May he know peace
May he know joy in his children and his children’s children
May he know the absence of pain
May he revel in the loss of a body that torments him.
May he feel the love that is coming to him
from all directions.
May he know my love.
My love.
May he know peace.
Don’t isolate. Call friends. Don’t stew in your own juices. Get help. Keep busy. Do this. Do that. I am two months out of Robin’s death. When I sit down, I want to howl. Howl, howl, howl. I have no idea what hit me because I am making such an effort to not isolate, keep busy, etc., etc. I am now alone. I can feel my feelings down to my toes, and by the way I keep stubbing my toes resulting in one black nail and two bruised and sore toes.
When I am with people, I want to be upkitty, engaged kitty, anything but mournful kitty. Now I can slump. Slumping toward Jersusalem. Sloughing off the public robe and in my pajamas.
I don’t know if I even miss Robin. Do I miss him. I suppose I do for I wouldn’t be crying if I didn’t. But he hasn’t been himself for a loong time. We did get tender toward each other in the last year. I forgave him his imperfections and he forgave and understood my efforts to nurse him. We loved not like we used too, not sturm und drang but accepting who we were and where in our lifetimes we were.
I loved to rub his head, and furry back. He’d scratch my back and make our morning tea. He’d stumble around and I was fearful he’d fall again and hurt himself but you have to give people a chance to be somewhat independent and helpful. He hated being useless. He hated how hard I worked. Oh how he hated that. And sometimes I hated him for not being able to help.
I got tired and crabby. To be crabby and hateful to someone who has no control over their body is despicable. I couldn’t help it. I was angry at my lot in life.
He would get up in the night hurting, hurting, I couldn’t help him. I’d say “did you take your pills?”, he’d say yes sometimes, no sometimes,” they don’t kick in for two hours”. Oh he suffered. He suffered. He didn’t want to bother me. He would go into the living room and sit in his chair and draw his leg up and literally writhe until the pain passed. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn’t. All I could do is witness. Witness.
That has been much of my life. Witnessing but being unable to intecede. I know most people don’t know that, but it’s true. It has turned me alternately hot and cold. Hot when I’m angry, cold when my inadequacy has been so reinforced that I just turn myself off.
Now, as I sit from a distance and feel what those years felt like, I can only cry. I cry for all of us. For Robin, who I couldn’t help or heal, who I could only watch, to Kate who I had to let go of, to save myself.
Folks say quite glibly, “grief is the cost of love” I say “fuck you”.
For all the blah, blah, blah about love and loss and grief, all I understand right now is that it hurts. It hurts everywhere. It hurts because I couldn’t help, it hurts because I was not up to the task, it hurts because there was no happy ending for Robin.
It hurts because I am so unresolved. It hurts because I am human. It hurts.
Hello. Yes, this is Dog 