The Summer of Loss

I hold myself together during the hours of a crisis.  I cried a bit when I knew it would be the day I couldn't go on thinking Cyrus was okay, thinking he could make it through another day.  And  I'd been told he was on the maximum dose of pain medication. The level of antibiotics was as high as it could go.  Finally nothing was helping.  It was all getting worse.  And maybe he'd been suffering too long.  Maybe I was just selfish in keeping him with me to fill my need to have him here.

Every day since his death there has been the oddly timed firecracker popping off somewhere on the block, or just behind the house in the alley.  And the reflex holds to not react, so as not to feed his terror of anything that sounds like gunshot.  I look over the bed to see how he's doing.  It's just a reflex.  But I will always hate the Forth of July for all the terrified dogs. 

The orange and cream Tibetan rug that was under his tempurpedic mattress and cedar bed on top of that is now bare and visible.  It could be a treasure exposed, but it just seems like an absence, a loss, a minus in my life.

Yesterday I spent most of the day crying.  Loss is always my fault.  I cannot grieve, it seems, without believing that somehow, if I'd done something differently, Cyrus would have made it through another summer then a fall and then...  I know why I have to blame myself.  It's the phantom pain of the scapegoat.

I have a few more days of dog-sitting Roscoe.  He spent last night here.  We had a little slumber party.  It's probably the last time I'll sleep that soundly for a good long time.

Crazy Heart

Nick took me to see Crazy Heart last week. It was a weekday matinee, the only time I'll go to a movie. I like the empty theater at a midweek midday matinee. Nick and I usually talk politics, but for some reason neither of us had much to say. Politics is making me sad these days. I feel very sorry for our President. The country is weary. War weary, sad and losing heart along with the good job and the new house. No one can afford to get sick. Even if you have insurance, you can't afford to use it. I'm almost afraid to talk politics for fear I'll just breakdown in tears. I was in the mood for a good movie, a distraction from one reality to take me into another reality.

But Crazy Heart took me into the one of the saddest failures of my life; it took me back to the days of living with and loving Tom. When I first met him, when we were teenage kids, he was just learning to play the bass. He was into Jazz then. But when we got together in midlife, after our divorces, he was playing Country/Western music which I didn't entirely appreciate since I was still into Jazz. When I first knew him he played an acoustic bass. When we were in midlife, he was playing electric bass and guitar. I'm not a big fan of amplified, electrified instruments. But I fell hard again for Tom and since I had run from him the first go round when we were kids, I maintained in midlife that I didn't want to be a couple, I just wanted us to have fun. But when you've always been in love with the man and he gives you the key to his house, it's hard not to become a couple.

When the band he was playing in rehearsed, they did it mostly at Tom's house and I was there. I don't know why so many musicians are hard drinkers, which seems to lead them into all sorts of other bad behavior, but in the bands Tom played with, that seemed to be pretty universal.

Tom's two youngest children were age four and six. They were lovely kids and I did enjoy their visits when it was his turn to have them. And because Tom always had gigs during the holidays and on New Years Eve it was I who took care of making Christmas away from their mother and their real home as much like a real Christmas as possible, with a tree and shopping trips and presents under the tree and hot chocolate and popcorn at night watching a rented movie. I was home with them when he was gone every night playing in some honkytonk or toilet in BFE. And I quickly grew to love his kids. And I grew to see him as a neglectful and insensitive father. He became a man who drank too much almost all the time. I know he had his reasons. I know they all did.

And in truth, I was much too crazy to really work out the other problems in our life together. I knew the root cause of my craziness, but Tom didn't want to hear about it, wanted me to get over it and move on without having to talk about it and the way the present reminded me of the past.

Crazy Heart reminded me of the past and the only man I really ever tried to love. Crazy Heart was a little too close to home, a little too real. And near the end of the movie I wanted to get up and run. I wanted to flee my past again, like I did when things got too bad with Tom. I used to decide in an instant that I couldn't take it anymore and throw all my things in garbage bags and leave without a word. The only real sound I made was when my tires were squealing out of the driveway and I was headed down the canyon road away from Tom and his insensitivity to my needs.

So when the movie ended I was ready to cut and run; before the credits even rolled I was trying to exit the darkened theater as fast as I could and I fell in the dark, hard. I didn't really hurt myself, but it all hurt, and I couldn't hold back the tears. And even now, even all this time later, I still can't think of Tom without getting a lump in my throat and fighting back tears.

Sublimation's a Bitch

I have held my tongue so long it's strangling me. I know that the area in my throat and chest that is effected by this tongue holding is the exact area that is strangling my friend. But today, while I waited for the phone call to go pick her up from her first day of prep for Radiation at Huntsman Cancer Institute, I have tried to put my house in order and this house keeping has seriously inconvenienced all the dogs. So I have shouted at dogs to move, go outside, shut up, stay! all day long. I finally took to using a water sprayer to surprise Marley in mid-bark at the kids playing in the yard across the alley.

I have stripped all dog beds or their coverings and washed them. I submerged Marley's bed in the bathtub and scrubbed it. It's been drying in the sun all day and is now a lot sweeter smelling than Marley herself. Tomorrow morning Marley gets another bath. I stripped my bed and washed sheets. And I did all this cleaning because I couldn't leave my phone for fear of missing Z's phone call.

When she called I had my clothes laid out to hop into so I would look respectable when I pulled up at Huntsman to pick her up. I wore a sleeveless white cotton blouse and a black cotton skirt. I wore earrings and a bracelet. I wore my good summer hat--it goes with everything. She was waiting in the circle at the entrance, and as I drove up the hill I saw her standing there dressed in a long sleeved brown top with matching brown pants. She is reed slender and this willowy frame from a distance has the look of the girl I first met at the U forty eight years ago in a room full of boys. I do not look like the girl I was. My hair is shorter and I weigh at least forty pounds more than I did as a reed thin girl. I look my age. But at a distance Z looks just like that willowy girl, that ballet dancing girl. And a lump forms in my chest as I think about the journey we both have taken to end up here now.

Tonight her sister-in-law is cooking for her. Tomorrow I pick her up at 3:30 to take her to Huntsman again for a half hour of treatment. She is feeling better all ready.

Marley on the other hand has her very long nose very seriously out of joint. At least I didn't kick her.

Grief Turns to Rage

I visited my friend Z yesterday. Her middle son is the only family member staying with her now. He believes that the mind is all it takes to heal the body. If she had her mind in the "right space" or some shit like that, she could heal herself. I want to scream when she tells me this, but wait to see what else she says. She says she plans to get the PET scan today and then plan from there. So far she hates every oncologist at the Huntsman Institute. Why? Because they tell her this cancer cannot be treated with radiation and diet alone. Some doctor in Peteluma has told her that it can be treated with just radiation and diet. She hasn't met the doctor in Peteluma, but she has talked to him on the phone and likes his "approach." I have choked back so much incredulity and anger that I'm about poisoned by my own rage and frustration. I know it won't help her if I argue with her, so I tell her I'm glad she's found a doctor she "believes in."

This morning two things have happened to flip my switch from mild irritation to full blown screaming, out of control rage. Marley was outside for ten minutes. When I let her in I noticed she peed on the second step down from the porch. Then she waltzes in the house and shits on the rug. I calmly clean it up and put her back outside. Then I lost my internet connection. I tried to fix it myself to no avail. I called Comcast. It took two tries to fix the problem but by the second try I was so pissed-off I was screaming. Seriously. Screaming! Now it works again, but I'm poisoned by the flood of adrenalin coursing through my system. I'll now back slowly away from the computer and call my shrink for an emergency appointment.