. It's that time of year again.

I'm aware of what tomorrow is. My body and heart know the conflict. And if I stop to think, it makes me sad and start to cry. It'll never be okay with me that Charley died when he was 28, when our life together was just beginning, when our daughter--and the only child we'll ever have--was so young.

But honestly, there's another element that provides a different, but no less melancholy, tone to today:

It's also the two-year anniversary of when my friend died.

Which makes photos like these--taken eight years ago today and tomorrow--all the harder to process mentally and emotionally:

At my rehearsal dinner

…because she was also my maid of honor.

We'd been estranged for several years when she died. Her mental illness and active suicide attempts started shortly after Charley died, and as a brand-new, 27-year-old widow with a one-year-old baby, I had no ability to cope with it. For my own safety and survival, I had to cut her out of my life…but it didn't stop the barbed attacks over email, the middle-of-the-night suicide "notes" via text messages and voicemail--or her mental illness.

I've only seen her twice since Charley's funeral--once at the dedication at PIR one week after he died, and then once almost a year later, after I'd had to call the police to check on her that she hadn't killed herself. I don't even know the last time I talked to her or actually received an email from her. Three years ago? Four? More? Even in my shock and numbness during that first year of widowhood, I was aware of how fucked up it was that I was having to deal, even if only obliquely, with a good friend's suicide attempts.

The person I was friends with since sixth grade disappeared a long time ago, our friendship unraveling by degrees from the moment I told her I was pregnant just over a month after my wedding. Charley's death and her mental illness--whatever the official diagnosis eventually was--only complicated matters.

It's all so sad, and tragically unfair. We all wanted her to get better so desperately, to find a treatment that would help. And it's days like today, where I reflect back on the people who've died so young--on the lives we'd hoped for as teenagers and adults that never got to happen--where the familiarity of grief is a comfort. It feels right, appropriate. How else should I react to my former best friend dying right after she turned 33, and my husband before he was even 29, before we'd celebrated our second wedding anniversary?

And until I actually stopped and sat down tonight, started to peel off the layers around my emotions, I didn't know my friend's death was lingering under the surface. I remembered about her death early this morning after I got up--but I remembered mostly because I realized first that it was the day before my anniversary…and only afterward did I connect that it was also the day I'd found out two years ago that she'd died.

In the truly bizarre workings of a grief-influenced psyche, I briefly felt guilty for forgetting. I remembered her birthday a month ago and emailed her mom…but would I have remembered her death if it weren't for my anniversary?

Bah. Grief can be crazy-making.

(And in an even stranger twist, as I was writing here, I went back to my old emails to find the one where I was told she'd died. And it turns out I might not even have the day right; she might have died on Dec. 5. Oh, the macabre irony…but I gotta say, that little twist did turn down the dial on my angst, guilt, and emotions. How could I react so strongly to the date if it's not even the correct date?!? Sheesh….)

An emotional roller coaster? You betcha…even if it's a much smaller one than I had to live with in those earliest years of widowhood.

But it's as good of a note as any to end a discombobulated blog post, pour myself another glass of wine, and go watch brainless TV off my Tivo….

And so my plan for tomorrow? I decided late last week to be naughty (or would that be wise?) and take the day off from work, even though I have no paid time off. I have support group in the afternoon--which will be well timed even if I'm not overly emotional--and I'll go to dinner afterward with a few friends from there (or myself if needed). But the part I'm looking forward to (and hoping isn't a repeat of last year's debacle)? I was uber naughty and scheduled a fancy-pants rain-shower massage and a facial for the late morning and early afternoon. (I confess: I partially planned it that way so I could have my parents pick up Anna from school and I could avoid parental duties. It's been a long time since I've had any kid-free time to myself when I haven't had something else going on…and if I can't do it on my wedding anniversary when my husband is dead, when can I?)

I'm relieved I decided to do something…but it's also traditionally one of the suckiest days all year…so we'll see.

If nothing else, there will be wine and chocolate dessert in my future tomorrow. Hooray for wine and chocolate tartufo….

And I'll remember, too, and raise a toast in honor of my friend--and the memory of a day where she was absolutely at her very best. Because regardless of all that came before and later, she really was a totally awesome maid of honor….

Wanna see what Snickollet looks like? ;o)

I know I'm always curious what my blogger friends look like and do in "real" life. Sure, I tend to post a lot of photos online myself (although they're almost always just Anna), but not all bloggers do…and my widowed friend Stacey--a.k.a., Snickollet to most of you--doesn't have photos on her blog too often.

But she asked me to take photos of her and the twins this summer, and their session is up on my photography blog. Go check it out here if you'd like a few peeks at her, Maddy, and Riley!

But until you click through, here's a little teaser for you. There are a lot more on the other blog post. =)

Can I excise this part of my sleeping life?

I hate having dreams about Charley.

Maybe I'd feel differently if I had good dreams about Charley--sweet, warm, lovely ones…or even nonsensical but mundane ones. But no. I seem to only have bad dreams about him.

It's not a new trend. In fact, I can only remember a few dreams--one or two? maybe three?--that I've had of him over the last six years that weren't awful. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting the good ones or the mundane ones--or maybe I never woke up remembering them in the first place--but the usual bad ones stick with me way too much, are too hard to shake.

In the earlier years of widowhood, the bad dreams about Charley could easily trigger a bad grief day or several of them in a row. And even now, they can be hard to just dismiss and forget--particularly when I've had several of them within a short time.

And since I'm writing about dreams, it's probably not hard to guess that I've had them lately. I had one a few nights ago--Monday night, maybe?--and then another one this morning, plus one last week sometime. The first one last week wasn't horribly jarring--he was back, but I was mostly perplexed and hanging back, waiting to see what was going to happen, to reserve judgement on whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was back--and while I don't remember the specifics now of the most recent two dreams, I remember their tone: he was back, but he didn't want us back. Or definitely not me. (I don't remember how much Anna played into either dream.) In the one this morning, he wanted to instead be with a girl, Darcie, I knew from youth group in high school (someone I'm pretty sure he never even knew; don't ya just love the illogic of dreams?)…and most of the dream took place in a Fred Meyer store. So bizzare. But anyway….

One of several struggles I've had over the past few years has been my own sense of self-worth. I've heard (or maybe just read in books and from no one actually in real life) how many widows can feel insecure or have a low self-esteem in the wake of their loss, and in the earlier years of grief, I never really understood it. My own security and self-esteem weren't shattered; I was still me, still mostly the same competent, capable, independent person I used to be, grief and dead husband or no. Hurting, sad, and desperate: sure, I was definitely those things…but I never would have said I was insecure.

But then the last few years of widowhood happened. I made it past the first big hurdles of widowhood, of simply surviving those first three years and finally getting to the point where I was starting to feel better, had made it past my rock bottom…but in the ambiguity and less death-laden/more normalized mode of the last 2 1/2 years since I moved back into Milwaukie, I've floundered again more.

Stacey (a.k.a., Snickollet) once said to me during a get-together for (adult!) drinks earlier this spring that she doesn't like doing things that she's not good at--and she observed that we seemed to be quite alike in that respect. We talked about it in the context of motherhood and staying home with our children, and six or more months later, the conversation has really stuck with me.

I'm a good mom; I know that. But I don't think I've been a particularly good stay-at-home mom. I'm not good at it--or at least not the peripheral parts of the job: the cooking and cleaning, the house care, at getting myself up and dressed and out of the house, with interacting with my child. When I'm home, I'm surrounded by all the things I don't do, can't get done--the dust bunnies, the crap sitting on tables for months, the overflowing litter box, the overdue laundry…etc., etc., etc.

I suck at being a housewife.

And for better or worse, being constantly reminded of what I'm not good at probably has chipped away at my self-esteem these past few years. [Snork. I doubt there's a "probably"; "definitely" would likely be a better word choice.] My social isolation day after day doesn't help matters any, either. I fixate on stupid, irrelevant things that only make me feel worse and I can be hypercritical of myself, to a totally ridiculous extreme.

I know why I do it and where the roots of it came. And I doubt it's a coincidence that the shortcomings I fixate on are also the personality traits that I know drove Charley crazy: my messiness; my laziness, inactivity, and sloth; how slow I can be. I know I was too susceptible to the overly critical opinions of the male figures in my adolescence and early college years--including my father, and Charley at times--and unfortunately, I've become too susceptible to it again in the last two-plus years. In the same way that a person's immunity is lowered after a bout of the flu or during cancer treatments, I don't seem to have many natural defenses left this past year.

So when I have dreams of Charley, my subconscious--hell, even my conscious thoughts, a lot of the time--screams back at me that Charley wouldn't like what I've turned into, that he might not want me back now, in the way that I am. On good days and months, I know that that particular voice in my head is ridiculous and inaccurate…but it's still hard to shake those damned dreams after they happen.

I suppose my "immunity" and guard were down a bit last night when I went to bed. I started crying a bit at support group yesterday when I talked about this time of year and my birthday and how they can be hard anymore, how they remind me that it feels like my life ended many years ago, that I might never have another child. I didn't mind crying--indeed, it often helps and makes me feel a bit better, releases things I don't always know I'm holding onto--but all the same, it's hard being reminded that I'm entering into a difficult time of year. It's already almost late October…and then it's a quick, downhill slide into Thanksgiving, Christmas, our wedding anniversary, and then the dreary, depressing months of winter.

It's no fun being reminded of those things…or of hard-to-suppress insecurities in dreams. It's no fun, either, being reminded that while the years change, the same lingering grief issues can flare up all the same.

Boo.

Memories of the fall

It's hard to believe, but in four more days, I'll have been at my so-called "new" job for two months. Anna's been in school now for six weeks. My thirty-fourth birthday was over a week ago, and it's already mid-October. Time is flying by.

Mercifully, things are generally uneventful for us. We've been staying busy--or at least we're rarely home on the weekends, it seems, our weekend social calendar rather full--and each week zooms by.

On a positive note, Anna still really enjoys school and first grade--no laments at all about how she hates waking up early (although she definitely iterates that she's still sleepy before school)--and I believe she'll still exclaim that she "loves school!" when asked. She must really like her teacher (as do I), because she gives Mrs. H a hug every day when I pick her up, and she's also taken to playing school at home--during which Anna is Mrs. H. I'm thrilled. Anna seems to be doing perfectly well at school, reading more and more fluently and easily with each week (double yea!) and quickly grasping the math concepts. Best of all, we're holding up well under the early-morning and early-bedtime schedule--unlike last year--with few difficulties. Thank. God. All-day school and the six-hour reprieve from it are like manna from heaven, and I'm enjoying being able to pick her up each day (and getting to briefly see her teacher in passing and ask any questions if needed). Such a change from the mania and downward spiral (for me) of kindergarten.

If I ever actually got some real time off from parenting to relax--say, during those daily six-hour breaks for school--it would be heavenly…but nope. Those hours are spent working. Mercifully, the job is still going fine, and working from home isn't too awful so far (aren't I just the glowing optimist??). While the actual articles and documents I read are often totally snooze-inducing (literally!), I'm reminded that I really like the act of editing, of taking a god-awful or almost-there piece of writing and making it better. I like the order of it, the rules, the requirements--and I'm good at it. I still have questions, of course, but they're far fewer than they were in the first month, and the transition and learning curve have seemed pretty easy. The people I work with seem nice--from what little you can tell over instant messaging, email, and the rare phone call. And aside from my difficulties in figuring out when to consistently get in the shower and get dressed (which is often right before 2pm when I have to go pick up Anna from school…sigh) and from the lack of social stimulation--and not leaving my house--working from home hasn't been as awful as I feared. I've been doing a decent enough job the rest of the time of running errands after school or making social plans (those busy weekends, remember?) to keep the at-home bit less overwhelming and isolating. But really, it's the paycheck that clinches it. Getting paid to do something--and getting paid twice a month, in an amount that, while definitely not large, is sufficient to not have to juggle which bills get paid on time and which can stand to be a couple days late (as I had to do for much of the last 8 or 9 months) and pay for some extras (vet checkup for the cat, new tennis shoes for Anna, a new bra for me when the old one was months past being shot), is an unimaginable treat compared to the last year…or the last six five years. Turns out I really like getting a paycheck. Somehow I'd forgotten. ;o) If the job were actually at an office, where I had a place to wear nice clothes, be social, and get the hell out of my house every weekday, and had a higher income that could equal what I'm still getting from Social Security, it'd be perfect. But it doesn't have those things, and it is what it is. Thank god it doesn't suck, though. (I actually had to write down, "It might not be as bad as I fear," when I was making a list of pros and cons back in the summer, to see if I could afford to accept this low-paying, work-from-home job, both mentally/emotionally and financially. What on earth does that one "reminder" say about the last several years??) But honestly, the job is actually going quite well. I just wish I had some free time to myself, though…but what single parent doesn't want that?

So overall, things are going much better than they were last spring…thank god. The voices in my head are dimmed (or more than they had been, at any rate), and I'm not miserable, anxious, and endlessly worried every day.

But as we roll into fall here in Portland, there are still little pings, little reminders of Charley and how much I miss him. Fall has always been my favorite season, and I love seeing the leaves change and feeling the nip in the air in the mornings in a way, love curling up under a blanket and reading a good book on a rainy afternoon. But fall brings unexpected memories and melancholy at times, too.

Like two weeks ago. It was the first week of October and the weather had turned just chilly enough that I had to turn on the furnace for the first time since the start of summer. One nice, tiny side perk of working from home is that I can listen to whatever music I want, without having to bother with headphones or worrying about annoying my coworkers. And as the furnace churned on and I settled into my chair for work, with a down throw blanket over my lap and a cup of hot coffee at the ready, I sighed in contentment. Ahhhh…fall, I thought to myself. As I customarily do most days, I turned to play some music on my iPod speaker. And since it's fall, seems like a perfect morning for George Winston's Autumn. But as soon as I reached over to hit Play on my iPod, something--the confluence of the day, the season, buried memories--made me pause, and then the familiar flush of missing sank down my throat and into my gut.

I first heard this particular album on a recorded cassette tape in the family car growing up. My brother--who's thirteen years older than me--had recorded it, along with a host of other tapes (Flashdance, Thriller, Footloose, a Fresh Aire Christmas tape) sometime during his early years in college, around 1983. My sister and I started piano lessons when I was in first grade (coincidentally, also around 1983), and I always remember hearing--and loving--this particular recording of solo piano. I bought a CD of it at some point--probably in college--and listened to it frequently on headphones at work at Intel.

But that's not why the music made my insides sink two weeks ago. It's also because, almost exactly nine years ago, going to a George Winston concert--my first and only one--with Charley was our first official date back together.

Thunk.

I'd just broken up with my then-boyfriend from work, whom I'd dated for almost nine months. Charley and I had started hanging out more more--just as friends--in August, after he moved from Salem (an hour away) to Tualitan (half an hour from my house then). I'd been increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied with my romantic relationship, and at the end of September and beginning of October, broke it off. I enjoyed getting to hang out with Charley--one of my best friends--more frequently than we'd been able to for the previous year, and thankfully, the leftover grudges and anger I'd had toward him had been healed and erased by dating my coworker…and by time and getting to reestablish a different friendship with Charley. But I didn't really have any conscious romantic thoughts toward him; he was just Charley, and we got along extraordinarily well. But apparently he had a few less platonic thoughts in mind. A friend of mine visited me for the weekend--ironically, the same friend who died almost two years ago--and like always, she wanted to go out drinking and dancing. I didn't have much interest in those particular pastimes anymore--I was too poor because I'd bought a house the year before, for one thing, and I lived over 45 minutes from downtown Portland, a distance that wasn't worth the effort of bar-hopping--but she insisted, so she, Charley, and I went to a bar downtown on a Thursday or Friday night. And under the auspices and social lubricant of alcohol, Charley kissed me while she went into the bathroom.

And as it turns out, that was pretty much that.

I had planned a short, five-day-long vacation by myself, though--a cruise to Cozumel and Playa del Carmen to make up for the trip I originally was going to take with my ex-boyfriend to Florida to meet his family (but that obviously got cancelled)--and I left a couple of days after that fateful first kiss. It also fell just after my 25th birthday--a fact that I didn't consciously connect until just now. It's no wonder that the start of fall and my birthday can often trigger unconscious grief; I simply didn't realize it (or remember, anyway) until writing about it just now--and after pulling up the old blog post from my birthday in Oct. 2009 to link to. (Huh. Whadya know. I can still learn something new after six years of this widowhood gig.) I remember going to my parents' house for my birthday dinner, with Charley in tow, a few days--maybe only 2 or 3?--after that kiss; he was there with me officially just as a friend, but I remember the undercurrent and quickly stolen embrace or kiss while my family was off in a different part of the house.

We didn't really talk about or work out what exactly it was we were doing, until after I got back from my cruise. And even then, it never really required much talking or working out. I'd have to go back and reread my old handwritten journals from back then--assuming I wrote much about it, that is--to remember what exactly we might have said or did, but nonetheless, I remember we did have an official, first, back-together date:

To a George Winston concert in Eugene, a city two hours south of Portland.

We drove down after work, ate at some nice(ish) but forgotten restaurant in Eugene, and then went to the concert. There'd been a snafu with the tickets, though--turns out my online transaction never processed, or something--and we only took our seats just as the lights dimmed for the concert to begin. And as the pianist began playing his first song, "Colors/Dance"--a song I'd heard for almost 20 years--chills ran down my back.



I couldn't believe I was there hearing a song and pianist I'd loved for years--and I couldn't believe I was there with Charley, again, after all the history between us.

I don't really remember much about the concert, aside from feeling that I was wrapped in a dark, warm womb of music. Charley, of course, loved the jazz pieces more, the ones inspired by Vince Guaraldi and the music from the Charlie Brown and Peanuts cartoons--ones I've never been as fond of. Since it was a Wednesday night and a work night, I remember it being a long drive and evening--but in the throes of a new relationship, it didn't bother either of us.

But as I reached to turn on that same George Winston album two weeks ago, all of those precious memories hit me in one unexpected, although gentle, swoop. And while it wasn't painful, it was wistful. Sweet, but still sad. And every year, I tend to forget that this time of year can bring back so many unconscious memories.

Perhaps inspired in part by widow friend Melodie's recent adventures under a tattoo artist's needle--a tattoo bearing the word "love" in her husband's handwriting (a choice that several other widowed friends have made too)--I went into my bedroom to find any scraps of writing with Charley's signature on them, as well as the program and tickets that I'd saved from the concert.

Anything that could bear testament that he'd been here, that he loved me, that I had something tangible left from my memories.





Definitely sweet, but sad, too.

The random, unpredictable flushes of missing Charley have hit me other times lately, too--in the shower, as Anna and I drove home from a weekend camping (RV-style) trip on Sunday, at other inexplicable and insignificant moments.

Most of the time I don't notice his absence. I've grown so used to it that it's not a tangible, gnawing presence anymore. And it may have been over six years now, but I still miss him…and it's unbelievable that it could be nine years already since we first got back together--and over six years now that he's been gone.

Yes…missing….