PT Cruiser

Jerry and I went through a phase where we thought the PT Cruiser was, as Jerry might say, "the berries."  Finally, on one trip down to Alabama, we rented a PT Cruiser - and discovered how noisy and unwieldy it was, or at least that one was.  I don't remember where in Alabama this was or when, but here's us with that car.

For Aunt Woodie

In Huntsville after two more happy and sad days of Sacred Harp singing and visiting with friends.  The happy part was the joy I'm grateful, again, to realize I can still have from singing and from being among so many friends in the Sacred Harp community.  They're seeing me, at times, at my lowest, and they're okay with me being this way.  They knew Jerry and they loved him, and they miss him too.  (I felt sad about two singers this weekend who hadn't heard about Jerry's death before now - one in particular, I was told, had asked someone "I've seen Karen without Jerry - is he okay?"  What a shock it must have been, as it's been to everyone else, of course, to learn the news.)

Sad - well, if you've read anything in this blog before, that's obvious.  Yesterday I led 442, a song Jerry hadn't led a lot in recent years (partly because I'd started leading it a bunch for a while there, probably) but whose leading of it was on Bound for Canaan, a cassette tape of singing at Antioch I had got a few years before I met him.  It went fine - no crying.  I did get weepy towards the end of the day, but unless I'm just too exhausted to remember right, mostly I got through.  Today Cheyenne called Jerry's Sunday song, and I know when she did I exchanged a big smile with Lynne - how nice that Cheyenne was going to lead his Sunday song.  I wasn't even worried about getting through it.  And then we started singing the shapes, and it didn't take long for me find myself sobbing, and my body starting that weird trembling thing again.

Later, when I was called to lead, I called 378t.  A year ago, at the Lacy Memorial, Jerry, Lynne and I led that song in memory of Aunt Woodie Walker, whom I never knew, but who used to lead that song and for whom Jerry liked to lead it, as he liked to lead other songs in memory of various singers he knew and respected.  And that turned out to be Jerry's last song at Jerry's last singing.  So today I had Lynne, and Woodie's nieces Reba and Betty, come up and lead the song with me, for Aunt Woodie and for Jerry.  And I didn't cry then, either.

146 was the closing song.  I can't remember if I cried during it or not until after it, but by the closing prayer I was sobbing again.

It's so odd and so baffling, not knowing what's going to do it, what's going to make me go to that scary, dreadful, dark place where Jerry's death and permanent, non-changeable, non-reversible absence from my life are real.  But yeah, apparently I can count on 77t.  Also, still, 47b - I was waiting on line to use the bathroom outside the church doors when they sang that, early on this morning.  More tears.

In all, another weekend of being very glad to be here, where I can re-find some morsels of joy, and try to imagine a future with more and more such morsels.  Not successfully, yet.  But I can try.  I'll spend a couple of more days with friends here before heading back to Illinois and... maybe... the commencement of work on the basement and roof?  I was promised an estimate this weekend, by e-mail.  Coming up on 11:40 p.m. - no estimate.  Come on, Steve!

Then... what I think I need to do and what I think I'm capable of doing are not quite in sync.  I think I need to make decisions about things - finding a job; where I'll live; how I'm going to face the approach of autumn, the shorter and shorter days, less light, more cold, the disappearance of green, all without Jerry.  But I don't think I'm necessarily capable of making life-altering decisions yet.  It's only, what, 12 weeks since he died?  (I can't believe the time has already come when that number is not immediately obvious to me.  I can now think clearly in months, but not weeks.)  I'm still not 100% sure I believe I'll never see him again.  (I keep wanting to tell him that Bud seemed better this weekend, that they're adjusting his medication and that might get him back on his feet.  He would want to know.)

Jerry should be here.  I don't want to make so many huge decisions without him. I don't want to move forward into a life that takes me farther and farther from our life together.  I don't want to be his widow.  He needs to come back so I can be his wife again.  He belongs here with me.

Birthday Boy

Most years on Jerry's birthday in February, I'd try to bake a cake - I don't remember if I ever even attempted to surprise him with one, since that's hard to do when you work together, come home together and are generally at home mostly at the same time!  One year, though, I ordered a cake for him from the Black Hound, a bakery we'd passed and oogled on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan - now that, I think, was a surprise.  Earlyish in our marriage, I'm guessing, based, again, on the aviator glasses, but I don't know the exact year.

ETA: Entire left thumb - so this is prior to 2004.

What does, what doesn't

Being automatically offered two room keys at the hotel desk - no tears.  End of Terminator Salvation (which Jerry and I watched before, some time earlier this year, and weren't too excited by) - tears.  There is just no telling.

So I went out and got food.  I'm now remembering, 11 years since it was basically last an issue, that I hate going and sitting in restaurants by myself.  Financially that probably did me a lot of good when I lived in Manhattan.  But anyway, I Nuvi'd a Burger King, wondering if all Burger Kings have veggie burgers now, and maybe they all don't, but the one on Preston Highway in Louisville, KY does, and they don't even turn them into hockey pucks, the way the Burger King at BNA does - so that worked out, I was able to get the food and bring it back here to the safety and sadness of my hotel room.

I also got gas - made it from Algonquin to here on 3/4 of a tank, probably getting lousy (lousier) gas mileage due to my lead-footedness, but willing to trade low gas mileage for a quicker arrival.

Tired.  I miss my honey.

Eastern Time Zone

So as it turns out, and as I didn't know, Louisville, KY is in the Eastern Time Zone.  Which meant that Nuvi (a word Jerry always delighted in saying), in telling me all along that I'd be arriving around 5 p.m., was telling me the local time and leading me to believe it was going to take an hour more to get here than it did.  So that was a nice surprise.  I left the house just after 10 this morning, and doing 10 miles over any given speed limit (and 70 mph speed limits in Indiana) balanced out traffic snarls on expressways around Chicago and Louisville and a couple of rest stops to get me here pretty much at the time Nuvi gave me at the start of the trip.

Something like three bouts of driving through tears en route.  Last one was when I passed a trailer full of hogs - given that my vegetarianism is first because of Bambi-ism and second because of the environment, a trailer full of hogs bound for slaughter would make me sad at any time, but this one brought on full sobbing and tears.  That's what happens when your underlying mood is bringing you close to tears most of the time anyway, I guess.

The last time Jerry and I drove to Alabama was for Allison and David's wedding two years ago.  Before that, I think we'd done the drive together three times, maybe?  Something like that.  Nowhere near as many times as he'd driven down before we met, of course.  But this is my first time driving south by myself. I managed not to cry at the sight of the Motel 6 in Jeffersonville, IN where we broke our return trips on Sunday nights, which was something.  I was probably still recovering from the piggies at the time.

I'm worn out, but I think I'll venture out and see about food.

JME out picking blackberries in Henagar

(If you enlarge the photo enough, you can see a very teeny me reflected in Jerry's sunglasses.  I wish I could stand in front of him now and have him smile at me like this.)

More landmines

I serendipitously ended up with a coupon for a free styling brush from Ulta, and had already planned to get one to deal with my new haircut, so I went out this afternoon, drove south on Main Street, and came to a stop to let a funeral procession go by... with a sign in the window of the hearse from the funeral home that came and took Jerry's body away early on the morning of 14 June.  First round of tears.

Made it to the shopping center, got the brush, plus another for good measure, then went over to JC Penney to see if I could find a top or two to wear to the singings this weekend.  48 is a really awful age to be when you're shopping for clothes: I don't want to end up as what the British so aptly call "mutton dressed as lamb," but so much of the clothing aimed at my age group is so depressingly ugly.  Junior sizes don't really even fit me right, but I ended up in that section after trying on a bunch of things in the Women's section that did. not. work.  And I did find a few tops, doing my bit with one of them to keep the Olsen twins extraordinarily wealthy, and I brought them up to the cash desk, and the cashier rang my stuff up and asked me to fill out a survey online later about the shopping experience, and if I did I'd get a... coupon.  Which she pronounced just like Jerry pronounced that word: "kew-pon."  I managed to get outside and put my sunglasses on before I started crying again.

Yesterday I felt like maybe I could actually do this thing, survive Jerry's death and keep going; today I'm back to feeling like I can't.  As, of course, I predicted - steps forward, steps backward, better days, worse days.  I am so glad I'm leaving for Alabama tomorrow.

I miss him so much.

My sweetie, again

A photo Jerry used a bunch for profile pictures on websites.  Back when the house was still green.

Lookout Mountain Tenors 2009

Allison, I think I stole this photo from you.

Front bench tenors at the 2009 Lookout Mountain Convention.

ETA: Yes, I'm right.  Photo by Allison Ivey Whitener

Breathing

I had it in mind to come here this evening and talk about the fact that today felt a little different, as if, maybe, possibly, could it be? - things had lightened ever, ever so slightly.  And then I saw the photo I posted yesterday of Jerry and David and looked at Jerry's amazing face and thought maybe I was wrong - how could anything be easier in a world without that face in it?

But today did feel a little different.  It might only be temporary right now - in fact, I've read all over the place that grieving isn't a linear forward process, but a series of movements in all kinds of directions - you feel better, you feel worse, the harsh pain recedes, it rushes back in on you.  And at just past 10 weeks since my honey died, I am under no illusion that I am past the worst of this.

But I had some moments today where I think I was imagining myself going on.  Not that I've ever felt suicidal - I keep making this distinction, between feeling like I really didn't care if I kept living, which I have felt and still mostly do, and thinking of actively ending my existence, which I never have felt like I wanted to do.  Most of the time I don't see the point without Jerry.  But while I may not still see a point, I do see a possibility.  And this past weekend had everything to do with that, I am convinced.  Being back in the hollow square of a Sacred Harp singing again, and not just any singing and not just any place, but specifically the Lookout Mountain Convention, surrounded by those people, feeling part of that, reminded me of what it's like to be happy.  I can't describe myself as "happy" yet - I don't know when or if that term will apply to me - and I'm still crying many times every day, and I still miss Jerry with every beat of my beaten-up broken heart.  But I think maybe, just maybe, to repeat the phrase I keep forgetting to repeat as I should, I won't always feel this way.

I had a haircut this afternoon.  It was a very necessary thing, I discovered after seeing myself in the photos taken at Lookout Mountain this past weekend.  I'm very pleased with what Lindsey and I came up with.

JME and David, Lacy Memorial, 2003

Memorial

Those of you who guessed that the garage door opener needed new batteries, pat yourselves on the back.  My first reaction to things not working the way they're supposed to, most especially things Jerry would have dealt with (which covers most mechanical and electrical things in the house and garage), is still to panic.  Then occasionally I figure it out when I try to stop panicking and breathe.  A few days after Jerry died, I couldn't get the garage door to move at all... after the panicking part, I thought about it and checked one of the many unidentified light switches in the kitchen near the back door of the house, and sure enough, one that turns the power to the garage on and off had been flipped the wrong way.  A piece of tape my father placed over it is still there, so it doesn't accidentally get turned off again.

So: the weekend.  As I've said, it was all just what I could have wanted.  The singing at Lookout seemed to me to be as strong as it's been any time I've been there (what they did with 30b on Sunday, when I led it with Reba and Rod and got through it better than I expected, I'll never forget).  Aside from that, there was the love that was there, the reminders of Jerry, the people who care so much for and about him and spoke about him in the memorial lesson or outside of it, the people who had no words but gave a hug or a pat on the arm, the typical and unforgettable hospitality and fellowship and warmth of the people who are there at Lookout Mountain every year - the realization that so many people there missed Jerry too and were hurting too, and cared about my pain and distress.  The knowledge that seeing his son and daughter there in the hollow square in Pine Grove Church would have made Jerry so happy and proud.

It was a weekend of laughter, even, at times.  Some moments where we did things we always did (sadly, that does include making catty remarks about some people's outfits or hairstyles.  Although in the hairstyle department, I might be the winner for Most In Need of Intervention this past weekend.  Thanks to the wake-up call in some photographs posted on line since Saturday, I now have an urgent appointment for a haircut tomorrow afternoon!).  I was even finding myself forgetting sometimes that everything was different, in a fundamental, wrong way, because most of the time, at Sacred Harp singings, Jerry and I would not have been sitting together, so the fact that he wasn't beside me wasn't unusual.  I spent most of Saturday's session and all of Sunday's in the tenor, and far back enough that the fact that I couldn't see Jerry wouldn't have necessarily meant that he wasn't there, because he'd have been up towards or on the front.  (When I sat in the alto Saturday afternoon, I did find myself looking for him, though.)

It was also very much a weekend of tears.  I wanted to lead his Sunday song, but I wanted to make sure I got it before someone else did, so I called it on Saturday, and had Seamus and Erin come up to sing it with me.  My hand often shakes when I lead (it shakes naturally anyway - essential tremor), but I certainly didn't foresee my entire body starting to tremble not long into the song.  Perhaps, as Karen has pointed out, that kept me from breaking down and sobbing, which I had been afraid of doing.  I did end up crying before it was over.

Certain songs seem to trigger tears. 499 always does now.  We sang it for Jerry as he lay at home dying, and that time it triggered one of the worst crying episodes I've ever had in my life.  Now it brings tears too - so far, even when I thought I was going to get through it, I haven't.  47b usually does it too (memories of weeping, hand in hand with Betty, backstage at the Words and Music of Cold Mountain concert when the battle scene was shown on a screen); yesterday the leaders only did two verses, and I didn't have time for it to sink in and make me cry.

Bud announcing the memorial before we broke for lunch on Sunday made me cry too.  It was the first time I'd heard him say Jerry's name since Jerry died.

The actual memorial on Sunday was another time of tears.  The people who got up and spoke for Jerry, each in his or her own way, moved me so much with their memories and their affection and love and esteem for him.  And then David led Jerry's Sunday song again, starting it off fast, with both hands, the way Jerry liked to pattern his leading after Barrett Ashley and other traditional singers, and I started crying so hard I couldn't see anymore.

I am so, so grateful for all of this.

(And I suppose I should point out, for those of you who are not familiar with Sacred Harp singing, that what I'm referring to can be explored here - and that these numbers I keep referring to are the page numbers in the Sacred Harp tunebook on which the songs are located, and "t" after the number means it's the top piece of the two located on a page with two songs on it, and "b," as you'd guess, means it's on the bottom.  77t is "The Child of Grace," and as I've no doubt said elsewhere or at least made clear, I think, in what I've written, it was Jerry's favorite song, the main one people associate with him.  I've posted this already, but I'll post a link to it again: so far my favorite footage of Jerry leading 77t, at Lookout Mountain in 1999.)

Seamus, Erin and I scattered Jerry's ashes up on the hill overlooking Pine Grove Church on Saturday after the singing.  Bud suggested the spot, saying it was always where "the little feller with the beard" had parked his car and then come walking down to the church; and from there he could look out over the church and the singings.  It rained Saturday night; when Lynne and I parked the rental car there Sunday morning, the ashes had been washed away, mingled with the earth of Alabama.

Uh oh...

... almost 2:15 a.m. and I'm still sitting here at my desk.  (Having chocolate at 1:30 a.m. couldn't have helped.)  So many "first time without Jerry" hurdles jumped this weekend, ending with the trip home from the airport - shuttle to parking lot, home in the Sienna, into the house (why the garage door opener on the wall of the garage decided to stop working, I don't know - glad the one in the car was still working.  To be investigated...).  Lots of little rituals no longer to be done: every time we came home from a singing, I'd say "I've done it again - I've gone home with the cutest guy at the singing!  Lucky me!" To which, always, Jerry would say "No, lucky me!"  (We couldn't help ourselves... )  And we'd write the songs we'd led in the backs of our books (I picked up that habit from him, I think.  The back of his book contains a comprehensive list of every song he led, from 142 in March 1989 at a local Chicago singing to 378t with me and Lynne at the Lacy Memorial last year).  And we'd have a little ice cream or other dessert, and if Jerry was feeling too awake and overexcited from the trip to get to sleep, he'd sip some vodka or aquavit or something like that out of one of the small glasses I got in Warsaw 100 years ago in another lifetime, to help him doze off in enough time to get enough sleep to get up for work the next morning.

Life can change so, so fast.  I knew that, intellectually - but until it did, so much for the worse, I didn't really understand.

The weekend was one of such sorrow and grief, and such comfort, too.  More on that later.  Go to sleep, Freund.

Jerry and Bud

Jerry and Bud at Pine Grove, April 2004.  I can't remember who took this picture - possibly me, possibly not...

Wee hours of Monday

Almost an hour since I walked in the door after my trip back from Alabama this afternoon and evening.  Too tired to write more now, so I'll just post the message I sent to some very special people who were among those who made this weekend everything I could have wanted it to be and more:


Just walked in the door back home in Algonquin (flight delays from Nashville made my arrival a bit later than expected) and wanted to send a quick note to let all of you know how grateful I am to all of you, as well as to Bud, S.T. and so many other people, for what you all did for Jerry this weekend.  For me, it was all I could have hoped for and more - I knew I wanted Jerry's life to be celebrated in that place and with so many people he loved so much, but you all took my vague idea and turned it into a weekend of such love and friendship and warmth, of such cherished memories, that I'm still amazed that I ever thought I might not have the courage to go to the Lookout Mountain Convention (or any singing) right now.  As I discovered very quickly, it was exactly where I belonged, and it was exactly what I needed.  To be able to share the burden of this awful sadness and grief for these two days with people who love Jerry, to have many moments where that grief was, although not removed, at least lightened for a time with the joys of friendship and fellowship and singing - I could not have asked for a better balm.

I look forward to seeing you all again soon (some of you next weekend back in Alabama, I'm so glad to say - coming back so soon is one of the better ideas I've had recently!).

Love, Karen 

JME at Pine Grove

Tears (frequent, often, daily)

Most of my packing is done, and tomorrow it's off to Midway, thence to BNA and thence again to Huntsville.  Saturday morning, down to Pine Grove Church, near Collinsville, AL, to the 107th session of the Lookout Mountain Sacred Harp Singing Convention - which would have been Jerry's 21st consecutive Lookout Mountain Convention, if things in this world were as they should be.  A year ago I never, never, never imagined what the future held, just a few months later.  We never thought anything other than that we'd both be packing, as we've done together every Friday before the fourth Sunday in August since 2000 (in 1998 and 1999 we were both packing for it, but I was in New York and he was in Illinois... ), and he'd have his note by the phone in the bedroom on his night stand reminding him to leave his pocket knife at home.  And we'd be so excited to be going down to Lookout Mountain again.

Instead, Seamus came by earlier today to collect the urn with Jerry's ashes, and he'll carry it with him on his drive down.  And Jerry's children and I will scatter his ashes near the place he loved so much, the place where he and I met 12 years ago.

If I thought for more than a second now and again that any of this was really happening, I'd be in bad shape.  As it is, I'm wondering how long it will be before I get through an entire day without crying.  I can't remember the last day I didn't cry.  I find my mind going back again and again to the moment when Jerry died, as if to remind myself "That's why he's not here."  Because I keep finding myself wondering why he isn't.  Because it just doesn't make sense.

As I posted on Facebook just now, my advice to anyone who'll listen is this: cherish the ones you love every single day.  As Marlo said, tomorrow ain't promised to no one.

Three James Enrights

The littlest one is Jerry.

And the winner is...

... uterine fibroids!  Yes, folks, if the uterine fibroid I have ever turns malignant, or gets worse and needs to be removed or otherwise treated, my new Blue Cross insurance, good as of 1 September, won't cover any related expenses!  Fabulous!  (Just wanted to keep y'all up to speed on things.)

Meanwhile, just checked in for my flight to Nashville tomorrow.  First time, except for the one time I went to Western MA and he went to Missouri in 2005, that I'll be flying without Jerry by my side since 1999 (as I've said before, splitting up and going to different conventions that year showed us we really, really didn't like being apart).  We had rituals for flying - we had to hold hands on take-off and landing, and we had to kiss right before take-off.  It was just the way of things.  I liked it that way.  I miss our life.  I miss Jerry.  I hate being apart.

At Saint's Alp Teahouse

Booble tea!

Stuart & Richard Ivey lead 37b in the Sacred Harp, Liberty 1992

This is too adorable - plus you'll see Jerry in the foreground of this video.  Unfortunately the DVD I have doesn't have any video of Jerry leading (which is too bad, because the minutes from that year say he led a couple of songs with Erin in the afternoon).  But there he is in the front row of the tenor as Stuart and Richard lead.  (They might not be so happy if they find out I've posted this to YouTube...)

(This is from six years before I met Jerry, five years before the first time I went south to sing, and a year before the first of the two Sacred Harp workshops Neely Bruce did at Lincoln Center's outdoor festival that finally, ten years after I first heard Sacred Harp singing, provided me with a chance to actually sing it and find my way to the Sacred Harp community.  All those wasted years between 1983 and 1993 when I should have been singing!  But so grateful I did finally find my way to it.)

Liberty Overalls

Jerry and Coy, out picking blackberries in Henagar.  Jerry loved this photo.

New Year's Eve 2009

A photo from my parents - this is us on New Year's Eve, this past New Year's Eve, in NYC.  (Which translates now in my mind to "18 days before the tumor was found.")  It wasn't until I looked at the photos from that trip later, with hindsight, famously 20/20, that I noticed that Jerry was already looking thinner than usual in them.  Except for a self-portrait we took in April, this is one of the last photos of the two of us together.

Tuesday

E-mail received today: "Welcome!  You have been approved for coverage with an effective date of 9/1/2010; however, a Coverage Exclusion Rider(s) has been applied to your account.  You will be receiving your policy kit shortly, which will include a description of the exclusion rider(s)."  So now I wait on tenterhooks to find out which of my conditions Blue Cross is going to refuse to cover.  Presumably any I might actually need treatment for someday.  And I should probably not have any huge medical problems for the next couple of weeks either, until the arbitrary start-of-coverage date arrives.

Nice flush of anger to change things up a bit, emotionally.

Today's plan for getting me out of the house consisted of bringing two bags of packing peanuts and bubble wrap (booble wrap, that is) to a UPS store for recycling and then going to the library and reading C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, which I was unable to do, as I expected, without thinking of Debra Winger the entire time.  Some very spot-on observations, well written, as concerns the actual lived experience of this sort of hell (other aspects, not so much relevant to me, as I also expected).  I found myself smiling in recognition at the line "I do all the walking I can, for I'd be a fool to go to bed not tired."  I was awake past 2 a.m. this morning, when I finally took some of those sleep tablets and went to bed and lay there crying and thinking of Jerry's last day and me climbing into that horrid hospice bed with him and holding him for the only time I'd been able to in weeks and talking to him about the day we met - the story I related in this blog yesterday, in fact - and singing him my one-woman rendition of 77t, as he lay there in my arms - asleep?  Unconscious?  Aware?  I'll never know.  And trying to tell him some version of "It's okay to let go," which the hospice people insisted it was important to do - to let him know I'd be okay without him, that he didn't have to keep fighting, but I couldn't do that, exactly - I couldn't tell him I'd be okay without him, because I couldn't then and can't now say that with any certainty - but I told him he could rest, that he'd completed the work he had to do and had done it all so, so well, he could rest now.

There is nothing about all of this that doesn't suck.

Woke up drowsy and foggy this morning to the sound of voices from outside - Steve the contractor and the gutter guy, presumably, who didn't show up yesterday - I didn't bother rushing myself into full consciousness enough to see what they were up to, since my presence wasn't necessary and they didn't need to get into the house.

I think my plan for tomorrow will be to do some cleaning.  I'm reducing clutter in the basement, but the rest of the house is a little the worse for wear, and for lack of caring.  Jerry and I were never the tidiest of housekeepers, but I think cleaning up a bit would be a good idea.

As the days tick down towards Friday's flight to Nashville, my first time through that airport without Jerry.  (But first, I have to get to Midway by myself.  Yikes.)

Personal to the big black spider up by the ceiling: your time in my house is drawing to a close. Just as soon as you come within my reach.

The unfairness of it all, an ongoing series

I took these photos on Saturday.  I looked out the window and saw this bird making a meal out of the purple coneflowers that are fading away in the yard outside our bedroom window... my bedroom window... and thought it was an amazing sight, one that Jerry would have loved and most definitely photographed if he could have, so I grabbed my camera.  By sheer chance, someone posted a similar photo to a Facebook friend's page yesterday, so I was motivated to do some detective work on Google and discover that the bird was an American goldfinch, and American goldfinches really like the seeds of the echinacea.

Just now I looked out the window and saw a male cardinal at the bird feeder, a goldfinch on the echinacea... and for the first time ever, a tiny hummingbird flitting around near some of the purple petunias that Jerry picked out at the nursery in May.  We always wanted to see hummingbirds, even had a hummingbird feeder one year (the shepherd's crook from that failed attempt is still up near the bird feeder and serves as a perch for cardinals and the occasional blue jay), but we never did.  And then today, there one was.  I wanted to tell Jerry.  I wanted him to see it.

It's not fair.

April 2008

Another photo of Jerry at BNA in April 2008, on the way home from the Pine Grove Singing earlier that day.

Rant: Health Insurance

I just spent almost 20 minutes on the phone with a nurse from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois as she questioned every single statement I made on the health insurance application about previous medical treatments and conditions.  I laughed when she mentioned the IBS.  Yes, I have it.  No, I am not planning on any treatments for it because IT'S NOT TREATABLE.  You are a nurse, right???  UTIs?  YES, I'VE HAD THEM.  I'M FEMALE.  IT'S PART OF BEING FEMALE.  LET ME EXPLAIN FEMALE ANATOMY AND THE SHORTNESS OF THE URETHRA.  NO, I DO NOT EXPECT TO HAVE MORE ANY TIME SOON, GIVEN THAT MY HUSBAND HAS JUST DIED.  CONNECT THE DOTS - YOU'RE A NURSE, RIGHT?  That was the version inside my head; the version she heard was similar, but not all in caps.  I did end up in tears, though.  Doesn't take much these days.

They really don't want to sell people insurance.  But at least I know that, as of now, I'm still uninsured.

Sweet corn

There are certain foods that I associate strongly with Jerry.  I mean, we ate lunch and dinner together mostly every day for the past almost 11 years, and breakfast together most weekends of those years, so all foods were shared foods (almost - the man definitely did not like raisins), but some in particular he really loved.  Hot peppers, hot sauces, the black "Twizzles" I've mentioned before, licorice and anise flavors in general, Butterfinger candy bars, Coy's barbecue (ooh, reminds me of a foundational story, about which in a minute for those of you who haven't heard it, and because we've been telling this story for 12 years... I mean, we had been telling it...  and never got tired of it), barbecue in general, slaw... and sweet corn, definitely sweet corn.  I had my first ear of sweet corn this evening since Jerry died: big disappointment, mainly because a) I bought it at the grocery store and b) I bought it at the grocery store at least three days ago, I can't remember exactly.  Jerry would not have approved of it, and while I'm not that picky, even I could tell this wasn't anywhere near a representative of the Platonic ideal of sweet corn.

But on to the Coy's barbecue story.  Almost twelve years ago - going by singing dates, it'll be twelve years ago on Sunday at around noon - at Pine Grove Church, during the Lookout Mountain Convention, I was standing on line waiting to approach the 47-foot-long (or so says Paste Magazine) table at dinnertime, when a man standing behind me recommended the barbecue.  I told him I didn't eat meat - which, given that this had been Jerry Enright's well-thought-out pick-up line, might have discouraged a less confident man, but happily it didn't discourage Jerry.  And of course I didn't mean "Go away, you attractive bearded man with the sparkly blue eyes who for some reason I immediately am finding extremely easy to talk to, which is very unusual for shy me, how could you suggest meat to me???" - and we started chatting, ate dinner together leaning up against his well-traveled Camry (the only time I ever saw that fabled car before he traded it in on the Sienna I'm now so lonely in without him), spent some time talking to Buell, I recall - bet Buell doesn't know he was in on those first moments - and at some point in our conversation must have mentioned the distinctive traditional pronunciation of the first four words in the phrase "I a poor child and Thou so high," since Bill Windom's video of the singing after dinner, as we sang 168, shows me sitting in the alto, smiling as we get to those words - because Jerry, sitting in the tenor, has caught my eye as we've gotten to those words and winked at me.

Coy's barbecue.  I don't know if he'll be bringing it to the singing this weekend.  Jerry would have been looking forward to it, and to everything else about this weekend.

Everything is all wrong.

The hazards of denial

Jerry and I used to send each other e-cards from a website that had animated penguin messages.  Just now I checked my mail and saw a message that said "Happy Birthday," sent from "admin" at that website - and my mind immediately decided that maybe somehow Jerry had sent me a card.

The sobbing and gasping that ensued have now subsided.  For the moment.

48

Today is my birthday.  I don't post this information in search of birthday greetings, although, you who've sent them, I thank you.  But I don't expect I'll surprise anyone when I say that this is the worst birthday of my entire life.  I hope I never have as unhappy a birthday ever again.

I guess it's a kind of milestone, another first: first birthday since Jerry died.  Everything gets to be a first one time.  I hope seconds are going to be less painful than firsts.  Today I feel like I've been fighting harder than ever against accepting the reality of my life, the reality of Jerry's death.  I just want him here so, so much.  I feel like he's got to be coming home now, this all just doesn't make any sense, it's so wrong, it can't be true and he's got to be coming home now.

I went out again today, just so I wouldn't be home all day.  Drove to a shopping center, walked around, looked at iPads in an Apple store even though I have no need for one, not much thought of getting one, and couldn't even figure out how to get the one I was looking at off of the web browser it was open to; thought about last time I was in that store (with Jerry, when we went and got our Macs).  Used a coupon for a free entree at Moe's (yesterday used a coupon for a free meal at Noodles & Co. - the birthday coupons these places send you by e-mail if you register with them.  I suspect they don't think you're going to be going in alone with the coupon and think they'll be making money off the people who go with you.  Sorry).  Drove home again. Did laundry.  Thought about what the next round of things for Goodwill will be (I'm thinking Christmas ornaments and some of the lights.  I don't plan to have a tree by myself.  I'll keep the ones that meant something to us - the penguins and the Tibetan things and the bells with "Karen" and "Jerry" written on them - and get rid of the generic ones we got to fill out the tree.  I'll keep the bubble lights, which of course he called "booble" lights.  Jerry liked the booble lights).

I want him to come home now.

At Pine Grove

Thanks for this photo, David.

ETA: Forgot to say, this was at the Lookout Mountain Convention in 2003.

Us on the patio

A bear of a man (or not)

Today's adventure was the facial and massage at a local Aveda salon.  Both were nice, as was the hair blow-out that was included in the package I booked.  However... the masseuse considered herself "intuitive," and when she heard that I was recently widowed, said something about "consulting with her guide." At first I had no idea what she meant, and then she said something about sensing a "warmth" - and I was horrified to realize she was doing a medium routine.  She decided she was sensing a large warm energy - and then asked if my husband had been a big "bear of a man."  She was probably disappointed when I all but laughed (or would have if I hadn't been feeling unhappy): those of you who knew Jerry know (and those of you who've seen his photos can probably guess) that he was at most 138 pounds sopping wet at his heaviest.  So the "large energy" got quickly switched to "a large personality?"  I refused to play along or give her any hints, so the channeling of my dead husband from the Great Beyond came to an abrupt halt, I'm relieved to say.

Despite that, as I say, the spa package was nice, except for me not being in any kind of good mental place to really be able to let go and stop thinking about things, and for some reason during the facial and massage my mind insisted on focusing in on Jerry in the hospital - maybe because the spa stuff was all so body-focused, and I was thinking of Jerry having massages at the radiation office (and coming out from one of them saying "Mellow..."), and how originally the plan was to have been for both of us to go to the spa together, and I started thinking about all the horrific things that happened to his body at the hospital.

Think I'll go try fifteen minutes on the meditation cushions.  I haven't given that a try since before Jerry went into the hospital.

Us, again

From my parents, a photo taken a few years ago when Jerry was working on the exterior of the house (painting it blue, fixing rotted window and door parts).

P.S. to the woodpecker

To the woodpecker I caught in the act of pecking on a wall of the house this afternoon: Don't.  Just stop now.  You're lucky a) I couldn't find a stone in the moment and b) I throw very much like a girl.

Brunch (I think)

I would guess this is at a restaurant in NYC, and based on what it says on the upload of the photo, I'm going to say January 2008.

Two months

Counting, counting, counting.  Two months since Jerry died, going by dates.  One week until I travel to Alabama without him for the first time since we started meeting up to go to singings down there in the fall of 1998.  Unknowable, uncountable: how long until I'm not aware every waking second of the incredible pain of his absence.

(I think the definition of the title to this blog - "what follows" - is "lots of repetition."  I guess I'll be repeating the same pain and sorrow until it eases, which I'm promised it will... someday.)

Very overcast and gloomy - I thought it was starting to rain, but now I'm not sure.  I wonder if it would help with the humidity or only make it worse.  Most of the time I don't use the air conditioner, but I had it on for a bit yesterday evening, and have just turned it on again to get some of the moisture out of the air.

Anyway.  Steve the contractor, a roofer also named Steve, and a concrete guy whose name I didn't get came to the house this morning and looked around.  Seems like the pouring of concrete in the "dirt room" (a room in the basement that was never walled in - as the name we gave it says, there's dirt foundation where walls should be) along with Jerry's tool room next door to it will cost the most - Steve said it's the most labor intensive.  We found a cache of roof tiles in the garage, which Steve the roofer will be able to use to work on a place by a dormer which he said wasn't originally done completely right, and is wicking up water, plus the place where the tiles had fallen off.  And when Steve the contractor comes back Monday afternoon with his gutter guy, they can see about putting new gutters on the house, which might solve the basement problem without the necessity of waterproofing it - as Jerry pointed out, and correctly too, it seems, when the gutters are clear, the basement doesn't leak.  We've had some huge downpours since I had the gutters cleaned, and the only time there's been any water on the basement floor has been when the water softener has run and the laundry tub has leaked. Not having to have the basement waterproofed would no doubt save me a bundle of money.

I went upstairs yesterday with a couple of wrenches and a book on basic plumbing that I found in the basement, all set to see what I could do with the upstairs tap that was leaking.  Turned the water to that tap back on... no leaking.  So my foray into plumbing will be put off for now.

Today I took two more large black garbage bags of (my) clothing to Goodwill.  Including, still, stuff I wore to work in offices in the 1990s and not since.

I watched the film A Single Man the other night - I was kind of hoping it would be cathartic, or at least give me plenty to identify with.  At the very beginning it seemed to - except for the distraction of George learning about Jim's death from Don Draper - but ultimately I found it surprisingly unmoving.  I don't know if it was Tom Ford's fussiness (the color thing, the focus on material things), or the comedic touches like George with the sleeping bag, or Julianne Moore's off-putting character in general, not to mention her English accent that kept making me cringe - the words "off" and "pouf" in particular stood out really badly - or what.  I was certainly ready to be weeping.  But nothing... Tara at the bar by herself in episode 2 of the current season of True Blood, which I'm catching up on thanks to tapes my parents are mailing me, was sadder in those few moments, even in something as over the top and silly as True Blood is.  I'm not sure if tearjerkers are in general a good idea or a bad one: I'm told the movie Up wouldn't be a smart move right now, though.

Another picture of JME at Cullinan's, March 2003

Max Headroom

I wonder how many of you remember Max Headroom, the TV character from the 1980s.  There was a series based on the character that I never saw (I just remember advertisements), but Jerry did see it, and he liked it, and was really looking forward to it being released on DVD.  I had let him know that the blog tvshowsondvd.com had it listed for release, and assumed we'd get it from Fletnix (as, of course, he called it) when it came out.

It was released on Tuesday.  I just put it in my Fletnix queue.

Some things I can do, so far, and others I can't.  I can continue watching things we started together, I can put Max Headroom on my queue, I can eat some of the things I bought for both of us, or even specifically for Jerry.  Some of them.  I can't eat the two bags of black "Twizzles" that I got for when Jerry got his appetite back (he loved black "Twizzles").  I can't move the uneaten half of a Heath bar that's wrapped up on his desk upstairs in the Buddha bedroom.  I apparently can't move the green suitcase he used when I first met him and he and Lynne and I started meeting up at airports in the South to go to Sacred Harp singings, not without crying - I went downstairs and moved some things, saw the suitcase, decided (without thinking ahead) to see if he'd left anything in it and discovered an itinerary for a visit he made to NYC in October 1999 - when I'd come back to NYC from my "trial period" in Illinois to put my apartment on the market and pack up to move back here permanently (we both knew the "trial period" wasn't really that - what, I wasn't going to follow my heart to its home... which was wherever Jerry was?).  Also hotel information for a trip to the Alabama State Sacred Harp Convention in November 2007.  After that I decided today was going to have to be an unproductive day, I was just not up to dealing with anything.

Tomorrow Steve the contractor et al. should be here around 11 a.m.  Saturday I've got an appointment for a massage and facial, using a spa gift certificate Lynne and Laura gave us for our 10th anniversary in March - as with so much else, it was meant for when Jerry felt up to it, and was ready for some pampering, and we'd have gone together.  So anyway, there's some scheduling going on in my life.  Not a lot... I'm thinking of Lookout Mountain as a big demarcation point: after it's over, I find myself thinking, it will be time to move forward with things.  I also think, though, that I'm trying to impose scheduling on something that will not submit to it, namely this hideous grieving process.  Tomorrow is two months since Jerry died, going by calendar dates, and one more week after that is not going to mean I'm actually in any better condition for "moving forward."  Two months is no time at all.  Not for this.

The end of summer has never been something I've liked.  As a kid, of course, it meant school was around the corner - the time between my birthday and the Jerry Lewis Telethon, and the start of school the next day, always flashed by - gone before I knew it.  Now that I'm older, it's the loss of warmth and light that have gotten to me - I dread the leaves turning and falling off the trees and leaving them bare, I dread the grayness and cold and dark.  And now, with the disappearance of the warmth and green and light,  Jerry's death will be in the process of becoming even more real to me - he won't be here.  He won't be here.  He said once, I think when we were driving to the shop after one of his radiation treatments, that he was really glad that it was getting towards spring as he was having to endure all of this, because it was getting warmer and lighter out, and it would have been unbearable to have to go through this and also deal with winter.  And now the prospect of dealing with winter without Jerry's warmth - without Jerry, without Jerry - scares me more than I can say.

People have told me "He's still with you," "He'll always be with you."  I hope someday I actually do feel something like that, somehow feel his presence in my life.  Because right now I don't - I can't touch him, I can't hear him, I can't smell his lovely scent or taste his lips, he's not there to listen to me, he isn't here at all - all there is is his absence.  It's the huge hole at the center of my existence.  And it hurts.

Cabinetmaker at work

Another photo from my parents: this is Jerry in June 2009, installing the furniture for the office in a walk-in closet in my parents' NYC apartment (at least we drove the cabinets from Illinois already assembled: when we did their kitchen, we drove the cabinets out unassembled and built them in the living room pictured above).

And another thing gone

I cancelled the Wood Bros. website today.  It was there this morning, and now it's gone.  The pages are still on my computer, and there are still skeletal cached versions coming up through Google searches, but really, it's gone.  I can't remember when I first put up the website; according to the account page at HostBaby, which was the last web host we used, I switched the domain and the hosting over to them in October 2004, but the site had been up a number of years prior to that.  For a long time the site also contained a page with information about Sacred Harp singings in the Chicago area - I passed the maintaining of the Chicago singings site on to someone else earlier this year, little knowing that come August the Wood Bros. site itself would be gone.  As is Wood Bros., Inc. Custom Cabinetmakers.  As is Jerry.

I did go to the shop today and spent some time updating, as best I could, the deposits and payments in Quickbooks, to try to help get the account into some sort of shape that the accountant can use to do a final corporate tax filing - going back over Jerry's entries in the check register, then, as the dates go farther into spring, fewer in his writing and more in Seamus's, until Jerry's handwriting disappears entirely.

A dusty black fleece vest he used to wear in the shop in the winter is still hanging there.

Too late

DNA Test May Speed Colon Cancer Diagnosis

Sample paragraph from the article linked above, from yesterday's Times:

Colorectal cancers tend to grow slowly and are easily removed if caught early. But many people over 50 do not comply with the recommendation to have a colonoscopy — a time-consuming procedure in which a tube is threaded up the intestine — and even colonoscopies do not catch everything. Colorectal cancer has become the second most common cancer in the United States; each year it causes more than 50,000 deaths and costs about $14 billion to treat.

Yeah: EVEN COLONOSCOPIES DO NOT CATCH EVERYTHING.  Glad they remembered to point that out, so I didn't have to go on a rampage, the way I want to every time I hear PSAs about colonoscopies that make it sound like all you have to do is have them and you're guaranteed to be safe.  There was one of those that would appear during breaks in programs we'd watch on my computer when Jerry was too weak and tired to get out of bed this spring - a PSA telling people they could catch colon cancers early through colonoscopy.  It made both of us so angry - even though we both knew it was true - often.  But not always.  Not always.  And they never tell you that.

I hope this new test does catch colon cancers early and make them less deadly (not deadly at all would be fine).  But it's too late.  Way too late.

Honeymoon Suite

Actually, if I've got this right, this is Jerry in our room at Cullinan's Guesthouse in Doolin, County Clare.  Looks like he's checking out maps.  We always remembered the sound of the wind outside our windows there - sounded like a gale off the Atlantic.  (Note the return of the "chile-butt pants."  When the time comes to go through Jerry's things, those are NOT being given away.)

Kindest heart

Well.  At the rate I'm going, by the time the Lookout Mountain Convention and the memorial for Jerry come around in a week and a half, I'm going to be crying every waking hour.  Only a slight exaggeration, possibly.  I walk into the shop, I start crying - it's what happens.  I get through it, some time goes by, I start crying again.  I went in this morning and gathered some things and brought them home - tools, utensils, a desk lamp I remember carting along Broadway to my apartment on 73rd Street from Pottery Barn (which Jerry called "Poetry Barn" for no reason except he liked doing it), before I met Jerry or had any clue that someday it would be lighting an office in a cabinet shop in Illinois.  The electric kettle for my tea.  The serving spoon with which Jerry meticulously divvied up the Tasty Bite entrees we'd share for lunch sometimes (or not so meticulously - I always suspected he gave me the larger portion and would often call him out about it, and he'd always deny it).  The map of Ireland I'd picked up during our honeymoon, with the ads for touristy things like Bunratty all over it (typing "Bunratty" makes me realize Jerry must have loved that name.  It just has the kind of sound he would have found amusing).  The Old New York calendar I got every year, this year's with a gastroenterologist appointment for Jerry written in on 15 January, the appointment that had the gastroenterologist who hadn't found anything three months earlier scheduling Jerry for a sigmoidoscopy the following Monday.  And no further medical appointments for Jerry written in anywhere - I refused to mark a single oncology appointment anywhere in any calendar.  (And we know what happens to me when I come across them written in Jerry's calendars.)

I found myself thinking "Oh, better take my sander - I'm going to need my sander."  Then thinking - for what?  For all those cabinet parts I'll never be sanding again?  I took my sander anyway (last of a long line of Bosch sanders - they do have a limited lifespan, those sanders.  Or I'm just really hard on them).  And sanding disks for it.  Because, of course, when Jerry gives me work to do, I'll need to be ready.

Seamus had someplace to be, so we called the lawyer, told him to go ahead and start sending out letters to creditors telling them Wood Bros. has ceased operations, and then we left.  I'll go back tomorrow and we'll see about what to do with all the papers - or try to figure it out, anyway.  And see if there's anything else I should take out of there.  And cry some more.

I was looking at the PC in the basement - Jerry's first computer, I think it might be, an old DOS machine that uses those big floppy disks.  So far I haven't figured out how to turn it on, or if it's plugged in, and since we're getting on to 20 years or more since I've used a computer anything like that, I'm not sure if I can even figure it out.  I was thinking I should take it to the annual electronics recycling thing the village does, which is this coming Saturday (I remember us driving a bunch of old computers and other things over to it last year), but now I'm thinking I won't rush - I don't know if there's anything important on there, and considering the amount of dust and cobwebs on the thing, I imagine not, but I'll take my time, see if I can turn it on, and see if there is anything that shouldn't be tossed.

On the table with the computer I found Jerry's 1987 edition of the Sacred Harp - I guess I never thought about the fact that when he started singing, it was before the 1991 edition came out, but the 1971 edition that I got in 1983 was I guess superseded by the 1987 reprint, so that's what he has.  Had.  Raised sixths, not that Jerry's patient repetitions of what that means have ever gotten me understanding quite what goes on in those, are circled in many of the songs; there's a comment on how 29t is sung "at Antioch" (with no loss of time); a flyer for a singing in 1992 is folded in between two of the pages.  Jerry Enright as Sacred Harp beginner, already paying attention to the traditional ways and making note of them, as he began to try to carry them on himself.  Oh, and most noteworthy, there's a yellow post-it on page 77, with "77 top" written on it.  Jerry's song.  I wonder if he put that there the first time he heard it sung.  (I also wonder how the book ended up covered in dust in the basement - I suspect he forgot it was there, since the rest of his tunebooks, except for the 1991 edition, are all upstairs.  The basement computer table was something he was used to from his former life, and when I convinced him after not too long that it really made no sense to sit in a dank basement when we had two extra bedrooms upstairs, and he turned the one into his thangka-hung Buddha bedroom, the old computer and the things around it were mostly forgotten, I think.)

I also found a printed 2002 e-mail from Doyle Ashley, the son of the late Barrett Ashley, one of the traditional singers Jerry admired and became friends with.  Jerry interviewed Mr. Ashley before his death in 1997 - I helped him transcribe the interview and was sorry never to have met Mr. Ashley.  Jerry modeled his own leading of 300 and 383 on Mr. Ashley's style.  Anyway, Jerry had asked Doyle for his wife's recipe for marinated bean salad, and Doyle sent it along in this e-mail.  I don't think Doyle would mind if I quoted his words here:

Hey Jerry and Karen,
So good to see the both of you at Pine Grove and the Lookout Mountain Singing Convention... Jerry, we (all of those who have heard and enjoyed the interview with "Mr. Barrett." also daddy) thank you so much for doing the interview with someone who is so special to us, and then providing us with a CD from that interview.  We know that you love fasola singing, but more importantly you have a kind heart and a genuine interest in your fellow man.

I have to agree with Doyle.  Jerry had the kindest heart I've ever known.

Us... don't know where, don't know when

Another photo from my parents.  I'm guessing it was taken somewhere in our yard, but I really don't know.  From a while back, though (Jerry in aviator glasses, looks like his left thumb is whole, too).

I love this photo.

ETA: Not so sure about the left thumb, now that I look again...

Plants

When I was in junior high school, I had a subscription to Seventeen magazine.  One issue featured stories that had been submitted by readers, and one of those stories has stuck in my mind over all these decades since.  It was told from the point of view of a girl whose mother had just died, and in the part I always remember, the girl's father finds her at the kitchen sink, angrily ripping house plants that have survived her mother out of their pots, and the father gently guides his daughter to put the plants back in their pots, replant them... what he says to her, however, I can't remember.

I think of that story, or what I can remember of it, now when I water the houseplants every week.  These plants are all still alive, and Jerry's dead.  How can this be?  Part of me does want to let them all die, rip them up, cut their branches off, throw them out of the house - the same feeling I get when one of those flies starts buzzing around me.  Why are you alive when he isn't?

Jerry loved plants.  He loved planting things, he had big plans for turning the yard from a not-very-attractive lawn into a sea of native grasses and other plants, and some of that he accomplished; he had equally big plans to start an indoor hydroponic window garden, which I heard about on NPR this winter and told him about - he was excited about the possibility of a less labor-intensive gardening project to do during recovery from chemotherapy, one that might have a better chance of success than the poor tomato and pepper plants he tried to shepherd through to harvest every year.  He had planted a first round of seeds for that project, and wasn't discouraged when those little tiny seedlings got dried out on the heating mat and died - he would just start another batch, he said.  He never got that chance.

The window boxes and hanging planters around the house have flowers in them that Jerry picked out at a local nursery a few days before he was hospitalized.  My parents planted them - Jerry didn't have the strength.

I should feel kindly towards all these plants, because Jerry loved them.  Instead, I'm angry with them - angry with plants, for however insane that sounds - because they're alive and he's dead.

Today was my last day as a cabinet finisher, after 11 years.  I stained and lacquered the crown moulding for the last job, which Steve the contractor came to pick up in the afternoon.  Probably not necessary to add that I did a lot a lot a lot of crying in the shop today.  Tomorrow I'll go in and get some things I haven't brought home yet - dishes, utensils we used for lunch, some of the tools from my bench, like the scraper ("scrapper," as Jerry called it) that Jerry would occasionally put a new edge on for me.

It's not just the end of Wood Bros. that's making me cry, I mean, in the general scheme of crying.  Last night I was trying to fall asleep, lying as is usual now on Jerry's side of the bed, which I do so I won't be lying on my side with no one on Jerry's side.  And I looked over at my side of the bed and wanted to be over there, but I wanted to be over there with Jerry on his side, where he belongs.  I don't know if it's becoming more real that he'll never be there again, but I'm beginning to feel what I think is panic - this horrific feeling, possibly of reality dawning more completely?  This feeling that something is really wrong now - this fear that Jerry might really be gone forever.

I don't know what I'm going to do if that's really true.

8 Weeks

It's been eight weeks since Jerry died.

I miss him.

Us in New York, again

Another photo from my parents - not sure what year this is from (trying to judge by Jerry's glasses and my hairstyle, but still not quite sure).  

One more thing...

Before I go to bed (1 a.m. ...good possibility that I'll be able to fall asleep now), I want to thank you guys for the cards I'm still getting, for the messages you've been sending, for the comments on the blog.  I'm not doing real well with one-on-one communication right now (as some of you have noticed, I'm sure), but I do want you to know I'm grateful for your love and support.

Up too late, again

Can I just point out that the fact that I can wear size SIX pants is laughable?  I went off to a Gap store this afternoon, taking advantage of sales and an Illinois state tax holiday to look for a pair of pants that'll work in case someday I have a job interview - I've spent the past 11 years working in jeans and t-shirts and sweatshirts and workboots that got covered in dust and lacquer every day, and it's not likely any job I may find in the future is going to put me in circumstances where those kinds of clothes are required.  I actually ended up getting size 8's (and "ankle length" rather than regular - I'm 5'6" tall, which is pretty much the definition of average height for an American woman, or at least used to be, and most regular dress pants I've tried on lately are way, way too long.  Perhaps they expect all women to wear high heels, which I cannot and will not do unless I really want to cause myself intense foot pain).  The 6's fit, but if I gain so much as one more ounce they'd be iffy, and more than an ounce and they'd be too tight, and given that my resolve to stop overeating and start exercising disappeared not long after it was initiated, gaining another ounce, at the very least, is a possibility.  The time will come when my lack of desire to buy larger sizes of clothing will overcome my lack of desire to eat more intelligently and move my body more - not sure when that will be, though.

Although given that I'll no longer be doing physical work in a cabinet shop, I'll need to start moving my body sooner rather than later.  If nothing else, I need to start lifting again, because there'll be no point having tattoos on flabby arms, and I like my tattoos.  OK... tomorrow.  Uh, I mean today, given that I'm typing this at 12:30.  Today I'll resolve again.  (If I'd ever, ever been able to stick with this kind of resolution, I'd feel more confident about this.)

But my point was, when I was in high school and college, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I wore size 12 pants.  And eventually my last size 12 jeans, the ones that were so nicely faded and patched and comfortable, were too tight to wear (I think they're still in an upstairs closet, for that day when I get pneumonia or food poisoning again and get back down to my all-time and very unhealthy adult low weight of 114 pounds).  And I know there's been lots of inflation of women's clothing sizes, since all those wily marketers know it makes ever-expanding American women happy to fit into clothing sizes with smaller and smaller numbers attached.  But I remember back in 1998 going through a phase where I was going to get my weight down, damn it, and I was going to do it by starving myself, and I did do it, I got down to something like 123 pounds, I ate nothing, I had one of the elevator operators in my building on 73rd Street so worried about my weight loss that he gave me chocolates, and then I went out and bought a size 6 short blue sleeveless dress, which I wore when I traveled down to Lookout Mountain that August (although I didn't wear it to the singing itself, so no, it's not what I was wearing when I met Jerry).  And that week I decided to stop starving myself, my weight went back up to a more sane and sustainable number, and I was never able to fit into that dress again and gave it away eventually to Goodwill.  Size SIX.  The size of pants I'm now fitting into at somewhere around 132 pounds.

So there you have it: ruminations on the insanity of marketing.  And a public airing of my current weight, to boot.  It's actually not so bad: my constant weight goal is simply to keep below 130.  So it's only a matter of a few pounds... right now.  Last time I stopped paying attention, it crept a bunch over 130, and that's when pants really stop fitting, so I do have to be vigilant.

Although that would require caring.  I have to get to the point where I care about things again.  I'm not there yet, not at all.  I'm most definitely still thinking "nothing now can ever come to any good."  I mean, I'm not totally apathetic - I bathe, I do laundry, I wash dishes, I sort mail, I get things done - so I would imagine this is all proof I'm not clinically depressed, for some who might have been wondering about that.  But everything feels different - things don't matter to me the way they used to.  I feel detached, I feel like I'm in a fog, I feel separate and different and apart.  Like the world is turning around me, and I'm just observing, not really seeing very clearly, just sort of passing through and waiting for something.

I'm afraid that what I'm waiting for is Jerry's return.  How long do you wait for something that is never going to happen before your mind and body adjust to reality and you get to figure out a new way to be, a new way to live that is reconnected, that has some sense to it and that lets you start caring again?  I guess it's different for each person who has to do this, adjust to a harsh reality she doesn't want.  And I guess I'll find out, eventually, if I can do it.  But I have to.  Otherwise I might as well arrange to have my ashes scattered along with Jerry's, because "existing" or "functioning" for the rest of my life cannot be enough for me.  I want to live, and I want to care.  I don't know how to do that yet, I don't know how to even imagine a time when the missing of Jerry and the longing for him are not going to be this intense and this painful.  But I have to imagine that I will be able to imagine it, and I have to imagine that I will find a time beyond this intensity, when missing him will be part of who I am, but not all of who I am.  I feel like I need to apologize to Jerry for wanting to stop hurting this much - it's not that I'm going to stop loving you, Sweetie - I'll never stop loving you - but it can't keep hurting this much.  Not if I'm going to survive.

I miss you, Sweetie.  I love you.

JME driving in the snow

I don't remember when this was taken, but it's later rather than earlier in our marriage, I'm going to say, because he's got his newer glasses on rather than the aviators he wore earlier.  I suspect it's Jerry doing the driving rather than me because it's snowing out, and I'd have been nervous about driving in snow (although of course I've done it, and now will have to do it on my own)...  oh, wait, I just recognized that sign in the background, through the window, I think, and if I'm right, I'm remembering now that this was a really bad snowy morning on the way to work, trying to get up a hill on Rt. 31 in Dundee.  We ended up having to be pushed out of a skid by a few Dundee policemen who were having to deal with lots of skidding cars that morning.

I find sometimes now when I'm driving I reach over to the passenger seat - I know he's not there, but I do it anyway, repeating a motion I often did, reaching out to squeeze his leg.  As if somehow he will be there, if I just keep trying.

The sweetie in Ireland, yet again, March 2003

More flies, more dreams

Dead fly tally so far this evening: 1.

I dreamt about Jerry again last night.  This time he was going to California, planning to carry out some sort of robbery at a hotel.  Somehow we got separated, because I found myself talking to some police, who were telling me they knew what he was up to and were going to go get him.  And they said I wasn't going to be able to see him.  I woke up from that last part feeling panicked, and then of course the reality I woke to was even worse than the dream.  I remember having bad dreams occasionally over the past years and waking up and realizing where I was and who was there sleeping next to me, and always being so happy and relieved.  No more happiness now, no more relief.

Had to give up on the bulletin board for widows that I'd been visiting - this has happened to me before, where I get involved on a bulletin board and then after some time realize that the people on the board are in general just way too different from me aside from the one thing we have in common that has brought us to the board in the first place, and I feel very uncomfortable continuing to participate in the posting.  It's happened a couple of times before, and I think this was the final example that proves to me that in future I'll be avoiding bulletin boards.  I've encountered a few people on each of the boards I've tried who have turned out to be longer-term off-board correspondents, and that has been nice, but in general I'll be much better off not clicking on harmless-sounding subject lines and finding that someone's spouse has very definitely been sending her signs through the songs that come on the car radio, or that some famous TV psychic is so obviously the real thing and has delivered news bulletins from people's spouses from the Great Beyond, and all you haters who don't believe it's true are just evil and jealous, or that everyone is assuring the OP that his dead wife is looking down on him from somewhere and smiling and deriving pleasure from what he's doing here below.  I hope all those widows are getting comfort from those kinds of beliefs and others, but they're not for me, and it's no help to me to read them.  Additionally, my nerdly grammarian brain felt like it was going to explode if I'd had to wade through many more repetitions of "could of," "loosing my mind," and other almost-but-not-quite phrases.

Clearly I'm just a mean and nitpicky person.  Then again, I never claimed to be otherwise.

More progress: Steve the Contractor will be here in a week, along with a roofer and a concrete guy and a gutter guy, to evaluate further what needs to be done.  OK, I didn't say the progress wasn't glacial.  But at least they remember I'm still out here waiting.  Still not sure when I'll have health insurance again (don't know if I have to wait until the beginning of next month for coverage to start), but I wrote another check today to supplement the one I gave the insurance agent yesterday - I have to pay for two months at a time, it turns out, or else they're going to want to make automatic withdrawals from my bank account, and I really hate setting up automatic withdrawals, and avoid it if I can.

The cabinet shop lives on for another weekend.  Sort of.  Seamus needs to finish getting the crown moulding for this last job assembled, and I'll stain and lacquer it on Monday.  It'll be picked up (possibly by Steve the Contractor - I think this is a job for his company) on Tuesday.  We talked today about having the phone service shut down on Tuesday.  Then I guess we take out what's left of our personal belongings and shut the door, and the lawyer moves forward alerting vendors and other creditors that the company has ceased operations.  Not sure what happens then.  We're sort of curious when the landlords will notice we're not there, considering they don't seem to have been bothered by not having received any rent payments in something like ten months... or at least not bothered enough to mention it.

Again I'm left to wonder how a heart that's already broken can keep re-breaking, over and over and over again.

WMSHC 2008

Thanks to Sheldon for this picture.  This is me and Jerry leading at the 2008 Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention in Northampton.  Jerry got that sweater in Ireland.

Not a good time to be a fly in my house

To the three four large flies that chose tonight to buzz around my desk: Sorry.  You caught me at a really bad time.

Recess

March 2003 again.  A little Googling reminds me that this is in Recess, in Connemara, County Galway.  Pretty sure we had stopped for a bathroom break in the pub behind Jerry, on the way out of Oughterard heading west.  And here we see the standard shift car that Jerry maneuvered along the narrow Irish roads (my lack of ability to drive standard saving me from driving in Ireland yet again), shifting with the left hand, driving on the left side of the road... oh, and by the way, please do say the word "maneuvered" in your best Eddie-Izzard-as-Professor-Heimlich accent.  Because Jerry definitely would.

OH FOR GOD'S SAKE.  Heimlich is not only an American, but he's also 90 years old and STILL ALIVE, Wikipedia says.  Cf. previous blog post about resentment of people getting to have longer lives than Jerry did.  Also, I wonder if Eddie Izzard knows Heimlich was born in Delaware.  Wish I could tell Jerry.

Happy about Bubbs

Things keep moving forward, little things getting taken care of (passive voice used advisedly, since, yeah, it's me doing them, but I feel like I'm moving through a fog a lot of the time, as if things aren't really real).  Yesterday I called and arranged for garbage pickup to start at the house again - Jerry canceled it back in 2005 when the price got ridiculous, and we just brought trash and recycling to the shop and put it in the dumpsters there.  I won't have that option anymore, so I called Waste Management and the price is still ridiculous ($27/month).  And considering I don't eat meat and we have a composter... I mean, I have a composter... and it's just me now, there isn't going to be enough garbage and recycling to justify that amount, but I set it up anyway.  I feel like I should just go around the house throwing out things whether I want to keep them or not, just to feel like I'm getting my money's worth.  And here's the extra annoying part: of our eight lots... I mean, of my eight lots... God, this sucks... of my eight lots, three are in the village and five are in the township.  If you live in the village, you pay for garbage pickup by buying individual stickers that you put on each garbage bag or can, and each sticker costs something like $1.50.  So if they considered me to be living in the village, I'd pay $1.50 a week for garbage pickup, if I even had enough to have picked up in a given week.  I suppose they decide based on which lots the house is on (this affects how I vote, too - I don't get to vote for village officials).

Anyway.

Today I met with the insurance agent and applied for an individual health insurance policy.  No more dental insurance (my dentist isn't in the network, so no point).  Knock wood for no more root canals in the near future.

Yesterday was the "re-employment workshop," in which a man and a woman talked to a room full of mostly white middle aged people about not chewing gum during job interviews and having a paragraph at the top of your resume stating your objective... or not (apparently HR experts can't agree on whether or not you should).  Also that most jobs are found through networking, which just brings to my mind that line from The Commitments, "so you're fucked for starters."  (Not knowing what I want to do, or am qualified to do besides things I've already done and don't particularly want to do again, doesn't help either.)  Anyhow, the man, who did most of the talking, was one of those people who is very comfortable talking in front of a crowd, very gung-ho and self-confident - in fact I think he's a high school sports coach or something of the sort - but consistently uses the wrong words while he's speaking.  I can only remember one example, because he repeated it twice, and by that time I'd noticed he was doing this - he talked about someone being at the "liberty" of someone's financial decisions, when he meant "mercy."  But then again, he's employed right now and I'm not, and there's very little I loathe more than public speaking, so I shouldn't throw stones.

Still finishing up the last project at the shop.  Seamus and I seem to have made this job last a lot longer than it had to - neither of us wants to complete it, since completing it means Wood Bros., Inc. Custom Cabinetmakers is really over.  Even though it is, of course.  I think the job is supposed to be picked up on Tuesday.  But thinking of doing my last bit of staining, thinking of spraying my last coats of lacquer, is just breaking my heart.  We're glad that if Wood Bros. had to fail, Jerry didn't have to know about it.  A small mercy.

I'm crying more and more in the shop now (and at home, and in the car, and almost at a re-employment workshop, but not quite).  I have noticed one thing that my brain is having a really hard time sorting out, which is my birthday.  On the one hand, I really, really want to ignore my birthday this year - clearly I'm in no mood to celebrate anything, nothing about turning 48 (or anything else these days) is going to be making me happy, and I just want to get through that day like any other.  But on the other hand I keep catching myself wondering if Jerry's got anything planned.  He relied a lot on the Sundance Jewelry Catalogue to get him through each August, the sweetie, and we just got... I just got... that catalogue in the mail yesterday.  And thought, for a split second, that I should save it for him, to make his life easier (we'd gotten a few earlier in the year and he smiled and said that we could recycle those, we'd get more closer to my birthday that he could use).  So yeah, for some reason I'm having a hard time remembering reality when it comes to this particular thing.

I dreamt about Jerry again last night.  I don't remember details, but somehow when I woke up I was under the impression that I'd been having to reassure him that I loved him, that in the dream somehow he wasn't sure.  I hope my dreams are going to give me a break from this sort of misery.  I know in reality he knew I loved him, I know he knew he was the love of my life, but to have to doubt that at all, just because of a stupid dream - hard to bear.

I finished up The Wire yesterday.  Jerry would have been happy about Bubbs.

P.S. To Karen, your comment on the dancing photos didn't come through.  That was a great night, though, wasn't it?