River: State of the Bear: two weeks after

I guess I'm in something like a holding pattern right now. I haven't fallen apart, though I'm still allowing for the possibility, but it doesn't feel as though I'm getting much of anything done either.

That's not entirely accurate; I spent the weekend on Whidbey with N and we did quite a bit of Stuff-sorting, mostly in the garage and mostly not Colleen's Stuff. But my tech-writing side gig is going nowhere, and I'm not journaling much either.

The feeling of unreality is still there -- it would surprise me if it weren't. It's not helping that she was away from the house -- in hospitals and nursing homes -- for so much of her last three-and-a-half months. I spent a lot of time visiting with her, but when I was home she wasn't there. When she was down in Seattle, I spent my weekday nights at N's house. I sort of got used to it. Now, day-to-day, not much has changed. Maybe enough has changed for it to really register.

When I look farther out, of course, everything is different. Unfinished projects that it would be pointless to finish. A house that will gradually lose pieces of our life together. Pieces of her. Her shelves of cookbooks. Her tea cabinet. Her walker. Her scooters. Her bed.

There must be hundreds of our friends who haven't heard yet. I still haven't gone through her address book.

I mentioned the list of "symptoms" in How to Carry What Can't Be Fixed. Here's the list:

   *Insomnia,
   *Physical exhaustion,
   *Time loss,
   *Confusion,
  **Sadness,
    Anger,
   *Clumsiness,
    Sleeping all the time,
   *Anxiety,
    Nightmares,
    Intense dreams,
    Loss of apetite,
   *Loss of interest,
    Feeling like you don't belong,
    Eating everything,
   *Frustration,
  **Sense of unreality,
    Loneliness,
   *Memory loss,
    Stomach pains, chest pains, and other physical sesations,
   *Trouble concentrating,
    Hard time reading,
   *Short attention span,
   *Restlessness,
    Hypersensitivity,
    Phantom aches and pains,
    Interpersonal challenges,
   *Nothing has meaning,
    Everything has meaning,
  **Inability to cry,
   *Numbness,
    Mood swings,
    Crying so hard you gag or throw up,
   *Everyday tasks seem confusing,
   *Dark sense of humor,
    Screaming in the car,
  **Crying silently,
    Feeling differet from everyone else,
    Feeling short-tempered,
    Abandoning your shopping cart at the grocery store,
    Feeling immense love for everything around you

There are 40 lines there, and I've put stars on half of them. I'm sure there are more; those are just the ones in the book. Good to know that I'm not the only one with "crying silently" and "inability to cry". Those were the ones that have always worried me.