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Posted 4:34 AM 30 January 2009
One year ago today our Patti died.
It is all starting to feel like a dream now, as does so many other events of a receding past that cannot be reenacted. People die and this is the crux of the situation for all of us, the situation of being alive and in another way of looking at it.. that of being left behind. At some point in the not too distance future each one of you reading this will become a dream by those that we too leave behind.
And so on and so on.
At times I think that we are just an "etc." or an afterthought to something happening in Life that is far larger than we could ever imagine it to be, that perhaps it does not all revolve around us afterall. Who's to say with unequivocating certainty as to the significance, if any, of all these changes we go through from our birth to our death, like a light that comes on, then steadily grows brighter and brighter in the beginning..until reaching some pre-ordained leveling off and then comes the noticeble creeping back from where ever it was we came from, our own brightness growing dimmer and dimmer until we appear to vanish altogether?
We "appear to vanish". What kind of sense is one to make of that?
Are we each just one tiny little part, the sum of which all dancing together to create and maintain the whole which Itself is becoming brighter and brighter.. then leveling off for a time.. only to collapse in upon itself some crazy later date up ahead. And then perhaps to begin again?
Are our lives just infinite little life dramas within some larger drama within a larger Drama still, all in service to the living-maintenance of the whole?
Well, it all is what it is (whatever it is)...until it isn't.
Yeah, that certainly makes it all clear as a bell now, doesn't it?
Indeed, as the old blind beggarman said...
One year gone.
The apartment that I keep remains the same save for a few minor changes: a couple of Patti's paintings I was not particularly fond of I have removed and stored away, replacing them with others that I did more so appreciate. As well, I moved the large TV 6 feet to the right so it was more directly in front of the couch. (It was never to my liking that every night when Patti and I would have dinner together on the couch while watching a BlockBuster video that both of our heads would necessarily be cocked 20 degrees to the left to see the movie ), a small desk that someone had placed out on the street with a "free" sign on it now sits beside my computer desk that I may put my overflow papers upon and my 5 o'clock beer... a memorial to Patti constructed upon the living room wall and holding a small vial of her ashes that I had held back, a curly 3-inch lock of her hair that I took from her before the men-in-black removed her lifeless body from the bed.. some photos, the small memorial message book and 3 wedding rings. These "things" of spinning electrons and protons still remain somehow alive with a force that may be indestructable. Small Testaments to Hope.
What can be said for any of it?
I lot I suppose or I wouldn't have kept back so much of the things she left behind for me to consider.
A couple of weeks after Patti vanished from our lives I was going through the files on her computer with the aim of backing up everything of value onto discs.
I came across a letter that she had written to me before she died. She knew I would be going through everything and she tucked it away in a document folder for me to find after her release.
I feel I can share it with the rest of you now as a part of the dream that a year and more ago was not a dream.
Take from it what you will. Hopefully she won't mind my sharing it with you all. As follows:
Dearest Bill,
I just don't have the words to tell you how much I love you and how sorry I am to have finally given up on life. I am so worn down from fighting a war I cannot win-the one inside my head that leaves no room for anything but sadness and despair. I am no longer able to see any beauty around me. My eyes see it but there is a disconnect between the visual image and the place where it can register as pleasure.
Even knowing that I am depressed and that there are potentially remedies for this doesn't help because I feel that the effort to bounce back and then wait again until I am knocked down again just isn't worth it anymore. And then there's the cancer issue once again -or still I guess. And not being able to speak. Now I think it will be better to just quit fighting.
I don't know what awaits on the other side. Maybe nothing. But if there is something I sure hope I won't be punished for deciding to call it quits.
I can't bear to leave you and I can't bear to stay. What shall I do?
Please try to explain to all who love me and us that I hope they will send kind thoughts our way and prayers for my progression to a better place.
Above all, you have been the last part of my life meaningful and beautiful when I am able to feel these things.
I love you so much and I hope you can forgive me for the pain I've caused you.
Nothing to forgive my lovely, not a single thing to forgive...You are beautiful in every way that your energy manifests Itself.
If Heaven is anything at all then surely it is all Love.
row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream..
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream...
I remember when I was a young teenager and occasionally involved with my own youthful introspections on life. It was a comforting sensation to think that I had my whole life in front of me! It stretched into the distant time horizon with seemingly no end in sight. No end that I could see, although I knew, as we all know even at a much earlier age, about old people dying. (Everyone then above the age of 30 was old.) One day they were around and the next they had vanished. So far into that distant horizon did my life appear to stretch that I could barely imagine my own self also ending and disappearing.
Some half century later I look back and realize that most of my life is now behind me. Along with my own friends and family members and life partner having vanished into that mysterious wind, over the Great Falls, whatever metaphor one wishes to use to describe the process..that fantasy of no-end-in-sight has worn itself away and another reality has taken its place.. one not quite so comforting.
Turning 64 tomorrow I hear the thunderous roar of that great "waterfall" up ahead and just around the bend. I move closer to it with each passing day. Each unnoticed breath we take just slightly presses us ahead in our time, conversely the Falls coming just that much closer, as we all move gently down the stream.
I don't feel bad about it. It's just how it is. There's no getting out of it. We all take our little turns at rowing our little boats here and there.
Sometimes I even see those Great Falls that I and everyone else will drift over and down, as the next really (seriously, really!) Great Adventure.
However the moment passes as usual and for the rest of the day and tomorrow as well, I shall close my eyes to it and continue on with all this very ordinary business of simply being alive and occupying my time with one thing or another. Obviously, this is another of Nature's little tricks to prevent me from thinking too much on the potential terror of actually flowing over those ipsy-dipsy-over-we-go-falls all with a rollicking good "wheeee hooooo!". (see "How I learned to love the Bomb" on the sidebar for that magnificent universal metaphor that makes me laugh every damn time I play it! ->)
"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh"
One of the reasons (but not all) that I write this little blog is to record my own history as I create it, or perhaps more accurately , as it is created ..and to record it online.
I know all too well that I am not alone in saying that as we age along we slow down (most of us anyway, except for Margaret!), we slow down both physically and mentally as well ("uuh.. what did I come into this room to get?"). Out-of-sight so often becomes out-of-mind and it happens instantly like the forgetting of a dream upon awakening. One thought bumps off the preceding thought and our drunken-monkey mind can bounce around like a pin ball. (a fondness for mixing up metaphors is also a symptom, no doubt) Increasing inability to remember what the hell we were even talking about would seem to be one of life's really bad jokes put to us. Reminds me of my smokin' days but without the crazy, wonderful, gut-hurting laughter to go along with it.
We slow down and gradually grind to a halt and eventually disappear much like a dream vanishes upon awakening.
This blog is my own creative but also somewhat laughable attempt at preserving some of the more meaningful aspects of my own past as it is currently being created. I wish I could have started when I was that young teenager. What fun it would have been to read my own life story and view the images. (or maybe not)
I'm guessing that none of us can see the future too clearly. I would at least like to occasionally review my own past in both these writings and photographs.
I can think of no more interesting way to do that then right here in front of my computer or when I am on the road with a wifi enabled laptop making these recordings. Hopefully some of you will get the occasional kick out of it as well.
Here is my next plan - (do I hear distant laughter coming from the vasty deep?)
In a couple weeks I will be heading south to Florida. Andrea and Margaret and I have been graciously invited to spend some time with Bob and Francie in their new home in Venice. (Andrea and Margaret have since had a change of plan.. yep, God laughing again as other things bumped them off that idea.) So I am heading south by myself. Hopefully.
After a few days with Francie and Bob showing me the sights and all of us having some laughs I will drive on to the Keys to visit my sister and nephew and his family. Nephew Eric wants to take me out on the ocean on his boat but the last time I went out on the ocean (deep sea fishing back in the 70s) I very nearly fed the fish with a breakfast that I had had a few hours earlier. We'll see about going out again 35 years later. Being an Iowa farm boy I am clearly susceptible to sea sickness.
I also plan on hitting Ernies BBQ Restaurant in Ft Lauderdale. They serve the greatest bowl of Conch Chowder and Bimini Bread ever or so they did 35 years ago. After that, I'll drive back and hike the stairs back up into our 9th floor nest above the tree tops here in DC for the rest of the winter.
For relatively weightier entries like this one I will continue to send out mass email notices. However I do plan for the foreseeable future to also post shorter and lighter entries along with photographs that really will not merit notifications. (like my upcoming journey to Florida) Those of you who have nothing better to do I invite you to bookmark the site and occasionally check back on your own. Like I said, I'm just recording my own history so I can look back on it as the years and the tears flow by and before I reach those Great and Thunderous Falls ahead.
Alrighty then.. the party is over.
Onward and upward into the year ahead and wishing all of you wellness.. good health and something secure to hang on to as this approaching economic "Katrina" makes landfall.
bill (and patti)
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Of Days Gone By
(archives)
2006~08
2005
2002~2005
Selected Entries
Teaching the Daughter to Fly
20-second gods
Quack..quack
Historical Linkage
Go Hug a Tree
Morphing the Stone
Everyone's Gone to the Moon
Recent SoundSlide Shows
(turn on your sound)
Patti's Ashes
Memorial
Commentaries on the
impending
Great Train Wreck
Jesse's Café Américain
The Automatic Earth
The Greater Fool
Danielle Park
Great Crash of 1929
(video) - PBS
or..
How I Learned
To Love the Bomb
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