Missing

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.”

One of the many places I had to lecture myself

I left some of Paul near this reservoir with happy cows

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.

Growth

rack

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.

Symmetry

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.

Undead

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.

MN float

Stoic

: not affected by or showing passion or feeling

especially: firmly restraining response to pain or distress.

OG stoic rower pose — Paul and Nancy expertly demonstrating the Stoic Rower Pose

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:

griefgraph — my graph of grief-related emotions. not generated with actual data.

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?”

Tasnowma

emmet house snow

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.

karl snow — I didn’t want Karl to miss out.

emmet run snow — snow is the best! snow is the best! snow is the best! photo by Kristi Eager

Snow day

It’s Monday, my power has been out since 5am, and it’s snowing. These are powerful triggers for missing Paul.

I have a magical memory of the first time we had a snow day here. Really, it was an “ice” day and the world looked like it had been glazed over with marshmallow fluff. We walked to the 6th ave Safeway to get snacks, came home and watched movies. Started with the Ice Storm, naturally. We fantasized that next time it snowed, we would cross-country ski through the neighborhood.

Paul loved snow, and he could tell you everything there is to know about it. And he wanted everyone to enjoy it, even Karl.

Paul and Karl, enjoying the snow. (Karl did not enjoy it, but he would do anything for Paul)

As I knew I would, I survived the power outage. I found the camp stove so I could make coffee, I took Emmet for a walk in the snow to the park, and now I will survive this Monday. But it will never be the same without him.

Paul’s not here to tease me about my static hat hair or my questionable grasp of layering, so I’ll give you that gift.

5

octopus explosion

How has it possibly been 5 months? On one hand, I’m feeling the clarity of memories slip away with the time/distance—this is a terrifying thing. On another hand, I can’t believe I have survived 5 entire months since Paul died. That’s almost half a year! On yet another hand (I am an octopus, right?) I am aware of every month and every week and every day that has passed, as if it has been slow motion.

Then there is this: I have read it and I have heard it and I have witnessed it, but I don’t know that I actually expected it to happen to me. It gets harder. I have needed him more, I have thought about him more, and I have dreamed about him more in recent weeks. I’ve had more things I excitedly want to tell him about. Maybe it’s the winter. Or circumstantial—the holidays, plus recent encounters with people who know me because they know Paul, or don’t know me, but knew Paul. Sometimes I feel like a proxy, living in this town that had so much more history for him than it has for me. Perhaps I am just in an awkward stage, the teenage years between fresh, dramatic grief and moving forward (hopefully this doesn’t last as long as my real one, because that’s still going on.)

There’s no point in analyzing it because the effect is the same. I’m pretty bummed out. My New Year’s resolution to channel all my energy into productive endeavors is great, but exercise and good habits can only take me so far. I guess they are good for long game results, and that’s a good place to focus. Focus? Hmm, how well do you know me?…

It’s only a number

And it’s the last day of 2018. I would expect to be ready to move on from a year that included so much grief and struggle, but honestly I’m sad to see it go. It’s silly to put so much meaning into the turn of a calendar year—besides, I still think in terms of school years and seasons, so why so much weight on this January 1st thing?

It’s handy, as a symbolic start time for all the optimistic plans I have to improve my life. Cue the montage soundtrack and picture me getting back on my bike, in the water, and to the gym, finishing projects around the house, developing a meditation practice, entering practical goals into my planner and referring back to it to cross them off as accomplished. I’ve already started these things over the last few months, but my energy towards them has been dull. I think I am relying on the self-imposed and conceptual constraints of January to kick me into gear.

But I don’t want to put a year behind me that had Paul in it. A year that included trips together and visits from friends. When there were times that he felt good and had a sense of humor about it all. When Marguerite captured this film of us which is probably the only video and voice record I will have of him, outside of a few voicemails. (I have not dared view it since he died) (but of course now I probably will) (I’ll finish writing this later) (might as well wait until the New Year.)

As sad as the events were, 2018 also included more time with people special to us than ever before, even the year we were married. I think I’m a little afraid to move on from that support, as if the new year will turn the page over.

Christmas this year was hard but peaceful and one of a kind. I was in New York with Paul’s family, my mom, and good friends. It was comforting to be there instead of wallowing at home, but every day something slammed me with a reminder of all of our time there for treatment, and the fun we had in between. In the coming years my holiday traditions will change, but for now I’m just finding my way through the big ones. Just like I’ll find my way through the next year (but with excellent planner use).

Time travel

On Friday, the four month mark passed. I didn’t think time would move so quickly on this side. I think I also thought that things wouldn’t change, people wouldn’t move on, I wouldn’t shift things around in the house, I would stay on my side of the bed, and I would continue not to let the dog onto it, per Paul’s (and presumably Karl’s) rule.

Last week I stopped by the chemo suite at Tacoma General. I had been meaning to do this for months, but as I suggest above, that time flew. I should have expected the flood of emotions when I crossed the threshold into the too-familiar Milgard wing but it had been a few days since I had cried, so maybe I thought I was in the clear. I got to see and hug some of my favorites, and learned that one had moved to the Gig Harbor location, and that they all still think about Paul. They were so good to us during his treatment, and these nurses spend so much time with their patients – it breaks their hearts to lose them too.

Yesterday I was cleaning my email inbox, something that has to be done in small doses or it would take all week, and I came across an email that briefly debilitated me. It was a response to a note I had sent to my boss and manager in July describing how I thought the next month was going to go, and how it impacted my leave of absence. Reading this immediately placed me back in that moment, when we had just come back from a trip to New York, including vacation on Fire Island, but Paul was feeling worse and worse. His guts were literally starting to escape from an opening in his belly, he could barely eat, and he was rapidly losing weight. I was between “normal” life and the end of it. Still, I didn’t appreciate that that day would be the last one that Paul and I would share a bed. That we would soon be making decisions that could dictate how much longer he would live, in terms of weeks and days. That the time we had talked about often over the previous three years was actually here now. Reading this email didn’t make me want to relive that sadness, but it made me wistful for the time when I still had a Paul to care for.

I have had friends comment that certain blog posts make it sound like I’m not doing well, and I want to address that. I don’t write these things to alarm anyone or to signal that I am feeling what I write, on the whole. In fact, at the time that I write a post, I am probably in a pretty good mood. I do think about these things, and often, but my primary state of mind is pretty normal. Filled with all the mundane concerns about taking care of myself and my pets, plus fun projects and workouts and spending time with friends and planning the future. It just helps me to write these things because a lot of you don’t know. And I’m afraid one day I will forget. And I actually think it’s pretty interesting to observe it and put it down in writing. Think of it as the text version of a curated Instagram page – I am not dumping the emotions I feel right now, but telling a story.

MJM at spheres.jpg — Touring the Seattle Spheres with Miles and Joelle this weekend