The Mandelbear's Musings

Colleen died one year ago today. By an odd but wellcome coincidence, my grief support group meets the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month, so there's that. (It runs from 10:00 to 11:30; I will probably post this sometime in the afternoon. I started writing this post two days ago, so please ignore any temporal confusion or calendrical parallax.)

My life seems to have been torn in half -- in part literally, shuttling back and forth between the houses in Freeland and Seattle. But also metaphorically, because so much of it revolved around Colleen. That includes nearly all of my social life.

I haven't gotten anything done in the last year. I've been reading, as usual, taking refuge in group theory and other rabbit-holes, but I'm just now getting back into singing regularly, and as for sorting and packing,... Actually, I've never sold anything on Craig's List or anywhere else online, and things that I could easily get wrong worry me. My daughter, E, is coming up to the house week after next to help with the sorting.

I've had plenty of support, mostly low-key, which I think is what I needed. Need. I haven't been left alone for more than a day or so, which is probably what I've needed even though it's not what I would have asked for. And I have the cats, who are also taking care of me in their own way. And a grief support group that meets via zoom on the second and fourth Thursday of eacy month, so they/we met this morning. There's also a Facebook group.

I don't actually know much about support, either asking for it, getting it, or giving it. Which makes being in a peer support group kind of problematic? Basicaly I'm faking it.

It's like object-oriented programming -- if a simulation is good enough, you can use it in place of the thing you're simulating. Or as Alan Kay famously said about Smalltalk, "If it quacks like a duck and it waddles like a duck, you can't tell that it isn't a duck." I just have to hope I'm waddling well enough.

Aside: the next post will be a signal boost for the James Webb Space Telescope's first images, released earlier this morning. A day that starts with that much beauty and wonder can't be all bad. And after that a boost for this morning's GoingSideways post.

So this is my first Christmas without Colleen. I've already gotten through Halloween and Thanksgiving, but this is different. We stopped putting up a tree in the last few years, but we put out garlands and a few ornaments. I put a garland with lights around the TV last year -- never took it down because Colleen said she liked looking at it. It's also the first year in a long time without the traditional marzipan and glass of Scotch we put out "for Santa".

I'm spending the weekend down in Seattle with N and G. Normally I'd have driven up to the house on Whidbey, but I have an appointment on Monday and there's snow predicted for tonight and tomorrow, and I don't want to get stuck. I keep three days worth of extra meds in my suitcase.

It occurred to me a few days ago, looking at the tree in E's house, that I ought to go through the boxes of ornaments and take out the few with special memories attached. No idea what I'd do with them, but I don't want them -- or the memories -- to get lost. Another writing project.

I have several writing projects started, and I'm not making much progress on any of them. Grump. (And of course I just started this one today! Maybe it will give me some momentum.) And that's not counting my usual pair of New Year's posts. Which I've hardly thought about yet.

In spite of everything that's happened this last year, it seems to have gone by very quickly, and it feels as though I've gotten very little done.

( Content warning: sad anniversaries. )

A lot of things still need doing. Getting Colleen's name off bank accounts. Tracking down online accounts. Tracking down subscriptions. Finding a new executor for my will, and a health care power-of-attorney (which neither of us ever did because we were mutually next-of-kin). Find a lawyer, which we never did either.

Downsizing and moving is a big one. Deciding what to throw out, what to give away, what to move to Seattle, and when. What I can't bear to part with. What to sell, including the expensive and still-good items like the patient lift and her scooter. Scooters. Actually selling things, which I've been putting off for years.

And that's not even counting the stuff in the garage and scattered around the house that hasn't been done since we moved in, in 2017. (Some of which hasn't been looked at since we left the Starport in 2012.) Hanging artwork. Clearing off the workbench and installing lights in the garage. And the unfinished projects, most still hanging around from previous workbenches I never cleared off.

I think another large part of what's going on in my head is that I haven't yet adjusted to my new living situation. I'm splitting my time between Seattle and Freeland, and neither really feels like home right now. Maybe three months isn't long enough? Very little of my Stuff has been moved; I'm still carting a suitcase back and forth every weekend. I haven't put anything on the walls, or in all but two drawers of the huge dresser that once held most of Colleen's clothing while we lived at Rainbow's End.

There's no damned reason why I haven't done the things except that they're very uncomfortable to think about. Which I suppose is my usual reason for not doing things. Some, like selling stuff, are uncomfortable because I've never done them before. (Have I mentioned that I procrastinate? Or did I put that off as well?) I try to at least do one thing every weekend. It would be nice if I could get that up to one thing every day, but don't hold your breath.

I've been drifting -- going down Wikipedia rabbit-holes, re-reading the Foundation series, puttering around with computers (instead of actually, you know, writing code. Or writing much of anything else.) I guess I've been drifting for most of the last three years, but at least a couple of times a day I'd have to stop drifting and do something for Colleen. Now I'm just adrift. Caregiving was a major part of my life, and it's not there anymore -- there's this huge hole I haven't figured out how to fill yet.

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.

A . V E R Y . B A D . W E E K .

Colleen died a few hours before dawn on Monday morning. We had been married 45 years, 6 months, 8 days, and 11 hours. The last thing I said to her, when she called Sunday morning before she went in for surgery, was "I'll always love you."

I'm... coping? Not as broken as I expected to be, actually. No real tears except when I tried to sing "Eyes Like the Morning". Somewhere close to tears, anyway. (v.i. 0717Sa)

I can't imagine what this week would have been like if N hadn't been there. She'd promised Colleen that she'd take care of me. The Y.D. is putting together the memorial, which is another load I don't have to carry. I still have the feeling I'm missing something important.

Oh. Right.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Apparently the last time I wrote a post with the title "State of the Bear" was in early 2009, over a decade ago. If you're looking for any sort of continuity, you won't find it here. I was doing a lot more introspection back then -- or at least writing about it more. It may be time to get back to it.

You also won't find much of a review. Not here, anyway; I may do year and decade summaries later. (Don't hold your breath -- I have a bad track record for that kind of thing. And a lousy memory.) It's been a rough decade. Colleen's had the worst of it, by far -- 18 stays in five different hospitals, seven times in rehab, nearly dying at least three times, ... She started the decade losing most of the use of her legs. I blame myself for some of her later problems -- I was very stupid a couple of times.

Also in the last decade I've been laid off twice, burned out, retired, had four different therapists; we've moved four times; our kids have both moved out, ... Perhaps the biggest change was joining up with N and her family, in 2012, to form a multi-generational family/household called the Rainbow Caravan.

Someday maybe I'll write up the whole story -- it'll probably take a book. (Mom's memoir comes to nearly 40 pages, and I write more than she does.) Meanwhile, you could look in the Archive -- but there are a little under 3,000 posts in the last 10 years. I've been doing a little looking myself, lately. Kind of amazing how much I've forgotten. (I'm getting the stats mostly by grepping the archive and piping the results through wc -- see Data-mining the Dog, which I posted a little over a month ago.)

But all that's process, and I was supposed to be writing about state. Wasn't I? Right.

Physically, apart from not having done nearly enough walking and not having been to the dentist for the last year (Colleen and I had appointments scheduled for last December -- just after she went into the hospital), I think I'm in pretty decent shape. The usual problems with my knees (I've been using a brace for the right, occasionally, to keep it stable) and back (mostly the QL muscles, which seem to respond well to heat and Naproxen), but those have been going on for the last 48 years or so, and they've been a lot worse from time to time. No major injuries, thank goodness, unless you count a bad fall a couple of years ago (resulting in a slightly broken nose) and a couple of torn muscles. BP and cholesterol under control with comparatively mild drugs.

Mentally -- better than this time last year, I think; probably better than the average of the previous five. (That's not saying much, considering that half of that time was spent burning out at Amazon. Often it feels as though I'm still not recovered.) I'm not sure how much of the improvement can be accounted for by the five months I spent with an online therapist on 7cups -- it didn't feel as though I was getting anywhere. Probably more of the improvement can be credited to my singing teacher.

So... one insight that I got from 7cups is that my main problem hasn't been depression or anxiety, but stress. (Several people have told me since then that they thought I knew that. Maybe I did at some point.) I haven't been all that successful at reducing stress, beyond passing off a lot of the cooking to the housemates. Colleen's care is stressful.

I've gotten very little done over the last couple of years. Some combination of inertia, depression, and laziness. Mostly the latter, I think (assuming procrastination is a form of laziness, anyway; I think it is). Right now I'm having a lot of trouble just finishing this post. I should post it now, otherwise it'll probably sit around for months and not get finished at all. Which has happened with more than one draft post.

I did get out for a 2.5-mile walk, but I had to push myself to get started. Hard.

My life is not sufficiently lifelike -- it's somewhere in the Uncanny Valley.

Annoyed/angry/frustrated/tense at work, fixing problems I thought had been dealt with months ago, in the code of a coworker who had left for a two-week vacation yesterday morning. What was he thinking? (Not the vacation, the code! Gaak!) And how many times should I have to explain this stuff? (Granted, it's tricky. But still...)

I headed home feeling totally drained. Today didn't help much.

cadhla

...There is always, sadly, a way to die.

Why am I telling you this? Becuase there is a difference between taking precautions and living in fear. Wearing your helmet when you ride a bike is taking sane and reasonable precautions. Throwing your bike away and refusing to ever let your children learn to ride is living in fear. This is a huge, fabulous, amazing world, full of huge, fabulous, amazing experiences just waiting to be had. But you cannot have them if you trade freedom for a security which is always, inevitably, illusionary at best.

You are not safe. Neither am I.

Welcome to life.

cflute