The day is crisp, cool, green and blue and full of energy.  I’ve had good clothes on all day and so not doing any gardening.  And I need to get into the garden.  Julia is finished with therapy at 5:30.  We could go home and instead of rushing to get dinner ready, I could change and dig and allow Julia to hunt for bugs.

Ah, and bugs.  When Julia got into the car . . . before bugs . . . Yesterday, when I went to pick Julia up from school, she ran out of the building by herself!  It was the first time that she came out without an aide.  How to explain the small victory, forward movement.  Because transitions are such a challenge for Julia, leaving school could be just as difficult a transition as trying to get her to stop drawing.  For years, she has been the last kid out of school, sometimes with coat half on, or back pack half packed with her adult trailing after her with full hands or almost dragging her out of the building.  She rarely would say hello to me when I was meeting her and would refuse to say good-bye to the faithful grown up who had delivered her to me.  So, some of the challenge was transitioning and some of it was the shutting down that transitioning could bring.  The long term plan was to fade the grown up help so that she could leave independently like all the other kids, but I didn’t see it coming so soon.  Yesterday was the first time she came running out of the building, looking like every other 5th grader.  And today, she was very much disappointed because I picked her up again and she didn’t get the chance to run to the bus by herself.  Run to the bus by herself!!!

And the bugs . . . so, when Julia got in to the car, she told me she had been catching bugs and wanted to add them to her bug collection.  I asked where she was keeping them right now and she said in her jeans pocket.  Umm, well, they can’t be alive, I told her.  This was not good news and when I checked them out, it was clear that none of them were moving.  She was disappointed and decided that she had to figure out how to bring them home alive.  

What an interesting child.

I went to a Family Navigator meeting today and felt my usual lost, confused, ineffective, and just plain stupid since this was my first meeting of a project that has been discussed for months but is still in the formation process.  My task through that meeting was to breathe!  And to let it happen.  To remember that I am the student here.  No one expects me to lead here.  And I don’t have to lead here.  Reading this over . . . well, duh.  But this is my underlying processing.  To be competent, to be successful, I have to eventually lead.  And, wow, that is crazy.  

So, I put myself in these places where there is no way that I will ever lead in order to learn things that there is no other way for me to learn, and then I ensure that the experience will make me feel badly because I define success only as leading.  There may also be a reverse that is operating -- when I am in a place where I will become the natural leader, I do not value the experience because it is too easy.  So, I cannot help but fail if I intend to lead the Family Navigator project and I give myself no credit for working to launch the Special Ed PEG group because of course, I am the natural leader on that one.  

Acceptance, acceptance, acceptance.  Just who and what I am.  

I am studying on line for Safety and Infection Control Clinical for non-employee students and non-UWHC employees Exam that I need to work in the clinic.  It is not a big deal and I reviewed the material and took the “exam” last year.  I am not sure what I thought about it last year.  This year, I see all of the ways that David’s final sepsis was almost inevitable with his compromised immune system and ineffective gal bladder.  There is so much here that I don’t mean to infer -- no blame, no caregiver bringing in infection, not even our own unintentional load of bacteria, etc, coming into his hospital room.  But @#$## (much more fun than writing out a curse word and I don’t even know what curse to use), I read this stuff and wonder at how slim his chance were.  How much so much was dependent on a string of miracles.  How many miracles we experienced but how many more were absolutely necessary.  And we did not know that.  We thought it was all science.

It was so much more.

And there are so many miracles that touch me and my loved ones every day.

I marvel at spirit.  I look up in wonder.

the day after

I just posted a lot of photos in the photo blog.

Indeed, I did more than survive yesterday.  Thriving may be going a bit far, but abiding in acceptance, understanding and love are useful ways to define the day.

The days was a slow flurry of activity.  I cleaned and cooked in the morning in preparation for the evening.  I was in the kitchen puttering during that half hour that marked the time that the emergency team worked to try to restart David's heart.  I pondered the meaning of "time of death."  Was it the time that the pulse was lost or when the medical team gave up, when they asked me,  standing at the foot of his bed, whether it was ok for them to stop working on him?

We went to the pool -- I took my water aerobics class, bouncing in the water with a bunch of old ladies of which I proudly consider myself part of.  Then Julia came into the water and we saw some friends from school.  Julia hung out with the girls while I chatted with the mom.  It was a beautiful afternoon, sun, puffy white clouds, sparkling water and company.

Then home to finish preparation for the evening's gathering.  Maria from next door stopped by with an offering to Julia and I asked her to come for dinner and the movie.

Mary and Robert arrived early.  I showered and the three of us prepped while Julia did her reflex math. Then Maria and Kirstin and Amy and crew came.  We feasted on antipasto, home made hummus, cheese, M&M's, ice cream and Amy's incredibly delicious pear sorbet.  My DVD player would not respond to the remote and for moments there was the possibility of no movie.  Maria stepped in and offered her living room and DVD play.  A very handy save and the party became progressive.

The film, Mysaki's Princess Mononoake was very intense and long.  We all struggled a bit towards the end.  Julia was too stimulated and she needed to burst out in talking very often.  And we were all patience.

And then the movie was over, loving people left, Julia and I prepared for bed, Julia fell asleep and I could not sleep for ever so long.  But no matter.  I had made it through another of these anniversaries.  I was able to have a party, a gathering of loving souls to get me through.

And I enjoyed giving this party.  Actually, I also enjoyed doing the End of Therapy Party two weeks ago.  This too is a change, a move out of the tunnel of grief.  I am beginning to be able to do what David and I loved doing together.

Today begins the time of living here, in Madison, for more time as a single mom than I did with David. I miss him.  I would do so much to have our lives together back, but . . . I am learning to thrive.  At least yesterday and this morning.

Third Anniversary

Julia is just waking up, Mary called a few minutes ago.  I've been up for awhile, answering texts and emails and checking face book.  What I wrote yesterday, it true for today.  I am in a new place, the intense grief of the last few years is not present.  At least not now.   I now know that difference between grief and sadness.  And I have plans for the day.

I am fully enjoying the new found energy to engage in my world, my life and Julia's life.  I am very grateful for the healing power of good friends, quiet counsel and time.  I read what I wrote of this day last year and the year before.  And the day before this day -- last year and the year before.

And I also wrote and posted this:

A day to abide with what comes, to be gentle with ourselves, and to remember that great loss can only happen when there was once great joy.

I wonder how long I will be making posts like this on July 4 and 5th.  It will be as long as I need to do it.  The lilies that I called David's lilies have not bloomed yet, possibly in another 3 days.  When I got my new credit card in the mail two weeks ago, I remember thinking when I signed up for that card that when it expired, David would be dead 3 years.  I could not imagine that time and now it is here.  What ways to mark such a time -- lilies and a credit card.

Possibly more later.

Started on 28 June 2013

It is so damned hard to let go of comparison, grades and measurements.  Julia is in swimming class (every day for the last two weeks which is a great format for her) and today is the last day of this session.  She will get a “report card” which will recommend whether she stay in the current level or move on to the next level.  I have sworn to myself and others up and down that I don’t care in the least what level she is in, but this morning, I cannot help but wish hard that she is allowed to advance.  I lean into that competitive, yearning-for-her-to-be-typical feeling and breathe.  So, so, so much to learn.

Update:  Julia did move from level 3 to 4 and I am so pleased.  Going into the class, she knew how to do an overwhelming number of the listed tasks.  Her challenge was listening and doing what she was told when she was told without the help of an aide.  With 3-4 kids in the class, she was able to do that.  She is proud of herself for her work.  I don’t think the move from one level to the next impresses her at all.  I hope that she doesn’t need to take pride in external measures of success for a long time.  Or rather, be proud of herself for the work and the reward but not be dependent on the external reward.  Wish that her mother was more that way.

This is the last week of intensive therapy.  We have therapy today and tomorrow and then it will be only twice a week at the clinic.  I am holding my breath -- even though I can really use breathing into that one as well.  

Some week highlights, which were shiny indeed:

Julia told a joke at the end of last week.  Her first!  “what is a tree’s favorite soda?”  “Root beer.”  She doesn’t quite get it herself but she knows that it amuses people when she tells it.  There are two things working her -- at least two -- people with autism are not known for their sense of humor and yet Julia wants to tell jokes (ok, a joke at this point).  Wanting to tell a joke to friends is a very social yearning.  Julia was pleased to tell the joke and pleased that her friends liked it.  Julia has many, many steps on the social ladder and she climbed one more.

We had a party on Monday to mark the end of intensive therapy.  We had pizza and fruit and a dinosaur cake (chocolate with blue icing made by Julia and her therapists and decorated by Julia) and iced tea with dino cool aide ice cubes.  Julia and her therapists painted together.  It was a canvas that needs to be finished.  Julia sketched in pencil as a guide for everyone to paint.  She sketched as if she had been doing it forever.  Like sketching for a painting was a skill just stored inside of her for retrieval at the appropriate time.  After painting, we all went for a bike ride -- all of us!  No one ran behind Julia.  She took two small spills but was able to get up and get going.  She is still not as steady as she needs to be and she still needs to be reminded to keep her eyes on the road and to avoid distraction.  She needs to be reminded to use her brakes.  Last year at the time, she took the lose the training wheels course and finished being barely able to ride with no confidence in her ability.  She has come very far.  

We are sitting on a chaise at the swimming pool.  We have an hour between Julia’s lesson and my water aerobics class.  It was a brilliant blue sky day a half hour ago.  Not there are very grey cloud making their way across the sky.  I can’t be sure the rain is inevitable, so for now we hold our ground.  And just to note, I love sitting on the side of the pool typing.  Absolutely no guilt about what I should be doing.  Crazy thing is that I can do the same thing at home.  And I don’t do it!

The clouds keep moving.  Leaves are turning over and the breeze is much cooler than before.  Still, no rain.

The dentist did sealants on Julia’s four back teeth on Tuesday.  The dentist has warned me that if Julia couldn’t do it -- sit still with the mouth open and her tongue -- for a bit more than a minute, that they would try to redo it but if it failed we would still be charged.  I don’t like the dentist.  I do not get a “can do” vibe at that office.  Julia was able to do it.  We did some prep before even as far as putting cotton in her mouth -- under her lips -- to see how it felt to have something in her mouth that she was not eating.   As we left the dentist office, I felt  a hush in the waiting room and many stares.  Julia was her exuberant self.  She talked to kids who were on the video games and pondered, out loud, her “prize” choice.  She was in a great mood and doing very well.    Still, there were stares and quiet as we went through.  The people at the desk do not engage Julia.    Nothing untoward is ever said.  It is just a feeling.  A feeling of exclusion.  Elusive and not specific, but palpable.  

An experience of my own:  Last week, when I wrote about dreaming of David, I did not paint the entire picture.  The day before the dream, I went to a Quest dinner and integration group.  Our assignment was to “tell our story” and although I had not planned to do it, there was time for “one more”  when those who had planned to do it were finished and I volunteered.  I had a metaphor that I had thought of right soon after I heard about the assignment.  

Julia had wanted to know more about how a caterpillar transforms to a butterfly and when we looked it up, I found out that in the chrysalis the former caterpillar turns into mush before it reforms as a butterfly.  My point of reference was the instant that the former caterpillar brain, realizing that it was not what it had been and had no idea what it would become, observes his situation and utters a bemused, “Shit.” 

And then, I told my story.  How life was so ordinary before David’s death -- growing up, theater, David, Cheshire, law -- I was invested in the ordinary path, but after David died I could not be.  I had to change and I found new passions with more questions than answers.  And how I’ve lived that “Shit” moment for a long time.  It seems like the longest times ever, and it seems to have gone by in the blink of the eye.

Telling my story, what I told was no tale of woe, tragedy and despair.  It was  -- and I don’t mean to make more of this than it was -- amusing, interesting, full of humor with possibly a dose of irony.  It was not the story of one of the walking wounded.  This telling took my very much by surprise.

After my story, Trudy did a closing reading:

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now

It took me until I was home to take in how the telling and then the listening struck me.  I pushed it away until morning and wrote the following to my integration group:

_____________________

This was an interesting choice for a closing last night and reading it again this morning prompts me to want to talk about those strings running through life that shimmer in the light every so often.  I don't believe that a god or the universe or some great power micromanages our lives, but I am pulled up short with surprise and wonder at the synchronicity that occur.

I might feel a bit vulnerable and exposed, sending this out to all of you, but then after last night, how can I even go there?

Last night, listening to Trudy's closing reading, I wanted to share this piece that I wrote for David's memorial a few weeks shy of three years ago.  I put that desire away and out it popped again this morning.  The image in my head is of the me of three years ago standing behind the pulpit and the me of last night sitting a few feet away. (Our group that night met in the auditorium of the church and that night, I sat facing the pulpit less than a dozen feet from it.) Listening to ourselves.  To each other.  Time bending and losing its linear shape.

And so, 

I’ve been looking at this blank page for two day trying to impress upon it something that would tell you of my David.  Something very special, something secret, something so apparent  that some of you would yawn.  

I started with Dayeinu which is a Hebrew word that means "enough."  At Passover seders we sing about each successive step of God's provision for the Israelites and we sing a chorus of Dayeinu -- that would have been enough.  I could do that chant but in the end I could not/ cannot feel Dayeinu.  It was not enough.  David and I wanted more.  And I am having trouble with Dayeinu.

Just before David and I married, we were reading a lot of Rainer Marie Rilke.  We were caught up in his book Love and other difficulties.  In particular, this piece:

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . . . A merging of two people is an impossibility. . .  But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them.

In our vows, we promised to guard each other’s solitude and  to witness transformation, reconfiguration, melting into nothing, and springing to life from the phoenix fire.  I had the front row seat to stories, refinished windows, hagadas, a pond, acceptances and rejections, plays, plumbing, novels, putenesca sauce, songs, tears, speeches, silence, articles, and the silliest man I have ever met.

In the expanse between us, we made our life and that was not always easy.  We were both passionate, both sure we were right, neither one willing to give in for the sake of peace.  Well, maybe David was sometimes.  David gave me the first unconditional love that I ever knew.  Our love honed the pointy ego places that could have kept us apart.  His soft voice quieted my shrill; his silences encouraged my talking; his perseverance inspired every uphill battle that I fight. And there was a moment, more than 35 years ago, when my eyes met his, over the hood of a beat up Dodge Dart, that was magic.  And slipping my hand into his made everything in my world alright.  The love, the devotion, the complete attention of one person is so much more than enough.   So much more than I had any right to expect.   Dayeinu.

Thank you for listening last night and this entire year.  Thank you for telling your stories, checking in and out, for hugs at the end of group, and smiles and words when we see each other outside of our Quest activities.  I didn't know what Quest was going to do for me; I just knew I wanted to do it.  I am humbled by the wisdom of the simple direction to "trust the process."  

_________________

The night after I wrote that to my group, I had the dream, that very read experience, of snuggling in bed with David.  

We are in the days before David’s death day.  No, I do not fall into the pit of darkness and self-pity when I “go there,” go to the blogging of the days after he was taken to the hospital for the second time.  I can read it with some distance.  I read it looking for cues.  I think I see some but whether I do or not could be refuted by someone who knows better.  And even if there are obvious clues that David needed some other treatment or care, it matters very little.  But I still read, looking for answers to painful questions.

And then I realize that it was last year around this time, again, days before David’s death anniversary that I woke up one day feeling for the first time in two years that I was myself again.  That first breath of air without pain attached.  This painful time also holds magic for me.

There is a little girl, a little one adopted from China, who had a heart transplant on Monday.  Her body is rejecting the new heart and there are all sorts of heroic efforts underway to save her.  A temporary mechanical heart, life support that cannot be turned off, lots of drugs, and the top of the list for another heart.  I read each update and say private prayers for this child.  I cannot comment like so many, many others because I do not see much hope.  David had an 80% survival rate for the first year.  I don’t know what this child had before transplant, but the percentage has most certainly gone down as the days have passed.  Even a 20% chance of death is very, very high.  I do not want this child to die, I want her to defy the odds and battle her way back to life, but the miracle, the happy ending escapes my view.  The miracle, in my view, is the extra day, the hour, another breath, the prayers and blessings around her now.  It is never enough, but it is all that is enough.

Life is fragile. The flutter of a butterfly’s wing.  It leaves the body in an instant.  We hold to an almost certain belief in our strength, in divine intervention or personal destiny.  All of that is over in the time between the out breath and the next in breath that never comes.  

A day before the equinox.  A day before the beginning of summer.  Sitting watching Julia’s swim class -- a little less stressed than I was on Monday when I was probably the only parent sitting at the edge of a chaise lounge tensed and ready to have the instructor tell me that he could not handle Julia.  But the classes are small -- 4 or 5 in her class -- and the teacher is young but not at all phased -- at least on day 4 -- of Julia’s occasional lapses of attention.  I wonder if he has done this -- taught a kid with challenges -- before this.  Julia is swimming with 3 boys and her attention lapses is not a extraordinary as it might be in a class of girls.  And watching the girls in other classes, I think my observation is spot on.  Girls listen, they line up when asked, they try what the teacher asks of them.  

Sometimes Julia hangs on her teacher and I wondered what the response would be, but the boys do the same thing.  And I don’t think any of them has challenges.  Interesting, one of the boys in her swim class is also in her class at school.  His father brings him to lessons and stays around.  When the kids (and instructor) went to the diving board, I got up to stay close and the father of this boy did as well.  I said to him, “Good to have another overprotective parent in class.”

So, to day I can almost sit back on my chaise and type.

A few more Julia things:

After swimming on Tuesday, we stopped at Waisman so that I could finish my work for the spring term.  Julia brought a book, a sketch pad and her iPad and I hoped that I could work for a bit more than an hour.  She found the family waiting room which is next door to to the Resource Center empty and there was a box of dinosaurs, some dinosaur books and a doll house.  She never opened her back pack and played for an hour and a half.  It was the first time that I tried bringing Julia to “work.”  Something I did much too often with Cheshire.  

When we were finished at Waisman, it was lunch time and we crossed the street to eat in the hospital cafeteria.  As soon as we went in, Julia told me that this was where Daddy died.  “Was this food that he did not eat?”  During his last week, David did not eat well.  One of the reasons that I called Cheshire home that week was to have someone else to be in the hospital to make sure that David was eating and drinking.  Julia heard that phone call when I said that and ever since attributed David’s death to his not eating.  At least in part.  

Julia asked if we could bring our lunch to David’s room and asked if maybe he was still here -- as if, possibly we could get him back if we only went to his old room, possibly we could bring him lunch and we could have him back.  The sweetness was heart breaking.  I’ve been in the cafeteria many, many times in the last three years although I remember when being there was sad and hard.  I had no idea the Julia would remember but no question that she did.  Again, we talked about David and dying and never coming home again.  She took it in again.  She did not ask if I was sad.  Something has changed for her.

At Marilyn’s session this week, we worked on the page in the trauma workbook that was about Miao-Miao being sent to school and Julia being told that she was stupid and not allowed to go to school.  She drew a picture of an incredibly angry Bai-Bai fuming like a volcano.  When she explained the picture to us, Marilyn asked if she was really angry back in China.  “No,” Julia said.  “I closed my eyes real real tight and went somewhere.”  When Marilyn probed further, Julia took the page back to draw a small t-Rex and a “machine.”  The dinosaur and the machine ate the Ayi who told Julia she was stupid.  When she finished her picture, Marilyn asked if Julia was the dinosaur.  “No,” with an intonation and could have added “Crazy lady” to her answer.  “I am the girl who is angry.  My friend, Lizzy, is the dinosaur who helped me.  She was a fie dun in China.”

Are these the answers?  Julia, angry and hurt, disassociating and making up the most terrifying thing she could think of to defend her.  Julia, who would only answer to Julia Dinosaur for more then a two years, is now the girl with a dinosaur defender.  And what is a dinosaur now, was the fie dun in China.  

The work book has been so very useful.  Every week we creep a bit closer to self-knowledge.  She owns her own story and perhaps she can heal.

Julia’s lesson is over and we sit, my tapping away and her drawing dancing dinosaurs on the chaise lounge that is now in the shade.  Yesterday, I was feeling like I could not make my body more.  I was going to nap during Julia’s therapy but I went outside to garden instead.  Slowly, very slowly, some of the messy garden beds are getting shape again, some for the first time.  I am working at an incredibly slow and unorganized pace and enjoying it immensely.  

And then, last night I had a dream about David.  It was one of those dreams that is so real that waking up is confusing.  I haven’t dreamed of David in a very long time and I still don’t remember many of my dreams.  In this dream, I came upstairs to our bedroom.  David was in bed  during the day.  I had something to tell him that was happy. I jumped onto the bed and snuggled up to him to lay in the crook of his arm.  I just laid there, smiling and saying nothing, feeling his arms around me and falling to sleep.  When I woke up, I was not sure where David went.  Then I remembered and was sad, but it was a much better the dreams in which I knew that David was gone but had no idea of where he went or why or how.  

This evening, as I closed up the house early in order to get to sleep to relieve an exhaustion that I cannot shake, I stared up at the black and white family pictures that I’ve hung in the corner of the living room.  Before I turn off the lamp there, I looked at David.  His face, as familiar as my own, the way he holds himself, where he puts his hands in each picture, the tilt of his head, where he looks and how he looks, likewise familiar, comfortable, loved.  My knowledge of him “proves” that my life did include him, but as I look at the pictures, I almost can’t believe that there was a life with this person who was a partner to me.  It is not a sad feeling but a perplexing one.

When I am at my emotional best these days, it does not break my heart to look at a picture of David.  I am confused, perplexed, in wonderment (still not close to feelings I am trying to describe) that there was a time when he was present and now there is a time when he is utterly not present.  Perhaps it if from these questions that people form the strong believe that they will see their beloved lost person after their own death. I don’t necessarily not believe this.  I just have no reason, from my experience, to really trust the belief.  And then again, the belief does not matter in this discussion.  I am abandoned right now.  Some totally unknown future does not count in these feelings.  Likewise, thoughts of him observing from afar or even existing in some other place offer no comfort.

I am left wondering how I can hold so many lives inside of me and why I have to. I went to sleep early and then woke up after a dream in which I continued my internal discussion/confusion/state of being.  

In the dream I was in a car, riding with two people who have long loved and taken care of me.  The dream had other threads of concern and conversation, but those fell away.  We found a place to park and got out of the car to take a walk.  I wondered whether it was appropriate to create life with someone that I was merely very fond of.  This feeling felt well fussed over inside although not discussed.  

As I debated inside my mind, the idea of David came to me and the world dramatically expanded on the thought.  At the same time, I held distinctly opposing and very deep, gut-wrenching feelings -- I felt intense and realized love and I felt loss and abandonment equally intense and real.  I could and could not hold both of these feeling at the same time, and I could not remember how I moved from one to the other.  It was as if the time of his death had not existed, like weeks and months were cut out of my memory.  I knew that he had not left, we had not broken up.  He was with me completely one moment and then some time later, I noticed he was completely gone from all the corners of my life.  It was at the same time devastating and perplexing.  I could not take in how all these worlds or lives or experiences could exist at the same time.  

Perhaps the people who were with me, who are real in my past or present life and who care/cared deeply for me, represent the strength that I need to dive head first into this perplexity.

I can’t go beyond these understandings, these rationalizations, the whys of my whirling mind.  I can only witness them right now.  Is this trying to “live the questions”?

Can I really have two terrible, awful, horrible day in a row?  

Perhaps.

Just a bit of it yesterday was my fault for not going with my gut, but really . . . 

So, Thursday, I had the morning to myself and I planned to garden.  Rain.  So, the house was really dirty so I cleaned.  I stripped beds, shook out rugs to be washed, and piled Julia’s camping stuff, including sleeping bag, by the washer to be washed.  Then I went upstairs to start in my room.  I tripped on the blanket on my bed but caught myself on the door, jamming my left hand into the door, dropping everything in my hands, scaring the cat who jumped into the window with a crack (that was going to be fixed next Monday).  The window broke showering the bed and Julia’s stuffed dinosaurs with glass.  

I took a few deep breaths -- The thought I am working with this week for meditation class is patience and thus, the breaths -- and laid down on the non-glass strewn part of the bed.  After a few minutes, I got up and started cleaning.  During the day, I bumped into everything that I could and knocked over anything that could fall to the floor.  I still have the aches and pains of the day in my hands and elbows and knees and back and one ankle.  It was as if, I was traveling a few seconds off the rest of the world or my coordination was tilted.  In the afternoon, after attachment therapy, I dropped Julia off at home and went to pick up a few grocery things and found myself knocking over what was next to what I was picking up.  

When I got home, I went to check on the wash, and found a flood in basement.  I have a pipe that leaks when spring rain is at its worst.  It is on the to-do list  and almost budgeted for, but even when it leaks, the water usually drains quickly in the main house drain with no real problem.  However, the main drain pipe was backed up.  I didn’t know this for awhile and tried to scoop up some of the water and put it into the sink by the washer until I realized that when I put water into the sink it would come up from the drain.  And it was too late to call a plumber.  

I shoved a pizza in the oven to avoid any use of cooking utensils and Julia and I ate and went to bed without further incident.  And I held onto sanity.

Whew!

So, Friday morning, I called a few plumbers and decided to go with the one that neighbors had recommended.  I had some misgivings about him when we spoke on the phone -- just did not sound responsible, but his price was the best and I had the recommendation. He was supposed to show up at 10:30 and when I called at 10:50, his voice mail was full and I couldn’t leave a message.  I was due at Waisman at noon, and was stressing out.  I finally called the plumber closest to me.  They came at 12:20, I let them in, showed them the problem, gave them the keys and asked them to lock up and put the key in the mailbox.  A bit crazy, I know, but I needed to leave.  

I came home at 4:30 and everything was fine.  I ran another wash and took a shower.  No flood.  

So, it was 1.5 terrible, awful, rotten days, and that was all.

Friday night, I had respite time but no one to do some Friday night activity with and so I took myself to the movies and popcorn and a beer.  The movie was good but more than that.  As I walked out of the theater and to my car, I had the feeling of milestone.  Of chrysalis.  I have not arrived.  I am not happy or joyful or content, but I have found strength.  I am someone else than who I was.  Right after David died, I held the image of going into free fall and trusting (and hoping) that angels would catch me.  I have been falling for almost three years. Tonight, for a time, I felt the bounce, the big in-breath of relief that being caught allows you to take.  I almost didn’t know myself.  I was surprised.

And I would say that during the afternoon as I watched the first year LEND students finish and graduate from the program, some ideas formed in my head for next year.  I have to talk to my mentor next week about them and I know that I will be shot down some and discouraged, but I cannot shake the feeling that it is important that I am there.  Not big, incredible important, but important all the same.  After our graduation, I was talking to one of the mentors who I like but haven’t spent much time with this year and she told me about some of her work and mentioned that she had been at it since 1985.  Something washed over me.  I have been trying to run with those who have been doing their work for a long, long time.  If I can keep up for a few paces, I am succeeding.  When I step back from my angst and worry, I have gratitude for this privilege of being there and being listened to.  Not all the time.  Some of the time and some people.  

Another day.

It was rather a small miracle to wake up on Tuesday morning without pain.  The flu was almost over!  I still carried a small and constant headache and a queazy stomach but that was nothing compared to the total body ache of the days before.  I am still a bit tired, that extraordinary tired of being sick, but definitely on the mend.  

And it was fortunate to awaken without pain because the snow was beginning and over the next 24 hours, we were gifted with another multitude of inches that also seems to be more on my sidewalk that what they report on the news.  Still, no matter the tally, our lawns and gardens are landscaped in higher and higher white mounds.  If there is any whisper of spring, it is that a day after the snow stopped the shoveled sidewalks are clear to the pavement, proof positive that it was warm enough yesterday to get rid of the bits of snow and ice left behind by blowers and shovels.  

I hear that we spring the clocks forward this weekend.  I haven’t checked and wonder if it is true.  We are still so far from spring.  

Over the last week at school, Julia’s class has been writing about their families.  Julia brought home her notebook with the writing a few days ago and we read what she wrote together.  I am pretty sure that she had a lot of help because the composition was too smooth to all come from Julia, but her ideas were there.  I sent the notebook back to school without copying the paragraphs and now I wish that I had.  From what I remember, we are all tall, Cheshire and I are pretty and we both cook very well.  Our house smells like baking cookies and Cheshire really likes hanging out with Julia and make gingerbread houses with her.  Julia wrote about Daddy being tall and handsome and smiling all the time.  She said that he like to “write a lot” and we all liked music and reading.  She closed by saying that hers was the best family in the world. None of this is untrue but it is such a lovely, sweet romantic version of life.  I am pleased that she has it.  

After we read the essay together, Julia was quiet.  Then she said to me, “Mom, when Daddy died, you and Cheshire were together all day.  And I was alone.”  I was stunned that she was thinking about that, remembered any part of that day,  I told her that she was with Cathy.  And she said she remember but that she was not with us.  Then, I realized that my memory of the day was that we had shielded her from any knowledge of what was going on until later in the day when Cheshire and I came home from the hospital and I told Julia what had happened.  I have never thought to explain that day to her, didn’t imagine that she remembered any part of it.  And I am not sure that her memory is what she was feeling that day -- there must have been some pretty heavy sad atmosphere in the house even though she had not been told that David had died -- or whether she has thought about that day since then and realized that she was not with us.  Either way, it is far beyond what I thought her capable of.

Julia studied for a test for the first time this week.  It was for science -- magnets, circuits, and a bit of electricity.  There was a review sheet sent home and we went over it a few times.  I review it with her and her therapists did as well.  We all read it over and quizzed Julia on parts of it but it was all very light and quick.  I talked to her special ed teacher today and she said that when she gave Julia the test, it seemed like she had studied and she knew most of the material.  How cool is that!

In attachment therapy today, we were working on a hard page in her trauma workbook, a page about being put in a dark place and left alone when her behavior was bad at the orphanage.  It was a short paragraph, one sentence, and she took it to draw.  The picture of an almost naked little child with a volcano’s worth of anger pouring out of her behind a shut red door was startling and poignant.  After she brought the picture back to us, Marilyn pushed her to talk about the place.  Julia became icy clear as she talked about her feelings and what happened to her.  Clearly this was something that happened often and when she was an older kid at the orphanage.  One thing she said was the they made her take off her clothes when she put her inside the dark place which probably was a closet but what she could only describe as small and dark.  She told us that was why she would not sleep in the dark and that shadows scared her a lot.  During part of the talking, Julia was silent and was clearly not with us, either immersed in the past or disassociating.  She has not done this in a long time.  When she was finished talking, we tapped about fear and anger and sadness.  She was able to feel safe and sure that those things would not happen again to her.  When it was all over, Julia drew a picture of a baryonyx dinosaur holding a fish to eat.

Yesterday, I walked to one of my Waisman mentors, Barb, about what I was going to do next year.  So far, nothing has easily presented itself.  I moaned and groaned about that fact and that I don’t know what to look for.  After talking to another mentor a few weeks ago, I was encouraged not to look beyond what was possible in LEND -- a fit your dream into our box, at least for now.  I have thought about just leaving Waisman and pursuing some experiences in the community, maybe engaging in the contemplative practice community or at FUS, but after entertaining the idea for a short time, I come back again and again to feeling sure I should be doing something at Waisman.  Early this morning, when I first woke up, before the alarm, I felt a peace come over me.  Feeling sure that some opportunity will come forward -- not that I can sit back and wait but that I have no reason to stress about it.  I also realized that I will really miss the Resource Center at the end of this semester.  I am truly enjoying the work there and feeling useful.

The dream of two nights ago.  Saturday night.

I dreamed that two friends brought me home from eating out.  Mike and his wife who I don’t do that kind of socializing with, and even in the dream, I thought how nice it was that I was getting to know Mike’s wife.  But these are Madison friends and they took my home to the Indy house on Washington Boulevard.  Mike’s wife admired the house and I asked her to come in saying something about how they had never been inside the house.  

After they saw the first floor, Mike made some comment about liking something and then said that they had to leave.  I walked them to the front door, pointing out the storm door that David had made to fit the front door that came to a point on the top.  I went to the porch and noticed that there were a lot of people outside in the long drive way.  Sort of lining up in a loose way.  Some of the people were short character actors, some kinda ugly, and some were young men in tails and top hats.  One of the young men in tails was making fun, sarcastic remarks about the movie that David was making in the backyard.  I was not surprised about the movie, taking its existence in stride, but I was furious about the over heard remark.  I set on the guy like a wild mama bear.  I told him that if he didn’t like the work or respect the filmmaker that he should leave.  I told him that “we” did not need any negative vibes during the making of this film and that his opinion had not been asked for and was not wanted.  I did not fire him -- he who I knew was an extra for some musical number -- but yelled at him as if that would have been the most logical final line.  

Then, I went in to the back yard and sure enough David was making a movie.  It was David but he was pale and gaunt.  I had never seen him that way.  David looked very much like his father and as his father got older he became rounder.  David was never round and although I guess I expected him to look like his father when he was old, perhaps he would have taken after his mother and her side of the family and stayed relatively slender.  Of course, his mother died at the same age that David did and so I have no idea what she would have looked liked as an old woman.  

David had the stubble of a few days without shaving and there was more grey in it than I had seen before.  We talked.  I took both of his hands in a particular way that we held hands together.  I may have taken the bottom of his face in my hands.  I don’t remember anything that we said but it was unremarkable -- a hello after a day away, a few words between takes.  He had to get back to work and I went to sit down and watch the work.  What I saw was a collage of images -- live actors working with a camera and sound crew working, rough cuts of a day’s work, partially finished images with some imagined background moving about, and a finished film.  I knew that what I was watching had to be a dream because the experience was too overlaid with multiple experiences to be reality.

Then I woke up.  

I was struck by two things -- that our Indianapolis house is now something of my dreams.  I have often dreamed of the houses I lived in with my family of origin as a child, but more frequently the house of my very young years and not the one I was a teenager in.  I can’t remember the last time I dreamed of a place I lived in with David, or without him for that matter.  I have more often dreamed of imagined houses and apartments.  I felt that our Indianapolis home has passed into something like a myth, an imagined place, a place held inside but no longer real.

And then, that David would not be the old man of the dream, and that I would never know what he would look like as an old man.  It was not the sadness of grief that struck me but the sadness of a missed opportunity.

And then I wondered if we had done this, made some kind of multi-layered film art experience in some other place.  At some other time.  And that wondering stuck with me throughout the day.

I had a dream of abandonment last night, the kind of dream that used to terrify me but when I awoke from it, the pain was almost sweet.  Last night’s dream began as I was getting ready for travel to somewhere exotic.  The name Uganda comes into my mind now but I don’t think it was there.  I was packing for a long time and traveling with a woman friend and an older couple who appeared from time to time in the dream either in or out of wheelchairs.  At some point I wanted to hug both of them because it was my parents’ wedding anniversary.  They asked if I was close to my parents and I told them that I was not, but that I still felt the need to celebrate the day.

I think I was younger than I am now, but it was not so much youth as that I had no responsibility and could travel as I wished.  That has never been a real time in my life, or perhaps now is as close to it as I have ever come.  I checked in my bags and was free to do as I wished without cumbersome baggage, and we had had to stay in a hotel the night before the flight.

I have been in this building in dreams before this -- part recognizable airport of somewhere foreign because the arrangement was different from somewhere in the states, part like a bus station, Grand Central in NYC, and part another kind of building, an office building or a courthouse.  As I walked around the building, I looked for David’s face and I remembered that he had left without a word.  He had abandoned me.  I had no idea where he was or why he was not with me or in touch with me.  

I’ve had this sort of dream for years and years, whenever there was mounting stress.  The stress was never due to our relationship but I felt an underlying tension that if I did not make it out of the present dilemma successfully, that he would leave.  This was never a part of our relationship but a left over from my relationship with my parents.  My parents’ love was always conditional and it was withdrawn from me on a regular basis.  Deep in my gut I fear that David would do the same.  So, I would have these dreams, wake up terrified, and snuggle into his arms to assure myself that it was not happening in waking life.

Last night, my feelings in the dream were as they have been before.  I tried to figure out what I did or said that made him go away, where he might be and how I could get in touch with him.  I felt wretched and very much alone.  I did not want him to leave me.  But when I awoke my feelings were completely different from those I had when I used to awaken with David next to me in bed.  I felt the sadness and the loneliness, but I savored the feelings.  Those were feelings of a living relationship.  I could feel such sadness that he had left but it was not the sadness of death.  He was out there somewhere, living, albeit without me, but living.  

How far I have some that even the pain of abandonment is light and a reminder of life and love.

I have this day, this whole day until 2:30 when I get Julia, to sort my desk.    Paper accumulates and reproduces there!  There is organization and sub-organization and files to go into and organize some more.  

And that feels like a useful joy today.

Not hearing from my Resource Center supervisor of whom I asked to if I could come in before the spring term begins at the end of January, I will probably be home the rest of this week.  I’ve taken it very easy for the last two days and besides putting away Christmas and doing some errands, I’ve read, taken naps, ran a few errands and met Julia at the bus.  I’ve also gone to bed when Julia goes to bed and as a result have fallen asleep early and woken up early.  (David had a morning habit (I almost wrote ‘practice’ which it may have been) of early rising to write.  It was how he wrote three novels for the most part.)  I’ve decided if I wake up before 4, I will put on my guided imagery for sleep and try to catch a few more winks but if it is after, I will get my fingers moving.  

Yes, I’m rested and refreshed from the holiday and a few days of gentle living!  I have a heap of resolutions to dive into and a long to-do list.

Through Facebook adoption friends, I’ve been hearing about two little girls who are very ill and fighting for their lives.  Both are heart babies from China, adopted after their grave conditions were known.  I read about their progress on blogs their parents keep, knowing the blogs tell part of a story, and that brave and prayerful postings to some extent mask the fear and sadness that faces them.  Without commenting, because they both are receiving many comments on each posting, I send them support and strength in the days ahead, but I see that  I come from the “other side” now.  I have lost profoundly and I will never be able to have the completely optimistic outlook of the rosy outcome.  I cannot look at their chances for survival and imagine that they will be in the percentage that lives.  

David’s chances of surviving for a year after his transplant were 80%.  Those were pretty good odds and we never, for a moment, believed that he would be part of the 20% that died.  I took the miracle of surviving for granted.  The assumption protected me at a time of incredible stress from understanding how much my life would change when David died.  

I am feeding this observation with words and not truly explaining what I feel.  Maybe it is  is merely that my heart has been opened to the wonder of life.  The opening, however, includes the possibility, no, the reality that if living another day is a miracle that I should celebrate and make the most of in many ways, not living is only a breath away.  Death is close and ever present.  It is not the scary monster behind the locked door.  It is not even the end.  It is just there, unknown, to be sure, but as present as the bowl of oatmeal that Julia was eat in another hour.

I was not so much scared of death, it was more that I did not consider it.  I knew and heard about it from my Catholic upbringing, I experienced it when my grandparents, my niece and my dear friends died, but I did not carry it around like I do now.  I miss those people who I loved who died.  There are times that I still want to tell Jon Jones something  or pause to realize that if Jennifer had lived how old she would be right now and what she might be doing, but I could also put those losses aside, not have them enter my consciousness for days or weeks at a time, and push on.  I could hold the mistaken belief that I could not be torn apart from almost everyone who held me firmly to this earth.  I could not believe, did not fathom, that my life could be absolutely shattered and that I would need to make a conscious decision to hold firmly to this earthly plane.  I did not consider it when David was diagnosed, when he found out that he needed the transplant, as we waited for a new heart, as I waited during the transplant, as I watched recovery, even as I called 911 the night he was taken back to the hospital because of the gall bladder infection.  I assumed that he would be healed and we would be living a long time together.  For all of my years and life experience, I was so utterly young.

Now, I cannot hear of life threatening conditions and not imagine death.  Months ago, I heard the news that Dick Chaney needed a heart transplant.  As the radio announcer told us about the 80% survival rate during the first year after a transplant, all I could think about was that 20% and felt awfully guilty for thinking so.  It was as if I was condemning the man, who I didn’t know and never liked, to die on the operating table.  I felt awful for even thinking of the 20%.  But I see that I was, for the first time and with a completely stranger, just looking at the whole picture set out before me.  

And now, I am thinking about the friends who counseled me before David died to get our finances in order, to make sure documents was available, to do small things that would make that profoundly awful time wash over and through me without the practical bumps.  We did those things and it helped.  I think about the constant friendship offered by the women who called, sometimes daily, to check in with me, the food offered by friends, the garden cleaned and the sidewalk shoveled, the people who drove hours to be with me for David’s memorial.  I’ve done that for others but never understood it.  

This last paragraph moves on from where I started, and I don’t want to go there right now.  I want to write that there is something in the mystery of life and death that I have taken into my everyday, pedestrian experience of living.  It makes living every day and loving my beloveds and reaching out to more people much more precious, but as powerful as the preciousness of life can be, the understanding makes death a partner with life.  Perhaps that is maturity.  I know I have lost innocence.  There are conversations that I did not have with David.  It would have been good to talk to him about these things.  I can’t regret not having those conversations because we did not know how or what to talk about.  It was a mistake that I will not make again.