Things fall apart

I'm having the strange feeling that Jerry is the glue that held my world together, in the physical sense, and now that he's dead, things have begun to go seriously haywire.  If I stop and try to be more sane, I realize that things always go haywire.  But in the shop there've been all sorts of weird problems with the spray guns, and yesterday huge thunderstorms rolled through and left me without electricity from 3:45 yesterday afternoon until about fifteen minutes ago, 8:30 this morning.  I felt really cut off not having Internet access - given my complete lack of desire to talk on the phone, no Internet means no interactive connection to the outside world.  Battery-run and hand-crank radios kept me company for a bit last night, and I read Earl Grollman's Living When A Loved One Has Died by candlelight at the kitchen table, shortly afterwards getting candlewax all over that book, the table, the placemats, my finger, and Genevieve Davis Ginsburg's Widow to Widow when I tried to carry a candle into the dining room that isn't a dining room (we never had a table and chairs in here - it contains my rolltop desk, a desk Jerry made, a credenza he got for cheap at work, and folding bookcases full of CDs) to use the old-fashioned plug-into-the-wall phone to call ComEd and try to find out when the power would be back on.

As you can see, I stopped at Barnes & Noble on the way home and went through their bereavement section.  The third book I got is Helen Fitzgerald's The Mourning Handbook (I was going to say it's the only one of the three that escaped the wax, but I've found some on the spine).  Since, at least so far, I'm not finding myself needing to know "why" - why Jerry died, why other people are still alive, why I can't have him back - since I don't remember a time when I ever sought or expected meaning in life or answers to questions about why we're here and why we die horrible painful deaths - I find right now what I want (besides Jerry - always Jerry) is to know that what's happening to my mind and body are typical, normal for someone in this situation.  These books seem to promise these sorts of things, and some sort of vague road map for the kinds of things I can expect.  Although they all remind me again and again that each person is different and goes through mourning and bereavement at her own pace and in her own way.  Didion has just cited a study that says that it's rougher for people whose lives were thoroughly entwined with their mates' lives, which bodes ill for me, I'm afraid.

I feel even more numb than before.

When the power went on again, I went around the house resetting clocks, including the one on the answering machine, and I realized I didn't remember what our outgoing message was - so I played it, and it's Jerry's voice.  I switched it over to the mechanical-sounding default message that comes with the machine.  That didn't erase Jerry's message, but now people who call won't hear him.

I'm thinking today is the day I'm going to have Jerry's "J. Enright" signature tattooed on my arm (although which arm and where exactly I'm still not 100% certain).  I'll have to call the shop when they open to make sure they have electricity first, I suppose.