About two days after her death.....I am trying to prepare for the funeral. How does one prepare in the face of such a tempest in one's life? I honestly don't remember.
I do remember driving to get my hair cut. I had shoulder blade length hair, and had somehow decided in my grief I wanted it gone. I was driving my little Toyota to the place where the deed was to be done.
Powerful grief can be like powerful drink, and I should not have been on the road that day. I remember driving along, and suddenly being overwhelmed by wave upon wave of utter, anguishing sorrow. My head dropped, I could not focus, and the tears came yet again.
Suddenly, a voice shouted out in the car. It said to me "Look out, dear!" I lifted my head and saw that I was on the shoulder and headed for a fence. I corrected my course, and made the journey without further incident.
The odd thing was that this voice was my own. Even odder was that I have never once in my entire life referred to myself as "dear", either before or after that moment, save that one time. I also had no clue that I was in danger of crashing.
Believe what you will, but I believe I was visited that day. Some have theorized when a departed soul visits a living loved one, it can actually cause the living person to feel fresh grief, hence my loss of ability to focus. And I believe my visitor realized what was happening and saved me the only way she could, by speaking through me.
Flash forward a few months. It is an early spring day, and it is starting to warm a little, the sun is shining and the promise of life is abundant. I am at the mausoleum though, and all I can see is death.
She is there, what little remains of her. I had walked through the door, noting it was propped open to let in the spring air, and made my way to her urn. After a little prayer I felt the now horribly familiar claws of grief take hold of me yet again. I sat on a nearby couch, collapsed really, and sobbed.
Now it's important to know that Gretchen had a love of small, cute furry animals. She wanted to be a veterinarian at some point, but had been stymied by the medications that slowed her mind.
As I sat on this couch, a small grey squirrel entered through the open door, ran across probably 20 yards of carpet, and hopped up onto the couch on the opposite arm. It sat there and looked at me with inscrutable eyes for maybe 10 seconds, then hopped back off the couch and scampered back outside.
I've dreamed of her many times since, and I believe we are visited in our dreams, but to me these were the last two messages in the waking realm from a departed soul.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
A piece of my past, chapter #3 of 4
When our front door opened, you looked down a hall into our bathroom. She was there, lying on the floor by the toilet.. It looked as if she had been sitting on it when she had a seizure. She had slumped forward, still not wearing anything, and landed headfirst on the tile, her knees still drawn up so that it looked almost like she had knelt down then placed her face on the floor rather than fall to it.
Time stretches out at this point, a ten foot hallway becomes a half-mile, then a thousand. I reach her, I think I had been calling her name. I don’t even have to turn her over or take a pulse. I put my hand on her back, and she’s terribly, horribly cold.
I can still feel it now, years later. I cannot bear to turn her over, perhaps this is a mercy at this point. The scene has haunted me to this very day, and seeing her dead eyes may have pushed me past any point of ever returning.
The air seems filled with a molasses fog, and I am struggling to breathe in it. I move in a drug-like daze to the phone, pick it up, and dial nine one one. I cannot recall what I told the person who answered, but I was still remarkably calm. Calm because this had to be some sort of nightmare, and nightmares always end with waking up and putting one’s arm around the warm, soft form of one’s sleeping spouse. The nightmare is the cold, unmoving form in the bathroom, the one that I cannot believe in.
I remember going to the window to watch for the aid units, and laying my face against the window. With a nasty start, I realized it was cold too. In fact, all warmth seemed to have been drained from the world.
I moved to the couch, and slumped down in my state of stunned disbelief. Next was a knock at the door, and a voice calling out. I answered weakly, and a cop walked into my living room, while his partner confronted my nightmare in the bathroom. I remember some basic questions, and the arrival of more people, including an ambulance with medics. I remember very little of this, except I know I gave them my mom and step-dad’s phone number. The cop called, and merely said “something bad has happened, you need to get over here right away.”
They lived very close, but time had lost all meaning to me at that point, all I know is that my mom’s tear streaked face loomed into view sometime after the call. Strangely, I had not shed much in the way of tears yet. This was, after all, a nightmare and oh please it should soon be over.
Finally, the cops and a medic sat down with me at the dining room table. They explained what would happen next, but they were speaking some strange dialect to me. Then one of the cops brought it all home. He held out his hand, and placed into mine two rings. One was Gretchen’s wedding ring, and the other a decorative ring she wore on the other hand. This was a touch of realism I didn’t usually find in my nightmares, and this is what finally cut through the haze and hammered home to me that this was real.
Putting those small personal effects of the woman I loved in my hand was like a hard slap. Gretchen was dead. It was then that the furious thunderstorm of grief began.
Time stretches out at this point, a ten foot hallway becomes a half-mile, then a thousand. I reach her, I think I had been calling her name. I don’t even have to turn her over or take a pulse. I put my hand on her back, and she’s terribly, horribly cold.
I can still feel it now, years later. I cannot bear to turn her over, perhaps this is a mercy at this point. The scene has haunted me to this very day, and seeing her dead eyes may have pushed me past any point of ever returning.
The air seems filled with a molasses fog, and I am struggling to breathe in it. I move in a drug-like daze to the phone, pick it up, and dial nine one one. I cannot recall what I told the person who answered, but I was still remarkably calm. Calm because this had to be some sort of nightmare, and nightmares always end with waking up and putting one’s arm around the warm, soft form of one’s sleeping spouse. The nightmare is the cold, unmoving form in the bathroom, the one that I cannot believe in.
I remember going to the window to watch for the aid units, and laying my face against the window. With a nasty start, I realized it was cold too. In fact, all warmth seemed to have been drained from the world.
I moved to the couch, and slumped down in my state of stunned disbelief. Next was a knock at the door, and a voice calling out. I answered weakly, and a cop walked into my living room, while his partner confronted my nightmare in the bathroom. I remember some basic questions, and the arrival of more people, including an ambulance with medics. I remember very little of this, except I know I gave them my mom and step-dad’s phone number. The cop called, and merely said “something bad has happened, you need to get over here right away.”
They lived very close, but time had lost all meaning to me at that point, all I know is that my mom’s tear streaked face loomed into view sometime after the call. Strangely, I had not shed much in the way of tears yet. This was, after all, a nightmare and oh please it should soon be over.
Finally, the cops and a medic sat down with me at the dining room table. They explained what would happen next, but they were speaking some strange dialect to me. Then one of the cops brought it all home. He held out his hand, and placed into mine two rings. One was Gretchen’s wedding ring, and the other a decorative ring she wore on the other hand. This was a touch of realism I didn’t usually find in my nightmares, and this is what finally cut through the haze and hammered home to me that this was real.
Putting those small personal effects of the woman I loved in my hand was like a hard slap. Gretchen was dead. It was then that the furious thunderstorm of grief began.
A piece of my past, chapter #2 of 4
I awoke the next day with the anticipated hangover, tired and out of sorts. A shower and hot, black, strong coffee helped a little. Gretchen was between jobs at the time, and was still sleeping. I dressed and made ready to leave. I kissed her and told her I loved her, and she repeated the same back to me. As I was getting my coat and heading out the front door, she called it out again. Being tired and out of sorts, I called back “I know” in a half-cranky/half-sleepy way.
Through the years that have passed since then, I have regretted those two words more times than I could ever count. I think she knew something was coming. I wish I had known, or at least responded better.
I showed up at work, on time as usual. I have always been anal to the Nth degree about being on time to anything I needed to go to, and even hangovers did not stop that. Karen came in shortly after me, and we both gave each other a sickly grin and a sympathetic moan of the post alcohol blues. It was just another rat-race day in the rat-race work world.
I was a production coordinator at a company that manufactured software packages for retail sale or shipment to end users. I basically took the written orders from the sales staff and translated them into work tickets for the work crew, and then fitted the job into the production schedule. It was not my dream job, but it paid the mortgage for the little condo we lived in.
On my lunch break, it was my habit to call Gretchen, to see how she was doing and share the thrills of my work day. I picked up and dialed our number, and listened to our home phone burr the customary four times before our answering machine picked up. I left a message, figuring she was in the shower or still asleep or something. Or something. I tried again a little later, and the machine picked up again. Odd. I waited maybe thirty minutes and tried a third time - no answer. I got a strange little feeling in the pit of my stomach. I told myself to stop being silly, everything was fine. Gretchen had been doing occasional on-call fill-in work at a local daycare, they must have called her in after I left that morning. It had happened several times before. But something whispered in my mind, a quiet and as yet unintelligible whisper that still filled me with dread.
As the afternoon wore on, and a couple more phone calls went unanswered, the whisper grew into a nameless fear. Something was wrong. Our company had parties once a month for all the people who had birthdays in that month. I normally love the attention, but for some reason I wanted to do nothing but hide in the back of the room that day, even though my birthday was one of the ones for that month. The company president called off the names of the birthdays for January, and when he got to mine I sort of waved and smiled weakly, then hunched down into my sweatshirt and tried to disappear. After I had put in my obligatory appearance, I scrambled back to our office downstairs and tried one more phone call – still no answer.
It was almost quitting time now, and I rode out those last moments in a quiet dread. Finally it was time to go, and I threaded my way home through the afternoon traffic, all the while listening to the whisper turn to a roar – SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.
I pulled into our carport, got out of my car, and started up the steps to our front door. It hit me then. What I had felt at work was like being on a beach, and little waves washing at my toes, then my ankles. This was like a sudden wave, dark and cold and huge, and overwhelming after the small ones. I knew with certainty that something was dreadfully wrong. I went to the front door, inserted my key, turned the deadbolt, and opened the door.
Through the years that have passed since then, I have regretted those two words more times than I could ever count. I think she knew something was coming. I wish I had known, or at least responded better.
I showed up at work, on time as usual. I have always been anal to the Nth degree about being on time to anything I needed to go to, and even hangovers did not stop that. Karen came in shortly after me, and we both gave each other a sickly grin and a sympathetic moan of the post alcohol blues. It was just another rat-race day in the rat-race work world.
I was a production coordinator at a company that manufactured software packages for retail sale or shipment to end users. I basically took the written orders from the sales staff and translated them into work tickets for the work crew, and then fitted the job into the production schedule. It was not my dream job, but it paid the mortgage for the little condo we lived in.
On my lunch break, it was my habit to call Gretchen, to see how she was doing and share the thrills of my work day. I picked up and dialed our number, and listened to our home phone burr the customary four times before our answering machine picked up. I left a message, figuring she was in the shower or still asleep or something. Or something. I tried again a little later, and the machine picked up again. Odd. I waited maybe thirty minutes and tried a third time - no answer. I got a strange little feeling in the pit of my stomach. I told myself to stop being silly, everything was fine. Gretchen had been doing occasional on-call fill-in work at a local daycare, they must have called her in after I left that morning. It had happened several times before. But something whispered in my mind, a quiet and as yet unintelligible whisper that still filled me with dread.
As the afternoon wore on, and a couple more phone calls went unanswered, the whisper grew into a nameless fear. Something was wrong. Our company had parties once a month for all the people who had birthdays in that month. I normally love the attention, but for some reason I wanted to do nothing but hide in the back of the room that day, even though my birthday was one of the ones for that month. The company president called off the names of the birthdays for January, and when he got to mine I sort of waved and smiled weakly, then hunched down into my sweatshirt and tried to disappear. After I had put in my obligatory appearance, I scrambled back to our office downstairs and tried one more phone call – still no answer.
It was almost quitting time now, and I rode out those last moments in a quiet dread. Finally it was time to go, and I threaded my way home through the afternoon traffic, all the while listening to the whisper turn to a roar – SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT.
I pulled into our carport, got out of my car, and started up the steps to our front door. It hit me then. What I had felt at work was like being on a beach, and little waves washing at my toes, then my ankles. This was like a sudden wave, dark and cold and huge, and overwhelming after the small ones. I knew with certainty that something was dreadfully wrong. I went to the front door, inserted my key, turned the deadbolt, and opened the door.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
A piece of my past, chapter #1 of 4
I wrote this a few years ago, it's way too long to post the whole thing in one piece on a blog, so I'm going to post it in chapters on days like today when I can think of nothing pressing to write about.
So here is the first installment:
It’s my last dart for this round. I looked down my arm, over the flights of the dart. Lean forward, envision your target. Triple twentys now. That’s it. Aim, exhale, release. Damn. I hit a single one instead. I sit back down and drink some beer.
Karen and Tony have been our friends for a while now. She is tall, willowy, and very Nordic. She is wearing her customary tight fitting peg leg jeans and loose, baggy sweatshirt. It’s as if she wants to only show off her figure from the waist down. She’s actually my boss, and a pretty cool one. I’m going to have a hangover at work tomorrow, but she will too. Our collective misery will enjoy the company.
Karen is married to Tony. Tony has a glorious blond mullet, and a muscular build. He could be a rock star, but instead he works for a local city, maintaining storm drains. He’s a good guy, quick to laugh.
Gretchen is not too tall, a little heavy built. She has long blond hair and a warm, genuine smile. She’s pretty in a “girl-next-door” sort of way. Her speech and mannerisms make some people think she is a little slow upstairs, but if you take the time to get to know her you realize she is actually reasonably bright. I know her well, we’ve been married for a year and a half.
She’s actually just legally stoned on Phenobarbital, this is what makes her seem slow. It’s one of the medications she takes to control her grand mal epilepsy. She’s had the seizures since childhood, and they have grown slowly worse over the years. We were together for five years before we married, so I’ve had some time to watch.
Like the time she visited me at college, and dropped like a rock in the cafeteria, losing a tray full of the deep fried crap they fed us students. The campus cops grilled me good on that one. They were quite convinced she was drunk or high on something more illicit. Assholes. They were washouts from the State Patrol, and suffered from little man complex.
Or the times in the shower - for some reason the repetitive noise of the water could bring it on. It was a bitch of a place to go down; she took her fair share of bruises from those times. There was nothing to do at that point but dry her off and put her in bed.
There was even a time during intimacy. I had been away for a couple of weeks without seeing her, and we were both pretty worked up – both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, stress or mental excitement could trigger the seizures too. One moment we were doing our thing, the next she was gone, eyes rolled back, twitching violently, making that odd half gasp noise she made repeatedly during bad seizures. I put my hand through the wallboard in frustration on that one, mad not at my sweet Gretchen but at this condition that she came to loathe.
And there was me. Young, sometimes impulsive. I had a blond mullet similar to Tony’s, but could not match his exquisite build. I had put away a lot of beer in my time, and it showed. Not excessively, but I had a soft, somewhat overweight look that was not going to pass as muscle of any sort. I liked to play hard. I drank with some regularity, but I was young enough to work through the hangover the next day. I loved being with Gretchen, I loved her with all my heart. I liked to live the fun life. Hell, I was a mid-twenty-something, full of vigor and ready to party.
The four of us were the members of a dart team that played in a recreational league. We represented the Irish Rose Tavern. We were decent shooters on our best days, a drunken wipe out on our worst. Usually we saved the heaviest drinking for after the match, so we were actually in contention for a playoff spot in our league. I don’t remember the score that night, although we managed a win. I know we enjoyed each other’s company for a while after, and the drinks flowed.
We finally made our way home close to midnight, through a cold, wet Seattle January rain. We made it into bed, and curled up together for warmth. For some reason, neither of us could sleep, so we cuddled and talked for a while about nothing in particular. Talk gave way other things, with the rain pattering down outside. Afterwards we fell asleep in each others embrace. It was the last time we would be together.
So here is the first installment:
It’s my last dart for this round. I looked down my arm, over the flights of the dart. Lean forward, envision your target. Triple twentys now. That’s it. Aim, exhale, release. Damn. I hit a single one instead. I sit back down and drink some beer.
Karen and Tony have been our friends for a while now. She is tall, willowy, and very Nordic. She is wearing her customary tight fitting peg leg jeans and loose, baggy sweatshirt. It’s as if she wants to only show off her figure from the waist down. She’s actually my boss, and a pretty cool one. I’m going to have a hangover at work tomorrow, but she will too. Our collective misery will enjoy the company.
Karen is married to Tony. Tony has a glorious blond mullet, and a muscular build. He could be a rock star, but instead he works for a local city, maintaining storm drains. He’s a good guy, quick to laugh.
Gretchen is not too tall, a little heavy built. She has long blond hair and a warm, genuine smile. She’s pretty in a “girl-next-door” sort of way. Her speech and mannerisms make some people think she is a little slow upstairs, but if you take the time to get to know her you realize she is actually reasonably bright. I know her well, we’ve been married for a year and a half.
She’s actually just legally stoned on Phenobarbital, this is what makes her seem slow. It’s one of the medications she takes to control her grand mal epilepsy. She’s had the seizures since childhood, and they have grown slowly worse over the years. We were together for five years before we married, so I’ve had some time to watch.
Like the time she visited me at college, and dropped like a rock in the cafeteria, losing a tray full of the deep fried crap they fed us students. The campus cops grilled me good on that one. They were quite convinced she was drunk or high on something more illicit. Assholes. They were washouts from the State Patrol, and suffered from little man complex.
Or the times in the shower - for some reason the repetitive noise of the water could bring it on. It was a bitch of a place to go down; she took her fair share of bruises from those times. There was nothing to do at that point but dry her off and put her in bed.
There was even a time during intimacy. I had been away for a couple of weeks without seeing her, and we were both pretty worked up – both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, stress or mental excitement could trigger the seizures too. One moment we were doing our thing, the next she was gone, eyes rolled back, twitching violently, making that odd half gasp noise she made repeatedly during bad seizures. I put my hand through the wallboard in frustration on that one, mad not at my sweet Gretchen but at this condition that she came to loathe.
And there was me. Young, sometimes impulsive. I had a blond mullet similar to Tony’s, but could not match his exquisite build. I had put away a lot of beer in my time, and it showed. Not excessively, but I had a soft, somewhat overweight look that was not going to pass as muscle of any sort. I liked to play hard. I drank with some regularity, but I was young enough to work through the hangover the next day. I loved being with Gretchen, I loved her with all my heart. I liked to live the fun life. Hell, I was a mid-twenty-something, full of vigor and ready to party.
The four of us were the members of a dart team that played in a recreational league. We represented the Irish Rose Tavern. We were decent shooters on our best days, a drunken wipe out on our worst. Usually we saved the heaviest drinking for after the match, so we were actually in contention for a playoff spot in our league. I don’t remember the score that night, although we managed a win. I know we enjoyed each other’s company for a while after, and the drinks flowed.
We finally made our way home close to midnight, through a cold, wet Seattle January rain. We made it into bed, and curled up together for warmth. For some reason, neither of us could sleep, so we cuddled and talked for a while about nothing in particular. Talk gave way other things, with the rain pattering down outside. Afterwards we fell asleep in each others embrace. It was the last time we would be together.
Monday, May 5, 2008
And the earth shook....
If you felt a small quake yesterday, that was just me falling down in the bathtub at the Chateau Westport. I got a nice gash over my eye, and there is a little discoloration today.
I've become used to the shower we have at home, which is a stall with a door and a nice non-skid floor. I'd forgotten that I need to be much more careful in a shower that is also a regular bathtub. The tub had non-skid strips. but my foot managed to slide right down the space in between two of them.
Joshua and I were down there because it was his turn to go on a trip with me, and there was one final razor clam tide for spring. He may have been the only person in the entire hotel not to hear the thundering boom of me landing on my face in the tub - he was far too engrossed in whatever cartoon he was watching at the time on the TV. He didn't even seem phased by the sight of his naked, bleeding, soaking wet father staggering out of the bathroom with a stunned look on his face.
Good times......good times.
Actually, the rest of the trip was very fun. We climbed the Grays Harbor lighthouse to the very top. We dined at Grayland's finest eatery, the Mutineer. We went swimming not once but twice in the pool at the hotel - before I tried to break my face of course.
And the weather was spectacular, sunny and very little wind. We easily limited out on clams. This trip was very different than the one Corwin and I did just a mere three weeks prior where it snowed on us. That was a brutal trip, with the temperature in the 30's and a wind of at least 30 mph coming straight off the water. It was so cold even the clams went into hiding.
I just want to give a shout-out to my three faithful readers. Thanks, and I love you guys!
I've become used to the shower we have at home, which is a stall with a door and a nice non-skid floor. I'd forgotten that I need to be much more careful in a shower that is also a regular bathtub. The tub had non-skid strips. but my foot managed to slide right down the space in between two of them.
Joshua and I were down there because it was his turn to go on a trip with me, and there was one final razor clam tide for spring. He may have been the only person in the entire hotel not to hear the thundering boom of me landing on my face in the tub - he was far too engrossed in whatever cartoon he was watching at the time on the TV. He didn't even seem phased by the sight of his naked, bleeding, soaking wet father staggering out of the bathroom with a stunned look on his face.
Good times......good times.
Actually, the rest of the trip was very fun. We climbed the Grays Harbor lighthouse to the very top. We dined at Grayland's finest eatery, the Mutineer. We went swimming not once but twice in the pool at the hotel - before I tried to break my face of course.
And the weather was spectacular, sunny and very little wind. We easily limited out on clams. This trip was very different than the one Corwin and I did just a mere three weeks prior where it snowed on us. That was a brutal trip, with the temperature in the 30's and a wind of at least 30 mph coming straight off the water. It was so cold even the clams went into hiding.
I just want to give a shout-out to my three faithful readers. Thanks, and I love you guys!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
