My Last Post

Three and a half years.

Here I sit trying to understand where I am. Sometimes now I stay in the house when it is beautiful outside. Now I don’t have good ideas for how to spend large blocks of time. Selkie is lame with arthritis so she doesn’t launch or inspire me to do long walks and if I leave her for a long time I feel guilty. Our idea of a good time is for me to putter outside and for her to lie down and watch me. I’ve gained a bunch of weight because I get hungry late at night and don’t put up a fight. If I have something I like I eat it. The GP I see said I should go back on Welbutrin which is an antidepressant and has some satiety influences but I don’t feel depressed, or not often. As previously noted I’ve made no new friends and have not done much to retain the old. I fill my hummingbird feeder with care though.

Today I didn’t do two community events, so far, with more no shows to follow in the afternoon.

Michael isn’t in my thoughts much but when he pops up it is sort of like an echo of something important that I don’t really want to think about or if the thought arises full center strong about him I just roll with it until it passes. Often it is with a crimp of grief or regret but not like before. The love and sadness are still there but I can’t have one without too much of the other.

I’m still doing what I think is important—standing up for human rights, justice and am firmly persistently anti-militarist. That takes a big chunk of my time and it is how I prefer to give of myself and define my life. I’m more idle now though. I’m inconsistent and can’t organize others because I’m so patchy about my follow through. I watch more TV and look at my stupid phone way too much, reading news feeds and stewing far more than I should. (I think it is an addiction that many people are caught up in.  Do we think we are doing something because we repost an article or event or diatribe?)

I feel like Michael never existed sometimes…like it has always been like this… pinball woman bumping from one thing to the next with the odd quiet moment like this to stew in a pot where there aren’t many ingredients. In my meditation we focus on the space of sensing and I do that a lot. It is a place of simple experiencing, where the universe unfolds without interpretation or thought comment. Somehow the living of my life has become a sense tableau without a central character except for times like this when a big chunk of façade falls on me and my person crawls out to report on my bruises.

It is time to end this blog. I am through the bardo or perhaps become the bardo, I don’t know. I want to start a new blog that is not about losing Michael and all the tinge of “poor me” that comes with the real and unavoidable snare of what he meant to my life. He was bigger than life and yet time is squelching his memory even from me, his faithful and loving partner, partly because I can’t stand to hurt thinking about him and that’s because it does me no dam good to hurt!!! I’m sure some would counsel that love should sparkle and be bright with the sweet and wonderful times but how that plays out in me is just to make me want to cry out… yes, yes, yes… there were myriads of adventures and beauty galore and challenges and him like a God… but no, I don’t want to live in the past. If it comes up so be it but I have to put the knife down!

I still walk out to where his ashes are most days. I sit and muddle and flick leaves off the rocks and shells that surround the little tree. Selkie lies down and watches me.

Peace to you. May you stay forever young and have a good death and leave behind well adjusted friends and family who will love you through time.