Road Construction Not Included

I have not yet gotten past the Is-this-really-happening? stage, but at least I no longer expect to wake up from the most hellish nightmare imaginable. Nightmares end; this one won’t.

Annie with Dozer at the beach

I have been offered grief counseling from both the hospice folks up in Garberville, and from the VA in Ukiah. Though I have benefited hugely from counseling in the past, particularly when it comes to managing my mood spectrum disorder, I do not view grief counseling as necessary at this most painful of times.

Talk it out, folks say, and I do recognize the value of that. Fortunately, I correspond daily with someone who does exactly what a therapist does: She listens, or rather, she reads what I write, sifts through the detritus of my thoughts, and then she gently nudges me back on course. That's what sisters do.

The best therapist in the world can’t make my pain go away, she can’t make time go any faster and she can’t lift the cloak of sadness that envelopes me. If I were in bed, under the pillows, or stumbling around in a drunken stupor, then sure, bring in the white coats.

As it is, I still get up somewhere around one in the A of M, give or take a few, and I still crash and burn early in the evening. That part remains the same.

Meanwhile, the house is immaculate; I am, after all, a Virgo. That being written, I know absolutely nothing about the other eleven zodiac signs. I just know that every profile of a Virgo ever written, fits me. And this Virgo is pretty compulsive about the morning routine of polishing the house in preparation for a small boy’s visit.

My compass these dayz

Speaking of therapy. The presence of Little Man in my daily life is the single best thing I have going for me. Curiously enough, having a small set of ears available for reminiscing, also helps immensely. After all, Little Man spent time every day in the vicinity of Annie, in the last months of her time here, and we have had many occasions upon which to reflect accordingly.

He won’t remember his grandmother when he grows up, not yet being two, but he remembers her now, and that is the thread I weave into the tapestry of what is still to come.

In my first two posts after Annie left us, I referred to the abyss, or chasm that lay in front of me, and how it terrified me. I wrote of the mist, or fog. Well, that metaphorical crap is gone now. 

I am a 67-year-old farmer who has this bipolar thing going on, I don’t own a pair of shoes and I live on a mountain. Whatever. I experimented by driving off the mountain Monday, for the first time since the week before Christmas, just to see what that was like.

After half-an-hour at the farmers’ market, held in Harwood Hall these days, I fell apart and had to exit, stage left. Something about all of those middle school graduation dances, History Day and Science Fairs, working with Annie, and all of those memories, made me decide that it was time to bail out. 

Losing my spouse, my partner, a person so filled with life, leaves the unknown in front of me, and that is what initially terrified me. Why wouldn’t it? My world has revolved around and been intertwined with Annie for almost forty years. Now I walk around asking myself irrationally all day, “Annie died?” 

Talk about denial.

Time just needs to get a move on and pass. How much time one asks? I have no clue but I do believe it’s one of those I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it things, like going off the mountain, doing whatever I need to do, and managing to do so without bursting into tears. 

Well, except for road construction. That makes everyone burst into tears...