I am walking among a thicket of thorns, waking and sleeping. Or perhaps I am crawling. I have come up with a workable solution for a very hard problem, and I cannot implement it because of the law of unintended consequences. You know, the law that says if you haven’t completely thought out your actions, the consequences of what you don’t think about will bite you hard, and repeatedly, like the ferrets of family legend, on the butt. I am looking forward to speaking to my mother this morning, as I mean to lay this burden on her not so she can solve it but because I want somebody besides me to be reconciled to the full horror of my situation, this morning of all mornings.
I note that today is the motorcycle Show and Shine. It’ll be a grand day for it. It was an event John rarely missed. I was reading the paper on the way home on Thursday and saw the advertisement and felt a pang that it was on the same day as John’s memorial service.
Ants have invaded the kitchen…. which soon won’t be my kitchen. My landlord cough’t up the last key of mine he was hanging onto, which he borrowed the day the back deck was ripped from the house. Carrie is visiting for the funeral and is going to stay and help me pack – I’m working all next week and I’m moving next weekend, so that is a blessing.
I can’t imagine what it would have been like to drive 1500 k to get to a funeral and I’m just as grateful I don’t have to try. Jeff and Carrie and I spent a large chunk of last evening looking at old photos and selecting same for inclusion on John’s memorial site. Also, I practiced, and frankly, I’m not that good. I’m hoping the folks attending the memorial service are in a forgiving frame of mind. And now it’s time to do the first bake on the biscotti and think about breakfast, although I’m so nervous about today’s main event that I don’t think I could eat. I know that will change the instant the biscotti comes out of the oven.
Kim phoned last night to say the water tank in the place we’re moving into is leaking. Glad I’m not in a hurry for anything these days.
I am getting reflected grief about leaving the job. I’m really sorry too. The work I do is less and less connected with who I am, and more and more difficult to reconcile with my values. It’s like waking up to find the person you’ve been sleeping with for a decade is a crack addict. You’ve known subconsciously for ages, and your credit rating is shot, and the cops get called every weekend, and the dining room set is gone, and you can’t leave your purse lying around, and your friends have been threatening an intervention, but it still comes as a ‘surprise’ when the spark of denial which has been animating your zombie-like frame finally goes out. Sure I like getting paid, but not at this cost. And now that I’m not in denial, the cost seems suddenly extreme. And so I must squarely face my entire lack of enthusiasm every day and still try to be productive, and the week before John’s memorial service, with the phone at home and at work going off very frequently, that’s been hard to do.
The oriental woman who gets the empties from the alley poked her head hopefully into the back yard. By dint of much arm waving I indicated I would bring them around the front for her, cause like, woa, dude, I have no back stairs, and she came and got them.
Tanya went on maternity leave yesterday. I will have to work another three weeks without her, and words can’t convey how much I will miss her. I walked downstairs with her when Battery came to pick her up, and all I could think to say to him was to whine about him cutting off his hair (he has lovely long hair).
It’s good to remember that the emotionalism and bluster I’ve been party t0 ….. this too shall pass. But nothing in the world will ever look the same to me. Yup, it’s bad. Must… remember …. that a) I asked for it (or volunteered, or ‘invited the duck hunting into my life as I would remark to Patricia’) and b) if it wasn’t for my Beacon family, counselling me lovingly and wisely, today would be already be a complete write off. But having said that, I can hear Jeff saying, “How can you say that about a day that has biscotti in it?”
Thank goodness there’s livejournal.
I’m going to go live in a house John helped renovate. That’s all I need by way of coda.
