A Few Good Memes

The others drank a case of me
  (still on their feet)

Aged over time, my love is now
  distilled
The blood in my veins put on to boil
Down to an essence now
        a spirit now
Vapors in the cask of my flesh
Strong drink

Who will share this cup with me?
The cup of my blood
Sangre de cuerpo
Spirits of my spirit
Overflow

This is our charge:
We must create a new language
The words familiar,
  the tongue not yet spoken
The meter - a connection to an unnamed tribe

The way has
  entrusted us to this
Its need emerging
  here.  now.

Mad to be saved,
Never knew I was mad to save
Salvation found in the unnamed uncertain.
  Unbidden, yet present

Tell me half your stories today
Half tomorrow
We both know a story can save a life
Just say the word

I realized today that there has been another thing interfering with my search for wholeness and with my journey toward another relationship. It’s my baby. My Emma.

Emma was 7 months old when Anna was diagnosed with cancer. Anna & I are/were pretty crunchy granola parents. Me, perhaps more than Anna, but not to extremes. we carried our tinybabes in his/her slings, Anna nursed Ian & Alyssa well into their toddler years. we co-slept (with mixed emotions & Mixed success for sure). When Anna got sick, she had to immediately wean Emma. We had to put her in a crib (luckily, we had one that had sat
mostly unused for 7 years). Anna was fighting for her life. Survival had to trump Mothering Magazine ideals.

So Emma has had to really be a scrapper. And she is. My nickname for her is “Miss Independent.” One of her most oft used phrases is” My do it!” Some of it is undoubtedly due to being third child. But I think a lot is having to have gotten by without enough mama- loving in her short life. And, of course, while Anna was sick and going thru chemo and radiation, I was very Focused on her too, going to every doctor appointment, every treatment, every consultation. Not to mention trying to be emotionally supportive to a woman with a death sentence.

whenever we visit friends or go to a party, Emma immediately finds the biggest hearted woman in the room (her radar has amazing precision), goes over, and attaches herself with a climb onto a lap or a call for “uppy!” It’s pretty sweet and endearing usually, but if also breaks my heart deep down every time it happens.

I so want Emma to rget the mama-loving she needs and deserves. So much. But I’m the papa, I’m a hell of a good papa. one of the best ones there is. It kills me sometimes that I can’t be the mama too. So I’ve found myself wishing, though not admitting, that I could find Emma a new mommy quickly before it’s too late and her little spirit gives up on the hope of gelting the mama-loving she used to get long ago. But of course, it doesn’t quite work like that. I’m so sorry Emma.

Goodbye stranger
It’s been nice
Hope you find your paradise
Tried to see your point of view
Hope your dreams will
All come true
- Supertramp, “Goodbye Stranger”

I was disheartened to see that Diane has deleted her blog. I always came away from reading her posts (and the comments thereupon) impressed with her insights and hopeful about her journey to “become a human being”. I think she already is - in a big way. Her posts have occupied a lot of my thinking time since I discovered it and I will surely miss her writing.

Diane, if you’re still around the blogosphere, do check in from time to time. And I’d enjoy hearing from you via email as well. jase@dufair.org. If you’ve decided just to move on, then, fare well my friend.

Alyssa and I cried for the first time together tonight about Anna. I sang her the lullaby I wrote her when she was a baby tonight when I tucked her in. when I finished, she was crying. She doesn’t often let her guard down enough to cry. And, until now, she’s either cried while I’ve been in a comforting place or I’ve cried and she’s comforted me, Tonight I was comforting her. She decided to wear one of Anna’s nightgowns and she was crying about the fact that it was the last nightgown she saw Anna in before she went swimming with her cousins and Anna & I ended up going to the emergency room,

I got her calmed down and made it as far as her door before I lost it. Why isn’t Anna wearing that god damned nightgown? Why does my daughter have to cry about not being a “normal” Kid? I went back in and hugged her and we cried together sitting on her bed. I told her that even though she may not be a “normal” kid, she’s a great kid. I told her it was a terrible, pitiful sad thing for a kid to grow up without her mommy and there’s nothing good to say about it. We just kind of left it at that.

I’ve been listening over and over to Martin Sexton’s Black Sheep from his Live Wide Open CD and he goes into this riff at the end where he says he’s thankful for all the hard times in his life, even though he didn’t want them to happen at the time. It’s a stunningly beautiful passage. It got me thinking about what gratitude I may be able to summon about having lost the woman I love so so so much. I surprised myself discovering that there really are some things I can be thankful about. Raising my kids by myself has bumped up my confidence a lot. I have a lot of logistical help. More than I could reasonably expect. So I can’t take a ton of credit in that regard. But being emotionally strong and available and connected has done a lot for my babies. For that, I’m thankful - Alyssa got her grades yesterday, and they were stellar. She makes me extremely proud. I’m thankful for the fact that, as the only adult in the family, decision-making and planning is just that much more frictionless. Perhaps a bit of a strange thing to be thankful for, but nonetheless. There are all sorts of things I’m thankful for in addition - a good job, a nice house, health insurance, good extended family, great friends & church community, good health (good music, too). I was consciously thankful for these before Anna died, for sure. Martin got me thinking, however, about what I may be thankful for as a direct result of these hard times. It’s a time of big change for me and for us, and I suspect that there will be even more coming out of this change that will be worthy of my gratitude in the years to come.

I’m also grateful that my one day of planning eating, and tracking has extended to four and that I’m feeling better and down about 4 lbs this far. I tried out Sparkpeople, at Kat’s suggestion, and it is extremely well done and fits my groove just right.

Last year at Disney World, we went the budget route (as was fitting for our means) and stayed at Disney’s Pop Century resort. It’s one of their “value” resorts, and basically the cheapest way to stay at Disney, especially since you don’t have to rent a car.

We had a sooper time at the Pop Century. Lots of regular people having fun around us, giant Rubik’s cubes, several pools, including one right out our door, giant yo-yos, good cheap food, giant bowling pins, fun pop Christmas music playing, giant Big Wheels, game room, fun souvenirs to shop for, you name it.

So not only did Anna insist on us going to Disney despite my feeble protests last year, she booked us on a sales job tour of one of the Disney Vacation Club resorts. It was like a 3 hour sales job introduction to Disney’s timeshare resorts. Knowing that a) she had terminal cancer and b) I’m a guy that, let’s say, lives in the moment (i.e. plans for shit) - though perhaps we both underestimated me sometimes - she wanted to cement a tradition of a family vacation for us.

So we cashed in a good chunk of our retirement savings to guarantee a trip to Disney (or one of a few hundred other places) every year until 2053. We were both glad to do it. We still pay annual dues, but when you add it all up, we’re paying Pop Century prices for luxury resort accommodations, Except, well, about that luxury resort…

Disney’s Old Key West resort is lovely, I suppose. It’s done up like you’re staying in Key West, FL. Which is like Cape Cod, as far as I can tell. The problem is, the place is huge. It’s a big sprawling condo complex with a whole golf course in the middle. So you have to take a shuttle bus to get around here. Ya spend a lot of time waiting at bus stops. Pop Century was all within walking distance. Plus, the place is pretty deserted. I’m no fan of crowds, of course, but I don’t like to hear an echo when I laugh, either. We’ve seen very few other young kids around - mostly people in their 50s with their khakis and their cardigans. We went to swim tonight, and the pool had closed at 8 pm! We decided to risk a trip to the Disney prison system and swam anyway. Pop Century’s pools were always hopping in the evenings.

Yeah, we have a bedroom and a kitchen and a pull-out couch and a giant tub with jets and such. Which is nice, for sure. But there’s no housekeeping. So it’s like home away from home - chores and all. And its ten bucks a day for wired internet. No wireless.

So maybe it’s because my sweet, beautiful, creative wife isn’t here with me this year (my wonderful sister-in-law’s company notwithstanding), or maybe it’s because our first visit was to the Animal Kingdom park, or maybe it’s just because it’s not our first time to Disney, or maybe it’s because we’re not the target market for Old Key West, or maybe it’s because it was just about 10 degrees colder than perfect, or maybe it’s because Emma is with us this year, making it a fair bit more work (Emma - when you’re old enough to read, don’t worry - I’m just trying to make a point here), or maybe it’s because I wrenched my back Friday heaving my entire gastrointestinal tract out with the stomach flu, but I’m just not feeling the magic I did last year. of course, I could be on combat patrol in Iraq right now, or worse yet, be an Iraqi civilian, so I suppose I could just chill.

Realistically, it’s probably all due to missing Anna. We caught the late shuttle home and it brought some stragglers back from Animal Kingdom to Pop Century before taking us here to OKW. Seeing the fun signs out front and those fucking beautiful bowling pins just made me break down right there on the shuttle. Who would have thought that a week in consumer Mecca USA with a terminally ill wife would have turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life? But it was. And seeing Pop Century reminded me just how much I’ve lost.

Dear Anna,

4 Months now and I don’t miss you one bit less. In fact, some part of me, some small part that lived after I knew love but before I knew death is still waiting for you to come back. Maybe that’s what grief is - the inability for my adult self who is rational and has full command of intellect unable to come to terms with my self who is Ian’s age and who just wants love and companionship. I miss the daily banter, the play-by-play of our lives. Sure, I can engage in a bit of that with Alyssa at 9 and even with Ian at 4, but there’s just so much that’s lost without the shared experience of having stumbled through our 20s together. of having eased into our 30s and nearly blind into raising kids. Of finally having hit our stride not long before you got sick.

These 4 months have simultaneously seemed like an eternity and like a single moment. I was in the basement this evening gathering stuff up to pack for Disney and came across a box of your sweaters that Virgina must have packed up after you died. It was full of clothes you used to wear all the time. I pulled it out and smelled each and every article of clothing in there, hoping something would still hold the scent of you, I breathed really deep in anticipation, One sweater seemed like it might still have smelled of you. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my part,

I think you would be proud of me over these 4 months. I know it was often hard for you to feel proud of me. I wore your dad’s mask so very often. He broke your trust so often and so badly. You deserved so much more. Since you’ve gone, I’ve kept things moving along pretty well. I got Alyssa into Tae Kwon Do and helped her navigate a crisis of confidence about two months in. I got Ian in another season of soccer. He did so well. He’s so enthusiastic. I got Ian and Emma in gymnastics on the gym bus. I got Emma’s shots. I got them all to the dentist. We weathered a nasty round of colds that knocked us out pretty well. We got family photos taken. We made it to The Feast of the Hunter’s Moon. We made it to Virginia’s for Thanksgiving. We have arrangements for Disney and Christmas in Charleston. With a huge amount of help from Virginia, we planned and executed your funeral, How I wish we never had to do that. We took bike rides and trips to the park. We geocached. I made it to parent-teacher conferences. I got Alyssa’s brownie troop switched so she could still be a Girl Scout and do Tae Kwon Do too. I even helped last week at a meeting. I have a decent chunk of our Christmas shopping done. I put a decent financial plan together. I got us down to Indy for a weekend with Becky and Andy. I could not have done half of this without the help of Kim & Alexis, Michael & Denise, Virginia, Sharon, Reggie & Judy, Becky & Andy and lots of other people.

Yeah, Alyssa’s been late to school 8 or 9 times, I forgot to help with spelling more often than I remembered, I owe Bethel a change of clothes for Ian, I need to balance the checkbook, I have too many stacks of paper on the dining room table I haven’t lost a single fucking pound, I don’t get enough sleep, I haven’t scanned very many of your journals, and Alyssa’s room needs some serious dust mite eradication. But we’re doing better than I thought we’d be, overall, in the letter I wrote the day you died.

As hard as I work, I can’t be both Dad and Mom to our kids. This is one of hardest the and saddest parts of losing you. Our kids still need you so much. I can be pretty compassionate, more so than a lot of fathers I know, but I still can’t be Mom.

More soon.

Love,

Jase

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

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.