More Anniversary Ramblings

 I'm regarding these anniversary posts as my "message in a bottle" posts to Future Me.  I've been frustrated because I've gone over my August posts, both in this blog and my previous one  - 13 years worth, and I wrote very little about anniversaries.  We had them, we enjoyed them, we enjoyed being married - but except for the big ones, really didn't do much.

I'm back to sleeping on the couch again.  There are times (like I did in March) when the fact that he's gone is more than I can handle and the bed is just too damned empty.  The couch is comforting, with that solidity at my back.  

The front office manager at the museum, Chris,  just lost her husband.  He wasn't feeling well, went to bed, and that was that.  My heart breaks for her.  Sometimes I wonder which would be worse.  The sudden unexpected loss like this (or my friend Los whose wife simply dropped from a pulmonary embolism) or my experience of sitting in a hospital room for three months watching him die.  It may be that there isn't better or worse way.  Like the words of wisdom from my friend Greg - grief isn't a competition.

The very beautiful "Let A Physicist Speak at your Funeral" drifted by on FaceBook. https://www.iflscience.com/ask-physicist-speak-your-funeral-0-23899  

About how nothing is ever lost - not a photon from him that landed in your eye, not his energy.  It's all still here.

What caught my eye this time was the sentence "as your widow rocks in the arms of her loving family  . ."

Yeah, right.  How about "as your widow lies on the floor alone, screaming, and no one knows or will come near because there's a plague going on."

I have a friend who moved back in with her parents about 8 years ago, first helping to care for her stepfather until he passed, and then for her mother until she also passed a year ago.  After you lose someone, even if you're the executor, there's nothing you can do for a couple of weeks until the death certificate comes in.  She flew home to visit her biological father and half-brother and wife.  At one point they asked what she wanted to eat.  She was telling me "I told them that I couldn't think.  I couldn't even make that much of a decision.  I was empty."  So they just put food in front of her.

I remember feeling that way.  And with no food put in front of me - well, there were some days that I simply didn't eat.  I couldn't tell the difference between grief pain and hunger pangs anyway, and didn't have what it takes to get up off the couch (or the floor) and go to the kitchen.  (And yet - somehow the cats and chickens and squirrel got fed)

But now, three years and change later, I realize that it simply doesn't matter.  Would it have been nice to have that support?  Maybe - but it makes no difference in the long run.

But in the short run, I hope someone is helping Chris.