Family (by Pierce Pettis, covered by Dar Williams)

Thanks again for everyone's continued patience with me.  Maybe I'll just blather here for a while and, if you feel like commenting, that's great... but, whatever...

There are no good days, although there may be bright spots in an otherwise awful day.  Just about everything makes me cry.  Anything can remind me of Eric, in a random moment, sometimes unexplainable, and I just can't hold it in... nor do I want to.  At first I thought there were a finite number of tears and I would cry myself out, but it's become apparent they are unlimited, a bottomless well.  

It's awful that we are still dealing with logistical issues (believe it or not, we only *just* received the death certificates today), which means I have multiple people/businesses to mail them to.

Yes to countless ups and downs but... Nothing. Like. This.  This is big.  This is incomprehensible.  This is ongoing.  This is forever.  The part of my life that is Not Eric is detritus.  I do not care.  I cannot think about anything else right now.  I'm still not reading.  TV holds no interest for me.  Food seesaws between styrofoam and a means to keep me from blood sugar drops.  I cannot concentrate on anything.  My vocabulary/memory is all but gone.  

I am angry.  I am taking everything personally.  I am still in Denial... yet, when I read the Accident Report or the funeral home invoice, it is In-My-Face Real.  

Chico and I went looking for, and found, a box of DVDs of moments captured when we finally got a camcorder (Winter 2001; we were very late to the game).  We stopped time earlier today and watched a few (they're each about an hour), and we laughed and cried at the family dynamic, mostly our road trips to Atlanta, etc. for the Christmas holidays, another with all the kids' Santa visits spliced together (Perimeter Mall; thanks, Aunt Mari!).  Chico filmed my *ss a lot (ha!), but the footage of the kids is priceless.  We have decided we will take a few to my sister's house for Thanksgiving.  Healing or hurting?  Both/And.

I am currently trying to find the fine line between tiptoeing-out-into-the-world adventurer and nightgowned-and-fuzzy-socked hermit.  Sarah and I did make it to Rob's roommate's Halloween party last night and I basically wanted to leave as soon as I got there.  The music was too loud, the menu was meat-centric, and most people got very drunk very quickly.  Wearing my Mother Nature costume (the idea borrowed from Roxanne a bazillion years ago) for the first time in a while, I felt pretty (it's amazing what some lip gloss will do)... but I also felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience rather than being in-the-moment.

I am trying so hard to be Present; the Past leaves me stuck at the September 26 8:30 p.m. Line of Demarcation when E's proverbial David Copperfield tablecloth is yanked out from under the dishes... and the Future will forever be missing a chess piece that I took for granted would always be there (yep, mixed metaphors).

I need to say his name.  I say it a lot, because it keeps him front-and-center in my heart and mind.  Thanksgiving will be unbearable.  I believe December will be easier because 2022 was his first Christmas*not* with us, because Eric spent it with Duyen's family in a North Carolina cabin.  

So, I'm really just a mess masquerading as a wife/mother/family member/friend/citizen of the world; I speak in soliloquys of heaving sobs and brain blips, reading messages into random occurrences that may not mean anything, but that I'm desperate to believe (rainbows and owls and synchronistic songs, oh my).

How does this happen?  Why did this happen?  (rhetorical questions both).  Walking and breathing and speaking will be a conscious effort for a very long time... 😖

SONG:  Family by Pierce Pettis (covered by Dar Williams)

BOOK:  I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One by Brook Noel, Pamela D Blair PhD

POEM(S):  Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star

would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.

The equivalent weight of how much railway

it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.

It’s the collective weight of every animal

on earth. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible

until I consider how it is to swallow grief—

just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed

a neutron star. How dense it is,

how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.

How difficult it is to move then.

How impossible to believe that anything

could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see what

anyone else has swallowed.

Helium by Rudy Francisco

When people ask how I’m doing I want to say, 

my depression is an angry deity, 

a jealous god 

a thirsty shadow that wrings my joy like a dishrag 

and makes juice out of my smile. 

I want to say, getting out of bed has become a magic trick. 

I am probably the worst magician I know. 

I want to say, this sadness is the only clean shirt I have left 

and my washing machine has been broken for months, 

but I’d rather not ruin someone’s day with my tragic honesty 

so instead I treat my face like a pumpkin. 

I pretend that it’s Halloween. 

I carve it into something acceptable. 

I laugh and I say, “I’m doing alright.”

QUOTE(S):  "Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement." ~ Albert Camus

"Forevers are composed of nows." ~ Emily Dickinson

“It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

New Mexico (Carrie Elkin)

[ I ordered a Carrie Elkin T-shirt during her and Danny Schmidt's live Facebook concert Saturday before last.  It arrived only a week later, wrapped in this beautiful painting.  Thanks times a bazillion, Maizy Rae...  💚 ]

It's Feel Good Friday.  Zippity!  Five items below of beauty, interest, and humor.  As Carrie sings in the blog title song, "I can hear the heartbeat in everything around me".  I hope you can, too...  :-)


~ One Bright Thing:  Need a little lift? Amid the bleakness, 18 New York Times writers shared moments that lightened their mood (be sure to scroll past the jump to read them all.)

~ QuaranToons:  Broadway.com illustrator Tug Rice has been thinking up what our favorite Broadway characters are doing while theaters are closed and they're at home social distancing.

~ Coconut Macaroons, Two Easy Ways:  I am not a baker, so I am shouting this recipe from the virtual rooftops.  (I used JustEgg to veganize it, and added cinnamon and a splash of vanilla.  Easy-peasy, and so yum!)

~ ElizaLive!  Songs of Comfort and Consolation, Friday April 17th, live from Eliza's Living Room via Facebook @ 5:30 pm Central.  
From Eliza:  Dear Friends, it has been disappointing to not be able to tour my new record  “2020”  when it was designed to motivate and inspire during a critical election year. But the Coronavirus puts things in a whole other perspective. And while I remain focused on making sure we can and will be able to vote come November, I also want to perform music for my friends as a way of reaching out and staying connected in a more communal way. We need to stay sane, grounded and hopeful, aware of each other and our vulnerabilities as well as our strengths... Someday we will gather in person again and we will speak of this time in our lives as the challenging and deepening process it has been. I look forward to that with all my heart. 

~ Help Luna Star Cafe Survive the Coronavirus
When Luna Star Cafe is closed there isn't any trade.
No one’s sitting at the bar, no music’s being made.
No one’s drinking any beer or ordering from ‘the board’.
No one’s tipping Monica who’s much loved and adored.
No one’s there with any cash, no one’s there at all,
Now Alexis’s cafe bank account is seriously small!
So send in your donations.  Help Luna Star Café!
If you live in another state, send something anyway!
Imagine you drank a beer or two and paid the cover charge.
 Imagine you ate a pasta dish served on that plate so large. 
It’s easy to thank Alexis with applause and words of praise  
Now let's thank her with with donations till the VIRUS goes away!


SONG:  New Mexico by Carrie Elkin

BOOK:  Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul by Melody Beattie

POEM:  Heart by Maggie Smith

A child of, say, six knows you’re not the shape
she’s learned to make by drawing half along a fold,
cutting, then opening. Where do you open?
Where do you carry your dead? There’s no locket
for that—hinged, hanging on a chain that greens
your throat. And the dead inside you, don’t you
hear them breathing? You must have a hole
they can press their gray lips to. If you open—
when you open—will we find them folded inside?
In what shape? I mean what cut shape is made
whole by opening? I mean besides the heart.

QUOTE:  "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." ~ Albert Camus