Today is the one year mark. We make such a big deal about marking “anniversaries” and significant days; sometimes I think it is pointless. Today is not any different from any other day, and it is specifically not the same as last year on this date. So why do I feel so bad? Why am I torturing myself with some of the most painful memories I have? Why do I miss Paul more today than any other?

I guess the real point of marking these dates is for remembrance. I think it’s nice to establish a particular time that is dedicated to thinking about a person or an event even more than you might on a general basis. It’s up to me to decide how to honor it – I could get on with my work day and try to distract myself, or I could spend time recalling our last conversations, go for a bike ride and scatter some ashes, or declare a day for nurturing myself and others who loved him. (cue a vision of me and Karl lounging about and eating ice cream) In any case, I have come around – I don’t think it’s pointless.

I just returned from Portland, ME, where I competed in a SwimRun event with Alison. We were out at a wood fired pizza restaurant on Monday and the soundtrack from Endless Summer came on. Those tracks by the Sandals are the backbone of an extensive surf playlist that Paul created, and that is exactly what I played quietly on the stereo in the last days, when he was no longer speaking and his body was shutting down. To hear this on Monday was poignant timing.

I don’t believe in this sort of thing, but I do like to imagine Paul experiencing an endless Summer. Although if he had it his way, he would probably have chosen Fall.

I have been on a lot of great adventures this spring and summer, and it’s been hard to sit down to write an update. Updates make me sad and sadness just doesn’t seem to fit with the season of bike rides, fresh ripe tomatoes, and rosé. Yet, this year I’m learning how closely joy and sorrow can coexist.

I had the amazing opportunity in June to go on a bike tour in the Dolomites, which wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Paul (and Mike Brown, thank you.) The scenery was more striking than I had imagined, and I relished the experience of riding from hotel to hotel, eating fabulously, passing through dramatic elevation changes and changes in weather. Burning thousands of calories every day and being a glutton every night is just my kind of vacation. But at the same time, it felt totally wrong to be there without Paul. Most “fun” descents made me cry, not only because I dislike them but because of how much Paul would have loved them. And some of the climbs were so relentless that I had to have ongoing conversations with myself about not giving up. On the endless 12% climb up the Grossglockner, I dug deep: “you know what Paul would say to you right now? You get to feel pain. You get to be tired. You get to hurt. Stop whining. Look at where you are.”

Summer has been slow to arrive in the PNW, but I’m still constantly reminded of what this time last year was like. I think of our trip to New York last July, when we knew it would most likely be our last. Then on to Fire Island with Jonathan and Katrina, which is always a magical time, but despite his good attitude we all knew how bad Paul was feeling. Now that it is August, I have flashbacks of Paul being home on hospice in the summer heat, with the fan on and the animals surrounding him. We were so well supported by friends and family, and between the constant care and the visits, time passed easily. Too easily – I would like some of that time back now.

I feel better when I can reach back to previous summers, when Paul could eat the tomatoes from the garden, and we would spend time on the front porch or generally enjoy being home. We loved being at home. I’m slowly continuing to make improvements to the house; I finally painted the bedroom and put up one of the prints we were gifted at the SERC fundraising auction. I feel like a part of Paul is with me when I do these things (either that or I recall one of the many times he used to say “your next husband can take care of that”)

I’ve got some more adventures on the horizon. Paul isn’t here to tell me I fill my schedule with too many things, but I know that to be true. Regardless, I want to soak in as much summer and time with our friends as I possibly can. I know I’m not the only one who is missing him.

People in the Pacific Northwest get really hung up on “Junuary,” when we think we deserve Spring but instead have a month of our regular weather. But in all the (nearly 9) years I have lived here, nobody talks about how amazing May is. a-May-zing. Okay, I’ll work on something better…

This was already my favorite month, because growing up in the New York area it meant a particular shift to the smell in the air, lilacs, my birthday, and the imminent end of the school year. Every year in Tacoma/Seattle, we have a stretch of weather that reminds me of those fantastic May things, even if the smell is different and the lilacs are too early. This month has been no different, except this time the yard is overgrown and I have a bike short tan instead of a farmer’s.

Enough great things have happened this month, that it helps me feel like I am emerging more and more from a state of grief. Today marks 9 months, and with a little bit of sunshine I feel like I am growing and setting stronger roots into my current life.

Speaking of growth, I think Paul would have been pleased by the new rack on the elk at the freshly opened McMenamins Elks Temple. This building project has been on the horizon since they day we moved here, and we were impatient to see it happen. I’m sad he never got the chance to go in, but I’ll think of him whenever I do.

Eight months. Eight years. In the process of doing my taxes, I discovered an interesting date on the mortgage statement, and some digging in my email history confirmed it. Paul died 8 years to the very day from when we moved into the house, August 14, 2010.

We had such a strong emotional response to this house from the first day we saw it. As an architect or just as a person with five senses, I recognize that it needs a tremendous amount of remodeling. Vinyl flooring and an acrylic shower/tub in the bathroom? Not my first choice. Failing plumbing fixtures and a broken kitchen fan? Not ideal, but I make it work and I still have friends over for dinner.

But I also appreciate the intangible impact a good physical space can have on people. The vaulted ceiling in our two living rooms, the mid-century linearity, the accent wall of mahogany, natural light, maple tree in the back yard and a glimpse of Puget Sound and Olympics all come together in a magic that made us fall in love with this house. I feel safe here, happy and comforted. Someday, I hope to update the problem areas, but for now I can live with them.

I’m grateful Paul got to be here at the end, in our favorite room. And I’m glad it wasn’t as hot as August 2010. I know he wanted to live to see his next birthday, or our anniversary, but his choice of day appeals in some weird way to my affinity for balance.

Sorry to disappoint you, but this post is not about zombies.

I see Paul so much in my dreams, and in them he is undead. The conditions of his being there are always the same – we thought he was gone but he came back, only temporarily. So usually there is this urgency to do certain things, to celebrate, to put things in order, to tell him things, before he dies for real. Or, it’s just a chance to chat. The other night I was telling him about a scary thing that happened to a friend, when an intruder tried to get in her house. Last night, we were looking up bands that were playing in Seattle soon so we could ask one of them to play a private party at our house. Which happened to be on the beach. Somewhere warm.

I am fascinated with recurring dreams because I seem to have a lot of them. There are the obvious ones, like trying to find a bathroom stall and the next thing I know, the stall barely exists and I am on a toilet in public. Other people have that dream, right? But in my undead dreams, the situations vary depending (presumably) on how I lost that person. When I see and talk to my brother in a dream, it is an incredibly rare and tenuous chance to make contact with him, because he is a recluse and doesn’t want to be reached. Maybe this is because it was so inconceivable that he died when he did. With Paul it is always this brief but celebratory miracle, despite an in-dream awareness that I watched him take his last breath.

In these dreams with Paul, I am usually talking with him about something that is a real waking life issue.  There are details both bizarre and yet so reflective of the silly and fun parts of our day-to-day relationship. It’s an emotional tease – I feel boosted by the feeling of being with him but then I’m always palpably sad when I wake up to realize he is really, truly, gone.

: not affected by or showing passion or feeling

especially: firmly restraining response to pain or distress.

I can safely say I am not a stoic person, but you might not know that. I looked up antonyms, and my favorite one so far is “kvetchy”. I’m not aiming for that either. I always admired Paul’s stoicism, and I hope some may even have rubbed off on me. Forget that this entire blog contradicts that possibility. I’ve had a couple conversations lately about emotions, how they reveal themselves, how they impact my behavior, and the degree to which my outward demeanor belies the underlying pattern.

I’ve marveled at how, when the weather outside is rough and windy, the world underneath the water’s surface is quiet as usual—the movement of the waves dampened by the mass of water so that a moon snail down at the bottom has no idea there’s a storm. I have learned over the years to get better and better at compartmentalizing grief and stress so that I can be that calm moon snail, though hopefully better-looking, focusing on my life/family/friends/work/pets and not on the turbulence that’s close to the surface. It’s useful, and even amusing, to separate my behavior from thoughts and feelings that on paper would make me look crazy. In fact, last night’s conversation with a friend about the ups and downs of my emotional journey after Paul’s death led me to try to put it on paper. Here is my not-very-scientific graph, and it succeeds:

Another friend observed that my current interior life is like a group of icons on an iphone when you want to reorganize, and they all vibrate, waiting to be moved to their ideal location. I like that analogy quite a bit.

My conclusion is that I’m starting to feel better, but the grief and the sadness and memories provide lots of waves to navigate. Sometimes I ask myself “what would Paul do? What advice would he give me?” Now I predict I will also be asking myself “how can I be like that moon snail?”

We had a snowfall that rivaled any since Paul and I moved to Tacoma. It started on Friday at noon, and practically didn’t stop until Monday night. It was beautiful. It made me giddy and high with the feeling that we should all stay up all night and play in the snow. I spent more time outside than I ever do at this time of year, meeting neighbors and taking Emmet out to bound about in the fluffy stuff. Alison and I went swimming twice while the snow fell, and we even found a Monkeyshine that was left with our clothes.

But underneath it all, I felt and still feel profoundly sad. These are the adventures and giddy feelings I was supposed to experience with Paul; he loved this sort of thing. I did my best to honor him by shoveling the sidewalk, front walk, and driveway every day, since proper snow management and civic duty were both high on his priority list. But the snow just reminded me that I miss him. And it’s not just that I miss when he was able to take care of the shoveling…

I’ve been noticing lately how layers of emotions coexist. I can be going along with my day, getting work done and making plans, not even really thinking about Paul, and then the taste of grapefruit La Croix will make me lose it because I suddenly think of the Saturday night before he died when he asked for grapefruit at 2:00am. The two pamphlets about death that I was subtly handed by nurses (in lieu of telling me directly that the end was near) mentioned that the person will often ask for a favorite food, despite not having eaten anything for days. How funny, that this is a common sign of being close to the end. And funnier still, that it was grapefruit. That was the end of his last “good” day, when he was talkative and joking, and we got to curl up on the real bed for twenty minutes. Anyway, it’s like those thoughts and painful memories are always so close to the surface and I just have to stay above them or I fall “in.”  Luckily I’m a strong swimmer.