May His Memory Be A Blessing

 If/when in 2020 anyone would ask me how I was doing, I would say I was OK.  Hanging in there.  Moving forward  One foot in front of the other.  Staying Strong.

Which was a huge load of BS.  There was no way that I was OK.  Six months in I was wondering how the hell could someone hurt that long and that hard and still be alive.  But I was functioning.  That was how I defined OK.

I was screamingly (literally - living out here I could scream if I wanted to, and I did) achingly lonely.  I tried to look and act normal, not needy.  For awhile, the house was cleaner than it had ever been before (I'm just not a great housekeeper) so that I would be prepared for people to come see me, to keep me company, to see how I was doing.

Well, Pandemic, right?  The number of friends who visited me that first year was . . . let me count . . . one.  Our friend Kim come to town to go for a hike.  (That number has risen to one more so far in 2021 - a friend came by to pick up some stuff and visited for awhile.)

I tell a lie - true as far as friends go.  But my niece and nephew drove up for a visit several times.  Until I started discouraging that, because Amanda was training to be a respiratory therapists, meaning she was exposed to this Covid crap all the time.  Seemed safer to stay apart.

The last couple of months of 2020 and the first three months of 2021 were brutal.  Because you can't help thinking of all the first anniversaries - first Thanksgiving (that at least was spent with some friends), first of my birthdays alone, first Christmas alone, first New Year's Eve alone.  Followed immediately by all the first anniversaries  of The Final Three Months.  Day by day I couldn't help but relive what had happened the year before.  

And that's over now.  No more first anniversaries.   And now I'm coming to terms (and which all of this recent word barf is about) with the fact that I am, indeed, OK.  My basic Ann-ness is asserting itself.  I am a little uncomfortable with that - I mean, how can I be OK without Bob?

I'm lonely, yes, but that feels natural now.  I do enjoy my museum work twice a week, and have even seen people outside of work a couple of times and enjoyed that too - but I'm not desperate for it.  Eating alone seems normal, too.  I remember last year that some days I would go all day without eating just because I couldn't tolerate the idea of eating yet one more meal by myself.  Now I'm fine with it.  I still don't like grocery shopping - but my hands don't shake and I don't have to suppress the urge to cry anymore when I'm buying enough for one person.

I play music and sing along and sometimes dance.  I love on the cats.  I hunker down to watch the bees in the wildflowers, and listen to the high screeching complaint of a fledging barred owl who is upset that mama is making him fly (it took me a few days to figure out what that sound was).

I'm starting to feel a little like a poser, especially if I'm around people who didn't know Bob.  Last year I felt defiant, claiming that I still "identified" as being married.  But I'm not.  I was married, past tense.  I still wear my rings.  I still use the term "we" and "our" a lot (referring to example, our land and the cats and anything that happened before 2020).  But it's starting to feel a little strange.   I'm just Ann, not Ann-and-Bob.  (it was usually the other way around.  We would tell people that the easy way to remember our names was to think of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann."  Only it was Bob Bob Bob, Bob and Ann).

The title of this post is a Jewish saying, May His Memory Be a Blessing."  I had always thought of it as just a saying, a thing one says at funerals, the equivalent of "may he rest in peace."   But it is having a greater depth of meaning to me now.  I miss him.  It hurts that he is gone.  But I had him in my life for 48 years.  That laugh, that look, those strange non sequiturs he'd come up with.  The gentle way he could hold a small animal (as opposed to the terrified way he would hold a baby).  The proud love he had for his family.  So much love.  The way he enjoyed life - the scent of a flower, or a good meal.  The way he could defuse a tense situation.  The way he could somehow understand what a person was saying, even if they didn't speak English.  So many memories.  I wish I had known him longer, but I'm happy in what I was given.

His memory is a blessing.