A Few Good Memes

I’m working on setting up backups for Poppy, my laptop (my computers are all named after past or current cats), so I wasn’t going to write tonight, but this thought occurred to me today and I wanted to get it out.

Anna’s last day was spent in bed. she was in pretty serious abdominal pain from the new tumors in her abdomen. By mid-afternoon, things seemed pretty serious. I had no idea it would be her last day, but I knew she needed help as her pain was pretty intense and her extremities were starting to look kind of yellow. I had spent most of the day packing as we were supposed to be making the 2 day drive home the next morning. Reggie (Anna’s brother) and I both concurred that we needed to get Anna to a doctor to get her in better shape for the drive home.

So he pulled his van around and I helped Anna to the van. She was in so much pain, she didn’t think she could walk out to the van. I said she had to do it and told her I’d help her out. So she put her arms around my neck and walked one small step at a time out of the bedroom, across the living room, out on the porch, down the three steps and over to the van. I walked backward, supporting most of her body weight. She sat down in the passenger seat and was reasonably comfortable. She closed her eyes and rested, I sat behind Reggie in silent fear, trying to stifle my cries so I wouldn’t disturb her.

The thought that occurred to me today was that Anna took her last steps in my arms. what a blessing and a gift to me. God damn I loved her.

So Puddlejumper suggested in a comment that I have my handwriting analyzed. Funny thing is, when I was in college, I changed my handwriting intentionally. I USED TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. MORE OR LESS LIKE MY DAD DOES. I decided it looked like shouting and was too unsubtle. So does that mean I underwent a fundamental personality change? I suppose college has that basic effect on people anyway. I used to be a god-fearing catholic boy, properly channeling my abundance of testosterone into a love of heavy metal. Ronald Reagan was president and that was fine by me. Then, somewhere along the way, I encountered XTC and The Smiths, LSD and Ram Dass, Tom Robbins and Neal Stephenson, Tennessee Williams and Eric Bogosian, Laurie Anderson and Jock Sturges. I suppose my handwriting (and my engineering major) didn’t stand a chance.

I wonder if switching from the QWERTY to the Dvorak layout 7 or 8 years ago signaled another personality shift. Come to think of it, that’s right when I became a parent. Hmm. Wonder if there’s such thing as typing analysis

Set up the Christmas tree today. I cried like a baby several times today. Christmas music made it worse. Put a grave blanket on Anna’s grave with the kids today. Wish I never had the need to buy such a thing. It’s almost the 4 month anniversary of her death and I feel like it was yesterday. It doesn’t hurt any less.

Michael and Denise came over to help with the tree. That was a blessing. I sure do love them. Cheered me up to see them and to see the kids with them. I made pizza and we had dinner. I’m still hanging by a thread tonight. I’m off to numb myself with a cooking show before bed. Can’t really face thinking about the week ahead yet.

Coming home caught me off guard tonight. Had a good drive home - everyone was pretty well behaved. Potty breaks were synchronized properly. electronics all worked pretty well. Alyssa and I enjoyed listening to “Hoot” on CD. Got home and not having Anna to go thru the “Get Home, Get Unpacked, Start Laundry, Unload Digicam” dance sucked really hard. There’s always a normal letdown coming home from a fun trip (which this one to Virginia’s certainly was), but at least we had one another to lean on and to look forward to cuddling with when the unpacking was finished. Now I’m halfway done unpacking with the kids down and just feel like crap. Lonely. Grief is pretty oblique, Just when you’re doing ok, something comes out of nowhere - WHAM - to remind you how much you miss her and how much she suffered and how powerless you were and still are.

Strangely, the only antidote I’ve found thus far for grief is listening to Umphrey’s McGee. Those guys have some sort of direct link to my dopamine receptors or something. Just discovered their anti-grief powers a few days ago. Convenient for me that their latest CD is about loss and struggle. Though all their music seems to help regardless.

Tired as fuck tonight. We were driving around today and Emma saw two people ride past us on a black Motorcycle with black body armor and black full-face helmets and said “bad guys!” strange that she would pick up such a cultural icon so young. too much TV at this point, probably. It was amusing though.

Went to a Christmas tree expo thing today with lots of kid activities. carousel, face painting, etc. Was in a convention center here in Knoxville. They didn’t turn on the overhead lights (each area was locally lit). And there was a lot of carpeting and cloth and trees. So it was relatively quiet and relatively subdued. Pleasant surprise as I was expecting your average over-stim-fest. Makes me never want to go back to the Walworth County Fair.

Need sleep. Kept focus on my life goals today, despite tiredness. Going to try to give more cycles to process zero like I did today. Worked out pretty well, overall.

Love my kids. Love Anna’s family. Love Anna. Had a dream I talked to her last night. Helped me get thru my day in a big way. Starting to feel the weight of Thanksgiving settling on me tonight. Anna, come to me tonight if you can. I miss you. You should see how much Emma is growing up.