Finishing Out 2020

 And now it's nearing the end of January.  No post since October 10.  In that one, I said a lot had happened between that post and the previous one.  Now I don't remember what.  Maybe the new deck.  I'll talk about that in a minute.

Losing Nazgul, so soon after losing Wilhelm (and a couple of chickens died, as well) about finished me off.  To the extent that even though I said no, Robert and Dane drove up to see me, as he put it "we are going to put our eyes on you."  At one point I sort of lost it, saying "I just need to be able to breathe."

And that didn't happen,  Four days after I lost Nazgul, a young friend (39) suddenly died of a heart attack.  Ellen and I were not close friends; her husband and I used to do programs together and she and I met through him.  She was finishing a Ph.D in marine biology, was a talented belly dancer, and a very creative and skilled costumer.  A couple of weeks before she died, I was talking to Los (her husband) and he was concerned about her because the Covid isolation and not being able to hang with her friends was wearing her down.  I invited her to a virtual tour of my cottage; we ended up talking for over two hours.  She was planning on starting an on-line crafting group (I looked forward to that) and we talked about maybe collaborating on some projects.  And then she died.

One thing good came out of this for me.  No, "good" is not the right word.  It wasn't good.  Important.  It was important.  I went to see Los, and we sat on a bench for a couple of hours and held each other and talked and cried.  By then, it had been six months since I lost Bob.  And it was the first time that I had been held.  There had been a few (very few) quick hugs, but that was all.  I needed that so desperately.  So although I was the one doing the holding and the consoling, it also met that need in me.   Los and Ellen had been planning on moving home to California, so he left less than a month later.  I miss him.

And slowly the year closed out.  I kept things quiet.  Some friends had me over for a (small and safe) Thanksgiving.  My birthday came and went.  I spend a quiet solo Christmas.  Of course the family asked me to come visit, but I wasn't up to it.  The main thing I wouldn't have been able to face would have been the lonely drive home to a house without Bob.  (After much internal debate, I kept our tradition of making meat pies to have with sherry while watching "The HogFather."  I also made a small amount of fruitcake, simply because I have done that for Christmas for some 55 years now)  Same for New Year.  There is also the Covid to contend with.  Amanda works as a respiratory therapist with Covid patients.  Visiting the family would have made a gathering of  7 people - that's more than I ever hang out with even at work (which is the only place I hang out with people.  As my brother so succinctly put it - "you live alone in the woods.  If you get sick, you're screwed."

I might be the only person who didn't want 2020 to end.  Because even though one day follows the next and there is no natural point to say "this year, next year, last year" it is the way we think of it.  And 2020 is when I lost Bob.  I've been moving away from him.  "He died two weeks ago" moved to "he died 8 months ago" and now officially it's "he died last year."  Los called me from California on New Year's Eve to talk about it - neither of us wanted to move solo into the new year.  But we have no choice.

I think about the things that Bob missed in this massively insane year.  He died just as the pandemic was setting in - no one had any idea that it would last more than a few weeks.  He never knew about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matters movement.  He never knew that we lost Wilhelm and Nazgul.  He never knew about the utter insanity that was the election and the aftermath of that.

He doesn't know, that for his sake, I'm doing OK.  I crash, and pick myself back up.  I'm still volunteering at the Museum (it's my lifeline).  I've kept up the house.  I even designed a new deck and had the old one torn out when it was getting rotted enough to be dangerous.  I've kept the yard under control.  Just for fun, I made an amazing dragon puppet (I'll post pictures later.  Somehow I want this post to remain solemn.)

I do not know what 2021 or the following years will bring.  I'll try to figure out my life, to move forward rather than just surviving.  But I will end with a post I did on FaceBook on New Year's Eve.  Because no matter what - I have to keep dancing.

Only a few hours of 2020 left. I might be the only person hanging onto it, heels dug in, nails clawing, not wanting to let it go. Because this is the last year that I was married.

The first three months of 2020 was brutal. Then it turned into a complete dumpster fire.

And I can't let it go at that. I have to hang onto something of 2020. And it's this: In the hospital, at Shands. After a bone marrow transplant patients are encouraged to exercise, to walk, to keep the blood circulating and to convince the body that more needs to be made. But Bob got sick and developed a fever, so he wasn't allowed out of his room. We were determined, though, so we paced the floor of his room, 12 feet up, 12 feet down, over and over again. To ease the boredom, we put on music. "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart, a favorite song of his came on, and he reached for me, put his arms around me, and we started dancing. Twirl and swing and dip. Possibly a kiss or two. At one point he whispered "look at the window."

He was referring to the observation window at the nurse's work station (we lived in a goldfish bowl). Quite the little crowd had gathered, nurses and staff, smiling and laughing and applauding. They had never seen anyone dancing and happy up there in the ward.

So that is what I will take with me. I don't know what will happen in 2021, but in 2020 - we danced.