Nope - no deer in this one, just a Shakespeare quote.
An important part in dealing with grief is to allow yourself to feel pleasure where you can - a bit of enjoyment here and there. And I do - but sometimes it just becomes an uphill battle.
Take Misfits for example. I wrote about this in an earlier post, maybe 2020. Basically, you get sent a big box of random vegetables every other week. It was fun - I never knew what I was getting, and it did keep me eating in a ridiculously healthy manner because it was a *lot* of vegetables, some I had never heard of before. (the chickens liked it, too). I would unbox, set up a still life to photograph, and figure what order to eat it all. Sort of like getting a strange healthy Christmas package twice a month. It was fun.
Alas - they expanded. The quality dropped a bit. And you had to go "shopping" and pick what you were getting so the surprise of opening wasn't there, and they didn't have the weird offbeat things anymore. On top of that, they raised the minimum order which made it more than I could possibly eat. So that was one small pleasure that went by the wayside.
It seems to be becoming the natural order of things. I enjoyed my chat and planning to get together with Ellen - that ended abruptly and permanently. I enjoyed the brunch with Adrienne last October, but there's no guessing when she'll be healthy enough for another get-together. I enjoyed my twice-monthly chats with Randy but that got uncomfortable and then (fortunately) ended.
I love the companionship of my cats - four of whom I have lost . I never lost my wonderment and joy of having peacocks around - and I'm down to one (my heart is in my mouth every morning when I first go outside, and every afternoon when I got to check on him, until I spot him.)
Even my friendship with Ebaida, so important to me. For some reason she made a random anti-American post on FaceBook, which startled and confused me. And of course several of her friends dived in on the comments. I dropped her a note about it, and she apologized for offending me and took the post down, but still . . . I wasn't offended, I was hurt. You paint "Americans" with a broad brush, and some of that gets on me. I am reminded of my rather racist father-in-law, who would say of a person of color - "You know, for a (insert pejorative term here because I'm not writing it) he ain't bad." And that's how I feel - for an American, I ain't bad. It was a small thing, and over, and we're fine, but it was a small, unexpected cut.
And then there's Ramin. Heaviest of sighs Two weeks after Bob died, there was a fundraiser that aired the 25th anniversary of Phantom of the Opera. I've always loved that ridiculous play - so I watched it. And there was That Voice. A voice like I had never heard before. I started playing Follow That Voice (easy to do on YouTube). I clung to that voice like a drowning man clings to a piece of flotsam.
I've written about him before, back in 2020, when I wrote about the song " 'Till I Hear You Sing." There were others, such as "Broken" - "Broken, broken, she will never be the same." And the very haunting "You're Still Here" which I called an exaltation of grief. It made me feel *understood.* (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVZQ6t6pNms)
"You're still here, next to me, out of reach, somewhere I can't be"
With the plaintive, grief-stricken fear
"What if I forget? I can see you now, but how will it last? Memory will fade, summoning the shadow that you cast, taking you away to nothing more than the past."
And then there was his speaking voice, described as having a soft, apologetic Canadian Cadence. And during the pandemic, he urged people to give themselves grace, to try to find gratitude, to be gentle. To try to be just a little bit better today than you were yesterday. Things that I needed to hear.
In short - I fell in love. I had a lot of love to give, and nowhere for it to go. He would post a short FB story (meaning a picture and a caption, maybe a bit of song) almost every day. YouTube videos on a regular basis (maybe singing to his dog in his living room). It was like getting little gifts. I'd see that kind, infectious smile, and find myself smiling as well.
And then - weirdness. He decided to take control of his social media and instead post on his own app. With a subscription, $17 a month (that's over twice of Netflix. A lot of people on YouTube also have patron pages, which are usually around $5). He was always about sharing, about a feeling of community - and now he was suddenly exclusionary. There was a lot of hurt feelings on the fan pages (which have pretty much died out now). Some people who had been fans for over 20 years, since his early West End days, are on fixed incomes and that doesn't fit into the budget. Others - including me - just don't understand this sudden change of attitude. I found myself humming an old Tom Lehrer song: "No fellow could ignore that little girl next door, she sure looked sweet in her first evening gown. Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free . . . " Or, in my meaner moments, his words from his role as Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard: "You think I've sold out, dead right I've sold out. I was just waiting for the right offer."
I could afford it, but the feeling is gone. And I very much miss it.
So there's the pattern - I find something I like, that I can enjoy, and it goes away.
And it's March 25. 2020. Three weeks since Bob's transplant. The absolute outside day that the transplant should show signs of taking. The nurse walks in. They have a daily routine of looking at the blood tests taken in the night and writing the results on the white board. She pulls up the screen, takes out the marker, and writes "Neutrophils: <0.01. In other words, nothing. There's nothing to be done now but wait. In five days another biopsy will be done. Two days after that we'll get the result and know if he has any chance of surviving at all. But we already know the answer.
I don't remember anything else that day. Maybe he went to dialysis and I went and took a nap. I don't recall talking. Maybe this was the day that I desperately needed comforting, crawled up in bed beside him, tried to get him to hold me. But he was too muzzy headed by then and kept drifting in and out and I couldn't get him to respond to me at all and when I tried to put his arm around me it just fell off again. I wanted to hold onto him, and I was losing him.
March 25, 2022. I spent another couple of hard hours in the garden, winning back another 8 feet or so, tackling the huge overgrown Virginia creeper. Then I got the trash fire lit. Sat and read for some time. Got my spindle and took a walk. It's dark now (I'm writing this outside by the fire). Peaceful, except for the mosquitoes. The spring peepers are singing down in the swamp. The owls are talking. It's time to put up the chickens, get Hamish inside (I'm tentatively letting him spend a couple of hours outside and then checking him for ticks afterwards - he's so much happier if he gets to go out), and feed the cats. And myself. It's been a good day.
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